Did foolish purchases by low income adherents of “prosperity theology” play a role in the real estate market collapse in the US? The Atlantic Monthly seems to think so. A Hanna Rosin article in the December 2009 edition (read it here) posits that prosperity gospel proponents encouraged church members, many of whom were poor Latino immigrants, to claim the blessings that God had for them, including the blessing of getting loans through sub-prime lending.

Read the rest here.

Language is a pesky medium. Everyone knew that sooner or later someone with name recognition would come out and announce the term “missional” fell under the weight of its varied meanings. In the last week those 140 space communiques known as “Tweets” announced that “missional church” is redundant and that “missional” is the new junk drawer.

I would venture a guess that most who have used the word never read the book by Guder titled, The Missional Church. Even fewer will have read his book, The Continuing Conversion of the Church. In the best sense of semper reformanda, Guder contends that the church in every context and age must experience conversion from the barnacles it attracts as it passes through culture. He never suggests there is a pristinated version of church but opens the reader up to understand that when the church becomes complacent in its self-criticism it eventually loses its voice as it takes on the worst characteristics of the culture in which it finds itself.

Yes, Ed Stetzer regularly tweets in love and favor of the church. What he does not do is suggest it is perfect, just not worth bashing.

Read more…

For many years, observers of the church in America have been warning that too many believers may have inadvertently swallowed a bitter pill thinking it was good medicine. The re-prioritizing of the two kingdoms, man’s and God’s, has long been a temptation and it seem that we are destined to see it repeated over and over again until the return of Christ.

Whether the belief that England was in a covenant relationship with God, thus the moral authority to launch crusades against infidels, or that France was in a covenant relationship with God, thus the moral authority assumed by Joan of Arc to crusade against the antagonistic English, or the belief that “New England” was in a covenant relationship with God since “Old England” has turned away from the covenant, nations and peoples since the ascension of Christ have sought to pick up, dust off and wear the mantle of Israel’s covenant with God. Almost without fail this leads to an idolatry from which there is rarely a return. Even many pre-WW2 Christians in Germany welcomed the influence of the Nazi Party as if it were the evident blessing of God on “the Fatherland.” Thankfully the Confessing Church stood against the embodied blasphemy that was the 3rd Reich.

Amid the many “taking America back” ideas that permeate that portion of Americans who are Christians there seems to run a common thread of misunderstanding. There has never been a Christian America and never will be. Just as there has never been nor ever will be a Christian Sudan, Ghana, Canada, Russia or Egypt. “Christian” should refer to people who have been redeemed by the blood of Christ, not countries, bookstores or concerts. While it should be obvious to any reader of the Scriptures that Jesus died to save Americans, He did not die to save America. To think that God has only used America for His purposes is to misunderstand history; to think that God has chosen American for special blessing in a way that He has chosen no other country is to misunderstand theology. Second Peter 2:9 makes it clear that the “holy nation” God has chosen in these day is the church, not a geopolitical entity. The church exists within the borders of United Nations national charters, she does not take the place of them or become them. The ongoing conflation of the two kingdoms has created an unhealthy relationship between church and government even here in the United States where both left and right leaning Christians equate the presence of the Kingdom of God with whether or not we get a single payer healthcare option or we finally drill for oil in the arctic preserve. It bears remembering for all American believers that every time the church has crawled in bed with the state, the government prospers and the church is left cold, wretched, miserable, blind and naked.

Valid questions for all American Christians are: Do we worship America or Jesus Christ? Have we been brought into the relationship marked by Christianity or the religion of Americanism? Consider the following as possible indicators that we might have switched kingdoms:

Does your blood pressure goes through the roof when you see someone burning the American flag, yet you can hear someone take the name of Jesus in vain and you don’t flinch?

Are you angered when you see disrespect to an American soldier, yet when the persecution of Christians is reported on the news you give it not a second thought?

Will you walk across a restaurant to thank a service man/woman you have never met, but never thank your pastor for taking care of the flock?

Are you worried more about the country going into socialism than you are praying for the financial obedience of your own church?

Do you actively recruit people to your political positions, but ignore the need those same people have to know Jesus?

Does the national anthem or “American the Beautiful” brings tears to your eyes while worship songs bring dullness to your ears?

Are you more concerned when the Constitution is ignored than when the Bible is ignored?

Are you more appreciative of freedom of religion granted in the First Amendment than of freedom in Christ promised in John 3:16?

Is there a greater place in your heart for Washington, Adams and Jefferson than for Abraham, Paul and Peter?

Is it more important to you to support war or to try and bring peace?

At the National Prayer Breakfast in 1973 Former Senator Mark Hatfield said, “Let us beware of the real danger of misplaced allegiance, if not outright idolatry, to the extend we fail to distinguish between the god of an American civil religion and the God who reveals Himself in the Holy Scriptures and in Jesus Christ.

If we as leaders appeal to the god of civil religion, our faith is in a small and exclusive deity, a loyal spiritual adviser to power and prestige, a defender of only the American nation, the object of a national folk religion devoid of moral content. But if we pray to the biblical God of justice and righteousness, we fall under God’s judgment for calling upon His name, but failing to obey His commands.”

Hatfield had it right. God help us not to get it wrong.

“People give to what they can relate to and participate in. They don’t give to institutions anymore. They give to movement and something tangible. They give to something that they can see.”

The missioscapes team of editors and contributors has sought to provide thoughtful, and at times, provocative ideas for the future of churches, Southern Baptist ones in particular, as they seek to fulfill the mission of God (this is a Latin free post).  As a contributor I have tossed in some ideas on what the GCRT might need to do as they make decisions that will likely change the way in which Southern Baptists do their work both at home and abroad.  For the present the GCRT draws much of our attention.  We want to provide a place for voices to be heard, from a variety of ’scapes’ and I have found one today that makes me cold just thinking about where God put this man.  Let me introduce to you Glen Land.  Glen is the State Missions Director for the Minnesota-Wisconsin Baptist Convention.  Glen has taken keyboard in hand and shot out a few of his own ideas about the future of the SBC structure and the work of the GCRT.  I found this post here at the NOBA website and wanted to bring his voice to the missioscapes blog.  Thanks Glen for letting us re:post your piece here at missioscapes!

Critical Issues Concerning Southern Baptist Structure

With three key presidential vacancies at hand, pardon my analogy from paganism when I suggest that the planets may have aligned for sweeping changes in Southern Baptist Convention structure. Whether this will prove a blessing or a curse is a question. Bureaucratic structures are tenacious under assault. Just consider the repeated attempts at federal tax reform, resulting in an IRS more bloated and a tax code more confused, complex and convoluted than ever before. There is no guarantee that a new denominational structure will be an improvement over what we have now. Read more…

We have a team going to Northern India later this week to engage in a continuation of work that began there in 2004 with our first trip. We have seen amazing things take place, from raising up church planters, to developing a clean water project, to assisting a Christian hospital, to supporting children in education and in an orphanage. It has been very exciting for our church. We have also had very little overhead as we have engaged in this and almost all of the money that we have raised has gone directly to the work there.

We took up an offering yesterday for the work that we are doing in India. It was substantial – far more than has ever been given before. People give to what they can relate to and participate in. They don’t give to institutions anymore. They give to movement and something tangible. They give to something that they can see. These facts are frustrating the International Mission Board. They also frustrate the proponents of the Cooperative Program for Southern Baptists. They are used to churches just sending them money so that they can do the work and provide a vague report of all that is going on at the Annual Meeting. But, the ground is shifting and things don’t work that way anymore. If I became a huge proponent of the IMB and the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for missionaries in our church, I would get blank stares. Our people just will not give to missions offerings, institutions, or nameless, faceless organizations. The emerging Southern Baptist identity is mainly relational and theological, not methodological. The work of parachurch organizations over the past 50 years has also weakened the loyalty of people to both their local church and denomination. But, the church planter that I introduced them to last week was blessed a great deal by our church because they heard his story, saw his faith, and believed in his vision. Plus, they just wanted to bless his family.

The same thing happens when we go overseas or do something in our community. People support what they can see. If the work is to happen at all, people want to be connected to it. They are not impressed with wild claims of numbers of baptisms. They want to see people being impacted personally on a micro-level. Because of the internet, 24/7 cable news, Facebook, texting, email, cell phones, etc., people expect to be connected personally with their passion for change. If there is not personal connection, relationship, and buy in, then it is just an institutionalism that someone is getting rich off of. The real, nitty-gritty work is believed to not be getting done.

Where does this leave the CP and behemoth organizations like the IMB? It leaves them with lots of overhead, staff, plans, and dependence upon the giving patterns of a generation that is dying.  The current generation of Senior Adults came of age when institution building was all the rage. They are used to giving to institutions and continue to do so, but that is beginning to end. Their children, the Baby Boomers, gave less and ended up primarily in Megachurches or larger churches that give less to the CP and IMB than the smaller churches that they left do.  Gen X and Millenials give very little to institutions that they have no personal contact with. So, the next 10-20 years will see a massive shift take place in what Southern Baptists are able to do involving global missions unless some serious changes are made.

Changes . . .

There is still a role for foreign missionaries. But, they need to be tied more closely to the local church and work in directing and assisting the U.S. based local church in their work by working with networking churches  and connecting them with projects. Are these plans on the books? Yes. But, they are submersed beneath the constant calls for more money for the CP and IMB. Missionaries also need to be able to respond to a local church and what they are doing, if God happens to open some doors outside of the current work of the IMB. Yes, we need to send people to do missions because we cannot do it ourselves, but the local Southern Baptist church has become very disconnected from the idea of sending others beyond giving money to a general fund. This will not continue to work like it has in the past. 

I think that the changes that we have seen in the church over the past 20 years (1990-2010) are nothing compared to what is coming over the next 20 years. The past 20 years were just the rumblings of a system that is falling apart on every front. The next 20 years will see the system that has been built come crashing to the ground as the older generation that built it passes on. What will replace it? What will survive?

I think that what will replace it is already being born, although it is being scorned and disregarded, if not outright ignored. I’ll talk more about that in another post.

From former Cambridge professor, author and famed atheist, Richard Dawkins:

“Before 1859 it would have seemed natural to agree with the Reverend William Paley, in “Natural Theology,” that the creation of life was God’s greatest work. Especially (vanity might add) human life. Today we’d amend the statement: Evolution is the universe’s greatest work. Evolution is the creator of life, and life is arguably the most surprising and most beautiful production that the laws of physics have ever generated. Evolution, to quote a T-shirt sent me by an anonymous well-wisher, is the greatest show on earth, the only game in town.

Indeed, evolution is probably the greatest show in the entire universe. Most scientists’ hunch is that there are independently evolved life forms dotted around planetary islands throughout the universe—though sadly too thinly scattered to encounter one another. And if there is life elsewhere, it is something stronger than a hunch to say that it will turn out to be Darwinian life. The argument in favor of alien life’s existing at all is weaker than the argument that—if it exists at all—it will be Darwinian life. But it is also possible that we really are alone in the universe, in which case Earth, with its greatest show, is the most remarkable planet in the universe.”

[...]

“Where does that leave God? The kindest thing to say is that it leaves him with nothing to do, and no achievements that might attract our praise, our worship or our fear. Evolution is God’s redundancy notice, his pink slip. But we have to go further. A complex creative intelligence with nothing to do is not just redundant. A divine designer is all but ruled out by the consideration that he must at least as complex as the entities he was wheeled out to explain. God is not dead. He was never alive in the first place.”

The rest of this article may be found at The Wall Street Journal.

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From a Facebook response written by Beth Duren Lancaster:

“The first question that comes to my mind is, What if evolution was God’s idea? Would there then be no use for God after evolution was set into place? If God invented evolution, then God would be the author/designer/creator/sculptor of evolution. Would we say that since we have the completed works of Shakespeare, we’ve no need for the Bard himself? We have lightbulbs (”greener” and far better than the original), so no need for Edison? The Mona Lisa hangs on display, so da Vinci is useless to us? Now, I can’t stress enough my awareness that these are far from perfect comparisons (I don’t know of any Edison disbelievers), but I’m not at all trying to offer any sort of proof for the existence of God so perhaps it doesn’t matter. Why would an invention or creation (maybe too charged a word for Dawkins) render the inventor or creator useless?

Dawkins works from the premise that God does not exist and has never existed. So that certainly aids in his conclusion that evolution renders God useless, but it’s definitely no disproof of God. Perhaps that isn’t Dawkins’ intent, but then what would be the point of the article? (And when is that ever NOT Dawkins’ intent?) Dawkins’ is supposedly highly skilled in his own scientific field, but has always appeared to me to be a real lightweight in fields out of his specialty. In other words, he’s a pretty lousy philosopher and seems nearly devoid of any sort of grasp of theology.

I do completely agree with the ending of his article. Either God exists scientifically or God doesn’t exist at all. There’s no ‘true for you, not true for me’ when it comes to God’s existence. Be a devout believer, a seeking agnostic, or a solid atheist, but good grief don’t think you’re doing anyone any favors by being everything to all. If you take a stand for nothing out of fear of offending someone, you give up all chances of ever challenging anyone. If our motivation is to challenge another person by sharing beliefs and discussing differences in effort to build relationships and better both parties, then we shouldn’t have to fear offending people. Believers and non-believers can both challenge each other, but too often our motivation is to convert just to prove ourselves right, and that’s simply a picture of the inward fears of humanity. Sometimes stepping on each others toes can actually be a good thing, but we shouldn’t feel the need to put on combat boots before we do it.”

Several years ago, my wife and I bought one of those package vacation deals with Carnival Cruise lines. We aren’t really cruise people, but we were looking for a cheap getaway that might be fun. So, they had one of these all-inclusive vacations deals where the only catch was you had to listen to their pitch for “vacation ownership,” i.e., a time-share. So, we went and sat through the pitch. Then, we boarded our Carnival Cruise ship in Miami for a 3 day jaunt to the Bahamas and back.

The ship had everything. Food, music, lounging, entertainment. You could take a dance class, or swim, or just read a book. You could do whatever you wanted – or nothing at all. The important thing was that you were on the ship. So, we went to a couple of shows, ate some very average food, took a dance class, went ashore in Nassau and went snorkeling with about 100 other people, and had a pretty good time. But, overall, I was kind of bored with the set-up of the vacation. There was no risk. Everything was prepackaged and predictable.  Read more…

Cynthia Crane was busy with her daily routine when God altered the forces of nature to send her a very clear, if not so subtle message. Normally this mother of six has her plate full doing laundry and washing dishes. However, on this sultry September day she had gotten ahead. With an unusual bit of free time she determined to find some mid-morning inspiration from television. Bypassing the usual suspects: Days of Our Lives, Oprah, Montel Williams, she paused on her local cable affiliate to watch Pat Robertson’s  700 Club. It was at that moment that her life changed forever.

It wasn’t the story of a 9/11 survivor who birthed a ministry out of tragedy.  It wasn’t the incredible story of weight loss inspired by faith. It was a bolt of lightning that came crashing down on her, entering her head and exiting through her tailbone.  Fortunately for Cynthia her son was home. Reaching into her back pocket he pulled out her cell phone and dialed 911. Soon emergency medics arrived and, by the grace of God she is alive to tell the story today.

Her pastor, Rev. Larry Stallworth, has a different spin on this compelling story. Cynthia had better be more careful about what she watches on TV. That’s right. This not-so-little act of God was a warning that she’d better stay away from Pat Robertson. “The evangelical church has gotten downright nutty over the last couple of decades. Guys like Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland and Pat Robertson? These guys are very close to abandoning evangelical faith altogether in favor of some covetous, mystical belief that, at times, borders on utter nonsense,” said Stallworth. Crane is not entirely convinced. “Guys with such great hair can’t be entirely beyond the pale,” she quipped. “But my pastor has a lot of wisdom, so I’m considering his words.”

“If God judged the sins of New Orleans by sending a hurricane then I have no doubt that he would send a bolt of correction to one of his children for the sin of watching TBN,” Stallworth said.

This article first appeared on Examiner.com.

As President Obama gives a national speech today to school children, there are some in the United States who continue to pray for God to kill him. Citing the "imprecatory Psalms," at least two local church pastors have made it clear that they regularly and actively are praying for the death of the President of the United States.

Wiley Drake, pastor of the First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, California, may have been the first to get national attention for his stance. Drake, who announced on "The Alan Colmes Show" that he was "asking God to enforce imprecatory prayers" against the president, is widely known in Southern Baptist circles for submitting the resolution that led to the widely questioned "Disney boycott" a number of years ago. Unofficially dubbed "Mr. Resolution" by convention messengers, Drake’s pattern each year has been to offer numerous resolutions to the convention, most of which are rejected or never make it out of committee. So well known is he for this annual ritual that when he was elected as Second Vice-President of the SBC in 2006 comic joy was expressed from the dais that "Wiley won’t get to offer resolutions next year."

Drake, upon his election, immediately added, "2nd Vice-President of the Southern Baptist Convention," to all his correspondence and when his 1-year, non-renewable term was over, changed it to, "2nd Vice-President of the Southern Baptist Convention, 2004-2005." He caused a minor stir when he flew to Nashville for the fall meeting of the Executive Committee with the expectation that Southern Baptists should foot the bill, a privilege normally extended only to the sitting President. Eventually there was reimbursement, but a clarification also issued that Drake was not qualified for travel expenses.

The SBC gadfly is also a "birther," that is one who does not believe that Barack Obama is a natural born citizen of the U.S. and, therefore, not a legitimate president. He is even named on a lawsuit to that effect. Drake, also a member of the "Minutemen" organization and a vice-presidential candidate on the 2008 American Independent Party ticket in California, is now recognized by most Southern Baptists as being so far to the right that he’s not even on the wing. Said Art Rogers, pastor of Skelly Drive Baptist Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, "I’m to the right of center on the American political spectrum. Wiley is on another planet."

Continue reading at Southern Baptist Examiner.