The Gospel Coalition

What do Matt Chandler, Beth Moore, Fred Luter, David Jeremiah, Rick Warren, Steven Furtick, and Billy Graham, all have in common? They are Southern Baptists.

Several years ago, Joe Carter did a blog series called Know Your Evangelicals, in which he posted profiles some of the most well-known evangelicals of our day. I found the blog series to be helpful, and I’d like to do something similar with the Southern Baptist Convention.

The SBC is a diverse collection of churches with different approaches to ministry who (generally) affirm a common confession of faith and value cooperation for the sending of missionaries. Just like any Convention of churches, we’ve got elements to be proud of and elements to be embarrassed about. Overall though, I am glad to be a young Southern Baptist and continually tell young Baptists that it’s better to be in the SBC than outside.

Before we begin the “Know Your Southern Baptists” series, I thought it would be helpful to take another cue from Joe Carter and provide nine things to know about the SBC:

1. The Southern Baptist Convention was organized in 1845 and now includes more than 45,000 churches and 16,000,000 members, which makes it the largest Protestant denomination in North America.

2. The “Southern Baptist Convention” is shorthand for all the churches and individuals who identify as Southern Baptist. Technically, however, the Southern Baptist Convention exists for only two days a year, at the annual gathering. The rest of the year, eleven denominational entities carry out the instructions of the messengers to the Convention. Actions by the Convention are nonbinding on local churches because every church is considered autonomous.

3. An individual becomes a Southern Baptist by joining a Southern Baptist church. A church qualifies as Southern Baptist by contributing to the mission causes of the Convention.

4. Theologically, the Convention holds to a consensus statement (Baptist Faith and Message), but this confession of faith is not binding on any church or individual because every Southern Baptist church is autonomous. An individual church may choose to adopt the BF&M or may create their own statement. Faculty at SBC-owned seminaries and missionaries who apply to serve through the various SBC missionary agencies must affirm that their practices, doctrine, and preaching are consistent with the BF&M.

5. The Southern Baptist Convention employs more than 5,000 international missionaries through International Mission Board. These workers are joined by thousands of volunteers to bring the saving message of the Gospel to 1,089 different people groups around the world. Last year, workers with the International Mission Board and their Baptist partners overseas reported 506,019 baptisms and 24,650 new churches worldwide.

6. The Southern Baptist Convention also oversees the work of the North American Mission Board, which exists to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, start New Testament congregations, minister to persons in the name of Christ, and assist churches in the United States and Canada in effectively performing these functions.

7. There are six Southern Baptist seminaries (Southern, Southwestern, Southeastern, New Orleans, Golden Gate, and Midwestern) that currently serve more than 13,000 students by providing theological education.

8. Because every local church is autonomous, ministry philosophy and methodology can differ substantially from church to church. David Dockery has listed seven types of Southern Baptists: fundamentalists, revivalists, traditionalists, orthodox evangelicals, Calvinists, contemporary church practitioners, and culture warriors.

9. Since 1925, Southern Baptist have been partnering together for missions by giving to these causes through the Cooperative Program – a unified giving system that allows churches to pool resources in order to fund mission work and theological education.

Kindle Deal of the Day: The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus by Lee Strobel. $2.99.

Retracing his own spiritual journey from atheism to faith, Lee Strobel, former legal editor of the Chicago Tribune, cross-examines a dozen experts with doctorates from schools like Cambridge, Princeton, and Brandies who are recognized authorities in their fields. Strobel’s tough, point-blank questions make this remarkable book read like a captivating, fast-paced novel. But it’s not fiction. It’s a riveting quest for the truth about history’s most compelling figure.

Simon Smart – Count Your Blessings: A Religious America

The US is a very religious place. Almost everyone believes in God and the vast majority respond to that belief with practice – high levels of involvement in faith communities along with prayer and the reading of scripture. Contrary to the accepted wisdom of certain circles, the impact of this religiosity is overwhelmingly positive.

Andrew Wilson – Hermeneutical “Humility”

One of the reasons I talk about hermeneutics so much, both here and elsewhere, is that it undergirds almost everything else. If we don’t know how God’s word exercises authority over us, and how to take what it says and apply it today, then we end up fudging the whole kit and caboodle.

Thomas Edison Didn’t Invent the Light Bulb:

If you asked who invented incandescent electric light, and you answered Thomas Edison, you’d be right – and you’d be wrong. The revolution that Edison wrought was the product of a team.

Evan Lenow asks some good questions about media coverage of the woman whose boyfriend secretly gave her abortion pills:

This story is undoubtedly tragic, and Welden deserves to face punishment for first-degree murder. However, the undercurrent of this story is working against the tide of abortion-rights advocates. Note with me the inconsistency of the logic of our laws and of abortion advocates.

I enjoyed lunch with blogger / author Aaron Armstrong and his family last week. He had some interesting reflections on the culture of Nashville. Our city is quickly becoming a top destination for visitors from all over the world.

One of the things that amazed us most during our stay was how we didn’t get the sense we were burdening society by being outdoors with our three kids. People smiled and talked to them and generally made us feel welcome wherever we were with them. This was a really nice change…

I remember where I was when I first heard John Piper’s sermon, “Don’t Waste Your Life.” I was driving down I-265 on my way to a tutoring session with middle-school kids when I was wrecked by Piper’s powerful illustration of a “wasted” life in retirement:

“I will tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you how to waste your life. Consider a story from the February 1998 edition of Reader’s Digest, which tells about a couple who “took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30 foot trawler, play softball and collect shells.”

At first, when I read it I thought it might be a joke. A spoof on the American Dream. But it wasn’t. Tragically, this was the dream: Come to the end of your life—your one and only precious, God-given life—and let the last great work of your life, before you give an account to your Creator, be this: playing softball and collecting shells.

Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgment: ‘Look, Lord. See my shells.’ That is a tragedy. And people today are spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream. Over against that, I put my protest: Don’t buy it. Don’t waste your life.”

“Look at my seashells, Lord!” Few preachers have been so effective in communicating the tragedy of spending one’s life without giving thought to the kingdom of God.

Guilty for Seashells?

Not long ago, I was talking to a friend of mine about this sermon illustration. He remarked: Oh man, I know. Every time I go to the beach now, I feel guilty for picking seashells.

I am looking forward to a beach vacation in a couple weeks. No doubt my family and I will pick up some seashells. And unlike my friend, I won’t feel guilty in the least. In fact, I’m pretty sure John Piper wouldn’t want me to.

You see, those who are familiar with John Piper’s passionate call to “not waste one’s life” might think he is anti-seashell and anti-leisure. But don’t assume “vacation” and “retirement” is the same thing for Piper. And don’t miss another great theme running throughout Piper’s teaching: the joys of this world are to be enjoyed precisely because they are designed to cause us lift our eyes and hearts toward the joy we find in the Creator of this world.

Like G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, and Jonathan Edwards, Piper’s passion for God’s glory is manifested in expressing a sense of wonder in the world around us. In a sermon on C. S. Lewis, he says:

To wake up in the morning and to be aware of the firmness of the mattress, the warmth of the sun’s rays, the sound of the clock ticking, the coldness of the wooden floor, the wetness of the water in the sink, the sheer being of things (quiddity as he called it). And not just to be aware but to wonder. To be amazed that the water is wet. It did not have to be wet. If there were no such thing as water, and one day some one showed it to you, you would simply be astonished.

[Lewis] helped me become alive to life. To look at the sunrise and with say with an amazed smile, “God did it again!” He helped me to see what is there in the world—things which if we didn’t have them, we would pay a million dollars to have, but having them, ignore. He convicts me of my callous inability to enjoy God’s daily gifts. He helps me to awaken my dazed soul so that the realities of life and of God and heaven and hell are seen and felt.

Looking Through Creation

Piper’s sermon on a wasted life is powerful because it exposes the tragedy of living only for this world. But countless other sermons from Piper are powerful because they show the joy and wonder of living in this world and the importance of looking beyond the gift to the Maker of all good things – the Artist who splashes his brilliant colors on the canvas of creation.

We would waste our beach vacation if we failed to notice the seashells. Just consider the variety of one kind of shell – the ark: cut-ribbed, mossy, transverse, ponderous, and turkey wing. Then there is the lightning whelk, the auger, and the rose petal tellin. Go ahead. Click on the links and marvel.

“Don’t Waste Your Life” shouldn’t make you dismiss seashells. It should cause you put seashells in perspective, so that you see in the seashell the glorious fingerprints of a loving God who has filled the world with pointers to the joy found only in Him.

This summer, don’t waste the seashells.

Kindle Deal of the Day: Praying Backwards: Transform Your Prayer Life by Beginning in Jesus’ Name by Bryan Chapell. $1.99.

Christians often say, “In Jesus’ name” to close their prayers. But is this truly a desire of the heart or a perfunctory “Yours Truly” to God? Bryan Chapell says we should begin our prayers in Jesus’ name-we should be Praying Backwards. To truly pray in Jesus’ name is to reorder one’s priorities in prayer-and in life-away from oneself and towards Jesus and his kingdom. It is to pray believing in the power and the goodness of the One who hears, and thus to pray boldly, expectantly, and persistently.

Afshin Ziafat – Grace and the Mission of God:

In a works-based system, the motive to live for God is the fear of not being good enough for God and facing the consequences. In a grace-based system, the motive is not fear but love. Because you have already received the favor of God, your works are done as an expression of love for God. Good works are not the means to salvation but the proof of salvation. Since Christ served us in death, we are freed up to serve Him in life.

Seth Godin – Learning by Analogy:

You are surrounded by examples and lessons and case studies that clearly aren’t exactly about your project. There’s never been a book written precisely about the situation you are facing right now, either.

Bart Barber – On What Being a Southern Baptist Should Be All About:

At its formation in 1845, the Southern Baptist Convention was consecrated to the cause of “the propagation of the gospel.” The convention existed to enable local churches to expand their common reach in the tasks of calling sinners to repentance and organizing new congregations of disciples. “We can do more together than we can do separately” is not just a Southern Baptist slogan; it is the Southern Baptistraison d’être.

Todd Billings, a gracious scholar whose work I’ve recommended here, is battling Multiple Myeloma. Here is an update from Kevin DeYoung on how you can pray for Todd:

The longer term prayer request is for a long remission from the cancer after this transplant. Multiple Myeloma has no cure, and so doctors expect it to come back, and it’s harder to treat when it does.

Who will bring me to rest in You?

Who will send You into my heart
so to overwhelm it
that my sins will be blotted out
and I may embrace You, my only good?

What are You to me?
Have mercy that I may speak.

What am I to You
that You should command me to love You,
and if I do not,
are angry and threaten vast misery?

Is it, then, a trifling sorrow not to love You?
It is not so to me.

Tell me, by Your mercy, O Lord, my God,
what You are to me.
“Say to my soul, I am your salvation.”
So speak that I may hear.
Behold, the ears of my heart are before You, O Lord;
open them and “say to my soul, I am your salvation.”

I will hasten after that voice,
and I will lay hold upon You.
Hide not Your face from me.
Even if I die, let me see Your face lest I die.

- Augustine of Hippo

Some delicious quotes from Preaching by Calvin Miller:

Preaching is an art in which a studied, professional sinner tells the less studied sinners how they ought to believe, behave, and serve.

Preaching cannot afford to opt for being cute when it ought to be visceral.

Many preachers below the Mason-Dixon Line still yell a lot, which often accomplishes little more than to clothe weak sermons with volume.

No reasonable book on the subject of preaching can begin with what is said. The force of preaching must begin with who’s saying it.

The world is too sick to be healed by a preacher’s congenial placebos. Merely to build a big hospital is a lame dodge for practicing real medicine.

The world comes to church looking precisely for a sense of significance, and we who preach tell them week by week that God loves them. It’s a truth we tell to give them that sense of significance for which they sought us. But it is a truth that can only be told by those who sense that the preacher also loves them. There is not the slightest chance that they will get hold of the first truth, unless they feel the second.

Only the truly otherworldly have earned the right to speak of the other world.

The preacher is not an answer man. Preachers are God-lovers.

Great preachers are positive purveyors of the wonder of God.

God has a word for us, not an opinion. The kingdom of God is not a discussion club. The church doesn’t gather on Sunday to invite opinion. It gathers to hear the Bible—the Word of God—the wisdom of ancient saints and martyrs comes down to the current calendar after a march of centuries.

Doctrines are the high-voltage center of the faith. Doctrines are the faith.

Sermons that are only about the practical things of this world are often too bound by this world to help them. And this world is too weak to heal what is wrong with most people’s lives.

The best of sermons have never been a belch of information or piety. Good homiletics are wellness reports that take seriously the cure of souls.

The noblest of prophets should feel before they advise.

Preaching Christ is the purpose and intent of the sermon and comes from a preacher whose life is captive to the momentary presence of Christ.

The best preached sermons don’t try to write the Bible on the lives of their hearers, they write their hearers into the Bible.

The pastor who doesn’t care for people has missed the heart of God.

Sermons grow robust in the soul of the listening servant. The best prophets listen before they preach—they reason before they rage.

All application comes to rest on the hearer as one basic conundrum. Shall I be the lord of my life or shall I have a Lord for my life?

Surrender is the only option when God is the only subject.

Propositions give you the information you need to build a life on, and stories motivate you to want to build such a life.

Pain itself does not make us preach well, but it builds a sensitivity that does make our particular emotional experience speak to that of the whole. Only weathered wood makes singing violins.

Where there is real preaching, the sermon is always reminding the flock that the church doesn’t just get together to be told how to live more morally but to remind itself that the church is on a mission.

For those who preach, the most important question for the preacher is not “What shall I say in this sermon?” but “What do I want to happen?”

Links for your weekend reading…

Kindle Deal: Which Bible Translation Should I Use?: A Comparison of 4 Major Recent Versions. $4.74.

Douglas Moo, Wayne Grudem, Ray Clendenen, and Philip Comfort make a case for the Bible translation he represents: the NIV 2011 (New International Version), the ESV (English Standard Version), the HCSB (Holman Christian Standard Bible), and the NLT (New Living Translation) respectively.

1. Justin Holcomb – Why the Rising Awareness in the Church Should Encourage Us

2. Texas Prosecutors Investigate Gosnell-like Center in Houston

3. Adam Jeske – How Social Media Made Me a Better Person

4. Jackie Hill – Love Letter to a Lesbian

5. Eric Geiger – Why Aren’t More People in Your Groups?

6. Barnabas Piper – Writers Don’t Let Go

7. Fifteen TV Plot Points That Angered Viewers

These two men are part of an experiment in which a machine simulates labor pains and gives them a taste of a woman’s pain during childbirth.

Right beliefs do not always lead to healthy cultures.

I’ve been watching the discussion about complementarianism – “new wave” and “old wave.” It’s interesting to see how new and old waves interact with each other, build on one another, correct each other, and warn each other.

As I read the comments on some of these posts, I wonder if there’s an aspect in this conversation that has been overlooked. It’s not about the specifics of complementarian viewpoints, but the kind of culture that sometimes grows up around complementarianism. It’s a culture that goes beyond the books and pamphlets that affirm godly manhood and womanhood in an age where gender distinctives are often minimized; instead, it is a culture of silent or exaggerated expectations that crush people who color outside the extra-biblical lines.

When I say the culture of complementarianism seems “crazy” at times, I mean two things, one good and one bad.

Good Crazy

First, there is a level of craziness that comes from being outside the mainstream of American life. Just quote Ephesians 5 on television today and you’ll look crazy, but this is a craziness that we should embrace.

The image of men and women, equal before God, embracing their unique roles, where men graciously lead their wives in love, and women willingly lay aside rights and power to graciously submit to their husbands – this is a picture of the gospel. Husbands and wives, in fulfilling their different responsibilities, shine light on different angles of Christ’s work. Christ, though equal to the Father, submitted to His will. In love, He gave His life for His Bride.

Furthermore, complementarianism isn’t the only (or main) aspect of Christianity that seems crazy to a lost world. There’s our belief in absolute truth, in salvation apart from works, our affirmation of Jesus as the only way to God, our belief in eternal hell, and our view of sexuality. We’ll always be tempted to tone down the crazy, but once we shave off the distinctive edges of Christian truth, we trade the power of the gospel for a bowl of postmodern porridge. There’s an element of “crazy” in complementarianism that ought to be embraced and celebrated in the same way we embrace the craziness of the gospel itself.

Bad Crazy

But there’s another kind of crazy that we shouldn’t be so crazy about. It’s the craziness that sometimes grows up in the culture of complementarianism. I’m talking here about culture, not the beliefs.

Culture is a lot harder to pin down and define, and yet culture communicates, sometimes more than our statements. In some churches that affirm a complementarian view of manhood and womanhood, a culture develops that goes beyond the complementarian beliefs into a skewed version of manhood and womanhood that we did not discern from the Scriptures, but from previous generations of American culture.

Some examples…

Last year, I wrote a blog post intended to encourage stay-at-home wives (like my own), and I got a lot of emails from puzzled men and women who felt I had overlooked the guilty consciences of working moms. I quickly discovered there are a number of people who are sensitive to this discussion because they’ve endured scorn and judgment for having a dual-income home. Here is a sample:

My wife has been a working mom for the first years of our marriage, and although we expect to bring her home from work upon the arrival of our next child at the end of this year, she’ll probably keep working on a very part-time basis.  You can imagine in our environment that we often face explicit or implied criticism/judgment that she is a working mom.

Notice the reference to the environment of their church. The idea that it is never appropriate for a wife to work outside the home is not something you’ll see in the best scholarship of complementarian thinkers and leaders, but it is an expectation that grows up in the culture among some complementarian churches.

(As a side note, in the Romanian villages I served in, the idea of women seeing their role as either inside or outside the home didn’t make sense. Families did whatever it took to put food on the table, which meant the women were just as active outside in the garden and fields as the men were. The kitchen duties were split, depending on whatever item was going to be cooked. The man was the head of the household, but the roles were not as specific or limiting; neither were these activities extrapolated as timeless specifics for everyone everywhere.)

There are other elements of crazy culture we should be aware of:

• a reticence or hesitance to affirm and celebrate women’s contributions in local church ministry, particularly contributions that are more up-front and visible.
• a warped vision of manhood that focuses on calloused hands and physical labor and ignores other kinds of work.
• the assumption that marriage is always better than singleness, so that singles feel like their identity is wrapped up in not having a spouse.
• unwillingness to celebrate any evidence of gospel ministry or fruit among those with a more egalitarian viewpoint.
• an unexpressed expectation that the godliest women have quiet and introverted personality types, and cannot be assertive and outgoing.
• a competitive tendency that leads to unhealthy individual comparisons and rushed judgments, rather than extending grace to one another.
• a spectrum of “holy” and “holier” choices with regard to a child’s education (from public school all the way to homeschooling).

I could go on.

The human heart is constantly seeking to justify itself. Too often, we as Christians are trying to one-up each other by grasping for a sense of superiority over our brothers and sisters because of the extrabiblical laws we’ve created and now keep.

It’s the culture of complementarianism that needs to be renewed and restored. Because there’s nothing crazier than taking a beautiful picture of the gospel and making a new law out of it.

Kindle Deal of the Day: How Do You Know You’re Not Wrong?: Responding to Objections That Leave Christians Speechless by Paul Copan. $3.49.

In today’s postmodern world, believers more than ever before are faced with a host of objections to Christianity. Expert apologist Paul Copan describes these objections as “anti-truth” claims and with “How Do You Know You’re Not Wrong” he provides a helpful resource with thorough, biblical answers to such regularly used objections…

Tony Merida – The “Dilemma” of Christ-centered Expository Preaching:

Essentially, expository preaching attempts to explain and apply the biblical text in its context. This poses an interesting dilemma for Christian preachers. How is one to preach Christ where he may not seem to be present in the text?  In asking this question, two assumptions are being made…

Winston Hottman – The Gospel and the (Im)perfect Marriage:

No matter how good our marriages are, as the most intimate relationship two human beings can share, marriage functions like a spotlight on our hearts by enabling us to see our selfishness from the up-close perspective of another person. It exposes us. And, consequently, it has a way of demolishing the pretensions of our self-confidence.

Thom Rainer – The Importance of Launching New Groups:

Most church leaders want their churches to grow, and for the right reasons. They want new people to encounter God, grow in their faith, and join God on His mission of serving others. But there is often a wide gap between a church leader desiring to grow and the church possessing a mentality of multiplication.

Tim Tebow Knows “Who Holds My Future”

Less than two weeks after the New York Jets released him, quarterback Tim Tebow told a crowd of about 3,000 at a Michigan college that his main goal is to impact lives, whether on or off the field.