Greeting all my blogging friends. I have missed you all. I have been away for a while and made some serious changed. I resigned my position of Associate Pastor, working to start a non-profit, and trying to do more writing. You can see by my lack of blogs that the last one hasn’t been going to well. I have left the church with a desire to reach out to those who are not coming to church. I have spent much of my ministry in front line ministry, on high school and college campus doing outreach and evangelism. That is where I feel led to go back, and with this in mind, I woke up to the tragedy this morning.
In case you live under a rock, a young man opened fire in a movie theater at a midnight showing. As of right now, there isn’t any reports of what was going on with the guy, why he opened fire and what was the focus of his anger, but one thing is clear. That young man needs Jesus. I don’t know anything about him, but I know that the darkness in his heart is symptomatic of the darkness in our society. We live in a dark world, with dark people trapped by their depravity.
So, it’s time for me to start the fight that needs fighting. I am out to wrestle against powers and principalities and authorities that are dark and twisted. As a Convention, I have concern that maybe we are not fighting the fights that need fighting. We like to fight about Calvinism, we fight about Traditionalism, we fight about communion and baptism and if Southern belongs in our name. These are good conversations, good things to consider, but they are not the fights that need fighting. It’s good to have Robert’s Rules of Order, but if they continue to dominate the convention, we have lost our minds.
I appreciate the fact that NAMB wants to penetrate the darkness, and thinks the answer is church planting. I think that is a good start. Can we do better? Should we do better? Do we as Southern Baptists or Great Commission Baptists or Great Southern Commission Baptists have any chance to begin to penetrate the darkness? Some of you have great ministries and are doing great things, but so many of us lead or work in churches in platue or decline. Are we fighting the fights that need fighting? Can we do better?