As we draw to the end of this series, we feel compelled to point out what all of us felt was an obvious point. It has been reported that some who read this blog have the mistaken impression that we do not support the work of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force. This entire series was written by seven guys who are offering suggestions as to what we see are necessary changes that the GCRTF could recommend. To suppose or pre-suppose that, despite our clear words, we are somehow against the GCRTF demonstrates a failed judgment of our motives and a EPIC FAIL in the evaluation of our writings.

For those who are newcomers to this blog and may not be as familiar with our past involvement with “The Dark Side,” the men listed on the Editors page were, for 2-3 years, avid (some might say “rabid”) critics of the SBC and, often, some in its leadership. Though motives were questioned then as well (both by us and toward us), to a person our goal was to try and instigate some type of reform that would address the backroom politics, good ole’ boy nomination processes and bureaucratic redundancies all of which we felt were suppressing the SBC’s creative talent and innovation, disenfranchising younger leaders and threatening the long term viability of the Southern Baptist Convention. While we were critical of some of the entity heads within the convention, we also recognized that any lasting change would have to come as a result of the “blog conversation” moving into the arena of official leadership. On June 18, 2007, on the last “SBC” commentary on my (Marty) first blog, SBCOutpost, I wrote that “change must come from Frank Page, Thom Rainer, Geoff Hammond, David Dockery, Timothy George, Danny Akin and others of their tribe.” Sans Geoff Hammond, each of these leaders is involved at some level of driving change in the SBC. Knowing that these men have stepped up to the plate does not make us mad; it gives us varying degrees of hope from fleeting to great.

Having said that, anything that appears to be criticism from our end should be read as a hope that the GCRTF will go the distance and not be, to use biblical phrasing, “of those who shrink back and are destroyed,” but will press to the farthest extent and let the convention itself decide. In other words, we believe the GCRTF should bring “Big Hairy Audacious Goals” to Orlando and let the assembled messengers determine how to proceed from there. We do not want them to “shrink back” out of fear, uncertainty or concerns about walking on the toes of feudal lords.

Therefore, if we were the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force, we would make the following recommendations:

1. That the Southern Baptist Convention intentionally downsize is structural complexity by recognizing the series of autonomous relationships that exist between churches, associations, state conventions/fellowships and the national body and that the local churches must take the lead in re-shaping this autonomy to all extremes in each direction.

2. That the Southern Baptist Convention re-focus NAMB’s ministry tasks, retaining only on those areas that empower the churches through national coordination and facilitate the planting of churches in frontier areas. This would be best accomplished through decentralization. NAMB should begin to act as a true missionary sending agency while funding those missionaries accordingly.

3. That the Southern Baptist Convention cease from the practice of voting on “Resolutions.” The purpose of resolutions in theory makes sense, but in practice they are great tools for making Southern Baptists look like fools. We have long passed the point that our society cares at all what we think about its ills; resolutions have become points of disparagement for our host culture, another stigma that must be overcome by Southern Baptist churches and do nothing to help us fulfill the Great Commission.

4. That the Southern Baptist Convention focus its coordinated efforts toward only what local churches, associations, or state conventions cannot do alone or by voluntary networking. By definition this implies the closure of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

5. That the Southern Baptist Convention instruct the International Mission Board to implement strategies that empower national believers rather than seeking to primarily deploy western missionaries and make those stories a focus of all promotion.

6. That one-third of the trustees on Southern Baptist Convention entity boards be comprised of men and women younger than 40 years of age and that the total number of years that a single person shall be able to serve on all boards combined is twelve.

7. That churches be given the option to direct their Cooperative Program funds through their local association consistent with the mission of the local church and the accountable practices at all levels of our cooperative effort toward fulfilling the Great Commission.

8. That all bodies within the SBC–local churches, associations, state conventions and fellowships, and all national entities–strive for absolute accuracy in reporting of statistics and that a differentiation be made between what is accomplished by our own direct ministry efforts and those of groups with whom we partner both in North America and internationally.

9. That the Southern Baptist Convention explore alternative methods of theological training that retain an emphasis on conservative, classic theology, but are local church-centric and host culture specific. A new educational paradigm should be introduced which places Missiology on the same plane as Theology proper, Christology and Pneumatology and staffed accordingly.

10. That funding the Cooperative Program not be considered as the basis for being a cooperating church. The basis for cooperation should be missional engagement as the local church furthers the stated goals of the Southern Baptist Convention. “Cooperation” should not be reduced to money.

If you were wondering how the whole notion of a GCR Task Force came about you can wonder no more. Here is a picture of brother Johnny Hunt listening to a podcast of Danny Akin’s chapel sermon on the Axioms of a Great Commission Resurgence. That ain’t no jive.

Dr. David Dunbar is President of Biblical Theological Seminary in Hatfield, PA. Dave has been offering thoughts on the school’s theological convictions in his “Missional Journal.” Biblical Seminary continues to press through to “missional theological education.” Some want to talk about missional theology. Biblical is committed to missional theology. Rather than nuance theology in missional terms, Biblical is committed to theology that is rooted and rises from the missio dei. You may follow the links in the footnotes and read the complete statement of theological convictions that guide Biblical Seminary in its theological project. Biblical Seminary now offers a MA in Missional Church Planting. Thanks to Dave for allowing us to post his article here at MissioScapes.

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“Through a Glass Darkly”

With these words St. Paul (1 Cor. 13:12) contrasts the limitations of our present spiritual vision and understanding with the fullness of knowledge that will be ours at the return of the Lord.  This metaphor may be helpful as we consider the last of Biblical Seminary’s theological convictions.

The Necessity of Cultural Engagement

We are committed to ongoing engagement with culture and the world for the sake of our witness to the gospel, and to continual learning from Christians in other cultural settings.[1]

There are three points I want to make about this statement:  1) culture as the context for mission, 2) culture as a way of seeing, and 3) the need for cross-cultural learning.

1.    Culture as context

By “culture” we refer to the traditional ways of thinking, speaking, and acting that characterize a particular group of people. In our highly mobile Western world, we must think of culture not as a single entity but as a complex interplay of contrasting and even competing ways by which different groups construe their world.

This diversity of cultures is one reason the church in North America must now think of itself as a missionary church. We are surrounded by groups of people who do not share our way of viewing the world. To bring the gospel to our world we will need to engage in the missionary task of translation.  We must communicate the truth about Jesus in ways that are faithful to Scripture and effective in crossing cultural boundaries.

Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, understands this challenge better than most. “When Paul spoke to Greeks, he confronted their culture’s idol of speculation and philosophy with the ‘foolishness’ of the cross, and then presented Christ’s salvation as true wisdom. When he spoke to Jews, he confronted their culture’s idol of power and accomplishment with the ‘weakness’ of the cross, and then presented the gospel as true power (1 Cor. 1:22-25).”[2] In affirming one gospel, Keller nonetheless argues that different “forms” of the gospel are appropriate to people of differing cultural backgrounds.

So, in the context of his own ministry in New York City, Keller recognizes that people with religious backgrounds understand the concept of sin as an offense against the law of God.  These people can therefore be reached with the more traditional evangelical summary of the gospel which presents the cross as divine provision for human sin and guilt.

But Keller notes, “…Manhattan is also filled with postmodern listeners who consider all moral statements to be culturally relative and socially constructed. If you try to convict them of guilt for sexual lust, they will simply say, ‘You have your standards, and I have mine.’ If you respond with a diatribe on the dangers of relativism, your listeners will simply feel scolded and distanced.”[3]  For this audience Keller finds it more effective to speak of sin not as guilt but as idolatry.

My point is not to argue the rightness or wrongness of Pastor Keller’s specific approach to preaching, although I agree with much of his article. The point is rather to emphasize the missional challenge we face. Careful interpretation of Scripture must now be combined with careful interpretation of culture(s) if we are to witness faithfully to our generation.
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“Our system is perfectly designed to produce the results we are getting.”

I am very excited about the GCR Task Force and the potential that exists for us to rethink the direction of the SBC and the relationship of the local church with the larger denomination. Much of what I am going to say here can be objected to with anectdotal stories that might paint a different picture. But, I am talking about overall trends and cause and effect relationships that have had unintended consequences. I am not saying that your favorite denominational worker or Megachurch pastor has a bad heart. I am saying that we have constructed a bad system that rewards the wrong things to help us carry out the mission God gave us. Until we see that, all attempts at tinkering with the structure to fix it will ultimately end in frustration.

If the GCR is to be a success, the GCR Task Force should call for Southern Baptists to withdraw from our addiction to corporate mechanisms and top heavy bureaucracies and return to the local church as the primary staging ground for Kingdom activity and advancement in the world.  Sometime in the mid-20th century, Southern Baptists began to behave like General Motors and we thought that we could coalesce everything into boards, denominational structures, and programs. We thought that cooperation meant that we developed huge denominational enterprises to direct our work. Sure, we said that the state conventions and national entities existed to serve the local church, but in reality, the situation reversed itself and the local church found itself in the role of being the resource mechanism for the entities to do the work for us. We called this fulfilling the Great Commission and we gave to a Cooperative Program to do so. The result has been that the local church has, by and large, hired out its God-given mission of equipping and sending to denominational entities that have become unwieldy in their scope and limited in their effectiveness. Baptism-to-member-ratios stand at around 47:1 across the SBC and we now see the local church in decline everywhere.  This is especially true among smaller churches.

Bill Hybels says that the local church is the hope of the world. Of course, he believes that Jesus is the hope of the world, but his point is that a local community of believers where Christ reigns and rules is exactly what the world needs to be restored to God. Of all people, Southern Baptists should believe this. But, we have gone all parachurch the last 60 years or so and have moved our focus away from local churches to larger, richer, and what we have thought to be more effective and diverse organizations. This move towards conglomeration has ultimately had an adverse affect on our fulfillment of the Great Commission. We have done this in several ways:

1. By flocking to the Megachurch. If there is a giving crisis related to the Cooperative Program in SBC life, one source of this crisis might be the Megachurch. It is common knowledge that Megachurches (churches with 2000 or more attenders) have primarily grown through transfer growth from other churches. As Americans fell in love with the shopping mall, consumer choice, and a “bigger is better” mentality, Megachurches, based on charismatic leadership and excellent programs and services, began to attract people building their lives in suburban sprawl. Many of these people left smaller churches. These smaller churches that often gave large amounts to the CP could not compete with the massive appeal of the Megachurch that often gave little to the CP because they were doing their own thing. Adrian Rogers’ famous statement that percentages don’t pay the bills became the mantra of Megachurches when it came to their relationship with the SBC. Even though their percentage giving to the CP might be 2-4% of undesignated offerings (as opposed to the 10% or more given by smaller churches), they still exerted heavy influence because they gave more money overall than smaller churches could. But, think about this: If we see a migration of people from smaller churches that give 10% to larger churches that give 2-4%, the result will be that overall giving goes down. The financial crisis facing the SBC could be solved (temporarily, at least) if Megachurches gave more. Now, smaller churches are beginning to follow the example of the Megachurches whose pastors influence the SBC and the situation is becoming an epidemic, it seems.  Our system is perfectly designed to produce the results we are experiencing. Megachurches are a part of that system and should not escape scrutiny. While they can do a lot of good and when properly focused they can be a powerful force for the Kingdom, they can also attract a large crowd that becomes increasingly disconnected from engaging in missional living.
2. By calling for continual support of SBC entities through the Cooperative Program, the impression has been given that the real action in SBC life is found in our state conventions, mission boards, and seminaries. While publicly saying that the local church is ground zero for Kingdom activity, the private expressions of many denominational workers has been that the local church is just not going to do the work required, therefore, they must do it themselves.  The local church has gone along with this and has outsourced its mission to state and national structures. The problem is that parachurch structures and denominational entities are fundamentally parasitic. While potentially helpful in assisting local churches in their mission, they are not effective in the long-term when they replace the local church in that mission. They end up removing mission from the context of daily life and community and it becomes something that the professionals do. Through adherence to size, money, and power as marks of success, we are seeing a reiteration of the priest/laity divide in unexpected ways (experts/professionals vs. non-experts/non-professionals). The short-term results of this can be exciting because of the accumulation of resources and speed of action that make so much possible, but the long-term effect is that you retard the Christian movement overall because you remove it from the hands of the people and from smaller churches where everyone can participate.  With an exodus of leaders and resources to larger systems, smaller churches have often lost their own vision and sense of usefulness for their role in the Missio Dei and have settled for sending a check to the CP or for sitting on the sidelines because they believe that they cannot do the real work. Lifelessness has set in with many smaller churches as battles over identity and turf ensue and this only speeds up the exodus of leaders and gifted people to larger systems. A vision and mission must be restored to the smaller church so that everyone can participate in a healthy way.

On a side note, it is ironic that the individualism that initially fueled the Megachurch and parachurch movements can often result in a bland conformity to large structures that end up squelching the God-given creativity of the individual as large systems replace affirming and empowering communities. With the emergence of the Millenial generation, there is a much greater desire for people to actually participate in the mission/cause themselves instead of hiring proxies to do it for them. Technology and connectedness make this personal participation not only possible, but necessary. Many Megachurches are realizing this and are adapting accordingly with great effect (Willowcreek and Saddleback come to mind and are influencing many others by reconnection the Missio Dei with the people of God, turning spectators into initiators).  Can denominational entities follow suit? Read more…

This post was originally published at Examiner.com.

Early Wednesday afternoon, around 1:50 local time, a sudden tornado traveled from south Minneapolis into the city damaging the Convention Center, a Lutheran church and a music shop. Dozens of homes and trees were damaged in the early touching down, while a different tornado crushed the roof of a North Branch middle school about 50 miles away, bringing doubts as to whether that school might open on time. The tornados were described as “weak” as the Weather Service gave both wind funnels a rating of EF0, the lowest on the scale.

Perhaps it was the “weak” designation that prompted popular Minneapolis pastor, John Piper of Bethlehem Baptist Church, to wonder on his blog whether God was giving a gentle warning to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America who were about to debate the ordination of practicing homosexuals into the ranks of their ministry. Piper wrote of seeing the cloud from distance, posted a picture of the damaged steeple of the Central Lutheran Church where the ELCA attendees were meeting and divined that the purpose of the tornado was related to the ELCA’s decision, writing, “The tornado in Minneapolis was a gentle but firm warning to the ELCA and all of us: Turn from the approval of sin. Turn from the promotion of behaviors that lead to destruction.” Not the possibility of one of the damaged houses being a crack den, or the school being a poor use of money or the music store having the name “Electric Fetus,” which, had I been God, would have received a lightning strike in addition to wind damage.

Finish reading at the Atlanta Southern Baptist Examiner

If we were the GCR Task Force, we would wear camel hair suits and eat bugs.  Like John the Baptist, the Task Force is charged with the task of issuing the clarion call to leave that which is and conform to that which is best. That which is no longer the religious routine but that which is the Missio Dei, the very Mission of God:  the redemption of His creation.

We understand that this is the most powerful role that the GCRTF can fulfill.  I say this not because of the prophetic image that John the Baptist casts – and let’s just admit among ourselves that all preachers fancy themselves a modern version of the second Elijah.  At least a little.

No. It is not the simple image of John that creates a powerful role for the GCRTF, but it is because they can fulfill no other role that they must become John.

Tasked with calling the bureaucracy of the SBC to a powerful move to fulfill the Great Commission, the GCRTF is the fruit of that same bureaucracy.  Calling for the various entities to move, restructure and reform is all that the GCRT can do, since the Boards of Trustees run their respective entities and do not have to conform to the reports, resolutions or votes of the convention.

So the prophetic call is what must come from the GCRTF.  There is nothing else.

And it must issue that summons with power and conviction.  It must do so with such force that the SBC heeds the call because to not do so would be tantamount to rejecting the Great Commission itself and no Christian should be able to do as much.

With wild hair and a burly countenance, the GCRTF must look the established processes, organizations and people in the eye and expose the semblance of an organization that claims to be about the business of God for all its many failures to actually be so.

More specifically, the GCRTF has to expose the deficiencies of the Cooperative Program and call the masters of the CP to realign it and the organizations it feeds to weed out redundancy, inefficiency, mismanagement and, sometimes, cronyism mixed with nepotism.

I’ll give you just a couple real life examples.

Take, for instance, this graph of the Cooperative Program Distribution of an Oklahoma Church using the CP to partner together for missions.  (I use OK, because that is where I pastor.)  This graphic was provided to us in our past annual meeting on the book of reports and is available through the BGCO website.

As you can see, for every dollar my church sends to the CP, less than 30 cents makes it to the mission boards.

Assume that half of the IMB’s budget goes to administrative costs, including of all employees’ salaries, benefits, travel expenses and then the exorbitant cost of the Trustee Board meeting 6 times a year.  (You could take that money, buy a new laptop for every member of the Board, staff the IMB with an IT team exclusively dedicated to facilitating communications among board members and still save the IMB a couple million dollars annually, I suspect.)

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Change is never easy, especially in the church. That much we can know for sure.  To effect change that is lasting, useful and effective a few things must obtain.  Leaders must know their minds, be confident of their purpose and have clear direction.  Leaders must have a strong imagination, one which enables them to see a world where changes have already occurred and then move backward to unpack the process of that change.  Leaders must have hearts that are large enough to hear from both their proponents and their detractors in order to exercise the very best ideas possible to move forward to the goal of faithfulness and effectiveness.  Leaders must be the sort of people who draw the best from those around them, inspiring greatness of heart and mind for the good of those who follow and the goal that they pursue.  Leaders must lead.  In short, leaders must break the ground, lead the way, chart the course, encourage the process and be willing to allow many people to share in the journey without losing their own way.  Leaders must have great vision.

Do Hard Things
Leaders must be willing to say and do hard things, things that defy the status quo, upset the system and seek the good that is shining in the future, not the past.  Leaders have to be those able to rise to the difficult task of choice.  Leaders have to be those who will choose between “this” or “that” all the while knowing that vested interests will call any choice for change an abandonment of our most sacred efforts to follow Christ.  The call to lead can be lonely, it can cause conflict and it likely will be misunderstood.

Tasked For Leadership
Leadership is precisely what we have asked the GCR Task Force to give the SBC.  We have given them the heavy task of recommendation.  We have set them aside for a purpose that comes with great authority.  We have not convened a group simply to ignore their recommendations, rather we have given the GCRT a de facto authority which says, “We will take seriously what you have to say about our cooperative life and will use your recommendations to help shape the future of our churches’ efforts to cooperate together.  With that said…

To The Slaughterhouse
If we were on the GCR Task Force we would go to the slaughterhouse.  Even as I type these words I know that some will object.  I did. The first time that phrase was put in front of me I quickly looked for a work around, a way out, an easier option to say what needs to be said.  Leaders lead.  If we were placed on the task force we would not have the luxury of the “easy”.  We would travel to the place where programs go to die, budgets get cut, denominational staff are sent back to the church to take up their work of serving Christ and whole entities are phased out.  We would have to go to that place we call the slaughterhouse and spend time there.  Though not easy, we would have to learn by heart the way of subtraction before we engaged the art of addition.  We would go to the slaughterhouse precisely because we have been called to the task of assisting in reshaping a denomination that has clearly lost its way.  We do not call people BACK to the task of the Great Commission of Christ our Lord if we are already engaging it in faithfulness and fidelity.  This is no time of minor tweaks, small adjustments, re-organization, or reallocation.  This is a time for seismic change to set a course for a future of local church centered, cooperatively effective mission in the name of Christ.  By going to the slaughterhouse we mean one thing uniquely: “Everything that makes it out of the GCRT recommendation process only does so because it can prove its vitality and usefulness in a 21st century effort to take the Gospel of Christ to the nations (including our own)”. Read more…

Hungry Baptist men, that is.

Recently our MissioScapes field reporter caught up with a group of men who will be participating in what is hoped to be a Guinness World Record.  Who knew Guinness kept track of the largest breakfast ever?  Not only do they, but they will have representatives on hand at The Bigger Breakfast to judge whether or not record numbers turn out to stuff themselves with eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, ham, grits, biscuits and gravy all in support of World Hunger Day.

We interviewed several participants including “Mountain” Mills Darden who told us that it would be a “hefty breakfast on a large scale.”  Darden said, “When it comes to feeding the hungry there’s no skimping.  We’re gonna go all out, brother!”

The event, which began among British Baptists, has expanded to include Southern Baptist men from the US and Canada along with Baptist men from Nigeria in hopes of reaching the record.  Hopeful participant “Big” Bob Hughes said, “We were gonna invite the French, but they wanted to eat fruit crepes and we told ‘em that sort of food’s for pansies.  Besides, a crepe wouldn’t satisfy the hunger of my little five year old daughter Rosalie.  I mean, this is the eve of World Hunger Day.  We can’t be letting people leave our breakfast hungry.  What kind of example would we be setting?”

World Hunger funds go towards helping malnourished people in places like Mali, West Africa, one of the poorest nations in the world.  The UN reports that nearly one third of all Malian children are malnourished.  In a recent visit to Mali we encountered a man named Bambara and asked what he had eaten that day.  He pulled a green leaf from a nearby tree.  “It tastes very bad,” he admits, “but it keeps you alive.”

When we told that story to Hughes he responded saying, “That just breaks my heart.  If you’ll give me his e-mail address I’d like to send him a copy of the Four Spiritual Laws and some pictures from The Bigger Breakfast so he can see the joy we have in good Christian fellowship.  They want us to share the gospel with our friends at this event.  Who knows.  Maybe Mr. Bambara will be encouraged by my e-mail and find the Lord himself.”

This year’s event will be held October 10th.  Organizers say that if they don’t break the record this year they’ll try again next year, “even if it means we have to invite a few Methodists and Lutherans.  We’ll enlarge this thing one way or another.”

We Need More Cowboys!

Sitting on his stallion, he overlooks a range full of cattle about to begin the long drive to market. The cowboy, that quintessential image of the Old West, knows the days will be long, the trail difficult, and the season, though short, will feel like forever. Yet he embraces the challenge that lies before him, for the sake of the herd, his employer, his family, and even himself.

The Old West means many things in American history. It was a period of time encompassing the latter half of the nineteenth century until the beginning of the twentieth. It was also a location, that huge area of land purchased by President Jefferson in what was known as the Louisiana Purchase and is now known as the area West of the Mississippi River. The Old West was a time of great expansion and growth in USAmerica. It was even a time when many thought we had finally fulfilled our “Manifest Destiny” as we extended our country from sea to shining sea.

It was the rugged, creative, and self-reliant nature of those who moved West that allowed the country to extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The West was not a place for those seeking an easy life. It was dangerous and difficult. Some flourished. Others could not handle it. It was full of lawlessness, a much different way of living from those in the genteel East.

The West is where people on the fringe live. They go there because they get to be creative without the reach of those trying to control. This is where our country was changed. It is where our own denomination can be changed.

For the purposes of this article, I want to define the West as any area where Southern Baptists have limited influence in United States, primarily in the West, Northeast, and Midwest. Read more…

Something is leaking. According to an article in the USA Today dated August 6 (taken from The Tennessean), someone’s computer sprung a leak. That is, an email was leaked which altered the course of the upcoming NAMB Board of Trustees meeting. Someone left the gate valve open and water sprung from a circuit board inviting unintended readers a look-see into upcoming discussions by the “executive committee” of the NAMB BoT. In an environment of trust in people and process “leaking” would not be necessary.

If we were the GCR Task Force we would avoid “watergate.” You see, we are familiar with “leaking computers.” Well, maybe not leaking computers, but leaking sources. During our time with the now defunct SBCOutpost, read SBC Drudge Report, there were many willing to “blow the whistle” on questionable tactics yet they feared reprisal. Over and again we bantered back and forth about “anonymous sources.” Some pontificated with erudition. In the end the atmosphere was the problem. In an organization, institution, intending to bear the Gospel of Jesus to the world one would assume ethical decisions would run through the ethic of Jesus. In order to move us from the pragmatic and narrow agendas of a few, we would declare an end to secret meetings from the outset.

Rather than offer an expose’ on the countless secret meetings held over the past 30 years, we would schedule all meetings inside a local church building. From the now famous or infamous meeting at the Cafe du Monde to the present hour our history is full of examples of these private meetings. The stakes are too high to undermine the process behind the cloak of secrecy. Sometimes symbolism is as important as substance. We hear much about the Great Commission being given to the local church, then we would plan to meet there. Our history is full of meetings held at airports. Sometimes the outcome of those meetings has been less than profitable.

Read more…