SBC Issues

 Ben Simpson is the pastor of West Main Baptist Church in Alexandria, TN and his blog is part of that church's site.  Helen Keller once said, “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched—they must be felt with the heart.”  We certainly live in a culture and day where the heart has been elevated to preeminence.  How many times have we heard someone give the advice, “Just follow your heart!”?  That’s the wisdom of the age, but it’s not just isolated to secular communities.  You very well might just as easily hear that from folks who claim to follow Jesus … [Read more...] about Bless Your Heart: A Biblical Look at the Heart of Man (by Ben Simpson)

I was recently reading one of the prayers in Valley of Vision, page 336, as I do each morning with my Scripture reading. This was on the Monday after I had preached twice at our church the previous day. As I read this particular Puritan prayer, he gave some areas that he fell into. It appears that he might have often struggled with these. As I read them, I identified with all four. I was struck by the clarity with which they came off the page. I immediately thought through my last 10 years of ministry, and how each of these “evils” has been a part of my life. Below are the evils he said … [Read more...] about The Evils that Befall our Ministry

Do you think it is a sense of personal inadequacy that leads young whippersnappers to focus so much of their personal identity on their facial hair?   … [Read more...] about Young Whippersnappers and their Facial Hair

 I didn't have anything to post from my (disappointing - hint,hint) team of contributors, and I simply have not had time to write anything myself. So, I'm pulling out a sermon from a couple of weeks ago (part 1 of 2). I'm in a series on the Beatitudes. Do I even need to prove this assertion? This is a seriously messed up world. It is a world in which lies often seem to overwhelm the truth. The news is filled with stories that take our breath away, recounting acts of depravity that defy imagination. How can people do some of the things that they do? How can they walk into a movie theater or an … [Read more...] about On Earth As It Is in Heaven: Hungering and Thirsting for God’s Righteousness (Matthew 5:6)

Apparently one is not supposed to plant a Magnolia tree close to the house. As first-time home buyers my wife and I were not aware of this tip. We liked looking out our bedroom window and seeing the beautiful flowering magnolias. That is until our basement wall started to crack. This past week—when I was supposed to be on vacation—I spent my evenings killing and uprooting a Magnolia tree. I decided to do this in a three stage process. Stage one is chopping down the tree and leaving a 3 foot stump*. Stage two is to dig a hole around the tree until I expose and then kill those dastardly … [Read more...] about The Gospel’s Root Work & Axe Work

Joel Rainey is the Director of Missions at Mid-Maryland Baptist Association, an adjunct professor at Capital Bible Seminary and blogs at Themelios. This post, the beginning of a series, was originally published at his site. This is the second in Joel' series about Baptist associations. Here is the introductory post.  If you try to do everything, you end up doing nothing well.  That principle is never more clearly observed than when examining the way so many denominational entities operate today. Last week, I spoke briefly about a number of issues that need to be addressed in the modern … [Read more...] about The Future of the Baptist Association: Identity Crisis (by Joel Rainey)

Marty Duren blogs at Kingdom in the Midst. In the aftermath of the Kermit Gosnell “House of Horrors” Aussie theologian Michael Bird produced a provocative piece at Patheos.com. Entitled “Infanticide: The coming battle” Bird, a former military man, warned how this encroaching mindset was already in the academy. He notes, after postulating that euthanasia will be the next death culture domino to fall, Then as regards to, “what’s after that,” I am convinced it will be infanticide. Already we have seen a vast array of philosophical arguments put forward for it by Peter Singer. Last year there … [Read more...] about Against infanticide: Introducing Protecting Infants and the Remember Ashkelon blog (by Marty Duren)

I've heard it all my life. "We need to restore America to its former greatness." "We need to take our nation back to what it once was." "We need to get back to being the Christian nation we used to be." I believed it and preached it. But I have come to believe that this is not something we should say. There are Christian brothers and sisters who hear something very different than we do when we talk about "going back" and out of honor to them, we ought to reexamine our thinking and our words.  Before I make you mad.... ...I'd like to make these things absolutely clear! 1) I love this … [Read more...] about We Need to Stop Talking about “Restoring America”

The Puritan’s distinguished a multifaceted union that every believer had with Christ. Do you think there is any validity to their teaching?????? Union with Christ and oneness with Him was the guarantee of eternal security. The idea did not depict a ‘moment’ in the application of salvation. Michael Horton said, “. . . it is a way of speaking about the way in which believers share in Christ in eternity (by election), in past history (by redemption), in the future (by glorification).” Union with Christ was a blessing from the Father. Without that blessing one could not see justifying … [Read more...] about The Three Fold Union with Christ