I happen to know that Dave is back home in Iowa at this very moment as I am composing this post because I saw it on Facebook.  I for one am glad to see him back in the states and ready (I hope) to resume his regular place as editor in chief of our crazy corner of the blogosphere.  It is a relief to be close to being relieved of duty once again.  I frankly don’t know how Dave manages to do all that he does for this blog on a daily and weekly basis.  I imagine that I will wander around in the background once again trying to remain inconspicuous and occasionally cleaning out the spam comments from the spam queue or something.

I enjoy many of the discussions and interactions that we are able to have here at SBC Voices.  I think it gives us a unique opportunity to talk to folks from all over the US and even the world about the things that affect our lives as Southern Baptists, which is why I still keep coming back.  I have developed new friendships and been challenged and encouraged time and time again through this little slice of SBC electronic life.  And I am glad that Dave trusts me enough to let me “go with my gut” even knowing that my gut may sometimes cause us all indigestion.  But when I mess up , I pray that I can learn from my mistakes and take the time to fix what I can.  Kind of like our old pal Barney Fife.

I know that this goes without saying, but I am not perfect.  In trying to keep up with three posts a day as Dave prefers, I published a post earlier that some have questioned.  It was from one of our contributors who usually writes thoughtful posts about issues that I think are important to address.  I didn’t read the post fully before scheduling it.  After it went live, I received some feedback regarding the nature of the post and whether this blog was the place for it to be given a voice.  We work hard not to censor our contributors here, but the writer wishes to withdraw the post rather than cause offense and so I have taken the post down.  Any who wish to complain about my actions should watch this short video and then send an email to jeffmusgraveisajerk@hotmail.com

Thank you for your readership and for taking part at SBC Voices.

Oh, and by the way, any comments trying to rekindle the issue in the comments of this post will be deleted.  The file is closed at this point..  Thank you very much.

A few years ago, I preached a sermon with this title. Lately, I have been thinking more about this. I have been reading a lot of blogs discussing what is wrong with the modern church and what we can do to fix it, and I think one of the problems that is the most troubling is the phenomena of inoculated Christians. Let me explain what I mean by the term so we have something to work with. The type of inoculation I am speaking of is a reference to the process of “immunizing” against a more serious threat. The dictionary definition is something like this: to introduce immunologically active material (as an antibody or antigen) into especially in order to treat or prevent a disease <inoculate children against diphtheria>. I can hear people already asking if I think Christianity is a disease, and I am not suggesting that it is, but the analogy is very appropriate. In many churches today, a weakened form of Christianity is being taught and preached and lived. It is a Christian message and life that is devoid of power and effectiveness. Those exposed to the message become more resistant to the full blown message of Christ, and in most cases feel that they have already “done that” so to speak. Many of them will never develop a “life-threatening” case of Christianity. They will never feel that they actually have to do all of those things that Jesus said. Jesus said that we must deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow Him. This is a radical message and if we truly believe it, there is no way that most of us would have lives that are as normal as they are. What does this have to do with the problems in churches? It is very simple. If most of our church congregations are inoculated Christians, then they are not Christians at all. They have a form of Christianity, but not the power. Actually, I think that I read that in the Bible somewhere, perhaps 2 Timothy 3:1-5

1But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— 5having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.

If you look at this list, you see a host of conditions that cause nothing but problems. Face the facts. When Rick Warren starts off his big bestseller with a first chapter that simply reminds folks that the world doesn’t revolve around them and that becomes a real revelation for people, we are in serious trouble. We have already hit the lovers of themselves category that Paul warned about and most of the others follow quite naturally. But that last statement goes to the heart of what this post is about. Modern Christianity is often about everything but the “real deal”. We can go to long lengths to package and market Jesus and the Christian life and never touch the power and reality of being a follower of Jesus. We can focus-group the community and find out how to meet their “felt needs” and we can meet those needs without ever telling them that they have sinned and fallen short of God’s standard. We can convince people that coming to church and getting involved in the programs we have or the services we offer are the right thing to do, and never bother with that troublesome act of submitting our live to Jesus. We can spend all of our time crusading for our favorite issue in Christendom or theology or Bible scholarship, and never worry about leaving everything that we cherish and love at the feet of Jesus.

I won’t say that Baptists are the most effective practitioners of this inoculation to Christianity, as I can only speak to what I know. Too many years of telling people that they just need to pray a prayer and walk the aisle and be baptized (in roughly that order) and not challenging people to instead give their lives to Jesus Christ completely have taken their toll. Other churches inoculate by different methods. Some say that you just have to show up every time you are required to be there and do what they say and all is well. Some say that you have to be active in ministry or service of some kind and that will do the trick. Some say that you have to display some sort of “spiritual gift” to know you are truly “infected”. None of this fits what Jesus said to those who would follow Him. He said, “The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.” -John 12:25-26 And this isn’t some isolated command. Everywhere you see Jesus talk about being His disciple, you see admonitions to count the cost, deny yourself, and take up your cross. This is the language of Christianity that many are uncomfortable with. This isn’t permission to find your calling and gifting and pursue it.This is a call to find your life by losing it.

I would hazard a guess that public speaking wasn’t one of Peter’s better skills, but he is the one we see delivering the first big gospel message at Pentecost. He did it because he was obedient and had given his all to follow Christ. If we want to see real change in ourselves and in our churches, we need to stop working with a dead or weakened strain of faith and Christianity. We need to allow the full-blown version to infiltrate us and consume us. When it does, we won’t have to guess if we know Jesus. We will know that we know Him. (1 John 2:3-6)

Yesterday, it was brought to my attention by one of our contributors that the Muslim month of Ramadan is underway again.  There are Christians who have developed prayer guides and such to lead fellow believers in praying for Muslims during this time, that they would see the true God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and more importantly get to know His Son, Jesus Christ.  I can commend that effort without reservation.

But this reminder got me to thinking about something related to this topic.  Several years ago now, I ran across a news article highlighting the fact that many guys from the “emergent church” movement were choosing to celebrate Ramadan in a show of solidarity or something with Muslims around the world. The story quoted Brian McLaren as saying on his blog, “We, as Christians, humbly seek to join Muslims in this observance of Ramadan as a God-honoring expression of peace, fellowship, and neighborliness.” I don’t know what these guys think we need to learn from Islam and I take issue with the idea.

Even more bothersome in my opinion is that these guys like McLaren who are promoting observance of Ramadan more or less ignore the feasts that God both created and commanded His people to observe, feasts that teach about His character and nature and plan for us as His people. I did a search of his blog for the terms Trumpets, Tabernacles and Passover and found exactly one hit for the last one. Meanwhile, he is blogging incessantly about what a “great experience” this observance of Ramadan is. Further evidence of this attitude comes from a quote from his blog:

Our main purpose for participating will be our own spiritual growth, health, learning, and maturity, but we also hope that our experience will inspire others to pray and work for peace and the common good, together with people of other faith traditions … as Christians, we want to come close to our Muslim neighbors and to share this important part of life with them. Just as Jesus, a devout Jew, overcame religious prejudice and learned from a Syrophonecian woman and was inspired by her faith two thousand years ago (Matthew 15:21 ff, Mark 7:24 ff), we seek to learn from our Muslim sisters and brothers today.

What in the world does he mean in this quote? Is he really suggesting that Jesus had to overcome personal prejudice of some kind? Maybe I am reading it wrong, but this sounds over the top to me.  Here’s an idea.  I would suggest that we as Christians might want to look to the religious festivals that Jesus actually participated in Himself (i.e. the feasts that are laid out in Leviticus 23) for “spiritual growth, health, learning, and maturity” before we look to the observances outlined by a faith that is diametrically opposed to Christianity and is currently persecuting Christians in many corners of the world.

As we approach the time of the year for the fall feasts of the Lord, maybe we should be praying for the Jewish people who still faithfully observe them to see the Messiah through them.  These feasts contain a wealth of knowledge and according to the prophets will still have a role to play in the future yet to come. Maybe it would behoove us as believers to get to know a little more about these celebrations (did you know that Hanukkah is actually mentioned in the Bible as well?) and to pray for God to reveal the Messiah to His own people during these times as well.  I happen to think it would be a more productive use of our time than trying to understand a month-long celebration from a faith that is diametrically opposed to Christianity.

The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is not the same as the god that is described in the Koran and worshiped by Muslims all over the world. I know that isn’t the politically correct thing to say, but it is the truth. There is no way to reconcile the two together. Simply look at these two statements side by side:

No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also. (1 John 2:22, 23)

They said, “The Most Gracious has begotten a son”! You have uttered a gross blasphemy. (Qur’an 19:88)

You tell me how you would resolve the two into one, because it just isn’t possible. Islam denies that Jesus Christ is God come in the flesh. According to Scripture, that sentiment embodies the spirit of the antichrist.

The longer I live and the more I see and experience, I have come to realize that some things are truly universal.  Like, no matter what church we have a community event in here in Langdon, the back rows always fill up before the front ones.  I specify church because I found that the baccalaureate in the school gym doesn’t suffer from that same problem, which I attribute to the fact that it takes more effort to climb bleachers in order to sit at the back.

Because of this truth, I am always excited to see when someone else has done the hard work of illustrating one of these universal issues in a clever way that also helps me to add content to the site here at SBC Voices.

I have shared one or two of the videos done by the Lutheran Satire guy on youtube here before, but I found a couple of more recent ones that made me laugh and I figured I would share them with you as well.

Universal issue: Some people try to give their “last-fruits” instead of their first fruits to the church.

That is funny. But after reading a particularly inspiring comment from one of our local Lutheran pastors on a denominational frustration the other day; I was reminded that as much as we sometimes find ourselves complaining about the capacity of our denomination to make silly displays at times (particularly at our SBC annual meeting), we are not alone in doing this.  Observe-

And here is where I invite you, our faithful readers and contributors, to weigh in on a thought I have been tossing around in my head. These videos are pretty simple to do with a bit of work. I actually started messing around with one as a discussion between a Calvinist and a Traditionalist, but I didn’t feel like I could write it fair enough on my own. Then I started looking around the comments for a good stretch of discussion that could be turned into an animated example. Anyone want to point me to some good dialog to use or else help me to write some to make a trial run. After all, why should the Lutherans have all the good satirical animation?

Update: So, I went ahead and finished and rendered the imagined discussion between a Traditionalist and a Calvinist. I didn’t find any direct dialog to use so I just took what I could from the ideas I have seen around here and ran with it a little bit. This is what it looks like when the discussion breaks down.

Editor’s Note: I originally posted this at my own blog quite a while ago and had thought about publishing it here at that time but didn’t.  While I am waiting for some of our contributors to finish up some posts and get them ready to go, I figured I would offer this as fodder for discussion.  If I have misrepresented any of the core of the five points of TULIP, feel free to offer some constructive correction.  It was not my intention to flesh them out fully, but neither did I desire to misrepresent them.

I have had a flash of inspiration. Perhaps someone, somewhere has already done this before, but I can’t say that I have seen it elsewhere so I thought I would give it a whirl. I keep seeing people complain about hyper-Calvinists. I have a dear brother in the Lord who was burned so bad by a group of extreme hyper-Calvinists (we referred to them as 6.5 pointers in frustration) that he would nearly froth at the mouth at the mere mention of Calvinism at all. This post should not be taken as a diatribe against Calvinism as a whole. It is meant in a spirit of levity to encourage potential discussion. I love my brothers and sisters who are serious Calvinists and who are passionate for the Lord and the Gospel.

Please further note that I am not a 5-point Calvinist.  At most, I probably agree with one or two of the points of the TULIP, but I will try to describe the points with some accuracy up through my own addition. These descriptions will be intermingled with my observations as well on the ones that I don’t have full agreement. With all that said, here is the acronym spelled out for posterity.

T – Total Depravity

Ok, I think we all pretty much get that and know what it means I would think. Man is totally depraved. Scripture makes this point repeatedly, and one episode of Jerry Springer will drive this point home to even the most reluctant of individuals I would think. The additional teaching behind this however is that man is completely helpless regarding his salvation. We don’t even look for salvation on our own.

U – Unconditional Election

We can not earn God’s grace and cannot merit salvation. There is nothing within us that makes God love us, He just does. All our righteousness is filthy rags type of things are the general point of this point. From my perspective, the idea behind this is generally right, but I hesitate to do much explaining about how God does these things. Even Paul was eventually rendered speechless in this regard (see the end of Romans 11).  Pushing this doctrine to its limit starts to move into double predestination and things that I generally disagree with as well.

L – Limited Atonement

Since not everyone is saved according to the words of Jesus, it follows that Jesus’ death must not be effective for all people in the end of all things. This particular point is generally arrived at through logical means in my experience. Both those who support it and those who argue against it can cite John 3:16 as it becomes a discussion/argument of who is covered by whosoever.  We have had plenty of those exact arguments here in fact.

I – Irresistible Grace

This is the teaching that God’s grace is irresistible to those who are elected to salvation and they will respond to the call of God through the Spirit. This is also a hotly debatable topic, mostly because simple observation yields plenty of examples of people who hear the clear Gospel message and don’t respond to it. Frankly, I think it is more amazing that anyone can reject God at all. This doctrine reflects that in some means, but I think any attempt to explain why some reject God’s call by placing them in a category of “unelected” or whatever is not correct.

P – Perseverance of the Saints

This doctrine simply states that those who are called, elected and chosen will remain in the faith without fail as God is capable of keeping them. This sentiment is perfectly biblical and true as far as it goes. I think the main problem in applying it stems from the fact that we never can know who is who from our limited perspective. In fact, many of the problems of Calvinist theology and much of the rest of theology is due to our extremely limited understanding and perspective.

Y – You’re Irrelevant

This addition is all mine, but you may have seen it coming. Given all of the above as absolutely true, many have moved on to another very logical point. It doesn’t matter what we do, since God has planned it all ahead of time. This comes out in various ways. I have seen a church that did no external evangelism. They preached the Gospel in Sunday morning service and expected God to draw those who were called to their building. I have seen others who assume that because everything is up to God, it absolutely doesn’t matter what you do about anything. Ultimately you are either chosen or not chosen, so just live your life and trust God(I mean why not do it anyway right) and He will do everything.  I couldn’t disagree more with this idea and I know that most Calvinists don’t agree with it either.  But I can assure you that I have known people who do think this way, and they weren’t all Calvinists either.

Let me say it once again. I love my Calvinist brothers and sisters. I will work alongside you all day long to share the Gospel and make disciples for Jesus Christ. I just wanted to write a post that points out the all too real end of taking this theology to its logical conclusions (I have seen it far too often for my liking). The only thing that can keep us from going there is the reminder that while all of these points may be true from God’s perspective; we are not God and they don’t work from our limited perspective.  So let’s just do what He has called us to do.  Go and make disciples of all the nations.

I am a lot like Dave in some ways.  We both serve in states that are out of the main core of the SBC.  We both serve in an office that has a title with no real power beyond our ministry as pastors (admittedly his is a much bigger office with no real power than mine).  We both dislike the culture of argumentative combativeness that comes with the territory seemingly of the blogosphere.  But I remind myself that it could always be worse.

Yesterday, I ran across an article that reminded me just how true this statement is. At least we find ourselves arguing over issues that are debatable in Scripture as opposed to arguing over things that are either explicit in Scripture or else whether Scripture itself is even worth following.

I would much rather argue with you guys over the finer points of soteriology than I would ever want to argue over whether the Bible is actually true and matters in the first place.  While the CR is another topic that Dave likes to eschew, I am forever grateful that we changed course in the SBC to maintain Scripture as the foundation of our faith and practice.

Frankly, if this article showed anything of consequence, it is that the push to be more relevant by compromising on the cores of Christianity has failed.

Yet instead of attracting a younger, more open-minded demographic with these changes, the Episcopal Church’s dying has proceeded apace. Last week, while the church’s House of Bishops was approving a rite to bless same-sex unions, Episcopalian church attendance figures for 2000-10 circulated in the religion blogosphere. They showed something between a decline and a collapse: In the last decade, average Sunday attendance dropped 23 percent, and not a single Episcopal diocese in the country saw churchgoing increase.

This decline is the latest chapter in a story dating to the 1960s. The trends unleashed in that era — not only the sexual revolution, but also consumerism and materialism, multiculturalism and relativism — threw all of American Christianity into crisis, and ushered in decades of debate over how to keep the nation’s churches relevant and vital.

If we have to argue about the sequence of salvation instead of arguing over the sufficiency of Scriptures, I will be glad to continue doing it.  Even if I have to do it by reminding myself that it could always be worse.

Editor’s Note: This post was referenced in the one I published yesterday and as one of the commenters suggested, it would be nice to have a separate place to discuss this issue.  The original post was published at my blog a couple of years ago, but the economy hasn’t gotten better in the meantime so I would imagine this is still happening.  How should we respond to those who treat ministry as a career path more than a calling?

I know where I stand on this issue, but I would like to throw some thoughts out there for everyone else.  The impetus for this post comes from a story on FoxNews online: Harsh Job Market Has Students Flocking to Religious Education Graduate Programs. I saw the headline and it troubled me a little bit, but reading the story proved to be more disturbing yet:

The explanation resonates strongly with Stephen Blackmer, who will begin studying for a master of divinity at YDS this fall. Blackmer, 53, had worked in conservation and sustainable development for nearly 30 years before answering a call to join the ministry.

 

This sounds good so far, but then he explains his “calling” and I started to wonder:

Blackmer said his experience has taught him that the main obstacle to slowing climate change is not technological or economic, but spiritual.

“Climate change is in effect a spiritual problem, because we’ve developed the technologies to protect the world from climate change, but not the wisdom to use them,” he said.

Blackmer, who said he hopes to join an “environmental ministry” after graduating, said the slumping economy made his decision to attend divinity school easier.

“If things were going gangbusters and there were opportunities all over the place, I might not have looked to the ministry at this time,” Blackmer said.

What in the world is an “environmental ministry” anyway? Have we gotten so off the tracks here in America that we are ministering to things instead of people? Even more bothersome is the direct admission that this guy is going to school for “ministry” because he couldn’t find anything else to do. Somehow, I don’t think that is exactly what was meant by the quote, “if you can’t do anything else, preach.” The drumbeat continues however:

But for other students, the impact of the economy has been more direct. Smoot Carter, 23, will enroll at YDS right out of college after rejections from business schools stymied his career plans. He hopes that after his two-year program, he’ll be able to pursue a career in public service.

“The reason I applied to divinity school was because the market wasn’t providing the opportunities to enter into the business field, while at the same time the business schools were pursuing students with more experience,” Carter said. “I was kind of stuck in the middle.”

Like Blackmer, Carter said the economy ripened a desire he had to pursue a religious education, which had been an interest of his for some time but had not been considered a serious option.

 

If this is the attitude of even a quarter of seminary students who are heading into ministry in a local church or a mission field somewhere, the body of Christ is in serious jeopardy of losing its heart and soul for real Great Commission work. I understand that the economy may cause more people to look for answers, but I didn’t expect that it would get people to try “being a minister” to see if it might be a good career fit for them.

Listen. I am a minister of the Gospel and not by my own choosing. God chose me for this and has made me what I am. Honestly, I would do what I do with or without a paycheck and I have proved that time and time again. I am privileged to be able to minister full time to a small church and community here in the northland of the country and support my family at the same time. I didn’t go into ministry because of the “job opportunities”; I was drawn into ministry by the one who saved me and gave me life. Frankly, this cavalier attitude toward ministry as a career path makes me sick. Paul cautioned against it in his writings and I can understand why. What do you think?

Editor’s note: Those of you who frequent the site probably notice that Dave generates a lot of the content himself.  While he is away, you will likely see my name on posts a lot more often.  Just think of it as me making up for lost time since I haven’t posted in a while.  This article is a repost from my own blog a while back.

Yesterday, I got a strange call. As a pastor, I am no stranger to odd requests and since the church phone rings in our house; we get to answer a lot of calls that might be better left to the machine. When I answered the phone yesterday morning, the person on the other end didn’t bother with any pleasantries like an introduction or name; she simply blurted out the words, “Do you take credit cards?” I have to admit that I was caught completely off guard by both the question and the directness with which it was offered. The only response I could come up with that quickly was, “This is a church,” with an astonished tone of voice.

Obviously this girl has made a lot of these calls, because she wasn’t fazed in the least at my response. She said that she understood that she was indeed calling a church and asked me again if we take credit cards. At this point, I simply said that we don’t take them and she clarified my statement by saying that if people wished to give to our church they must do so by cash or check to which I replied, yes. She didn’t explain why she had called or say anything else at this point, but simply disconnected the call. I still have no idea who they were or whether this was a survey or what. I was astounded at both the tone of the call and the content and it jarred me into thinking about the reasons for the call.

I know that there are churches that do take credit cards. As our society increasingly moves away from writing checks (which is something that we rarely do I will admit), and cash becomes less used in favor of the ease and convenience of debit and credit cards at the register (which saves those poor cashiers from having to count out change); this may become more of an issue for churches. I am curious what you all think about the situation. I have personal aversions to credit cards in church because the Bible actively discourages indebtedness because the borrower becomes a slave to the lender (thank you Dave Ramsey for helping me learn that lesson), so I can’t imagine this being a good idea for that regard. But debit cards function in the same manner as credit cards in terms of how they are processed; so if you make provision for the use of them, you open the door to the credit card issue again. I am curious what those of you who read this think about this issue.

And since I am already talking about money, I have another subject to mention along those lines. I have written previously about the fact that ministry must be a calling as opposed to a career or else it will ultimately be in vain. I still stand by my statements in this regard and recently heard another story that deepened my convictions in this matter. While I cannot share any details here, it came to my attention that a sister church had called a pastor who decided not to come because they couldn’t meet his salary demands. As a pastor who has spent many years in a bi-vocational role, I still find it hard to imagine how a pastor can make a decision based on the salary he will receive from a church. I know this can be a thorny issue for some, but for me it goes back to the heart of what Jesus taught in Matthew. Our Father knows what we need to live, and He has stated plainly that He will provide for our needs. I can echo what Paul said about learning to be content with much or with little. God has been gracious to let me experience both; and I learned well that He took care of me in either situation regardless of what I made.

Money is one of those issues that can really get intense. It is said that arguments over money are the most frequent kind of arguments, so it is bound to be a touchy subject. I think the Word makes it clear that if money is our master; we will have no room for another. Given the way the Bible discourages getting into debt, do you think God would take a credit card? Is it wrong for a church or ministry to do so?

What do you think?

With Dave’s departure for the island nation of Taiwan, I have been left to man the fort and keep posts posted and comments commented, or something like that.  I have asked for help from all of our contributors in continuing to bring you some of the finest content we can produce, since I don’t tend to write as many posts as Dave does.  To that end, I am going to try and write a little more myself in the next couple of weeks and lean on the expertise of our crack staff.  And if anyone tries to take advantage of the deputy, I fully intend to “nip it in the bud.”

Lastly, while the deputy is on-duty, you can direct all complaints to my email:
jeffmusgraveisajerk@hotmail.com
Yes, it is a working address.