A SIGNIFICANT STEP…

A Significant Step in the Right Direction

Published on 11 March 2010 by Jim Richards in GCR Blogs

Dr. Jim Richards Executive Director of Southern Baptists of Texas Convention

The Great Commission Resurgence Task Force released a progress report last month in Nashville. It is my privilege to serve with these godly men and women. I watched the members struggle with the complexities of bettering our Convention’s Great Commission ministries while moving forward together. Unity of vision and heart was accomplished on the Task Force. I pray Southern Baptists will catch the vision and be of one heart as well.

If I were the author of the documents, I might have chosen different words at times. If I had my way on every issue, the report would look different (and no doubt not as good). Some may feel certain areas of Southern Baptist work did not get enough attention. Our major focus was reaching the nations and our nation. I am convinced the Task Force progress report is a significant step in the right direction. All of us are being challenged. It will be difficult, but anything worthwhile always calls for sacrifice.

The Cooperative Program definition remains unchanged and uncompromised. It is still the preferred channel of giving. Some state conventions introduced a “designated” Cooperative Program in the early 1990s. It is a failed concept. The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention was founded with a strong commitment to keep CP an undesignated giving channel for missions and ministry. The SBTC has recognized designated gifts from churches from the beginning. In the future Southern Baptists may call those types of gifts “Designated Great Commission Giving”. The Cooperative Program will remain the preferred way of Great Commission Giving.

I will not comment on all the components of GCR progress report in this article. There is one of the components very close to my heart, reaching North America with the gospel.

I am a traditional Southern Baptist. My comfort zone is with traditional ministries found in many our churches located in the Deep South or similar rural settings. But much of the world I grew up in is gone. Some of that culture was good, some of it was bad. We can’t pine for the good ole’ days or the way it used to be. Decisions can’t be based on my preferences; it has to be about Jesus’ passion. His passion was to seek and to save those who are lost.

Our nation is becoming less evangelized every year. Southern Baptists work hard. We will not get the job done by working harder. We have to work smarter.  By approaching our nation as the world, we can have a better handle on the getting the gospel to the burgeoning people groups and diverse culture of the United States. We must find a way to move personnel and finances outside of our strongest areas and redirect them to the places of greatest lostness.

Is the GCR plan perfect? No. Is there time to improve it? Yes. I encourage you to offer positive suggestions. Help us find a way to move in the most aggressive way possible with the gospel toward lostness in America. It is my desire for God to use Southern Baptists as a tool of national spiritual awakening. It can be a spiritual morning in America. It will take a Joel chapter two experience. It also requires us to get outside the box to see what God would have us do differently.

We all want men, women, boys and girls to experience life in Christ. Business as usual will not get it done. An undeniable decline in the number of baptisms to population growth has taken place for decades. After much prayer and study the Task Force has cast a vision. I believe God is giving us one more opportunity to put our money and personnel where we say our hearts are. Let’s go for it, together!

EMOTIONAL BLACKMAIL…HOW DO YOU HANDLE IT?

It will not be news to pastors and former pastors to know that leading a congregation of God’s people is a daunting task.  The very metaphor of the “body” as used in Scripture to describe the church is one filled with the serious and the humorous.  A reading of 1 Corinthians 12:14-27 confirms this.

I recall hearing Evangelist Junior Hill refer to this passage. He said many want to be something they are not. Some may be a big toe, but they want to be an eye. He then said, “But remember, if you are a big toe and want to be an eye, all you will ever see is the end of a sock!” OK. But we laughed when we he said it! I guess it’s all in the way you tell the story.

Most pastors and other church leaders have to deal with various kinds of people. Some are really emotionally dysfunctional, but they are part of the body. I want to talk about one of the most difficult in this post and refer you to some resources.

There is a type of person that resorts to what is called by some “emotional blackmail”. I like that term. Let me acknowledge that I first saw that term in a book of the same title by Susan Forward, Ph.D.  You need to know that Dr. Forward is a therapist, lecturer, and author. There is nothing in the book that would indicate that she is a person of Christian faith or evangelical faith. I simply do not know the answer to that question.

So why refer to this book? I find it very valuable is its description of a kind of person we as church leaders interact with on a fairly frequent basis. So the book is valuable for its descriptive purposes.

Prescription is to be found in the Word of God. It is unwise to use the wisdom of the world as prescriptive when the issue is a spiritual problem.

Dr. Forward describes emotional blackmail as a powerful form of manipulation in which some people in your life use fear, obligation, and guilt to manipulate you to do what they want. If you do not yield to their desires, they will threaten us. They know we value the relationship with them. They often know where we are vulnerable. They use these and other things to gain one thing – our compliance to their desires.

She summarizes these types of people as to their method. In chapter 2, she describes them as the punisher; the self-punisher; the sufferer; and the tantalizer. These are methods used to ultimately gain our compliance to the blackmailer’s wishes.

Some of these people are in the body of Christ, and some of them will call you this week, or meet you in some part of the local church building just before you step to the platform to begin the morning worship service. You last thought prior to entering worship is on that conversation. And it can be a huge tool of the devil to distract the man of God from the mission and message of God.

What do we do? Here are some suggestions.

First, our own heart must be prepared. Obviously we as leaders need to practice what we preach and have our own time with the Lord.

Second, we must not let our own character development slip or be arrested. A valuable resource to help with that is Jeff Iorg’s book, “The Character of Leadership”.

Third, Pray and immerse yourself in the unity passages and pastoral letters of the New Testament. Read Proverbs and take notes of the passages the Holy Spirit presses to your heart and mind as those that speak either as descriptive of the person or prescriptive of a biblical solution.

Fourth, reflect upon and/or know your own personality strengths and weaknesses. If your personality lends itself to being a people pleaser (not a compromiser, but one who values being well thought of to the extent you will do what others desire to gain their approval), you are very vulnerable to the person practicing emotional blackmail. If you are too aggressive this can be a potential explosion that will not cure the problem but will instead accomplish the desire of the Great Manipulator, Satan himself. Know who you are; know whose you are.

Fifth, bring around you trusted leadership of the congregation. Mentor them. Seek their wisdom. When issues come up, present to them a careful analysis of the issue (not the personality) and biblical solutions. Ask them to pray with you and ask them to share with you their thoughts. Sometimes, effective resolution means a change of procedures of how the church processes certain ministries. It may even be a change in constitution and by-laws. These need to be prayerfully thought through. The last thing you want is a “reaction”. Be proactive, always.

This will take longer but it will pay dividends in the future. Your credibility will be enhanced, and if you focus on the problem and not the person, the solution will be long-term and will forward the mission of God through the church. Sometimes a brother or sister can be restored. Sometimes, they themselves are not even aware of what they are doing. Correction can sometimes be achieved without destroying a brother or sister in Christ.

Sixth, act redemptively and with witnesses. Avoid at all costs situations of confrontation in which you do not have trusted church leadership by your side. Titus 3:10 is very specific in how to deal with those who are divisive. But you must have truth, love, and support of leadership. Make sure your own heart is redemptive and you are communicating that in word and body language.

Seventh, give God the glory and honor for resolution of the issue. Stay focused on the mission God has given.

These are some suggestions I have this a.m. Others of you may have experience in dealing with these kinds of situations. Comments?

AFTERGLOW

I hope many of you were able to attend the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention’s annual meeting in Lubbock. It was a relational and spiritual blessing in our (my wife and myself) lives .

Allow me to use this post to tell give you some personal observations.  The next post will deal with some spiritual warfare issues related to this previous post.

I have attended conventions for years – state conventions, national conventions, and evangelism conferences. Some things never change. Most of those have been as an employee of a convention and as such I was assigned certain duties that did not allow much time for being in the convention meeting hall itself. Thus, from my assigned booth I have observed many, in the words of the King James, “going to and fro”.

THE HALL FELLOWSHIP

I have learned that one does not have to have an ‘assignment’ to miss what is happening in the convention meeting! For some, it is like the morning walks at the local mall – they go round and round! It reminds me of Billy Preston’s “Will It Go Round in Circles.” Billy Preston was an entertainer raised in part in Houston, TX and at age 12 was leading a choir of 100 in his father’s church. He later chose a secular route to exhibit his many musical talents. You may listen to it on You Tube here, and get an added bonus of Eric Clapton’s guitar. And, understand this is a bit ‘tongue-in-cheek’. The value of a convention for many is to fellowship with old friends. We Baptists love to fellowship and it is an important part of what happens.

The Eating Meetings

“I see you found the food” was one comment. Yep. We Baptists not only like to fellowship, we like to eat. And some are willing to provide a meal for a nominal cost in order to share their ministry with those attending. Great fellowship around the table and an affinity ministry or one’s Alma Mater. Alma Mater is Latin for “nourishing mother”, so it is appropriate.

The Convention Meeting

Lots of paper went to recycle. Ballots were likely unused. The unity of the meeting was such that even when issues were discussed people were not unkind. The Spirit of the Lord was obvious in the meeting.

So What Set This One Apart?

God met with us in Lubbock. It is that simple. Lubbock is not a strong area for the SBTC in terms of number of churches. There are fewer churches there than in other places. Yet one could not have hoped for a more friendly and cooperative environment. The Lubbock Baptist Association led by their fine Director of Missions, Larry Jones, and the SBTC congregations were excellent hosts.

On the last night of the annual meeting, there were two evangelistic events. The last number of recorded decisions I have is 726. I personally helped three people – a man, a woman, and her ten-year old son. They were coming “to have a new beginning”. I went over the gospel to make as certain as is humanly possible they understood and were committing their lives to Christ. They themselves checked the “profession of faith” box on their decision card. When I looked at the cards they filled out to see if we had follow-up information, I saw that all three had different last names. A blended family with a new beginning in Christ.

The next morning in the Executive Board meeting Jack Harris gave a report on Crossover. When completed, the chairman of the board asked one of the pastors to lead in a prayer of gratitude to God. Some in the room were in tears. The pastor prayed, said “A-men”, then gently broke into “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow”. Everyone was moved with gratitude to God. It wasn’t what “we” had done, nor what the “SBTC” had done. It was a God thing and everybody knew it. Yes, we worked and prayed. But God is glorified.

You may read more of the convention reports in the on-line version of the TEXAN here.

The difference? I’ve been to many meetings. In this one, there was an obvious awareness that God had met with us and answered the prayers and efforts of so many. Indeed, To God Be The Glory, Great Things He Hath Done!!