SBC Voices

Christianity is a team sport.  There are no free agents.  There are no Lone Rangers. We simply cannot obey the "one another" passages of Scripture if we are not properly united with a local church fellowship to whom we are accountable and with whom we serve the Lord together.  Frankly, Christians who are unaffiliated are stunting their spiritual growth in the Kingdom of God.  They will be "stuck" right where they are until they make a change. Lately, I have experienced a profound burden for two groups of people within the church I pastor -- and within every church, for that matter.  I named … [Read more...] about Permanent Prospects and Backslidden Baptists

“It is a terrible thing to keep a wound of some great sin upon the conscience, for it makes a way for a new breach; because when the conscience once begins to be hardened with some great sin, then there is no stop, but we run on to commit sin with all greediness.”  (Richard Sibbes, The Tender Heart, 35) What Sibbes is saying here, with his Puritan language, is that we must be quick to root out sin because once it takes root it will only make way for more hardening and more sin. Earlier in this text Sibbes gives the example of King David.  When he spiraled out of control with Bathsheba he … [Read more...] about Hardening, Hiding, and the Gospel

Content removed … [Read more...] about Youth Minister Interview Questions (by Rick Patrick)

I tend to give the type of directions that people hate.  Actually, I give the type of directions that I hate.  You know the ones that are never detailed and usually end with something like, “don’t worry you’ll know when you get there—you can’t miss it”. Well, what if I do miss it?  What if I’m a total moron?  I am the guy that once stopped at a gas station to get directions for the building across the street.  It is possible that I could totally miss the obvious building that even a monkey could drive to. These type of directions stress me out because they require a good amount of trust … [Read more...] about You’ll Know When You Get There

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)