Southern Baptist Diagnostics

I realize that I never blog here anymore, but I have about 200 words worth writing about the current SBC stupidity and it's not Pyro-worthy, so I'll put it up here in case anyone's feed is still pointed at this blog.

There's a lot of heat and light right now about the ridiculous document, "A Statement of the Traditional Southern Baptist Understanding of God’s Plan of Salvation."  Tom Ascol is giving it the thrashing it deserves, and even the unbalanced can see that, in the best possible case, it talks about Christian theology in semi-pelagian or perhaps even rankly-pelagian terms.  It's not Arminianism.

Here's what I think: if the men who authored and are proffering this document are serious about being advocates for this way of talking about the Christian faith, let them come forward and have an open, honest, and real discussion with their peers at SBTS about what they mean by it.  This document, like all the other shady little snipes that have come before it, is not any better than gossip and rumor and false accusations until it is brought out into the light of day and tested for its accuracy and orthodoxy. Just because Paige Patterson signs onto a document does not make it either reasonable or serious.

However, unlike a lot of folks who are right now bemoaning what this document does or might do to and for the SBC, I welcome it.  I hail it as a milestone.  This is the chance its advocates have been waiting for: this sets the stage to actually fight the fight for the soul of the SBC so that it may find out what it is made of.

In a million different ways, I would much rather that the SBC actually have it out over the accusations made in this document, and over the shoddy formulations in this document, and settle the matter.  If there is a split, let there be a split -- and let those who accept the unbiblical, unhistorical, and unsystematic claims of this document separate from those who would call them to the abstract of principles of SBTS, among other foundational and historical SBC statements.

Rather than post these random and accusatory documents and then run away, let these fellows offer a time and place where an exhaustive and serious discussion of these issues can be had, and let them be resolved.  Or else: admit that they have no intention of ever doing that, and simply have the courage to walk away from SBTS and the like-minded churches which support it, and go their own irreconcilable way.

That's it.  See you the next time something like this comes up.

Two books, briefly

Crossway has dipatched more books to review in spite of my lack of earnestness in reviewing all the books they send me. The title to the left is Religion Saves, and 9 other misconceptions, by Mark Driscoll.

You heard the sermon series last year, I am sure. I was reading the other title I received this weekend while my wife was paging through this one. She says to me, "Are you going to review this one?"

Of course, I said. That's the deal.

"You better throw it away when your finished with it. Our kids are readers, you know. If you leave this laying around, they'll read it and it's not appropriate for them."

So I'll have to review that one pretty quick before my wife takes summary action with it.

The other one is the title you see to the right here -- Southern Baptist Identity, edited by David Dockery. On the one hand, thank God someone is talking about this besides me and iMonk. Seriously.

I was having an e-mail conversation with a Southern Baptist Missiologist who didn't ask to be drawn into this conversation but did contribute to this book (this was about 2 years ago) and he was going on about how the SBC was a denomination -- and I told him that this was the problem. He didn;t get my sly remark, so I clarified: the SBC was never intended to be a denomination: it is a convention. The distinction there is that a denomination can and will dictate terms to member churches because that's the point of a denomination: centralized leadership through which to force conformity. A "convention" ought to be a mode of cooperation by local churches who are seeking to do more for the Gospel collectively than they can do individually -- the agenda is driven from the bottom, up.

And in the ways that this book speaks to that truth, it's a useful book for Southern Baptists to read and think about and discuss vigorously.

You can look forward to some discussion about that book here in the near future.

And sometime this week a debate about the Trinity is going to break out at the D-Blog. I am sure it will edify someone.

Prohibition season

The Southern Baptist Convention is about to convene, so that means it's time for the prohibitionists (you know: because the SBC is relevant to what's happening today in the English-speaking world) to trot out their amazing and ever-inventive singular vision of moralism. And in that, my friend @hereiblog has engaged in some Twitter apologetics with a fellow who calls himself "SAGordon".

@SAGordon tweeted thus:

Which is a clever approach, right? The Bible offers some warnings about drinking alcohol, but since it never explicitly demands we drink alcohol, we should therefore never touch the stuff.

Clever, but completely wrong.

Are the only two modes of communication from God "command" and "forbid"? What if we tried to form up the Gospel in those terms -- would our prohibitionist (and mostly-anti-calvinist) brothers in Christ accept the definition of the Gospel "the command from God to believe and repent or be damned"? That sounds a lot less like the pleading Christ they champion than I suspect they would be comfortable with -- even if there's not a Calvinist in the universe who would bat an eye at such a definition.

And I say that to say this: while there is no command to drink alcohol in the Bible, there is this:

Praise the LORD, O my soul. O LORD my God, you are very great; you are clothed with splendor and majesty. He wraps himself in light as with a garment; he stretches out the heavens like a tent and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters. He makes the clouds his chariot and rides on the wings of the wind. He makes winds his messengers, flames of fire his servants.

... He makes springs pour water into the ravines; it flows between the mountains. They give water to all the beasts of the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst. The birds of the air nest by the waters; they sing among the branches. He waters the mountains from his upper chambers; the earth is satisfied by the fruit of his work. He makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for man to cultivate— bringing forth food from the earth: wine that gladdens the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, and bread that sustains his heart.

... How many are your works, O LORD! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.[from Psa 104]

Which is, of course, not a command to drink wine, right? It's a catalog of the exquisite provisions God has made upon this earth (including the place where we get the title of this blog, fwiw). And what do we find there among the things which the Psalmist exclaims are the works of YHVH which "in wisdom [He] made them all"? Yes: wine.

So it's not a command to drink it: it's an offer to receive it as a blessing. God is saying, "it's a good thing which I give you as a blessing from my wisdom. It's good like oil which you may use as a comfort, and bread to satisfy your hunger. I made it to make your heart happy -- I made it for your sake."

God may be King of Kings and Lord of Lords, but he's not completely emotionless. He's not a stony-faced despot who is only forbidding or commanding. He's also a father who blesses us, and has done things for our sake. Try to work that into your theology regarding good works sometime this month as you wrangle the evils of Calvinism.

And be with the Lord's people in the Lord's house on the Lord's day this weekend. And if you have wine at His table, know that it is because He said that it's a good thing which he made with you in mind.

Why Timmy Brister is the luckiest man alive

Darrell Orman, pastor of First Baptist Church in Stuart, Florida, and chair of the convention's resolution committee, doubted that the resolution would lead to widespread purging of church rolls. "No one can tell Southern Baptists what to do," he said.

In response, Ascol said, "That's a sad reality. Even Jesus can't tell some Southern Baptists what to do."

Booyah.

BTW, Pastor Tom: nice work for Resolution #6. God willing the SBC will take it as seriously as it takes beer.

Joe Thorn is a good guy

See – I put that headline up there to make sure that anyone reading this will not miss the fact that I said, “Joe Thorn is a good guy”. Because this post isn’t about whether or not Joe Thorn is a good guy or a bad guy. This post is about his new blogging endeavor.

See: Joe is a good guy. If you meet him, I promise you will probably like him. And if you ask me, that’s probably a good attribute for any Christian: as Paul would say in proper King James, lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. I think that’s Joe.

And he has opened up a new blog with fellow reformissionary Steve McCoy [note: AFAIK, STeve McCoy is a good guy, so no sleight-by-omission intended] called “sub•text”, about establishing the church in a suburban (American) context – which, you know, the suburbs are full of lost people. Everyone from Steve Camp to Steve Sjogren would agree with that. The suburbs need the Gospel.

I agree that the suburbs need the Gospel.

But then Joe and Steve affirm this:

For many Christians the mission of God is seen as the salvation of individual sinners from hell, sin and self. While this is an important part of God’s mission, it is only part of it.

The whole picture is that God is redeeming a people for himself made up of every tribe, tongue and nation. And his mission does not stop there, but includes the salvation of creation itself. His goal is the establishment of a new creation that will never fall into corruption; one that will reveal and revel in his glory for eternity. In fact, at every point along the way of the history of redemption God’s promise to redeem through the Messiah is never pointed merely at individual salvation. The reformed tradition has made this clear in its dealing with the covenants of God.

I added the underlines, btw. Before we go any farther, I don't know anyone who would deny the first underlined part except for a few hard-core anti-reformational types. People would fall on a spectrum of whether God's glory is in the foreground, the middle-ground, the background, or perhaps God's glory is the overarching metaphysical ground -- but the idea that "God's mission" is to glorify Himself is, frankly, baseline Christian metaphysics.

The second underlined part there, though, is where the dust cloud sorta kicks up. And the problem is not the reformed stress in what it means that God calls a people out to himself: it is what Joe and Steve meanby applying that tradition.

The next part is pretty neutral:

In God’s first promise of redemption after the fall (Gen 3:15), hope is given to the human race. Somehow, through the woman’s offspring, Satan would be defeated and sin would be conquered (See Geerhadus Vos, pg 43). God later promised that through Abraham’s seed all the peoples of the earth would be blessed. This covenant would be made with all of Abraham’s spiritual offspring (Gen. 12, 15, 17; Gal. 3). Ultimately God’s promises of redemption always reveal a communal salvation and a creation-restoration.

Now, again -- that's a pretty reformed idea that Jesus didn't die just to save me (even if I do get saved overall). It's also a pretty reformed idea that God will restore creation. The problem, of course, is that these two things are not completed as parallel work. That is: God calls out the church through the proclamation of the Gospel in the course of time, but the renewal of "the heavens and the earth" isn't a like that.

Joe and Steve, I think, would disagree with that:

Concerning the restoration of the earth George Eldon Ladd said it this way,

The biblical idea of redemption always includes the earth. Hebrew thought saw an essential unity between man and nature. The prophets do not of the earth as merely the indifferent theater on which man carries out his normal task but as the expression of divine glory. The Old Testament nowhere holds forth the hope of a bodiless, nonmaterial, purely “spiritual” redemption as did Greek thought. The earth is the divinely ordained scene of human existence. Furthermore, the earth has been involved in the evils which sin has incurred. There is an interrelation of nature with the moral life of man; therefore the earth must also share in God’s final redemption.

George Ladd, The Presence of the Future

For some of you, a bell just rang, and for others of you, well, you need a tour guides here. George Eldon Ladd was a dispensationalist and a baptist who wrote some interesting -- and, I think, when you read it as he intended it -- useful theology on the meaning of the term "Kingdom of God" and how we are to think about that in this church age. The problem is that Ladd's work has been somewhat co-opted by the "Kingdom Now" guys for the sake of setting up the groundwork of dominion theology and/or theonomistic approaches to the church in the world.

Here is what I am NOT saying: I am NOT saying that Steve and Joe have drunk the dominion theology Kool-Aid. I am sure they are not throwing themselves into the Pat Robertson/Gary North right-wing of dispensational reconstructionism.

Here's what I am saying: they are making the same mistake to the left.

These are two obviously-bright guys who have and obviously-right heart about people and God. They want the Gospel to go out, and for it not to come back void, amen? So Joe and Steve are not bad guys. But in wanting to be faithful, and in not wanting to do what their forefathers in the faith have done, I think they are reacting against superficial problems rather than the root cause of their beef with SBC suit-and-tie types.

The problem is not that the SBC doesn't understand the command in James to not be hearers only of the Law but doers also: the problem is that the SBC has made the Law the Gospel in many ways, and has therefore transformed the communio sanctorum from God's work using God's means into men's work using men's means.

And as a word of advice to Joe and Steve, neither of whom are bad guys, let me suggest that changing the works from Gospel sings and passing laws against Gay marriage to, well, raves and passing laws against unkempt yards ... might as well just pass the resolution against alcohol, too, then. Meet the new boss: same as the old boss.

WORD OF CAUTION: I think it is conceivable that the rebuttal from Joe and Steve looks like this -- "dude, that is our point. The SBC is afraid to make superficial changes which will reach people, and that's wrong."

The problem is that this is not my point. My point is that there are fundamental problems in over-realized eschatology, both on the right and the left. I think we should stop quibbling about things like whether or not Lenexa, KS, has the same cultural environment as Miami, FL, and start worrying about whether or not anyone in either city has even encountered the Gospel. Hearing the Gospel proclaimed is not about putting it in the right fashion catalog. It is about whether or not the church itself has as its main focus a savior who transcends culture whose work is greater than aid.

scholars and scholarship

This one gets filed under "alcohol" for one simple reason: it's part of the larger question of what is and what ought to govern our thinking -- particularly Southern baptist thinking -- on the topic of alcohol and its use or uses.

Peter Lumpkins has dropped by in the meta, and has labelled the work of Eliphalet Nott "scholarship" on the subject of "temperance", by which they both mean "prohibition". That's an interesting opinion, and I think it deserves some working out.

Dr. Nott was, in fact, a scholar. He tested out to receive his Master's Degree without needing to complete the coursework, and ultimately earned a doctorate. He spent almost his entire adult life in the service to adacemia, and for that he is to be applauded. That is a great reason to call him a "scholar"

However, the lecture series from which the arguments we have seen from Mr. Lumpkins have been drawn were not academic lectures -- that is, they were not delivered as "scholarship" per se, subject to peer review. They certainly implement a wide variety of information, they implement an expositional style intended to persuade the listener, and they are somewhat tenacious regarding the point they are trying to make.

But in that, they were delivered in temperance lectures -- the 19th century equivalent of appearing on an info-tainment show like 20/20 which people attended for populist, civic-minded entertainment and information. In that, it's reported on page 190 of Dr. Nott's memoirs:

[His scriptural argument] is presented in two or three lectures, out of a course of ten which he delivered in Schenectady, in1838, 1839, and repeated in other places. … As to the postulate concerning the good and bad wine of the Bible, it need only be said that by the majority of Biblical critics the argument is not now held to be conclusive. He never claimed to be a Hebrew scholar ...[Memoirs, C. Van Santvoord, ed., 1876]

Dr. Nott was a scholar, and he held opinions which, frankly, he was entitled to. The unfortunate fact is that his lectures where these arguments are made are not "scholarly" lectures but in fact "popular" lectures, and should not be represented as holding some kind of endorsement of academic credibility.

Not any more or less, at any rate, than blogs are held in such repute today.

Wine

This came up in the meta, and it's an argument which, in one form, Pastor Peter Lumpkins reiterates from his source from the 19th century, one Eliphalet Nott (Pastor Lumpkins misspells his first name now and again), which is that the Bible makes a distinction between "good wine" and "bad wine" – and Dr. Nott's view is that "bad wine" is actually "alcoholic wine" while "good wine" is merely grape juice, or grape juice mixed with other flavoring agents, or water, or all of the above.

There is no other argument in this discussion which, frankly, defies more hermeneutical and logical conventions than this one, so before I get to Dr. Nott's larger work on prohibition, this particular chestnut needs some time in cracker to see what's inside.

The first thing we need to cover is this: it is important when we read any text, but particularly the Scriptures, to represent what the writer meant as he meant it. I say that because Dr. Nott's argument expresses something which I think the average reader will miss unless someone points it out to him.

For example, Pastor Lumpkins makes a point of giving us this as an example of "bad wine":

"For their vine is the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah. Their (yayin) wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps" (Deut. 32.33)

Fair enough, right? Except that's a truncation of the verses in question by a significant lot:

For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah: their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter: Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps.

The problem is not that they have "bad wine": the problem is that they have wine from grapes which spring from bad ground.

Hermeneutically, if we are going to say there is "bad wine", we have to admit that there is a reason in the text for the bad wine – and it's not alcohol. It's Sodom and Gomorrah -- which is to say, sin and disobedience.

But that said, there is another curious problem for Pastor Lumpkins and his Presbyterian source: the use of the word "yayin" in Hebrew.

See: in Gen 9, Noah plows the ground and grows some grapes, and makes him some wine. "yayin" is the word it uses there, specifically in v. 9:21. And with the "yayin", our friend Noah gets drunk.

That doesn’t seem to terrible on the surface, but when we get to Ps 104 and find out that wine is a blessing, it turns out that the wine in question is "yayin". When Ps 104 is talking about "making the heart glad", it's talking about something other than fruity goodness.

Be in the Lord's house with the Lord's people on the Lord's day this week.

Have a drink, or don't

OK – I promised to crack the books and start some replies to Pastor Peter Lumpkin who is blogging toward (if, allegedly, not against) those in the SBC who find Resolution 5 offensive and anti-biblical.

This is where I'd start with Pastor Lumpkin, which would be the intro from one of his latest missives:

Thus far in our series on wine, we've really only made one important point contrary to our Brothers who insist that moderate consumption of alcoholic wine for pleasurable purposes is the only Biblically defensible position available; namely, that there exists a viable, scholarly understanding based on Scripture that calls for total abstention from intoxicating beverages--wine, in particular--for pleasurable purposes.

The reason I'd like to start there is because Pastor Lumpkin sort of just starts talking past people with this assertion.

Apparently – and I welcome his supporters, and anyone on his side of this exchange, to offer me a correction on this – he has misconstrued his own position for the position of those who object to Res 5.

See: Res 5 makes this plain statement in English --

the messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Greensboro, North Carolina, June 13-14, 2006, express our total opposition to the manufacturing, advertising, distributing, and consuming of alcoholic beverages; ...
... we commend organizations and ministries that treat alcohol-related problems from a biblical perspective and promote abstinence and encourage local churches to begin and/or support such biblically-based ministries.

It makes alcohol consumption an all-or-nothing proposition, and as I pointed out back in '06, this is based on the conflation of the use of alcohol with the abuse of alcohol.

My position – and the position of every single person I know who would reject this resolution and advocate for "moderation" – is that total rejection of alcohol use is excessive and outside the Biblical mandate, but that to abstain personally is appropriate in a very wide variety of circumstances.

Let me give you some personal examples. I work at a place where, from time to time, the guys I work with at my pay grade go out and have a beer and wings. BTW, we have it at a place which is about two miles from the largest SBC church in NW Arkansas, and that church is not campaigning to have that establishment, or any of the dozen liquor stores in its 10-mile radius, closed. And their pastor is a supporter of Res 5. End Parathetical.

But we go out and we have a couple of beers, some laughs, some wings, and we go home. And when I say "we", I actually mean "they": I am the first-string DD. When we go, I drive, and when I drive, I drink Cokes. In that situation, it is both prudent and a ministry to stay sober because somebody has to drive home, and I take their marriages and families seriously enough to say, "I'll pass on the Sam Adams, boys, because I love you and I want us to get home safely."

If I was in my house, I might have half a beer – because I like a half a beer once in a while, but I also can't have more than half a beer because of my Lipitor. But I refrain when it is prudent and not because there is some phony holiness stipulation which convicts me.

Everyone with me so far?

There is also the matter of ministry service. I'm the facilitator for Adult community life at our church, and as such I am considered a member of the ministry team. We live in a dry county. In that environment – where the moral view of the gentiles is that alcohol is the deemin likker – there is no profit for a servant of the church to partake in a practice which is viewed by the locals as somehow satanic.

So again: I choose personally to abstain.

The question, then, is not is abstinence a valid choice? The question is when is abstinence a valid choice? And as a correlation to that question, when is moderate drinking a valid choice?

Therefore, as we begin to engage Pastor Lumpkin's points, let's remember that it is not the advocates of moderation who are demanding an either/or solution to the issue. The prohibitionist view is founded on the principle that either alcohol is evil or it is wholly and always good – and it is that view which is frankly untenable.

We'll get to the 19th-century perspective of prohibition and alcohol which Pastor Lumpkin borrows from a Presbyterians minister the next time we come across this topic.

Then again, a story like this comes up. Can't wait to see the spin on this one.

Programing notes

Beautiful. It's January, and apparently that's the baptist liturgiucal season for demanding prohibition. Gene Bridges sent me this link to Les Puryear's blog; Les has compiled the summary of links to Peter Lumpkin's blog regarding Pastor Lumpkin's thoughts on a "useful" approach to making sure alcohol is illegal and never passes the lips of a baptist in an SBC church.

Most helpful to those of you who are really up for this is this link to the book from which Pastor Lumpkin has extracted his argument against alcohol -- a book published in 1857, which is an edited version of a series of lectures by the Presbyterian (!) president of Union College in Schenectady, NY. And let me tell you: there was never a time I was happier that Google started putting public domain books on the internet in PDF format than when I came across this little set of essays by Pastors Lumpkin.

And I thought I had a full calendar already. Stay tuned.

Because Oklahoma doesn't have any worse problems...

... like rampant and vulgar Charismatic chaos or the appearance of casinos on every street corner, the Arbuckle Baptist Association has issued a fatwa against (sorry) issued a recommendation that the SBC take a stand against reformed theology and/or Calvinism.

It's funny how the Calvinists want the SBC to have truthful membership records and take a resolution to exercise biblical church discipline, but the other side wants to ban alcohol and Calvinism. There's a punch-line in there someplace, but I'm just too vexed to think of it.

SBC Growing Pains

HT: AOMIN.org

When Kirk Cameron understands the Gospel better than, well, people who want to outlaw booze for Jesus, there is a problem.

Bringing the pet peeve home

For those just joining us, my pet peeve is the question "Can I leave my church?", and what we have covered so far to answer that question (from Titus) are the points that [a] the church should have leaders with authority, implying more than an informal structure, and [b] the point of having leaders like this is not to have a docile flock but to have a flock which, internally, demonstrates how beautiful God's promises are.

In and of themselves, those are pretty robust. But there is a third part of Paul's letter to Titus, whether or not the verse numbers are inspired. Now, before we get to that, let me recommend a book (it's about 10 years old) to you which speaks indirectly to why we think about this subject (and a few others) the way we do today -- which is, I would argue, in an incomplete or truncated way. The book is The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind By Mark A. Noll. In this book, Noll talks seriously and compellingly about what has happened to the way Evangelicals think, and even what we are willing to think about, in the last 200 years. So if you want to find out something about American evangelical (bad) presuppositions, buy that book and give it one or two readers to make sure his point sinks in with you.

And I bring it up because one of the threads in his book is that we have stopped thinking about the church as a vital entity. In fact, the foundation for the consumerism obvious in our aggregate body of believers comes from the assumption that we're in the last days anyway, so the church is both apostate and becoming irrelevant.

But here's what Paul told Titus:

Remind [the believers] to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people. For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people.

The more-alert among you will notice I didn't finish the paragraph here, but we'll get to that in a minute. Paul is here telling Titus that the church ought to be different from the world in a way which can be observed in a clear way.

Think about that: For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. That is, before we received Christ, that's how we were all the time. That's the old way of doing things -- and in case anyone missed it, Paul says that the old way is to be contrasted with the new way of being submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people. See: the elders and leaders of the church aren't just figureheads. Certainly – as the London Baptist Confession of Faith says – there is only one head of the church, who is Christ Jesus, but there are those who have authority to teach and to disciple in the body, and we have some obligation to be in submission to them.

That submission should not make us docile monastics who pad around softly as if we were afraid of stirring up some human person's wrath: it should make us into courteous, gentle people who are doing things which can be seen as good work – work which represents to the world the difference between what we were and what we are today.

And Paul says that this is excellent and profitable for people – that is, the people to whom he is talking.

"But cent," says the person who really, really wants to leave his church, "dude, Paul didn’t write that to me. My pastor at my SBC church rules the place with an iron fist, and there's no room for dissention. All I want him to do is to listen to me for a minute in order to stop him from railing against a straw man he's calling 'Calvinism', and he's dead set against even listening to me. I can't keep my family here if he keeps this up."

For you, my friend, I have some sympathy – because you’re right: Paul wrote this letter to his faithful disciple and fellow worker Titus, and my guess is that Titus wasn't blacking out large sections of the Psalms, and Job, and Genesis, and Exodus, and Isaiah, etc., in order to toe the Conventional line that Calvinism makes God a bad guy. But listen: what is the solution to a church culture which is self-immolating for political reasons? Is it "let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains"? Many people think so – and it's an easy choice to make because it gets made all the time. Listen – this is why I bring up Noll's book. The urge to run away is strong, and given the plethora of good spiritual food you could choose to take instead – via podcasts and books and videos from reputable churches and pastors – you could easily continue to mature on your own ...

... except that Paul doesn’t say that believers are called to mature on their own. He says that they are called to live together to be a testimony to the beauty of God's promises, always doing good works. And maybe you get to suffer for the sake of the Gospel.

The reality check is this: eventually, one of these 21st century Medieval bishops and their cadre of lackies is going to do what my hypothetical reader here says they are doing if you attend his church, and if you bring it up to him that he's wrong (Mt 18 and all that; truth in love; gentleness and reverence), he's going to tell you that you're not qualified to correct him, and your attitude is divisive. It's going to happen in spite of prayer and good will. But the question, then, is what to do in the face of what is truly persecution for the sake of God's truth. I'm not talking about drama here: I'm talking about actually submitting to persecution for the sake of being all things to all people in order that some may be saved and share with you in the riches of the Gospel.

It seems to me that running away from a persecutor of the church who is posing as an elder or pastor is forgetting the Gospel completely. If we think in worldly terms, we think only the Islamists and secularists are persecuting the church: but truth be told, when a false teacher lampoons the Gospel and tries to drive those who know God's truth, or want to seek God's truth, out of God's church and into dispersion and seclusion, just because there's no physical lynching or rape doesn’t mean there isn't spiritual violence going on.

My suggestion to you who are reading this blog is that you love God's church more than you love a comfortable spiritual life. It's hard to love your enemies, and hard to suppress our natural love of soap opera, and to do good to those who do evil to you – but it seems to me that this is what the Gospel says we should do. And I don't see anyplace where it says, "yeah – to the liars and fornicators and atheists and idolators do that, but to screwed up pastors or self-important deacon/elders? Dude: run away from them – they can't be saved. There's no work to be done there." Paul certainly commands the elders to refute false teachers, and to have nothing to do with them is they will not be reconciled to truth – but that's to elders and not to Joe Baptist who, providentially, read the book of Romans as if Paul was actually trying to say something there.

Paul says to Titus here that inside the church is where this stuff starts. And when the church is doing this, it becomes a giant neon sign to God's glory and God's promises.

Peter had the guts to say this:

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name. For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And

If the righteous is scarcely saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner? [Prov 11:31]

Therefore let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.

The church ought to be beautiful – by example if it works the way God has intended and commanded, and by the suffering of the saints if not. Starting a new "fellowship" because you're not able to keep the old one is utterly antithetical and self-refuting.

That's a good place to stop today – but I'm sure the question of the Reformation (or those who think they are about to start a new reformation) will come up. That's what the meta is for, and I'm sure I'll have a few more words on this as time permits.

Overheard in the SBC yesterday

Instead of people following Jesus in discipleship, there are a lot of people today who are just following Jesus around.

-- Tad Thompson, Senior Pastor, Harvard Avenue Baptist Church.

A pet peeve

I have this thing about the local church -- and I have no idea when or where I developed this condition, but it's probably going to be fatal to me in the long run.

See: I spend a lot of time here at the blog giving the local church a hard time -- mostly for surrendering its obligations to religious circuses and media sideshows. I think it's not just a shame but shameful when the local church is doing the sociologically-Christian version of watching MTV and eating chips on the couch.

So far, so good, right? Everyone in the blogosphere is prolly saying "amen" to that.

Here's where I get under people's skins: I think that's no excuse for leaving the local church for nothing at all. You can't find a proof-text for becoming a spiritual lone ranger in the Bible, kids. It doesn't exist.

Before we go any farther here, I want us to think about the book of 1 Corinthians for a minute, because it's relevant to this issue. Paul writes to this church which he established because they wrote to him, and they have apparently sent him a laundry list of "stuff" that they can't figure out. For example, they can't figure out who they should follow -- they have factions, and some are Paul disciples, some are Appollos disciples, and some (I am sure these were the protobaptists in the crowd) make the clear claim that they are followers of Jesus and not men -- very pious types, I am sure.

But these people, who apparently have many teachers all of whom has a claim to fame, can't seem to stop bickering. They have disputes which roll over into (what we would call) the secular courts; they don't have the will or the guts to discipline sin for the sake of turning a brother away from destruction; they use daGifts as if they were for entertainment or self-sulfillment; they abuse the Lord's table -- and worth of all, they just don't understand the Gospel.

Your church may be this bad. I am sure many churches today are this bad. Some -- a handful, lead by actual heretics who deny the Trinity or gloss over sin with either self-help psychology or legalism -- may be worse. The problem of having broken or sloppy churches is not a new problem: it is literally as old as the faith. Paul wrote 1 Corinthians in c. 55 AD, so in the last 1952 years it's not like this is a new problem.

But let's listen to 1 Cor for a second. Of all the things Paul says to our brothers in Christ there -- the ones Paul says are "sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ", the ones "enriched in [Christ] in all speech and all knowledge ... so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift" -- he does not say, "and if you can't fix these things, people need to leave the church because it is broken beyond repair."

Paul says to fix what is broken -- which is only possible (he demonstrates) by understanding the Gospel and the consequences of the Gospel. And one of the consequences of the Gospel is the local church. But the other consequences of the Gospel -- for example, in 1 Cor 3, "let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future--all are yours, and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's" -- are to be carried out inside the local church.

So let's imagine that you belong to a Purpose-Driven, First [non-denominational denomination] Community Fellowship Tabernacle of Praise and Holy Spirit theme park church, and you've been dutifully reading the blogs and the various Confessions, and your Bible, and listening to John Piper and John MacArthur and (because you're above average, but under 40) Mark Driscoll and Darren Patrick (or if you're over 40 but still above average) and the White Horse Inn and Mark Dever, and suddenly, your church looks a little small and mundane -- or worse, it looks like it worships its programs more than it worships Jesus.

That is: you have deep pangs of conscience -- and rightly so -- that your church is a disciple of Rick Warren, while it ought to be a disciple of Mark Dever, and a person who used to work for the church (and still attends the church) is suing the church for this or that, and the way your church treats baptism is a joke, and the Lord's table is barely practiced at all, let alone practiced as a solemn remembrance of the New Covenant, and last Sunday your pastor warmly received the text of Your Best Life Now as edifying reading.

Is it your duty to split from that church because it is a disgrace? Paul doesn't even consider that an option. He doesn't put it on the table for the Corinthians. So why is it an option for you?

This is going to come at at DebateBlog pretty soon, so I want you to think about something: how necessary is the local church? That is, do you have an obligation to belong to it, or not? And if you do, how far does that obligation reach?

And no, I have not forgotten the Zens paper. It's right here next to me on the desk. I'll get to it this wek.

I just found out ...

... that my plan to attend this subversive event is a lock.

It looks like fun. More on this later ...

Back from Sick

And I’m off the medication, too, so you all will be very happy with me today, I am sure.

I have a sort of backlog on the blog here which I think needs to be cleared up, and in part it revolves around a link provided by reader “scott” to Matt Lauterbach’s blog about what missional means. I give it here for a context, and I have two reactions to it.

The first is this: his exegesis of 1 Cor 6:9-11 is sloppy. Paul’s point in saying what he says in 1 Cor 6 is not, “boy, it’s a sloppy mess when you convert the sinful”. His point is that the Corinthians, who are supposed to be “called to be saints” and “enriched in speech and in knowledge”, don’t have the ability to settle their own disputes: they take their alleged problems to secular courts for judgment. In that, Paul says they disgrace themselves when they have to have the ungodly settle their alleged wrongs against each other. And the admonition that none of these kinds of sinners will inherit the Kingdom of God is made to make the point clear: you are not like this anymore, so don’t give these people authority over you.

And this is a transition from the fact that the ungodly should not judge those in Christ to the fact that those in Christ ought to treat each other as if they were in Christ. That is: “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”

Paul is not talking about missiology here in the sense Pastor Lauterbach is. Paul is saying that our witness to the world ought to be that we have power (cf. 1 Cor 4), and that we are different than what we used to be. That is a missiological statement, but it is couched in ecclesiology and frankly Christian ethics – not in talking about how messy it is to be a person being reformed by the Holy Spirit.

But that said, here’s the real question: what is the mission of the church to those people Pastor Lauterbach has listed by example in his post here? Do we have one – or can we write off the partnered homosexuals who find methods for getting children, the single moms who adopt, the tattooed, the pierced, the surrogate mom, all the people who not only don’t look like “us” but also probably cannot ever “look” like “us”?

I think it’s a great and important question. But there’s a really big problem in the way Pastor Lauterbach frames it: he has implied that somehow “Republican” values are inherently “Christian” values. You know what? That’s a root-cause problem in this discussion.

Yes: I vote Republican – over one issue only, and that’s right-to-life. But I’d vote for a Mormon for public office if he was going to dedicate his political career to the end of abortion. But I have no inherent love for the Republican party. They do not represent me on the matter of the institution of marriage (I’m for the Genesis 2 model – how many laws are based on Genesis 2?). They do not represent me on the matter of public prayer (I’m for the Acts 2-3-4 model of public prayer). They do not represent me on the matter of freedom of religious expression (I’m for the Rom 1:16-17 model of freedom of religious expression). They do not represent me on the matter of race relations (I’m for the Eph 2 model).

So the idea that somehow the Republican party is a template of Christ-in-culture bothers me.

Which brings us, thankfully, back to the matter of Gospel being the solution to culture. The solution to culture is to refute all the errors of culture with the truth of Jesus Christ. And since Pastor Lauterbach brought it up, 1 Cor is a great example of how Christ leads the way for us to be in a culture and at the same time be contra mundum.

For example, Paul says this:

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people – not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler – not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. "Purge the evil person from among you."[1 Cor 5:9-12]

Listen to Paul. In this passage, he is saying, on the one hand, the church has an obligation to deal with men and women who do not repent of sin but instead abide by their own sinfulness if they want to be called part of the family of God. But equally necessary here is what Paul is saying about those outside the church: you cannot be cut off from these people who have not been saved. You cannot come out of the world.

That is missiology, my friends. If that is not missiology, then there is no such thing, or else it is the shabby thing I have been on about in my last few posts to iMonk. The church must be something which is radically set apart from the world and at the same time in the very presence of the world for the sake of showing them the truth.

Paul says more about that here:

For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things. [1 Cor 4:9-13]

Paul doesn’t say, “Gosh, we have a good footing in the political arena and now we can go do God’s work.” And he doesn’t say, “I’m glad I have, at last, become my own reality TV show so that I can influence the culture.” He says, (I paraphrase) “God has made me suffer greatly in all things so that I can be theatron for angels and men and everything in the world.”

Theatron. Listen – that’s got to slap you in the face no matter who you are. Paul says he is made sport of for the public amusement for the sake of Christ; he’s the object of scorn. It doesn’t mean he’s in people’s face with some kind of insult: it means, as he says clearly here, that he makes a fool of himself for the sake of Christ.

He is not seeking anyone’s respect. And why is that? Does he say why? I think he does – it’s the premise of what he is telling the Corinthians here:

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

Paul says that his mission was itself not to gain anyone’s trust or to gain anyone’s approval but to in fact to deliver a message which, by any other standard except God’s standard, is a folly -- so that God will be glorified.

Now, please hear me clearly: I’m still the guy who thinks that the message of Jonah has a lot to do with what our missiology ought to be. I’m still the guy who thinks that Stephen delivered the Gospel to the council of the High Priest. I’m still the guy that believes strongly that God is just as glorified by His love as He is by His justice and holiness. But my point here is that we are not sent here to get anyone’s approval but God’s.

You must speak to people in an idiom they grasp, and you must use the aspects of the Gospel which will have the most impact on culture. You know: in a nearly-monolithic American Republican culture, the truth that Jesus Christ demolishes the demands of the Law is devastating. And in a nearly-monolithic American Democrat culture, the truth that Jesus Christ fulfills the Law and demands repentance from sin is equally devastating. And in a popular counterculture where nihilism and radical autonomy is exalted, the fact of Jesus as Lord and Christ sweeps the ants off the anthill without and regard for their outrage.

These are all expressions of the Gospel – all cross-centered, Christ-exalting, God-filled visions of what the world is and they do not contradict each other. But they do create a culture which contradicts what the world demands of us.

This is missiology: being something in the world which is an affront to the world and a stumbling block to its ideas of wisdom and status. The mission of the church is not to try to make Republicans out of disenfranchised bar hoppers, gender role breakers and all manner of prostitutes: it is to make sinners grateful to God for grace, and to make them repentant that they have tried to reinvent His law, and to make them humble in love and service to men. It might obviously cause them to vote against abortion and those who protect it, but that doesn’t mean it’ll make the world into a suburban Tennessee cul de sac.

When the finger starts wagging about “missiology”, let’s not forget that the purpose here is not to become as much like the culture as we can before we fall into just being the culture: the purpose is frankly to devastate the idols of culture and all their sacraments in order that Christ may be lifted up.

It’s nice to be back.

Baptist Identity Crisis

Ah yes. It was going to come eventually.

Saith iMonk:

It’s not the t-shirt- it’s what’s ON your t-shirt that matters.

I see the big dogs have now picked up the “what clothes are you wearing” aspect of the Missional discussion. What a disappointment. One moment you are discussing missionary methods as the future of evangelism in our culture, the next it’s the discipleship implications of what kind of shirt and shoes you wear. The big problem with missionals: phony in the way they dress. Let’s mail them all _________________ t-shirts so they will be properly and age appropriately attired.

Post a pic of a 19th century preacher somebody, so we all know how to dress.

That's right: someplace the subtext of my posts on this subject is "buy team Pyro t-shirts" or "shop at my pawn shop". Yep -- do that. That would certainly clear up the problem I'm talking about here. That's why I started this discussion in the first place.

Not the fact that what goes on in SBC teen ministry is actually what passes for "missional" ministry 7 times out of 10 (or more); certainly not the example of the ex-con biker in prison ministry. It's all about the pawn shop.

Here's another opinion, and we'll see where it goes from here: I think iMonk doesn't want to deal with the issue that one of the things which poisons the well for "missional" thinking is that there's actually poison in the well. That is: (and let's see if this gets through his mental filters) even Ed Stetzer admitted that the field of missionals is full of bad examples. That is: most "missionals" are not like Tim Keller.

In inviting iMonk to this exchange of ideas, I wanted to find out if he thought that the SBC which he loves had, in his mind, any good reasons for rejecting what passes for "missional" these days. Apparently it has none -- they are only at fault for being concerned about how this things plays out even though they have evidence that it doesn't often play out to the good.

Go back and listen to what Dr. Stetzer delivered again and see if he has that rosey a picture of what is happening. I don't think he does: I think he is concerned that our convention is whithering on the vine, and that it ought to so something, but that something has a great deal to do with reforming in the face of the Gospel. That something does not mean merely wearing a costume or playing social games which people understand: it means

Gospel -> Cultural Context -> Counter-culture

That is not what the vast majority of "missionals" are doing. It is far better than what they are doing.

But, as a bone to iMonk, let's have a teachable moment for me. Teach me that I am wrong about the majority -- even 51% -- of the missionals available to observe today. I'm willing to concede without argument that Matt Chandler, Mark Driscoll and Tim Keller are exactly what Dr. Stetzer are talking about; I'm willing to give you that the 100+ churches in Acts29 are all unquestionably solid and the "right stuff". Demonstrate for me in some way that this is what most missional adventures are like.

You could even have a t-shirt if you have some kind of evidence that this is the case. How sweet can the offer get?

Southern Baptist Interlude

I was about to go off in the meta on something johnMark said there – with which I agree – and I realized that it belonged here, so thanks for following along.

Markie said this

I've had points of disconnect when I've talked to people who've grown up PK's or their whole lives in the church. They don't understand where I've come from through the RLDS and the lostness in college, etc.

And you know what? He’s exactly right. That "lostness in college" is the authentic thing. And I'm not saying you have to have experienced it to preach to it: I'm saying that you have to understand it's there to preach to it. Somehow, you have to know something about it.

You know, to get through the cracks of (for example) an LDS guy, you have to find out what he believes about his own so-called faith and church. Because if you come at him with the Way of the Master -- which is 100% a legit method of evangelism and a clear presentation of the Gospel -- he'll tell you that he agrees in principle, and amen. Man should obey God's law, and when he doesn't, Jesus will fill in the gaps. (the sharper readers, of course, see the problem immediately) There's a context for the Gospel which must be approached in talking to the Mormon, and it's different than when you approach an atheist or a run-of-the-mill secularist.

That is missiology. That is how you reach people. And that's not about how many arguments you can memorize: it's about what the Gospel says, and how it contrasts to what the false religion of something else says. It is about engaging what is there, on both sides of the coin.

You know: iMonk is very bent out of shape that I have called most of these so-called "missionals" "dumb" -- and the irony is that he's mad because I didn't name names and he wants me to say that Joe Thorn is dumb so I can fit into his stereotype of a TR blogger.

Joe Thorn is not dumb; Joe Thorn is not who I am talking about. I'm talking about people who got whatever paper credential they got, set up shop in a "missional" venue, and then criticize a guy like John Piper for having an "ahistorical" view of the Gospel. I'm talking about guys -- and they exist by the gaggle -- like the ones Voddy Bauchman has criticized for being very entertaining and informed on young adult fashion, but completely vacant in terms of the Gospel. I'm talking about youth pastors who never open a Bible up in front of teens. I'm talking about Campus Ministry guys who spend a lot of time on "spiritual disciplines" but never seem to get around to Acts 2 or 1Cor 15.

Those things are dumb, and guys who do them are dumb for doing them.

Now, here’s one of the real integrating points of this matter: the truth is that this is how the SBC practices youth ministry right now. It’s missional in this dumb, superficial, non-practical, non-theological, non-scriptural way. And the truth is that the SBC recognizes – in theory anyway, and in statistics – that this methodology has not only not worked, it has backfired. This alleged “meet people where they are” strategy has created thousands of youth pastors and tens of hundreds of youth centers and teen satellite churches – and has resulted in more lost kids coming out of SBC churches than ever.

So when the rest of the missionals get together to form an intervention for the SBC and say, “dude, you have a problem,” the SBC says, “’dude’, you are my problem – and I want something else which actually works and in which I can have some confessional trust.”

In saying that, it doesn’t mean Joe Thorn is a jerk. Joe Thorn is not a jerk. But Joe Thorn is not representative of the movement. Sorry! I wish he was. I wish Tim Keller was representative of the movement. But factually, it’s the guys who think the Message is a good Bible to use from the Pulpit who are representative of this movement. It’s the guys who characterize Baptists as people who reduce the book of Romans to four propositions who are characteristic of this movement. It’s guys who want to call what they are doing a “reformation” when in fact they are undoing the work of the actual reformation who are characteristic of this movement.

Ed Stetzer’s point – that if the SBC is to have any influence in the 21st century it has to stop being mono-cultural (the subtext is that it is also mono-racial) – is over-the-top good. It’s Turkey with all the fixin’s. But his other point – that in allowing a multi-cultural mix we must still contend for the essentials and be counter-cultural rather than culturally-submissive -- carries equal force, and cuts deeply into both sides of this debate.

And for emphasis, you should read this post from a while back in which I make this point in another way as clearly as I can.

Have a nice Wednesday.

Southern baptist Identity

To follow this question, you might want to download the pdf of Ed Stetser’s talk here.

Quoth iMonk:

In this quote, Stetzer puts the challenge simply: can we cooperate with those who LOOK different? Not those who believe differently. Not those with a different confession, but those who simply look different.

I am reminded of how often I've read reformed blogs make fun of the physical appearance of twenty-something emerging type pastors, or how other non-confessional, non-gospel aspects of emerging churches will be mocked as being "trendy, faddish, etc."

I am one of those blogs, iMonk. I admit it, and I’m really not ashamed of it. Here’s why it’s an object of ridicule: while you might be able to find a handful of these guys for whom this “look” is missionally necessary, it is by-and-large a Seminar student fashion statement akin to people in MFA programs who keep hand-written journals, or music majors with black hair, or even SBC pastors who still wear corporate suits everywhere and have, as you have astutely pointed out, 1950’s corporate haircuts.

It’s a lemming mentality. It’s the idea – the impulse – to follow the outward appearance of some thing which is happening without actually pursuing the thing itself. If there’s any guy on the face of the earth which proves this doesn’t have to be this way, it’s John Piper.

Piper doesn’t show up at Passion dressed like, well, Louie Giglio – and I have a lot of respect for Giglio. But there’s Piper, speaking to thousands of college kids, dressed like he always dresses – like a 1980’s college professor. He’s 60 (more or less) and he doesn’t have to pretend he’s hip, or relevant, or cool, or informed. He opens up the Bible, and preaches exactly the same way he preaches at Bethlehem Baptist every single Sunday.

And I bring that up to say this: if that’s what was happening even 7 times out of 10 in so-called “emergent” and “missional” churches, I think there’d be almost no fight. There’d be some fight – but it would be far less anathemacious than what is happening right now.

Seriously: think about what is happening in SBC churches for the most part. Most of them have transitioned to some more-contemporary form of worship, or at least what is called a “blended” style. That’s more than half-way to a “missional” concession. Most pastors who have the facilities are using multimedia – Powerpoint, video, multiple sites receiving one pastor’s preaching via some kind of local media loop. Many, many pastors are streaming their Sunday message via church web sites.

Guys like me – and others who you would associate with me – aren’t wigged out about using the means at our disposal. We’re wigged out that some kid with a bible college degree, or maybe an M.Div., and about 2 years of understudy at some middle-sized church is going to go ahead and take on the trappings of a culture which neither you nor I would say is God-honoring and somehow, through his hair products and his skater layered look – and for the hard-core, a tat – teach people that Jesus commands repentance. You’ll excuse me for asking, but “with what?”

I have an anecdote which will be useful to demonstrate what I am talking about here. When I was working FT at the bookstore, one day this beater Pontiac pulled into the lot, and this biker guy climbed out – very ZZ Top after about 100 miles of dirt road. We greet everyone the same as they walk into the store: “How are you today?” I did exactly that, and he didn’t even look over at me.

He went straight back to the Bibles. I give everyone about a minute to get their bearings, and then I walked back and I asked him, “Anything I can help you with?”

He doesn’t say anything, but he’s looking intently at the Bibles. After about another minute, he asks me, “You work here?”

Well, yeah. “Can I help you with something?”

He commences to tell me that he was saved in prison, and that he just recently got out, and he’s now in prison ministry, and he needs “prison bibles”. I told him honestly (I was still a rookie) that I didn’t know what a prison Bible was, and he told me it was a Bible with a paper cover with big print. I had one by accident, and he swiped it up – and so I don’t forget this part, I gave it to him for free for teaching me what a prison Bible was.

Anyway, big, hairy guy, covered in tats, terrible teeth, hair like dirty rope – completely insane for Jesus. We spent an hour talking about his testimony and his ministry to prisoners and his approach to ministry. I didn’t count, but I remember thinking that he didn’t have any words bigger than 2 syllables, except “resurrection” – and he said it “res-RECK-shun”. He left with a free bible, and came back several time over the next year to get more Bibles, and to get equipment for the Lord’s table, and other books.

The question, as I think about this in the terms you have positioned, is whether this guy needed to get a haircut and a daily bath and shave to be an acceptable minister of Christ – and I think the answer turns out to be “no”. And that answer is really points at the question I asked above about the kid with the fashion statement. With what will this guy – the ex-con in prison ministry – preach the Gospel? With actual authenticity and not make-believe authenticity.

But if that is the right answer, should some middle-class kid who, after bible college and an internship at Respectible Community Church, grow out dreadlocks, stop shaving, stop bathing and “down size” to one set of clothes in order to follow a call into prison ministry because my anecdotal brother in leather is clearly OK that way?

See: it turns out to be a question of authenticity. I know the missionals get all “Annie Armstrong” at this point, but there’s a massive difference between being an indigenous missionary to a completely foreign people and being a transplanted person inside one subculture who speaks a common language.

If the legitimate example is Tim Keller – and he’s a brilliant example, the one everyone else ought to be studying – then open the other eye and look at him. He’s not a stinky bohemian even though he is ministering to the stinky bohemians of NYC. If the missional prototype is Tim Keller, then it seems to me that “authentic” doesn’t mean “clothes by Aeropostale”, a paper cup of half-latte decafe glued to your left hand, and the Garth Brooks wire mike stuck in your ear. It means being personally authentic rather than branded. And to bring this parenthetical to a close, someone who dresses like a biker but has never really lived that life is kidding himself if he thinks people will accept him as a biker when he’s obviously a middle-class kid trying to prove something. He’d be better off by far to wear his usual clothes and demonstrate the love of God and declare the Gospel to dying men.

Southern Baptists have long struggled with their reputation as a stereotypical Southern denomination, right down to the suits, KJV Bibles, Sunday School pins and hymnals. Stetzer is asking us to see that culture and set it aside as a norm or a stereotype. He brilliantly emphasizes that Biblical faithfulness, cultural relevance and counter-cultural are NOT opposing characteristics.

I agree with this. There’s no question that this is what he’s calling us in the SBC to do. None.

The question is if having some kid from North Little Rock dress like he’s from Compton will make him a credible witness to anything in actual Compton. See: if he’s willing to lie about who he is really, why wouldn’t he be willing to lie about his so-called “Good News”?

Is Stetzer right: a church can be faithful, relevant AND counter cultural? Or is he wrong? Does cultural relevance- even in an intentional counter culture- always mean compromise on the Biblical message?

It’s the last question there which intrigues me. I think I answered the other two, above, but if I missed something, please take a free redirect on me.

That last question – does cultural relevance always mean compromise on the Biblical message – is such a double-edged sword. There’s no question that it drops an anvil on the Wile E. Coyote of SBC stoginess – but it also drops an equally-weighted anvil on people who are doing the exact same thing on the other side of the fence. Because the question is not “should we be ‘relevant’?” The question is: in what way is the Gospel relevant? That is: in the 1920’s, man was still sinful and Christ still died for sins, but what was the context in which people would receive that?

Do I need to dress like Chappell for people to listen to me? Or maybe like Brad Pitt? Or maybe like Justin Timberlake? Is it really true that there’s no way to communicate with people unless you dress like them and hang out in the same dives they hang out in? Do you really need a beer to break out the Gospel – is the Gospel like asking someone out for the first time?

See: I think I get the Tim Keller thing – because Keller is on about answering the questions people actually have, not the questions we wish they would ask. Keller is on about demonstrating the results of the Gospel today to these people here rather than as if you were doing a set piece from the 1840s. But If Keller is the missional guy, why are so many so-called missionals not like him? Why are they so phony in their authenticity? Why are they plainly dumb (and for the sake of peace, I’ll not list any blogs I think are in that category on either side of the missional divide)?

I think it’s a fine point that in many cases, as Michael Horton said on this week’s WHT, people are afraid of “otherness” – and some of what is happening right now in the SBC is a fear of “otherness”. But the reality is that the so-called “missional” side of the bridge is simply awash in theologically-questionable people with non-transparent motives.

And let me close this answer with this, from your last response: you say you want trust to be the watchword in cooperation. Paul says, “it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy”. When he says this to the Corinthians, he is chastising them for elevating themselves above the apostles when they are themselves unworthy to be called stewards – they can’t even discipline a guy who’s sleeping with his step-mom. But in that, trust cannot be taken for granted: trust has to be earned and it has to be serviced in some way – there has to be a way in which trust can be fortified over time. It is not a given.

Given the state of the “emerging” movement – and that it is not filled with Kellers or even Driscolls but with fellows who are far less grounded and focused – the question of whether the trust can just be granted is a completely fair question.

Southern Baptist Identity

Quoth iMonk:

Two key bits from Stetzer:

1) Missional refers to the specific activity of the church to be a counter-culture, building the Kingdom in ALL settings where its members find themselves, not just to build the church and its programs, facilities, etc.

I agree. No question -- and we face a terrible problem in this because we live in a post-Christian culture. We are going from a place where the context of Christianity is evident in the culture to a place where Christianity is seen, in the best case, as having jumped the shark, and in the worst case, has been disproven by some quack with a couple of stone ossuaries bearing the most common names of the day.

So given that we need to be kingdom-building, what does that look like? Is it programs and daycare centers and baseball leagues and 10,000 member communities which are aping the external culture -- or is it something else?

2) There can be no doubt that any church that is true to its calling is thoroughly, consistently and unapologetically missional by the above definition.

I think that this is a relatively-new insight. Maybe that's the wrong word: this is a truth about the church which was lost sometime after the third century (paint with wildly-broad and careless strokes).

My widdoo heart went pitty-pat when Dr. Stetzer cited the letter to Diognetus -- because that letter was a foundational document for me to start blogging. When I read it for the first time, I realized that there was something mostly-wrong about how we, the Christians, view our churches. The idea that the people who changed the world for Christ -- who faced down Rome, and then saved the West from becoming a wasteland when it fell -- were people who, in the end, weren't trying to imitate the culture.

In fact, they were really trying to live without the culture yet inside the culture, if that's possible. All the things the culture held dear were wrong in the face of the cross and the Christians described in that letter behaved as if those things were wrong. They didn't picket them, or protest them, or try to stop other people from drinking alcohol: they lived as if Christ died for sin, and that this message was so important that it should change them. Stable marriages, love of children, unquestionable work ethic, kindness to strangers -- think of that: in an age when people couldn't make reservations at the Holiday Inn, and the rule of law was only applicable if you could find the bad guys quickly (meaning the bad guys worked hard to stay mobile and were usually strangers wherever they went), they were kind to strangers.

But in that, they were winning people over to what they believed because it was obvious they believed it.

And in saying that, let me agree and disagree with something you said in your last answer. On the one hand, I agree that the great reformed minds of the last 25 years, um, pass by the issue of missions and missiology in the way we are talking about it in this exchange. But I disagree that they were not missional at all: there's a context for what they did -- and frankly, they were fighting (and are still fighting) against the second or third generation of heresy and evangelical unbelief from the end of the 20th century. The missiology of that age was (and is) overtly polemical -- and frankly, I'm a child of that school. So I have a great degree of respect and sympathy for these men who have spent their lives on that mission field.

But the truth is this: that field, by their work, has changed. They have won some, and the terms of engagement have changed. Man has not changed; the Gospel has not changed; God forbid that we say that Christ has changed. But the people to whom we have to get this message to have changed.

In the same way it is not profitable to use the KJV anymore because people can't read it, it is not profitable anymore to start a fight in order to win a man to Christ. I'm not saying it never works, but I think it rarely works. Christ didn't die to win an argument -- and He didn't die to make us clever debaters who use words of worldly wisdom to win men to an argument. Christ died for sin, and, as Paul noted to the Corinthians, that puts all wisdom to shame, and catches the clever man in his own cleverness, but it also calls us to be saints, and enriches us in all our speaking and all our knowledge.

So to bring this back to your statement, I think we make a mistake when we try to downplay to roll of those who came before us -- even if they only came 5 years ago. They brought us the church we have, and frankly they brought us the Gospel. Now it's our turn to honor them by bringing the Gospel to the world we have, to treat them both like fellow workers and fathers in the faith. That doesn't mean we have to steal their schtick -- but it means that we will bring the Gospel with the same zeal to this world which is dying.

Is it possible to say that THIS aspect of missionalism is one on which we can (indeed, must) thoroughly agree, and whatever disagreement we have must be about methodology and not mission?

I think it cuts both ways, as I have said to some extent, above. It's somewhat stupid of us to demand that Dad allow us to have a beer (one beer, and maybe not finish it) when we are somewhat critical that he's willing to smoke a cigar or have extra gravy on his taters -- that is, if we want missional freedom, we have to agree that there is missional freedom for all the contexts, including the ones where (and it kills me to admit this) the megachurch seems to work, and LifeWay seems to work, and the Pastor-as-CEO seems to work.

But in that, these models don't work everywhere. In fact, there are a lot of places they can't work. And in those places, the Gospel is still needed -- not a satellite church with a Jumbotron to project the Pastor's face on the wall to save on ministerial staff, but the Gospel. The fact of a personal Christ who died for sin to glorify God and make disciples is far more important that whether it's 12 people on folding chairs in the back room of a bar or 30 people in a park or two families who meet in alternating garages and prayerwalk for their neighborhood.

And all of these are missional expressions. The question is if we can bank on only one of them. If we do, we better start reforming the IMB -- because they definitively still use more than one model to reach the lost in the non-English world.