I'm not supposed to speak about matters presently before the board of trustees, so I'm going to limit my remarks to a few observations about how being a trustee works and the nuts and bolts of how we relate to the Southern Baptists who have placed us into office. Some trustees are blabbermouths and some trustees are very tight-lipped and most trustees are somewhere in the middle. Me? I'm a blabbermouth by nature. When I get myself into trouble, it is usually for saying too much. Not everyone is like that. Trust me when I tell you that my natural inclination is to tell you a lot more. Doing … [Read more...] about A Few Comments about SWBTS’s Finances
Let’s Adopt the Baptist Faith & Message This Year
Let's have a define-the-relationship talk. Let's make 2019 the year that we make it official. Let's bring the whole Southern Baptist family together in agreement around The Baptist Faith & Message. We've waited long enough. The BF&M has existed in its current revision for nineteen years this coming summer. It is not going away. It enjoys broad support within the SBC. All of the SBC entities at the national level have adopted it years ago. It works just fine. It will strengthen our unity, not divide us. The recent kerfuffle at Southwest Baptist University in Missouri highlights … [Read more...] about Let’s Adopt the Baptist Faith & Message This Year
Criticism and the SBC—Unsequenced, Unexpected Part (Different Author)
I'd just like to jump in alongside Dave's series on criticizing the SBC and offer some niche thoughts, fresh and relevant, perhaps. I'd entitle this one: "How to express directly to trustees your criticism of their actions or to deliver to trustees your opinion about an unresolved matter presently before a board of trustees." Before proceeding, let me say this: What follows are in no way whatsoever a set of "rules" to follow for communicating with trustees. If you are a member of a Southern Baptist church, you can communicate with trustees any way you like. There are no rules. And it may be … [Read more...] about Criticism and the SBC—Unsequenced, Unexpected Part (Different Author)
Thanking God for Black Southern Baptists
Note: Throughout this essay I will use the term "Black Southern Baptists" anachronistically at times. Therefore, you should take it to mean "Black Baptists from the South" whenever you encounter it referring to Baptists living before 1845. In the first century of Christianity, nobody accomplished more in terms of spreading the gospel where people thought it couldn't spread and in terms of bringing together Christians people thought couldn't be brought together than did the Apostle Paul. He gave leadership to the church in Antioch of Syria, which was perhaps the most ethnically diverse and … [Read more...] about Thanking God for Black Southern Baptists
A Non-Nativist Case for Strict Enforcement of Immigration Law
It is the major purpose of law to provide justice for people who are experiencing injustice. A law is a good law if it intends a just outcome. A law is an effective law if it actually accomplishes more justice than it causes injustice. Immigration law is no exception to this general rule. We have immigration law in order to provide justice to people and to minimize the level of injustice suffered by people. To determine whether our immigration laws are good or bad, effective or ineffective, we merely must examine how well they are accomplishing just outcomes for the people affected by … [Read more...] about A Non-Nativist Case for Strict Enforcement of Immigration Law
Why Good Trustees Don’t (And Shouldn’t) Blog About Their Business
I'm the one guy who contributes here who sits on the board at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. I'm the one guy who contributes here who has had nothing whatsoever to say about recent controversies at the seminary. At the end of this post, those two things will still be true. But I aspire someday to be a full-fledged SBC polity wonk, and it seems to me that this is an opportune moment for us to think together about the way that our polity works. Why haven't I put to writing my thoughts about these important matters? A superficial answer would be this: I wish to end my term as a … [Read more...] about Why Good Trustees Don’t (And Shouldn’t) Blog About Their Business
The Perfect IMB President
Few jobs in the Southern Baptist Convention could be considered more demanding than leading the International Mission Board. To say the least, the post has grown somewhat since James Barnett Taylor took the helm in Richmond in 1845. Starting with him, every candidate for the job has been a compromise candidate in one way or another (just like every candidate for the pastorate of my church has been). If we were to wait for the perfect choice, we would never fill the position. Of course, that doesn't mean that there's no value in thinking about that perfect choice. True, I'm not an IMB … [Read more...] about The Perfect IMB President
Something the Church Can Actually Learn from Politics
I'll be uncharacteristically brief, here. While the whole universe is speculating about what lessons Republicans or Democrats ought to learn from Roy Moore's loss in Alabama, I'd like to turn the conversation away from politics and ask what lessons we who are pastors and other church leaders can learn? Instead of a list, I'll offer this one: If you are in leadership in a church and are secretly involved in sexual or financial sin, please step away from your leadership position immediately. If Roy Moore had not run for Jeff Sessions's seat, Luther Strange would've won the seat in a cakewalk. … [Read more...] about Something the Church Can Actually Learn from Politics
What Became of Luther’s German Church (A Book Review of Philipp Jacob Spener, Pia Desideria)
Pia Desideria. By Philipp Jacob Spener. Leipzig: Karl Franz Köhler, 1841. 211 pages. Philipp Jacob Spener was a Lutheran parish minister in Frankfurt on the Main, Germany. He was born near Strasburg in 1635. Devout from childhood, Spener devoured Puritan classics and lived a careful and strict life. He pursued an extensive education culminating in a Doctorate of Theology. His pastoral career was unanticipated: he had intended to teach. He is the father of German Pietism, and Pia Desideria is the chief exemplar of his spiritual program. Seventeenth-century Protestantism was a turbulent … [Read more...] about What Became of Luther’s German Church (A Book Review of Philipp Jacob Spener, Pia Desideria)
Blinded
"I KNEW it!" she crowed, as if she had found a discarded scrap of paper containing coded instructions from LBJ to Lee Harvey Oswald. She was, by all appearances, a lovely lady. Tall and slender, dressed beautifully, with a meticulously groomed head of white hair framing a face befitting that woman in your home town who retired from a successful career and then quickly segued into the presidency of the local library board, she sat in the shade on a park bench in the Ahuntsic neighborhood of Montreal, talking with a team of our volunteers. What nefarious plot had she uncovered? What deep … [Read more...] about Blinded