SBC Issues

Warning:  Pastors, some of you may not like me much after you read this. But if we are going to preach the hard truths to our people, maybe sometimes we need to listen to the hard truths ourselves. Divided churches and church splits are a huge problem today. And we like to blame those sinful, divisive, unruly people for all the problems. But I am going to call the "blame the people" response into question here.  I think church splits are usually started by rebellion or ungodly attitudes among people, but they are assisted by wrong attitudes and actions by church leaders.  I hope you will … [Read more...] about Church Splits: Causes, Cures and Calvinism

So, we blew up the website in the past week, partly over a post over at Les Puryear's other blog. (Who has more than one blog? Oh, yeah, I used to, then I got too lazy to keep up with them both. Anyway, nothing wrong with that.) There's much to contemplate on how that got responded to, but I've been looking at it and thinking about it. Copying his 10 posts with response here (and expecting him to point out how I've taken it wrong.) Pastor-blogger Puryear pointed out these 10 things as the problem with the SBC. 1. Preachers who reject that the Old Testament moral law is still valid today. … [Read more...] about Les Puryear Is Right. At least partly right, that is…

(from the SBC Plodder) Here is an abstract of one of those Calvinist church situations that caused me to write an earlier piece on being wary of my five-pointer brethren -  another place, I know some of the players, passed along to me by one close to the matter. Before anyone accuses me of making this stuff...you CAN'T make this stuff up. And, you can't survive in the SBC without a sense of humor. Good church calls Calvinistic pastor who proceeds to implement his vision of what the church should be. Things don’t go well. Church declines. Pastor encouraged to leave. He leaves...but not … [Read more...] about You Can’t Make This Stuff Up (by William Thornton)

(A friend who has been following my Brick Walls and Picket Fences series sent this to me and asked if I would be interested in publishing it.  I appreciated that he interacted with what I wrote.  For reasons that seem reasonable to me, my friend desires to remain anonymous.  For those who are interested, he DOES attend a Southern Baptist church!) Dave Miller has been writing this past year about Brick Walls and Picket Fences that has caused me to think quite a bit about how I would define who I believe are outside a Brick Wall. I mean, the Picket Fences is to me simpler to explain than a … [Read more...] about My Brick Wall: Three Simple Questions (Guest Blogger)

Through before and through then and through forever after, Through sighs and through tears and through too-little laughter, Through pain and through sadness, through anger and fear, Through wandering away and through clinging near. Through pits of deception and mountains of truth, Through hope and through striving, through longings of youth, Through moments of stillness in search of Your voice, Through dangerous journeys of self-proclaimed choice. Through brokenness, hopelessness, running and hiding, Through moments of peace and through blessed abiding, Through hiding and fighting … [Read more...] about The Gift that Keeps on Guilting

One of the constant debates Christians seem to have concerns our relationship to the Law.  Some take the words of Jesus in Matthew 5 as an indication that we must still live under the Law, that is unless the New Testament clearly does away with some aspect of it (like the sacrificial system).  And indeed Jesus did say, “Do not think I have come to abolish the Law or the prophets; I have…come to fulfill them.”  But more than that, Jesus says, “I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.”  He then tells us we will never … [Read more...] about The Christian and the Law: A Brief Consideration of Galatians

Jerry Corbaley lives in Hawaii and blogs at "Think the Thoughts?"  This article first appeared there.   Yes, I am also unhappy with what the United States is doing in regard to defining marriage. Yes, I am glad that many are working politically against the trend of redefinition. Yet, Christians are still free to emphasize God’s purpose of marriage. Why wait until the concept of ‘marriage’ is further maimed within our culture? Perhaps we could equip our congregations with what is right in God’s eyes whether the culture ever agrees or not. I wonder, should we ignore the need for our … [Read more...] about Christian Marriage: A Model for Surviving the Future (by Jerry Corbaley)