How about a little change of pace and mutual encouragement? Answer one of the following questions in the comment stream:
What do you love about the SBC?
Or
What is something God is doing in your church, association, state convention, or other ministry?
Here are the guidelines (for this post only and I know we can do it!):
- Positive comments only – if you don’t have anything nice to say, comment on a different post
- No hidden or subtle swipes at some other group or position
- No Convention politics
- No sarcasm, snarkiness, condescension, orneriness, or mentioning of SEC football
- Smiley faces are allowed 🙂
The SBC, through it’s flagship misison board, IMB, has the ability and resources to attemt to fulfill the Great Commission, a reality made possible by our common desire to do that and by the pooling of our resources. I love the fact that whatever controversies or disputes there have been and are among us, there has always been general agreement about the primacy of this task.
My church (Grace Covenant Community Church Brea, CA) is starting a visual theology service tonight. My friend is at Golden Gate Baptist Seminary and is also a Hollywood story board artist. He’s always used visuals in his teaching, so now we’re combining art, technology and preaching in our unique service. To give you an idea of what we’re aiming for, here is a video he made called “What is Truth?” http://blepotheology.com/2012/02/what-is-truth-2/. Please pray for our first service tonight.
Sounds like a neat idea. I pray it goes well. 🙂
Frank,
Really good stuff. We’ve come a long way since “Jot.” 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-o-mXKe-mcs
Indeed we have. He he he. By the way. It went well. We’ll be updating our blog at blepotheology.com every week. We’re also on twitter and facebook.
My favorite thing about the SBC is our unfailing commitment that the Bible is God’s Word and everything we do as a convention is based on that fact.
I always enjoy Sundays, but this morning was special. We had a missionary to Greece talk about his work in our missions Moment, had the Lord’s Supper and Baptized a teenager… can’t get much better than that!
awesome!
I love that Southern Baptists are committed to the Bible. I love that Southern Baptists are committed to missions through the Cooperative Program. I love that Southern Baptists reached out and told me about Jesus.
And, because smiley faces are allowed, I really love our legal name. 🙂
I love Todd’s experiment, other than those silly smiley faces! What are you gonna do?
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
🙂
In a changing culture, I love how Southern Baptists, as a whole, proclaim the never-changing Gospel of Jesus Christ and share in love that Jesus is the ONLY Way, the ONLY Truth, and the ONLY Life and salvation is found in no one else, but Jesus!
Amen! The gospel speaks to every culture and calls all to Him!
God is really moving in the hearts of our people in some cool ways at Harvest. We had an awesome youth retreat with a sister church and many of our youth are beginning to take a stand for Christ in their schools and are witnessing to their friends. My church members are asking for prayer about witnessing to their neighbors, getting involved in church planting, starting a disaster relief team, and growing in their Christian faith. God is opening doors for us to build cross-racial relationships with non-white pastors and churches. We’re beginning to see some fruit and have had a baptism 3 of the past 4 Sundays. It’s neat to see the growth in my own life and the growth in the lives of my church members as we serve the Lord together.
Our association hosted an On Mission Celebration, last weekend. It was great to meet many of our missionaries, state, NAMB, IMB.
I am not sure Rick understood the rules.
Tomorrow, I head to Indianapolis for our executive board meeting. I am delighted to serve with godly men and women who serve on the board and love the leadership of our state. Even as we have dealt with some serious issues and the changes brought about by GCR, I have always left our meetings encouraged and confident in our state leaders and pastors. I look forward to meeting with these brothers and sisters. God is doing some exciting things in church planting and strengthening. I LOVE being an Indiana Baptist!
I love the fact we are …and always have been… “People of The Book”, who value solid Biblical teaching & application to personal lives. I love how we are big on missions & on how we encourage & support each other. Most of all, I love how we can celebrate our diversity because it is in just that in which we find our strength.
I love the diversity in the SBC. This is remarkable because I used to not appreciate it at all. I used to want a much, much smaller theological SBC umbrella. Now I view it as a beautiful picture of Christ’s body: “For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ” (1 Cor. 12:12 NKJV). I now view the diversity among us as a helpful checks and balances.
Amen William! It is what I appreciate about the SBC as well. With a few disagreements, but as a whole I also love the way we do missions.
I went through the SBC Conservative Resurgence and praise God that Southern Baptists today stand unapologetically for the inerrancy of the Bible.
We stand for the fundamental doctrines of Christianity.
We stand for the moral absolutes in Scripture.
Southern Baptists are a great testimony to the nation and the world on these issues.
David R. Brumbelow
As a pastor in Montgomery Alabama, we have witnessed the painful reality of severe weather. I am convinced that some of our greatest people are involved with SBC Disaster Relief. These guys and gals come into a painful situation and share the love of Christ. Great ministry and one we can all be proud of!
Wade Rials
I second that motion.
All in favor stand.
And the entire state of Alabama stood up. And so did Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Nebraska and ……….on and on and on they stood.
Thank God for Southern Baptists wearing Yellow Hats.
I thank God for Gideons International. I was saved upon reading 2Timothy 4:6-8 from a Gideon Bible I had taken from a motel. Due to that, I have been invited to speak at many Gideon meetings through the years.
The Gideons are missionaries in the truest sense of the word. They are now operational in 194 countries. I would like to encourage all of you who serve as local church pastors to invite a Gideon speaker into your church. Encourage business men in your church to join the Gideons. May their tribe increase.
I remember reading what you wrote about your encounter with that explosive scripture, and how your eyes were opened . . .
Your story could not fail to remind me of the story of St. Paul’s conversion.
He became someone whose mission was to bring the Gospel to the people of his time, to open the spiritual eyes of others . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qUW7IxapdU
The reason your story so evokes St. Paul’s conversion is the explosive effect of that verse from Timothy on you at a time chosen by God in your life for this to happen
. . . such is the power of Christ as Logos, the Eternal Word.
My favorite thing about the SBC is the Cooperative Program. As broken as it may be, as frustrating as we may think it is, it’s the best way to fund missionaries I’ve ever seen.
I grew up IFB (hardcore version — don’t worry, I got better) and I dreaded missions conference week. Missionaries would show up and tell us how much money they needed to be able to go back on the field, and the pastor would get up and berate us for not giving the missionaries more money. I decided that missions work was for suckers.
In college, I started going to a Southern Baptist church with my girlfriend. After I got over the shock (I was taught that Southern Baptists were Bible denyng heathens who were just one short step away from Hell itself), I found myself enjoying the church. Then came missions conference. I braced myself.
Imagine my shock when the missionaries came out and didn’t have to beg for funds! They were telling about what God had done, and what plans they had for the next year! They weren’t worried about making enough money to get back, or buy food, or anything! It was amazing, and I gained a whole new appreciation for missionaries — AND the kind of churches that supported them.
Brother Warren, I whole heartedly agree. I am one of those IMB missionaries and on Stateside Assignment (furlough) I love to respond to any invitation no matter the size of the church and say, “thank you”. I have worked with missionaries who do not have that luxury. There is little accountability there on either side. I’ve seen good guys starve because they couldn’t raise their salary. I’ve seen some others live like kinds who are good communicators and may not have the ministry that they publicize. I know that’s on the judgmental side. We are held accountable and there is a joy in knowing that we are prayed for and that churches, no matter the size, are supporting us spiritually as well as financially. Thank you local churches. I am a faith missionary who has faith that the Lord will meet our needs through churches. God bless you guys….
I’m thankful for our commitment to God’s Word and to missions. I’m really grateful for what I’ve seen from the Metro New York Baptist Association and the sense of mission and unity I’ve seen between churches there, even from a distance at this point.
I love the fact that we believe everybody is equal (soul competency) even if we stumble a bit putting our belief into practice.
“I love the fact that we believe everybody is equal (soul competency) even if we stumble a bit putting our belief into practice.”
Ditto’s Frank.
I’m glad that the SBC is a big tent. Warren and I apparently have a similar background as far as IFB goes and I have found the SBC preachers and churches to be very welcoming to me.
As far as my church I have two blessings. First in the last two years I’ve had the priviledge of pastoring two of the best families I’ve ever known through tragedies and what I’ve seen exhibited is that a genuine faith in Christ makes all the difference in the world. I intended to minister to them but they always end up being a bigger blessing to me. The second blessing are three young Timothys in our church (aka preacher boys), watching them in their integrity and purity and the growth they are displaying in their preaching is more awesome than I can describe.
I love the SBC’s commitment to evangelism. I love the SBC’s diversity of doctrine and method within a big tent that creates appropriate limits. I love the SBC’s pursuit of the God of scripture. I love the opportunity that the SBC to harvest the fruit of the CR in our seminaries over the next generation. I love the CP and it’s ability to unite chruches of different sizes and capacities in pursuit of a common goal.
I am thankful these comments. While there are always things to be fixed, there is so much right in the SBC. God is still working in great ways. To Him be the glory.
I am thankful for the SBC’s commitment to planting and funding new church starts. Without their support, the church where I pastor would not have made the progress we made as early as we made it.
I love Southern Baptists and the SBC for many reasons. Among them is the fact of: 1. Commitment to the Bible as the verally inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God (and I started voting for this view from the get go, because I had seen the Bible change my childhood home in Arkansas). 2. Compassion in helping others. Our church does a lot of this, and our son’s church went to the Gulf Coast after Katrina and down to Eastern North Carolina after Floyd. Many other churches had done similar things, and they have been doing so for many years. 3. The great evangelistic and missionary programs and efforts. I known, met and/or heard, followed, etc., many of the leading evangelists of the SBC across the past 54 years. And I can remember when Independents on the mission fields would get help from our FMB to get back to the USA, when their supporters let them down or when they got into trouble. The SBC not only sent missionaries, they started schools, hospitals, etc., supplying, in addition, personnel to get the institutions up and running. I even met at least one well-drilling missionary in Haiti 32 years ago and a senior citizen, a lady, who was there as a secretary in Santo Domingo of the Dominican Republic plus a missionary who was really a noted servant of the Lord who had transferred to the Dominican Republic from Central America. Our mission personnel, while admitting the fact that there are always some misfits, are, for the most part, tremendous people, dedicated to their calling, honoring God and Southern Baptists. 4. I like the fact that I found out how closely tied my family had been to Southern Baptists across two centuries or more. Usually they were just faithful members of some local church, seeking to do the Lord’s will. A few were ministers who left a good record of service to Christ, for which I am thankful. 5. I am thankful for a Black Historian who got me to start doing research. I chose Baptist History and did it intensely for 6 years, accumulating some 3000 5×8 notecards from which I wrote a Master Thesis in American Social and Intellectual History on the subject, “The Baptists & Ministerial Qualifications: 1750-1850.” I also wrote papers on various aspects of that research, e.g., one on James Petigru Boyce, another on Evangelism in the 18th Century. Later I wrote an article on The Climax of the Reformation, a play for a church, Mirror of Our Past, which the Baptist State Convention filmed, and gave an address as Chairman of the Historical Committee of the Baptist State Convention of NC on the subject, “The Genius of Orthodoxy: Eldresses,” in which I attempted to show the possible biblical justification that Shubal Stearns and Daniel Marshall might have used for having Eldresses in a day when they would have not dreamed of disobeying God’s word. I also served as a chairman of the Historical Committee of the Sandy Creek Baptist Association and preached one of the Annual Sermons of that worthy organization. I proposed a Doctoral Dissertation at Columbia University on the subject of the Baptists & Slavery in the Summer of ’71, which would have sought to establish how God produced some really wondeful believers among Black folks during the awful times of slavery (like the case of one white church which purchased a Black man’s freedom and made him the pastor where he served for about 10 years). In ’75-’76 I did my project for the Doctor of Ministry on “Christian Love and Race Relations.” I love the church where I was able to get it done without getting fired. There are many things I could say about many in Southern Baptists, Conservatives and Moderates, too, calvinists and non-calvinists, Pre-mills, A-mills and a few Post-mills (where I currently hold after being trained and raised under some of the great Pre-mills, e.g.,Dr. Ernest R. Campbell, Dr. Robert G. Lee, Hershell Ford, etc.). There are good men in all of these camps…as well as a few bad ones. My heart’s desire for Southern Baptists and the SBC is that we might really begin to get organized to pray for a Third Great Awakening. To that end I have been praying for (it will be this fall) 39 years. God grant tht we might have some one to lead us into making a study of Edwards’ HUmble Attempt which inspired William Carey, Andrew Fuller, and others to launch the Great Century of Missions and how it can apply today to a new mission advance, GCR (Great Commission Resurgence), and a Third Great Awakening which might win the whole earth in one generation and even continue for a 1000 generations. God grant that it might come to pass.
I’ve been attending Southern Baptist Churches since 1975, or 1976. My family left the Methodist Church, due to heresy and liberalism. We started going to a little Church in Memphis with a young, dynamic Pastor…Bellevue Baptist Church and Dr. Adrian Rogers.
I got saved in 1980. I’ve been going to Southern Baptist Churches every since then.
I like Southern Baptist Churches, because we stay closer to the Bible than any other. We believe in missions and evangelism. We have the Disaster Relief Ministry. We have a strong network of Churches and Pastors.
God has been doing some wonderful and great things in my Church. Our worship is great. Our fellowship is strong. And, we’ve had quite a few, young couples with small children to come into our church here lately. The Lord is blessing.
David
Excuse me, the date I got saved should have been 1981…lol. In fact, it was in the spring of ’81….got called to preach in June of that same year. I knew that God was gonna call me to preach, or be a missionary, if I ever got saved.
Anyway, I just wanted to correct the date. Going too fast, and not re-reading….lol.
David
I’m thankful to the Lord for our spiritual heritage. I am thankful to the Lord that he has raised up in past days, as I believe he has in this day, men and women of God who believed and believe that Scripture is sufficient.
I like that the big concerns in the SBC are largely about important things like theology and the Great Commission.
I love the opportunities that my church makes to fulfill the GC like having an afternoon cookout for the residents of a poor neighborhood, distributing Bibles around town, and taking the gospel around the world. I think we’ve hit every continent now except for Antarctica, and we keep on going.
It’s exciting to see how very different missions my church has going on are being used together by God to accomplish His purposes. We may be tempted to despair over politics, but God is alive and well around the world and when the veil of darkness is lifted from difficult areas, I expect we will see what He has been doing all this time and how He’s given us a hand in it.
When I came to my first SBC church from an IFB background, I was thankful that the emphasis was on Evangelism, starting Baptist churches and building the SS all within the context of a cooperative ministry. I thank God for that.
I’m thankful that the missionaries, professors, and other denominational servants in the SBC have not, in many decades, had to take time away from ministry to spend it upon raising personal financial support.
Thank you for joining me in this “experiment.” As we continue to discuss important issues in SBC life, I am reminded how thankful I am to be in a denomination that stands on the Bible, and works together as a people of common faith to take the gospel to the nations. May God continue to work in and through Southern Baptists.
Top three reasons I appreciate being in the SBC
1. A zeal for missions (IMB)
2. A zeal for church planting (NAMB)
3. Good seminaries, especially Souther Seminary 🙂
I know that all three things I mentioned are imperfect, yet God uses all of them for His glory and the spread of the gospel in our denomination.
Plus, periodically getting to have lunch with me.
I don’t recall that seminary. I thought we only had six. When did we get “Souther?”
Is that in the north so that we had to have different “descriptor?”
Sort of like CRU for Crusade for Christ?
I love the SBC because it has men like Dr. J. Can we get him an award for “most words per post?”