REMEMBER TO PRAY FOR THE “YOUNG” PASTORS

I’m not old, but I remember. I am aging, so perhaps in some minds that is “old”.  I subscribe to the “sixty is the new fifty; fifty is the new forty” mantra. So come on, knees, get with it!

One of the great things about some age is that any one of us can say, “This is not my first rodeo.” We remember some things that should prompt us to pray for the many younger pastors and others fulfilling their calling in Christian leadership.

Because of the nature of this post, I will not call names. And really, names are not the point.

I am grateful to God for the younger faces I see in the streams and photos from the recently concluded Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting. I have not been privileged to attend an annual meeting for many years, so I follow on-line and through twitter.

God is so good to us. There are young men rising from their generation that God is empowering to build great Great Commission churches. Many are in demand as speakers at almost any conference.  Some are edgy in their delivery. Others have shaped their message to be a bit more smooth. Almost all are radically in love with Jesus.

Thus the issue. Are you praying for them? In Hebrews 11 fashion, time would fail me to tell of the many who were heroes to myself and others while we were in college and seminary that have fallen. For some, their pride was so severe that it appears God gave them over to themselves and they became casualties. Others had moral issues surface. And some, through no fault of their own were taken by disease and accident at an age we would call “premature”.

I believe it is well within the bounds of Scripture to say that the enemy is seeking to destroy the lives and ministries of any who serve God. One does not have to be on a large stage with a watching SBC world. Satan’s minions are everywhere and Paul reminds us Satan himself is disguised as an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14). Jesus said the thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10).

As I watched the streaming of the SBC and read The Southern Baptist Texan and Baptist Press, I was reminded of many who were my generations heroes when we were younger. They are the aging statesmen. Some have retired, others are retiring. I also saw the younger pastors typically profiled at the preaching events.

I was also reminded of several who could have been among the aging and retiring statesmen. Some have been taken in death. Others made shipwreck of their faith and ministry through sin.

1 Peter 5:8-9 exhorts, “Be sober! Be on the alert! Your adversary the Devil is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for anyone he can devour. Resist him, firm in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are being experienced by your brothers in the world.” (HCSB)

Let us thank God for these wonderful men and women whom He is raising to lead another generation to radically serve Jesus. And let us continually hold them up in prayer.

Baptists are by and large “list pray-ers”. So let me encourage you to make a list of some names you know. They may not be national names. Some may be. But make a list of younger men and women who are called to Christian leadership and pray for them on a regular basis. Ask God to bring into their lives those whom they will respect as accountability partners. Ask God to grant them protection from disease and sin and/or any other thing the enemy would bring into their lives to distract and discredit them. Pray for their humility. God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. And pray their Sabbath time – their times of solitude with the Lord – will be valued and frequented by them.

They may never know of your prayers. But God will. And the Kingdom of God will be strengthened. Remember Ezekiel 22:30? God was seeking for one to “stand in the gap” in intercession. Let us not fail to be one of those, to the glory of God!

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!

LOVE LIFTED ME

Have you ever sung the hymn, “Love Lifted Me”? When I was an older boy and young teen, my peers and I were not the most “holy” group in the church. So, we would sit in the back, singing “I was sinking deep in sin” and turn to a buddy and say “Wheee!”

We understood sin only as a behavior and had little if any knowledge that sin was a condition of the human heart. We were already deep in sin but thought since we hadn’t had opportunity to commit the big ones we were OK. Cultural changes came so fast “change” almost became a sedative.

I given serious thought to the concept that one reason we love change is that it provides an escape from accountability. When things are changing so fast, or we are causing them to change so fast, there is little time to evaluate whether or not the changes are worthwhile and productive. And one cannot be held accountable without proper measurement.

Do not hear this as a rant against change.

But when we are so focused on the things related to the administration and growth of the church we can easily lose sight of core biblical truth.  Jesus said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” (John 8:32)

Jesus actually said that. No amount of exegetical maneuvering will change that simple statement. It even works in context.

“Know” – intimate knowledge. Not just intellectual awareness, but deep, intimate knowledge. On another occasion Jesus said, “I am the way, THE TRUTH, and the life.” (John 14:6)

We youngsters, steeped in sin and blinded by the error that the essence of sin was badness, were laughing our way to perdition because we had not committed the “biggies”. No amount of self-reform would change us. There had to be deep conviction that what was wrong with us was internal, not external. And only the truth could set us free.

In a similar way, I believe we in the church have spent years cleaning the outside of the cup using our different methods, programs, and emphasis, while the inside has been stained beyond recognition.

I am encouraged by what I hear from the Great Commission Resurgence commission report. It points us to Jesus. Perhaps we as a people called Southern Baptists will be blessed by God with a deep conviction that what is wrong with us is internal, not external. May we return with words in repentance and submission to Him.

What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus!

THE SBC IN 2010…A VIEW FROM THE CHEAP SEATS

This post is not intended at all to complain or to offend anyone but the Devil. And I pray I offend him every single day with every single action. Unfortunately, I do not. But I seek to do so.

This post’s intent is to challenge all who seek to be used to advance the purpose and intent of our Sovereign God. It is an observation with that challenge especially for younger pastors in chronological age and those who recognize they are aging, but refuse to get old.

There is a difference. Some of you young guys are already old and seeking how you may “climb the ladder of  success.” You are already on the road to irrelevance in the Kingdom of God.  And some of us who are aging are not as “old” as our appearance.

My observation throughout the years has been that of being close to some “insiders” and yet not close enough to influence decisions. In other words, I have been in the house but not at the table. At times I feel somewhat frustrated but then I review the ministry God has given and I am overwhelmed by the grace and mercy extended me.  I am very grateful some things I wanted early in my ministry were kept from me. And I look forward to the future although I do not know what that will be. Our all-seeing, all-knowing, all-present God is always faithful to us, even when we are failing in our faithfulness to Him.

Thus, my view is from the cheap seats. Here are some of my observations.

A Great Commission Resurgence is much-needed. But my question is why a denomination that believes Scripture is both inerrant and sufficient needs a Great Commission Resurgence? Please do not interpret that as critical of the concept or the committee. Hear the question: Why do we need? And if we do need this and it is biblical, why are we waiting for a committee report to obey God? How many times must Scripture speak before we obey?

There are churches that no longer visit prospects. I was actually told by one staff member that he typically waited until someone visited twice because the second visit indicated there might be serious interest about the church. I have had others, seminary trained, who simply do not visit. Some talk of “attractional” methods. Tell me what is attractive about a church that has lost its passion for Christ and those for whom he died?

Where does a local GCR begin? It begins with leadership in precept, principle, and example.

We have emphasized church growth, then church health, now we have a Great Commission Resurgence committee. God bless them. Those who initiated and suggested this were people of integrity and passion. The same is true for the committee. They seem to desire to be catalysts to move the SBC as a body toward incremental and necessary change.

But you, pastor, do not have to wait until Orlando to change. What is the Spirit saying to the churches? I submit the same things he has said all along recorded in Revelation 2-3 and other passages applicable to the subject.

Has “revival” become a cop-out for such things as passion, caring, obedience and hard work? We do not really know much about revival other than what we have read. We may have had what some call “mercy drops”, but a national or denominational revival/awakening has not been seen by anyone alive today. Biblically, those are mostly Old Testament passages. It is not the cry of the New Testament. The closest in the New is a call to a busy church to remember their first love, turn around, and return to that first love. And I believe that is a first love of loving Christ as well as loving others (Rev. 2:1-7). It seems consistent with the Great Commandment of Matthew 22:34-40.

There is an article here in the Southern Baptist Texan. It is well written and acknowledges that revival/spiritual awakening seems to be predicated upon prayer and the Sovereignty of God. There are those that reduce God’s Sovereignty to man’s formula. We would not do so in precept, but we often do in principle with our methods. Roy Fish, one of God’s greatest gifts to Southern Baptists and the world, is quoted in the article. One of the most crucial concepts is this: “Yet Fish added that awakening—a term he uses synonymously with revival—is not merely the result of believers meeting certain conditions in a formula. In fact, two churches could seek God identically but  only one congregation experience revival, he said.”

So my observation is this. We as leaders should lead our people to passionately pursue communion with God through prayer privately and corporately. I do not believe it offensive to lost people who are intelligent enough to know they have entered a place of worship called a church. They may even have expectation that we would pray.

Justice is big stuff these days. It is ”big stuff” and later blog posts will address the subject.

What is justice? This particular post will not go into theological definitions and nuances of the term. However, one has said that justice is righting past wrongs. This particular definition was given within the bounds of biblical truth. One could also say that in a great sense justice is cooperating with the mission of Christ to push back the darkness (see Isa. 61 and Luke 4). If that is true, then not only good works, but also prayer and evangelism become part of any biblical concept of justice.

I may give a cup of cold water and/or food in Jesus’ name, and I should. But if I do not give biblical hope, that person may perish on a full stomach and spend eternity apart from God’s grace but eternally present with His wrath. Good works should not at all be manipulative for the purpose of getting ”decisions”. But somewhere in the conversation, eternal hope through the Gospel of Christ must be clear.

Doing all the Great Commission indeed involves evangelism, discipleship (inclusive of prayer and justice), and bringing people into the local Body of Christ. Again the question: Why do we need a GCR committee?

If indeed there is need, and there appears to be, then is not our immediate and personal response that of heeding John’s call to the Ephesian church in Rev. 2:1-7?

Like I said – it is my view from the cheap seats. How many more churches could be started, mission trips taken, and people helped with the monies we spend trying to motivate professing Christians to simply obey the elementary commands of Christ? Think about it.

Inside-Outside: The culture of the church

These are thoughts written some time ago in the context of my blog and brought back here for current reflection. The question is important, and is the beginning of some posts on justice issues. In a sense, community does not exclude biblical justice!

I was once asked to help a congregation develop a small group ministry. This was a very good congregation with a long and admired history. They have recently relocated to a different community. The issue at hand is that they are getting many visitors to the Sunday worship service but these are not being assimilated into the Sunday School or other areas in the life of the church.

Some wanted to drive small group with curriculum. Huge mistake. No doubt we should teach within the boundary of the Apostles’ teaching (Acts 2:42), but small group is a method of developing Community, and Community is about relationships.

Which brings me to the point. Why the Church? Why the “called out ones”? Often in discussions some want to push every word to extremes. For example, if I asked “Do you go to “church” or are you the church? Some would take one extreme or another and shape the conversation around whether or not one should attend public worship. That is missing the point.

The point is about identity as a follower of Jesus and how we live that out with others. We are called, transformed, and sent with the gospel message. The new community of which we are a part is a relational community.

Within the biblical parameter, there is mutual accountability. Accountability can only be positive in an environment of loving relationships. In the context of evangelism, no one is won to Christ by someone they do not like. In the context of the church, no one will submit to accountability or discipline unless they believe the church or the other person genuinely loves them.

Love does not gloss over sin or bad behavior. Confrontation is sometimes necessary and almost always painful. The Bible uses a phrase that we sometimes over-use and by doing so we can negate its impact: “But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into Him who is the head – Christ” (Eph. 4:15).

I confess my guilt in using this verse as an excuse for sometimes blurting out words that are truth, but not said in a loving way or with the intent of helping the hearer ‘grow in every way into Him’.

Many churches have what I call an “inside culture”. These are wonderful people who are very out of touch with the desires of the culture around them. In order to be part of that church, one must first learn the “inside culture” and adapt their life to it. That will happen less and less. And it is death to a convention of churches.

Does not love teach us to take proactive steps to develop biblical community in such a way as to break down the walls in order for us to develop healthy relationships and become catalysts for the transformation of soul that only Christ can bring?

Do you see an “inside culture” that is prohibitive in reaching people? How do you deal with it in your context?

Camelot, Camels, and Center

My first date with my wife was to see the movie Camelot. We sat in the balcony holding hands as Arthur and Guinevere romanced and sought to build the round table. Unfortunately Lancelot captured Guinevere’s affections and she and Lancelot betrayed Arthur. Mordred, the illegitimate son of Arthur exposed the affair with the intent of destroying Arthur and taking his throne. The end scene in the movie was on a battlefield on which Lancelot and Arthur would lead their Knights to fight to the death. Guinevere came out of the fog to reveal she had taken refuge in a convent. She wept out a movie version of repentance to Arthur, who forgave her.

Of course, the movie is fiction and most scholars regard the story as fiction as well. Arthurian scholar Norris J. Lacy commented that “Camelot, located no where in particular, can be anywhere”.

That has certainly been true in American politics with the Kennedy administration. It is often referred to as “Camelot”.

My question is this. Is that also true of some past history in denominational and church life? And if so, was it ever as good as some remember? I hear people talk about the “old days”. In my own mind I have mostly been an outsider. But I have listened. And I have come to believe that much of what some talk about is Lacy’s definition of “Camelot” – located no where in particular, can be anywhere.”

Which leads to the question, ‘Is this why some insist upon swallowing camels’? Jesus refers to some in his day as “blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel” (Matthew 23:24). What was the problem in Matthew 23? Seven woes are pronounced upon those who preach but do not practice (23:3).

You see, Camelot exists only in the imagination. No doubt there have been good times and bad times in history, but we do not live in history. We are informed and somewhat shaped by it, but we live in the present and prepare for the future. The Scriptures speak of David as serving the purpose of God in his own generation, then dying (Acts 13:36).

And I remind you – Camelot did not end well and camels are very difficult to swallow!

May I offer a suggestion in the form of a question for 2010? Whether it be the local church in which we serve, the denomination, or the Great Commission Resurgence – can we find our center in Christ?

I have never doubted the inerrancy of Scripture. I learned that at my father’s knee as a child. My parents could not give theological reasons nor did they use the term “inerrancy”. But they did understand and teach that the Bible was God’s word and there was no error in Scripture. We have what God wants us to have. So, the sufficiency of Scripture was learned as a child. But as an adult I have also learned the superiority of Scripture.

If ministry methods, traditions of men, and social mores not taught in Scripture become equivalent to Scripture in our processing of discipleship and community, then are we perhaps swallowing a camel in search of a non-existent Camelot?

The revival we seek will only come when the Christ of the Bible is at the center. We can be described by boundaries we create, but we cannot be defined by them. A follower of Christ can only be defined by radical commitment to Him and the extension of His Kingdom.

The Christian life is one that requires an empowerment not from ourselves. We can only be empowered from Christ the center, not the boundaries. Thus, to live life together from the center is to live centered in Christ and focused on Christ.

Jesus taught us that the only thing attractive to humanity is the uplifted Christ (John 12:32). In the cross-resurrection event is both judgment upon sin and grace for the sinner. It is Christ the center that enables life for the sinner.

Historically, one generation does not pass down their vision to another. God is fully capable of calling, gifting, and giving vision to each generation. The question becomes “How may we flow together in a multi-generational world and church to the glory of God without segmentation that dismisses those not like us?”

I offer that we all submit to Christ as the center and one generation resources the next – not just in terms of money, but in terms of all we have. We resource with people, money, creativity, respect, honor of others, etc.

In other words, recognize that Christ dwells in the hearts by faith of all who have been born again. He has gifted each one. Now in your congregation and sphere of influence, how can that gifting be utilized for the glory of God and the extension of His kingdom? What resources do you and your congregation bring to the table?

We might begin by with taking the camel off the menu and understanding that Camelot is fiction. Christ alone is reality (Col. 2:8-17).

May 2010 be a year for you in which you and your congregation see the abundant blessings of God and His favor.