The Gospel Coalition

Blog attacks on Southern Baptist leaders have reached an unprecedented level. Leading the charge is the website SBC Outpost. For weeks now, the bloggers behind this blog have been loading, aiming, and firing at just about every Southern Baptist leader that does not cater to their sensationalistic reporting. Most of the attacks come insidiously masked as “questions” and “curiosity” when in reality they are simply veiled attempts to mock, ridicule, and drag our Convention through the mud.

When Marty Duren first began SBC Outpost, the intention of the site was to bring renewal to the SBC by uniting younger leaders and asking tough questions about the burgeoning SBC bureaucracy. As long as Marty was at the helm, the Outpost remained a viable, respectable option for those who wanted to hear a different perspective. (I often disagreed with Marty’s conclusions, but I appreciated the tone of the debate.)

Since Marty “retired” from blogging, the site has been left in the hands of a renegade bunch who are determined to smear current SBC leaders and their families. Last night, I followed a link to an animated video that featured the faces of each Seminary present pasted onto dancing showgirls. Incensed by the mockery found in the post, I then breathed a sigh of relief…

They’ve finally done it. The SBC Outpost guys have shown their true colors. Their site is not ”news,” not respectable, not even gracious. It is a site meant to anonymously assassin the character of other men, openly mock the legacy of our seminaries, demean the positions of leadership in our Convention and rid the blogosphere of the honor and humility that should characterize our discussions.

I am tired of SBC Outpost giving the rest of us Baptist ministers who blog a bad name. I am sad to see the brilliance and energies of men like Ben Cole be channeled into the tearing down of others rather than the building up of God’s kingdom. I am sickened at the thought of how we must appear to the watching world – as we increasingly become known for how we mock each other, rather than how we love each other.

The SBC Outpost should do all of us a favor and change its name to the SBC Outhouse. Then, at least, there would be no misunderstanding about the site’s content.

written by Trevin Wax. © 2007 Kingdom People Blog

The world says, “Show me a person with high self-esteem, and I’ll show you someone who will accomplish great things for the world.” God says, “Show me a person who does not esteem himself at all, and I”ll show you someone who will do great things for me.”

- Victor Kuligin, Ten Things I Wish Jesus Never Said

Timmy Brister offers helpful advice on appraising a blog’s value and determining whether or not to read it.

Tullian Tchividjian gives a good list of books for new Christians

Read Aaron on missional living

Full time seminary student? Full-time job? Got a family? Here’s how to manage it all.

Interview with Caedmon’s Call’s Andrew Osenga

Read Michael Spencer’s “A Jesus Prayer” 

Time lists the 100 Best TV Show of All Time. I was glad to see Mary Tyler Moore, Dick Van Dyke, and I Love Lucy making the list. But where is the more recent Everybody Loves Raymond? And no Andy Griffith? The guy must be a northerner.

Top Post this Week at Kingdom People: 5 Tips for Faster Reading

Recently, I decided to practice the spiritual discipline of Silence and Solitude. I spent four hours in a garden, reading through the psalms and praying.

If you have never practiced this spiritual discipline, let me heartily recommend you make some time to do it. This is a very helpful discipline, even more so in our noise-centered culture.

The time of silence and solitude was valuable to me in many ways. First, it revealed to me just how much noise is in my life. Until I spent those hours in absolute silence, I didn’t realize just how foreign the concept was to me. Secondly, it revealed to me that I can spend time with God without always having to pray. I consciously tried not to spend the four hours speaking to God, but instead listening to His voice. Third, I realized that I need to be practicing silence and solitude more often. Even if I don’t have a block of 4-5 hours, I can at least devote 15-20 minutes a week to silence.

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Aubrey Malphurs’ book Advanced Strategic Planning (already in its second edition) offers sound, practical advice to pastors seeking to chart out a strategic plan for healthy growth. As professor of pastoral ministries at Dallas Theological Seminary, Malphurs has experience teaching pastors to think strategically, and this book serves as a textbook for students who want to avoid the plateaus and valleys of church life. Malphurs is also the president of a consulting organization that helps identify weaknesses in churches and pushes them to implement changes that might help them grow again.

There is much to be commended in Malphurs’ book. He recommends the adoption of mission and vision statements for churches. He helps churches discover their core values. He understands that churches will look different in varying contexts. He communicates the value of professionalism and excellence in ministry undertakings. He offers helpful instruction for evaluating the ministry, and he affirms the necessity of church discipline.
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Most of us are perpetual liars, even when we don’t intend to be. I know we are all against lying. No one reading this blog would say that we should be liars. But we still do it all the time.

We lie to impress people. We fill out job applications and add little untruths here and there. We pride ourselves in exaggerating our past accomplishments.

Some of us lie to get revenge. We want to discredit other people.

Others lie to make a profit. They try to sell you something that’s not worth all they say it is, so they take advantage of the situation by covering up the truth.

Sometimes we just lie because it’s more convenient to lie. We bluff our children, seeking their compliance by empty threats.

Children lie to escape punishment. And we never grow out of that. You don’t want to get in trouble for surfing the web at work, so you say, “I was looking up a competitor’s address and phone number.” Or you don’t want to get caught doing something bad, so you twist the event and try to squirm out of it.

Distortion is a subtle form of lying. You are telling the truth, but you’re only telling certain parts of the truth in order to make the overall picture tell a lie. So technically, you’re lying without telling lies by the way you’re twisting truths. Continue

“Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.”
- Jesus to John the Baptist on the occasion of His baptism (Matthew 3:15)

Jesus always sought to do His Father’s will. Even as a twelve-year-old boy left behind in Jerusalem, He desired to be in His Father’s house and about His Father’s business. Although John the Baptist considered himself unworthy to baptize his Messiah, Jesus insisted that the event take place so as to fulfill all righteousness.

In that moment of baptism, God the Father announced His approval of His only Son. The heavens opened up and His voice echoed from the skies, declaring to Jesus and those around: “You are my Beloved Son! With You I am well pleased!” As Jesus came up out of the water, God’s Holy Spirit descended on Him like a dove, in a breathtaking moment of quiet majesty. The Father found complete satisfaction and great delight in His beloved Son.

No matter how much we may be appreciated by others, or how much we have felt loved by our own parents, God our Father looks down on us and sees us just like He saw Jesus that day. As we come out of the baptismal waters, He sees us through the window of His Son’s righteousness – and with certainty and delight, He tells each of us the same thing: “You are my beloved child! In you I find my delight!” He no longer sees our sin and failures, our competing desires and lusts. He sees us as we are in Jesus Christ.

This kind of fatherly adoration on behalf of God towards us may make us uncomfortable, since we cannot comprehend having such support from our Heavenly Father. Yet He, with paternal love and pride, looks down and sees us washed in the blood of our Savior. We are represented in God’s eyes by our Messiah! At that crucial and holy moment of baptism into Jesus, the curtains of heaven are drawn back, and the Father sees us fulfilling our first step of obedience. It is our act of devotion that prompts His words of delight.

written by Trevin Wax  © 2007 Kingdom People blog

I beg you, Lord,
let the fiery, gentle power
of your love
take possession of my soul,
and snatch it away
from everything under heaven,
that I may die
for love of your love
as you saw fit to die
for love of mine

- Francis of Assisi

Little men with lots of time find it easy to discover faults in great men with little time.

- Hershael York

When Jesus Christ came out of the tomb on Easter morning, our world was forever changed. It was the morning of the first day of the week, the dawning day of new creation. Paul uses the language of “firstfruits” to refer to Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus is the first one back from the dead. Our resurrection from the dead will follow.

But the Bible also speaks of Christians as the firstfruits of God’s new creation. Our actions in the present should anticipate the future new heavens and new earth that God has promised to bring about.

Our presence in the world is like the first rays of light after a long night of darkness.

We are like the first spots of grass peeking out above the snowfall and signaling the end of a long winter.

We are the beginnings of a fresh breeze on a hot summer day, signaling the coming of a refreshing rainstorm.

We are to live now in light of the future God has promised.

Many Christians misunderstand what it means to be the foretaste of God’s new creation. Some believe that we are to be focused on an ethereal, future, disembodied heavenly state, disregarding all the “temporal” things of this earth. Instead of our being a foretaste of new creation that has consequences for this present world, we shut ourselves off from influencing our world and save the foretaste for ourselves. The rulers of this world grin smugly when Christians take this route, for a privatized other-worldly religion carries no threat to present evil.

Others believe that to be the foretaste of God’s new creation, we should seek by all means to never be at odds with anyone over anything. When this happens, our strong Christian ethics and beliefs get traded in for an bland, appeasing ”niceness” that has no real flavor in our world at all. Again, the Evil One delights in seeing the implicit compromise that accompanies Christians who refuse to ever stand for justice and peace.

When Christians are correctly acting as the foretaste of new creation in our world, we are met with both welcome and resistance. For some, our presence is a balm on an open wound. Our lives serve as a sweet foretaste of heaven on earth. For others, our presence is an irritating agent. They see our lives more as an aftertaste, a stench rather than a pleasing aroma. 

We should expect such reactions. The presence of Christ in us is a pleasing aroma to those who are saved, yet carries the stench of death for those who are perishing.

Regardless of how we are received, we are to be the foretaste of God’s new world. This means that our lives are not only a reflection of our hope in a heavenly afterlife, but a taste of what life will be like in the new heavens and new earth… where justice reigns.

written by Trevin Wax. © 2007 Kingdom People Blog