Bart Barber

I believe that our immigration policy is in need of reform, particularly with regard to Mexican immigrants. Mexicans benefit from coming here to work. Americans benefit from having them here to work. Mexicans coming to the United States are far more likely to encounter evangelical Christianity than they are in Mexico. I have them in my church, as do most pastors in Texas. Ethnic churches are one of the major growth areas of the Southern Baptist Convention. I've only ever heard two arguments against permitting Mexican immigration: One is economic and one is political. The economic argument … [Read more...] about In Defense of Amnesty

If the Cooperative Program should go away, would we find ourselves with a societal missions approach? That's been the standard presumption. I've said it myself. Now I'm not entirely sure. The great debate of the 1800s, besides whether slaveholders could be missionaries, regarded funding and organizational approaches to Baptist causes. On the one hand, Northerners favored the societal approach. According to that approach, Baptist churches do not organize per se. Rather, what we might today call a "missional entrepreneur" would launch a "society" organized to address a particular highly … [Read more...] about The Walmartization of the SBC

Kent Brantly: Recovered Nancy Writebol: Recovered Rick Sacra: Recovered Anonymous WHO Doctor: Recovered Ashoka Mukpo: Recovered Thomas Eric Duncan: Died Nina Pham: Recovered Amber Vinson: Recovered Craig Spencer: Ongoing Case Fatality Rate for African Ebola patients 70% Case Fatality Rate for American Ebola patients 11% The lone American fatality, Thomas Eric Duncan, was sent home from the hospital when he first sought treatment. Thus, the case fatality rate for American Ebola patients who receive prompt treatment is, so far, 0%. Ebola … [Read more...] about Death by Poverty

People are religious. Not "SOME people are religious." People are religious. In every nook and cranny of this planet, among every race and in every tongue, in every culture and climate, there is prayer, there is ritual, there is religion. So pervasive is the religiosity of people that unbelieving scientist Jesse Bering has said, "I've always said that I don't believe in God, but I don't really believe in atheists either." Read that whole article, because it is very intriguing. Bering can't affirm that there's a God, but he thinks that deep down inside everyone, himself included, has a … [Read more...] about Why Are People Religious? Can Evolution Provide an Answer?

This week, while I was away at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary attending our Fall Trustee Meeting, one of my church members received an important email from the seminary. Decades ago, when she was fresh out of college, she had served as a Journeyman to Brazil. She still remembers quite a bit of her Portuguese. She still advocates for missions in our church because of that experience. She drove all the way to Houston and stayed in a hotel at her own expense just to serve as a volunteer in the IMB booth at the SBC 2012 Annual Meeting (where our church had been invited because of our … [Read more...] about Whom Should Seminaries Educate?

A massive humanitarian tragedy is developing in Liberia and Sierra Leone. I'm not talking about the epidemiological tragedy, which will continue to unfold over the next several months. I'm talking about the inevitable state of these two nations after the virus has run its course and the epidemic comes to an end. Between now and then, the United Nations projects that 10,000 new cases of Ebola will emerge weekly, mostly in Sierra Leone and Liberia, and that, at this phase of the epidemic, those numbers will increase exponentially. At present the fatality rate in this epidemic has been around … [Read more...] about Why Southern Baptists, Above All Others, Must Stand Ready to Aid Liberia

Most awkward pastoral moment: When I'm pressed to identify my favorite verse in the Bible Sometimes it happens because a fifth-grader asks when I visit his Sunday School class. Sometimes it happens when I'm supposed to inscribe a gift Bible for one of our first-graders. Sometimes it happens in dialogue with a men's Bible study. "Pastor, which is your favorite verse of the Bible?" So, here's the awkward truth I face in those moments: I don't have one. Truly, I do not have a favorite Bible verse. I never have. It's not that I came to the reasoned position that I shouldn't have one; it's … [Read more...] about Favorite Verses

It doesn't make sense how much I love Rich Mullins. I am, probably—for the preponderance of our population in the way that they use the word—a fundamentalist. No, the folks over in the Independent, Fundamental Baptist world certainly wouldn't call me a fundamentalist, and I admit that the word is used probably with too much variance in meaning for it to be helpful. I don't introduce myself to people by saying, "Hi. I'm Bart Barber. I'm a fundamentalist." Dave Miller introduces me to people that way, but I don't introduce myself that way. But what's important for this post is simply this: … [Read more...] about A Ragamuffin Fundamentalist

Your reaction to the title might be, "OF COURSE we own the Cooperative Program. What'd you think, that we had sold it to the Methodists?" Or, perhaps, you might react by saying, "The Cooperative Program is not a THING to be owned. We own the entities. We own the assets. Nobody owns the Cooperative Program." But I'm using that word in another sense altogether. When President Obama first entered office, every problem with the economy in every speech that he gave he blamed on the Bush administration. But now, all these years into his presidency, that's a lot more difficult for him to do. … [Read more...] about We Own the CP