We have no movement on our hands here at the present point.  I, like so many others, voted heartily for the GCR in Louisville.  Like so many others, I cheered Pres. Johnny Hunt as he preached at the convention.  I was struck by the sober reality painted by David Platt in the Pastor’s Conference.  I was hopeful that a movement was underway.   That is not to say that we do not have some good words working through the convention.  Much of the rationale for the preliminary report given by Ronnie Floyd to the Executive Committee was great.  Consider his call for a renewed emphasis on the local church and a recognition that the church is the true “headquarters” of our denomination.  Wow, truly great words spoken by a great pastor and leader.  The recommendations?  They seem to be primarily concerned with the top level of cooperative life in the SBC.  Some have said this is simply because the GCRTF can’t change anything else.  We would do well to remember that they do not have the authority to change the SBC; only God can do that through willing hearts of faith.  We need a movement of God.

Denominational tinkering makes not a movement.  I was one who hoped the strong words of Danny Akin in his axiom sermon would start a movement in the SBC toward gospel-centered, Christ-exalting ministry.  I had hopes to see a movement toward participating truly in the Great Commission by living out the Great Commandment.  I had hopes that leaders would rise up and point our convention of churches toward Christ, His commands and His commission with great humility and great zeal.  I still hold some hope…but it is fading.

Most of the firepower in the preliminary report has been aimed at “releasing” NAMB, as if there was lying dormant some latent power in this agency.  Don’t get me wrong—NAMB does many good things, but we have no clear idea who will lead NAMB.  There is also much talk that we might not need NAMB and a real lack of clarity about how the proposed changes at NAMB demonstrate that the denominational headquarters of the SBC is in the local church.  This is not a movement.

There is little doubt that whatever the GCRTF brings forward will pass in Orlando.  Some will take exception with that statement, but I have not met one person who has followed the GCR conversation who actually thinks the recommendations won’t pass.  The problem is not whether what is brought forward will pass.  It will.  The real questions are:  1) How can we implement the recommendations in the current institutional environment of the SBC? and 2) How will these changes specifically lead the churches of the SBC toward the gospel movement that God is already at work supplying to some?

IF this is the best that we can do as a denomination, I will accept it and move forward with my brothers and sisters in Christ, in great hope that God will do mighty things through His people.   I do have a pressing question, though.  What will the leaders of the GCRTF do to demonstrate that these changes will in fact move us toward a resurgence of the Great Commission, a movement based in the gospel and carried out by transformed people? How, in particular, will the churches, seminaries and organizations represented by the leaders of the GCR model for us the means of a gospel movement through these and future recommendations?  I would ask the presidents of two seminaries, “What specifically will be different in your strategic plan as key partners in training pastors and leaders in light of the recommendations?”   To the pastors I would ask, “How will the church that God has entrusted to your shepherding care model for the cooperating churches of the SBC a gospel movement specifically by participating in the recommendations?”  To the other leaders I would ask, “What will be different for you and the church you attend in light of the vote in Orlando?

I ask the questions for a very simple reason:  I want you to be leading voices for gospel-centered churches in the SBC.  I have the privilege of working with 20 Southern Baptist churches in my association.  If you show me how you can be more gospel-centered, Christ-exalting and missional in light of these recommendations, I will join up and serve alongside you for the glory of God.  This is a critical time in our life as a convention of churches GCRTF, please show us your hearts for the gospel and the specific work that we cooperate together to do.  Provide clear calls to mission that other churches can join alongside.   I still want to believe that the GCR is far more than a call to manage the denomination; I want to believe in the movement that might have been, is not yet, but still can be with God’s help and grace.

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.

Monday I spent the day at a conference hosted by our contributor John Elam and the Northwestern Baptist Association in Woodward, OK. That’s right one of the smallest associations in the SBC hosts a conference titled, For the World. (Oh that our larger associations would consider these kinds of regular events.) Applying the best sense of the word missional the conference sought to encourage pastors to lead their congregations to live out the mission of God “for the world.”

SEBTS professors Nathan Finn and Alvin Reid offered two sessions each. Dr. Anthony Jordan, Exec. Director of the BGCO was featured for another session. The three combined with John Elam for a panel discussion moderated by Douglas Baker, new Executive Editor of The Baptist Messenger.

The point of this piece is not to offer a review or necessary critique. I would suggest you listen to the sessions. The discerning ear will hear some surprises. For instance, what would it mean if we really grasped Finn’s description of Baptists as an “ecclesiological reform movement?” Let that sink in a bit you who want desperately for Baptists to be a “theological reform movement.” Finn does not suggest an a/theological move for Baptists, instead he outlines historically what it means when we talk about the “five Baptist distinctives.” One must confess they are all ecclesiological in their affirmations.

Maybe you would find Reid’s attention to the 120 in the early Acts narrative compelling. Regularly we pay attention to the extraordinary “move of the Spirit” in Peter’s preaching. But, would we concede that contextually the 120 likely had as much going on in that fast movement of Gospel embrace? Or with all the bantering about “contextualization” would you be willing to accept the methodological adaptations evident in the growing story of the church?

There is little doubt a firestorm could swirl around Dr. Jordan’s contention that we make second order or tertiary confessional commitments matters of collegial cooperation. Recent moves to attach secondary issues to first order matters in an event to tighten the circle for cooperation would surely resist that the BFM article on the family does not rise to the level of the deity of Jesus. What’s more, will we ever concede unity does not of necessity mean uniformity? And, can that apply to more than our preferred music or governing polity?

Take some time to listen to the sessions. Come back and engage a conversation.

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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.

2.     Culture as a way of seeing

Paul talks about seeing in the mirror “dimly” or “obscurely.” This is due both to our finiteness and our fallenness, and both play out in the influence of culture upon us and upon those to whom we bring the gospel.  Culture allows us to see certain things while it makes other realities opaque.

Here’s another way of saying this: None of us perceive reality (including the Bible) in a purely objective way. We are all imbedded in our culture. We observe from a limited perspective.  No one enjoys a God’s-eye view of the world except God himself.

When I was a beginning student in theology, most evangelicals were objectivists. We saw ourselves as people who could simply observe the world and the Bible without being impacted by our cultural surroundings. Perspective (bias) was not a problem, at least not for us! Abstract scientific induction was our model for the study of the Bible and the articulation of theology: begin with the pure data and by careful, logical process craft your sermon or build your theology.

But now postmodernism has powerfully critiqued that type of naïve modernism. There is a growing convergence among evangelical scholars that objectivism is not workable. No less a conservative than D.A. Carson now says that “… human beings may know objective truth in the sense that they may know what actually conforms to reality, but they cannot know it objectively, that is, they cannot escape their finitude and (this side of the consummation) their fallenness….”[4] Similarly, John Franke writes, “We simply cannot escape from our particular setting and gain access to an objective, transcultural vantage point.”[5] The result, says Carson, is that we are all perspectivalists.

This has both positive and negative consequences. On the one hand, culture may function in a positive way to help us see particular dimensions of our humanity or of the world that may otherwise escape us. Our conviction statement reads:  “It is also true that God can work in a culture to surface issues of justice, equity, or mercy that the church has neglected.” Clearly the civil rights movement of the second half of the 20th century surfaced a glaring inconsistency in the theology and practice of many white Christians in North America.

On the other hand, culture can impact the church negatively as well. In this case it blinds us to truths that may be obvious to those of a different cultural background. For example, the narcissistic individualism[6] of the West has left American Christians with an anemic understanding of the church.  As a result many of us would summarize the gospel with no reference to the centrality of the church in God’s purposes, and many of us live as if salvation were merely a private affair between Jesus and me.

3.     Cross-cultural learning

So, any particular culture both illuminates and obscures aspects of reality. To quote Carson again, “…every expression of human culture simultaneously discloses that we were made in God’s image and shows itself to be mis-shaped and corroded by human rebellion against God.”[7]
How then are we to live out Christian faith without being co-opted unknowingly by the most dangerous elements of our surroundings?  The primary answer is that we must be willing to bring our most fundamental assumptions back to Scripture in the recognition that a fresh hearing of the Word may yet disclose points of correction or expansion in our living of the gospel.

However, our convictions statement speaks of the need for “continual learning from Christians in other cultural settings.” The way we understand and live out the gospel needs to be compared with the ways brothers and sisters in other places hear the same message. In the process we will find elements of similarity and difference; the commonalities will confirm our faith and the plurality of views will humble and perhaps instruct us.

The growing weakness of the church in the West and the explosion of the church in the two-thirds world should make us teachable. Wheaton College professor Kevin Vanhoozer says, “Those who cannot see their own cultural conditioning are doomed to repeat it. It is just here that Western sytematic theologians have much to learn…. It is ultimately for the sake of better biblical interpretation that Western theologians need to attend to how the Bible is being read and practiced in the non-Western world.”[8]

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In summary, none of us can escape culture. It is the context in which we understand, embody, and communicate the gospel. The church’s missional challenge in every particular cultural setting is to incarnate the message faithfully. At Biblical Seminary we believe the best hope for carrying out that mission is a fresh listening for the voice of the Spirit as we read Scripture together with the global church.

[1]The full text of our Convictions is found here:  http://www.biblical.edu/images/discover/Convictions0808.pdf
[2] Tim Keller, “The Gospel in All Its Forms,” at http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2008/spring/9.74.html?start=1
[3] http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2008/spring/9.74.html?start=5
[4] D.A. Carson, Christ and Culture Revisited (Eerdmans, 2008), p. 101.
[5] John Franke, The Character of Theology (Baker, 2005), p. 90.
[6] See my earlier Missional Journal on Narcissism:  http://www.biblical.edu/images/belong/PDFs/Vol1No11.pdf
[7] Idem, p. 49
[8] Kevin Vanhoozer, “One Rule to Rule Them All?” in Globalizing Theology edited by Craig Ott and Harold Netland (Baker, 2006), pp. 116-17.