Archives for 2013

I am no expert on World War II, but I have read about the Battle of Hürtgen Forest, which took place from mid-September of 1944 to February of 1945 on the German/Belgian border. By the accounts I have read it was a fierce battle, which caused 33,000 casualties on the American side and around 28,000 on the German side. Bloody. Brutal. And according to most of what I have read, largely unnecessary.  Charles B. MacDonald, an Army historian who also served in the Battle of Hürtgen called the battle "a misconceived and basically fruitless battle that should have been avoided." Evidently, as the … [Read more...] about Blogging and the Battle of Hürtgen Forest

For the last two days I’ve noted a potential pitfall to spiritual gifts testing.  (See here and here).  Though I think there are dangers to spiritual gifts testing I do believe they can be beneficial.  As I mentioned yesterday, our church does a 3 in 1 profile that considers personality as well as spiritual gifts.  Such tools can be helpful to the body in these ways: If a foot thinks it is a hand you’ve got problems.  Though I’d rather have two hands and a confused foot that thinks its a hand over zero hands, I’d much rather have hands and feet do what they were created to do.  Gifts … [Read more...] about The Benefit of Spiritual Gifts Testing

Louie Giglio is hardly a fundamentalist firebrand. But in the brave new world of Obama's progressive secularism, little distinction is made between Giglio and Fred Phelps. Anyone (and according to Lifeway research, that is 44% of Americans) who believes homosexuality is a sin is unwelcome in the public square. One who holds to the biblical truth about this subject will not be eligible for appointed office or elected to significant places of service. I mentioned this in a post last week, that we are going to have to get used to being a minority, and increasingly, I believe, an excluded and … [Read more...] about If You Had Any Doubt, Evangelicals Are Now an Unwelcome Minority in America!

Ecclesiology is always a hot topic among Baptists. One of our bedrock beliefs is congregational church government. But not all congregational government is constructed alike. I've been the senior pastor of three churches over the last 27 years. My first church was governed by its eight deacons, who ran the church with something just less than an iron fist. Everything went through the deacon board. The church's committees and officers had to go through the deacon board to get anything done. They even felt they had the authority to tell me what I could and couldn't preach (let's just say we … [Read more...] about Every Church is Elder-led; Every Church is Congregational

Yesterday I noted that one reason I’m not a huge fan of spiritual gifts testing is because the church at Rome did not have Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.  That’s another way of saying that I do not think the early church did ministry according to perceived spiritual giftedness but instead their overarching paradigm was to be united servants of Jesus and that looked different for different people. Okay, so maybe spiritual gifts aren’t quite what the early church did.  They also didn’t have electricity, microphones, padded seats or VBS.  You won’t find those things in the Bible but the … [Read more...] about The Other Reason I’m Not a Huge Fan of Spiritual Gifts Testing

We have had a fairly lively discussion of the Rev Dr. Plodder's post on pastor's salaries. A few pastors shared that they were paid above average, most claimed to be below average in compensation. I have another question that I thought might be an interesting discussion. Is your salary public information at the church? In my experience, it is common practice in smaller churches for the pastor's salary to be public information.  In larger churches, that information is kept private. Often, the budget is presented with a line item that groups all staff and support staff … [Read more...] about Pastor: How Confidential is Your Salary?

We love our systematic theology and our interpretational guidelines. Dispensational. Covenant. Calvinist (or non-Calvinist). Deeper life. Baptist Identity Gospel-centered or Christ-centered. There is a lot to be gained from theological systems. They help us unify and organize our thoughts and see consistent themes in the study of Scripture. They help us link Genesis to Leviticus to Matthew to Romans to Revelation. It is great to have an organizing hermeneutical principle when we are studying scripture. But these controlling hermeneutical principles have some inherent … [Read more...] about The Dangers of Theological Systems

Ready for it? Here it is: The church at Rome did not have Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. Take a gander at the list in Romans 12:6-8.  Now look at 1 Corinthians 12:7-10 and 12:28.  Different list isn’t it?  Now we in the 21st century have the advantage of going through all of these various spiritual gifts listed by the apostles and in then compiling a handy list of all the spiritual gifts in the Bible. Once you have the list of these gifts you ask people various questions to find out what they are passionate about and then you match their passions and experiences with the biblical … [Read more...] about One Reason I’m Not a Huge Fan of Spiritual Gifts Testing

William Thornton is the SBC Plodder.  Pastor pay is up! Happy days are here again! Look at it this way. On the first of every month, you go to your church office and are handed a check for $5,064.50. On that day you also can feel good that the church is paying your health insurance along with some contribution to your retirement. It all adds up to $72,840 which does not include cash payments that most ministers receive as accountable reimbursements (mostly for use of their car, calculated by mileage) or for incidental reimbursements for convention, books, etc. Ministers who live in … [Read more...] about 2012 Average SBC Sr. Pastor Pay: $60,774 (by William Thornton)