SBC Voices

Andy Hynes is the Director of Admissions and Dean of Men at Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary and a PhD candidate there. Follow him @ABHYNES on Twitter. The battle within me Today’s society is enthralled with self.  We live in an era of persistent narcissism. The constant clamor of people bragging about themselves; engaging in constant self-promotion, seemingly drowns out other voices. However, it may be that there are times when focusing on self is really not a bad thing.  When it comes to how we understand the qualities and characteristics of God, and apply them to our lives, it … [Read more...] about Meeting God and Remaining Unchanged? (by Andy Hynes)

I've been preaching through Acts on Sunday nights and I keep getting more confused as time goes on. You see, I went to seminary and I got me an edumacation and lots o' book-learning. I've been to evangelism conferences and training sessions. And, with all that I have learned about evangelism and cultural engagement, I am left with only one conclusion: Those poor folks in the church in Jerusalem just didn't get it. They did not know the effective evangelism strategies that we have learned today and they didn't know what we now know about engaging our culture in a positive and tolerant way. … [Read more...] about Evidently, the Early Church Didn’t Know How to Do Evangelism!

As one who loves baseball, I absolutely cannot stand this commercial! … [Read more...] about Worst Commercial Ever?

I want to say a public thank you to Mississippi Baptist men and a ministry they have that has blessed me three times over the 22 years I have lived in Iowa. The last two times they did it, I didn't have a forum like this to say thank you, but now I do, so here goes. I know a lot of you young whippersnappers preach in t-shirts and sandals, in your ratty ol' ripped blue jeans. But those of us who, like fine wine (grape juice?) have matured with age still wear our suits and ties when we preach on Sunday morning. And those suits do not come cheap, especially when you pastor some small church in … [Read more...] about Thank You, Mississippi Baptists!

I am no expert on World War II, but I have read about the Battle of Hürtgen Forest, which took place from mid-September of 1944 to February of 1945 on the German/Belgian border. By the accounts I have read it was a fierce battle, which caused 33,000 casualties on the American side and around 28,000 on the German side. Bloody. Brutal. And according to most of what I have read, largely unnecessary.  Charles B. MacDonald, an Army historian who also served in the Battle of Hürtgen called the battle "a misconceived and basically fruitless battle that should have been avoided." Evidently, as the … [Read more...] about Blogging and the Battle of Hürtgen Forest

For the last two days I’ve noted a potential pitfall to spiritual gifts testing.  (See here and here).  Though I think there are dangers to spiritual gifts testing I do believe they can be beneficial.  As I mentioned yesterday, our church does a 3 in 1 profile that considers personality as well as spiritual gifts.  Such tools can be helpful to the body in these ways: If a foot thinks it is a hand you’ve got problems.  Though I’d rather have two hands and a confused foot that thinks its a hand over zero hands, I’d much rather have hands and feet do what they were created to do.  Gifts … [Read more...] about The Benefit of Spiritual Gifts Testing

Louie Giglio is hardly a fundamentalist firebrand. But in the brave new world of Obama's progressive secularism, little distinction is made between Giglio and Fred Phelps. Anyone (and according to Lifeway research, that is 44% of Americans) who believes homosexuality is a sin is unwelcome in the public square. One who holds to the biblical truth about this subject will not be eligible for appointed office or elected to significant places of service. I mentioned this in a post last week, that we are going to have to get used to being a minority, and increasingly, I believe, an excluded and … [Read more...] about If You Had Any Doubt, Evangelicals Are Now an Unwelcome Minority in America!

Ecclesiology is always a hot topic among Baptists. One of our bedrock beliefs is congregational church government. But not all congregational government is constructed alike. I've been the senior pastor of three churches over the last 27 years. My first church was governed by its eight deacons, who ran the church with something just less than an iron fist. Everything went through the deacon board. The church's committees and officers had to go through the deacon board to get anything done. They even felt they had the authority to tell me what I could and couldn't preach (let's just say we … [Read more...] about Every Church is Elder-led; Every Church is Congregational

Yesterday I noted that one reason I’m not a huge fan of spiritual gifts testing is because the church at Rome did not have Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.  That’s another way of saying that I do not think the early church did ministry according to perceived spiritual giftedness but instead their overarching paradigm was to be united servants of Jesus and that looked different for different people. Okay, so maybe spiritual gifts aren’t quite what the early church did.  They also didn’t have electricity, microphones, padded seats or VBS.  You won’t find those things in the Bible but the … [Read more...] about The Other Reason I’m Not a Huge Fan of Spiritual Gifts Testing

We have had a fairly lively discussion of the Rev Dr. Plodder's post on pastor's salaries. A few pastors shared that they were paid above average, most claimed to be below average in compensation. I have another question that I thought might be an interesting discussion. Is your salary public information at the church? In my experience, it is common practice in smaller churches for the pastor's salary to be public information.  In larger churches, that information is kept private. Often, the budget is presented with a line item that groups all staff and support staff … [Read more...] about Pastor: How Confidential is Your Salary?