SBC Voices

He gained fame as Nixon's hatchet man during the Watergate scandals. After he was saved, and after his sentence in prison was over, he established Prison Fellowship and became a best-selling author. He has now gone to God's presence, a testimony of God's saving and transforming power. … [Read more...] about Chuck Colson has passed away.

For those who are readers here, let's talk about the SBC Annual Meeting in New Orleans June 19-20(?). Are you going? What are you looking forward to doing in New Orleans? What significant actions do you hope we will take at the meeting? Would you be interested in a blogger's get-together (say, Cafe Du Monde) after one of the evening sessions? I booked my hotel this week. I'm looking forward to it!   … [Read more...] about An SBC NOLA 2012 Forum

Irony of ironies; all is irony. Mark Driscoll has been a hot item on the blogs recently, in case you haven't heard.  He spoke at a small Christian college out east somewhere, and is doing a conference in that town over the weekend on another hot-button topic. Sex. How does the church address sex? We have a wide range of opinions about how the church should address the issue.  Driscoll, of course, represents one extreme.  If the Bible doesn't say its bad, then God says its okay between a married man and woman.  I think that is a fair representation of his view.  On the other extreme … [Read more...] about As the Kerfuffle Turns

The similarities are striking. Both men were in their early fifties with high profile jobs and strong ties to the state of Arkansas. Both were involved in extramarital affairs with women in their early twenties. Both brought enormous pain and shame upon their families and the institutions they represented. Both scandals received national attention from the news media and led to serious investigations of misconduct. Both men initially denied any wrongdoing and attempted a coverup to avoid having the relationship exposed. Both investigations clearly revealed an adulterous relationship … [Read more...] about A Sad State of Affairs

Yes, I just used the cliched line from Apollo 13. It's a good cliche: it states the situation without sounding panicked. That's where we are right now as the Southern Baptist Convention: we have a problem and we need state the situation without panicking but still looking into it. The problem is this: after we have roasted, toasted, and flamed one another since back in September over a name-change proposal to hopefully break from our past, especially the times we have embarrassingly embraced racism, we just blew that whole plan. All of the hope of moving past that issue originating from our … [Read more...] about Nashville (and Marietta), We Have a Problem

Richard Land’s racial remarks against the backdrop of the Trayvon Martin tragedy are the most damaging, alienating, and offensive words about race that I’ve read or heard, rendered by a SBC personality, in the twenty-eight years that I’ve served as a SBC church planter/pastor. The pain that Richard Land inflicted upon Blacks in the SBC is a pain that would be only felt greater by the pain inflicted upon Trayvon Martin’s family by George Zimmerman. In his non apology—apology, he blames those of us who responded to his racial views, for the pain we felt. The opening line in his letter of … [Read more...] about WHY THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION NEEDS TO GO ON RECORD REPUDIATING THE LAND RACIAL REMARKS By William Dwight McKissic, Sr.

Apologies and offenses notwithstanding, at least one profound underlying issue lies at the heart of the recent conflict over remarks made by Dr. Richard Land, President of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and it is not the false notion that Dr. Land is a racist. A fair reading of his record on this issue going back several decades clearly demonstrates otherwise. No, the question I wonder about concerns whether there exists, in the area of racial reconciliation, a level playing field for the sharing of concerns and demanding of apologies among those of every ethnic … [Read more...] about Beyond the Southern Baptist Land War

“Men may try; but they will try in vain, when they attempt to convert the weapons for defending against infidelity, into bread to feed God’s hungry children.”  -(Ichabod Spencer, Pastors Sketches, 59) In the context of this quote Spencer is lamenting the overabundance of speculations about faith and the continual labor to defend and explain the faith against those that do not believe.  The problem, says Spencer, is that “speculations about faith have no tendency to invite faith”.  Rather they tend to do just the opposite.  “Many of our treatises on the subjects of faith…are so filled up with … [Read more...] about Don’t Starve the Sheep to Fight the Wolves

I have noticed a disturbing occurring that happens far too often.  I have noticed most in the Calvinist/non-Calvinist argument, but it seems to pop up all over the place.  It's the shoot out using the supporting Bible Verse.  We disagree, we quote scripture and then someone else trumps out scripture with one of their own.  For a denomination that claims to believe in inerrency, i can't help but wonder what we are thinking about. As believers, can we really use scripture to contradict scripture when we say that scripture never contradicts?  What example are we showing people who visit the … [Read more...] about The Battle of Scripture