SBCOutpost

In the early days of the SBC Young Leader Initiative a person might be reading the comment thread over at Steve McCoy’s site and discover the handle, “iMonk.” Michael Spencer is internetmonk. On his site you may find this piece about Micheal, a 1984 graduate of Southern Seminary,

Internet Monk is the personal web space of missional communicator Michael Spencer. Michael is a missional thinker, communicator and writer living in southeastern Kentucky. “I am deconstructing and moving past my evangelicalism; rediscovering what it means to be vitally connected to Jesus. That process is always worth sharing.”

On Sabbatical retreat iMonk visited his alma mater. His reflections were recorded in a February 23rd post titled, The Empty Shelf in the Southern Baptist Bookstore. This post is offered here with permission. I am grateful.

The Empty Shelf in the Southern Baptist Bookstore

February 23rd, 2008 by Michael Spencer

I’m very interested in what current SBTS and other SBC seminary students have to say about your future in the SBC. Will you stay if Calvinism becomes a divisive, “lose your job” issue in the SBC? Would you prefer a Driscoll, Piper or Mahaney Network (T4G) to the current SBC?

CLARIFICATION: I’m a post-evangelical, and that applies to the SBC. But some of what I want to keep is stuff my tradition has in its attic! To be post-evangelical differs from being emerging in the sense that I want to keep my Baptist polity, historical (not current) view of the sacraments, cooperative missions vision and emphasis on missions.

Don’t stand too close to me in public. I’m going to blog your conversation. Yes, I’m that kind of writer.

After the Louisville Institute sabbatical orientation, I stopped at a few bookstores, including the large Lifeway Bookstore on the campus of my alma mater (’84), The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

I’ve been visiting the SBTS bookstore since the late 1970’s. I’ve watched it change through the years as SBTS and evangelicals themselves have changed. Today’s Southern Seminary Bookstore is a cornucopia of Calvinism, reflecting a seminary that is leading the Calvinistic resurgence in the SBC. If you are a lifelong Southern Baptist who would have ever found it difficult to believe that pastors in your convention would buy bobbleheads of Martin Luther, busts of John Calvin or framed prints of various infant-baptizing, state-church sponsoring reformers, I have news for you: It’s big business. There may be a head of Lottie Moon in there somewhere, but the business of little statues and pictures is almost entirely a presentation of Luther, Calvin and the Puritan-influenced reformers. (Apologies to your Roman Catholic friends can be sent directly to the IM post office.)

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a catholic Christian and I benefit from the gifting of the Holy Spirit to the church as a whole. But I was brought up in Landmark Baptist dispensational fundamentalism, and part of me is still a little rattled to see just how far the Calvinist resurgence has come in the SBC. I applaud its good fruit and pray for more, especially in the health and theology of churches. God bless The Founders, 9 Marks and their work. I also have many questions and concerns about what will happen in the SBC in the immediate future as thousands of Calvinist students make their way into a very evangelical, revivalistic, Arminian-leaning denomination.

Back to my evesdropping. I was standing at the “New Releases/Popular Authors” section. “Popular authors” these days include SBC Calvinists like Mark Dever and Al Mohler, alongside non-SBCers such as John Piper, John Macarthur and C.J. Mahaney.

Regular, Nashville published, fully Cooperative, SBC saved, trained and ordained authors? Not many. In fact, there were very, very few. A relatively empty shelf of significant influences and books, so to speak.

The subjects of my evedropping efforts were two students discussing Redeemer Presbyterian pastor Tim Keller’s new apologetics book. Keller, the rising star of the PCA and of conservative evangelicalism in general, has written the kind of book Southern Baptists have largely failed to write or promote in the last fifty years. Apologetics is just one area where the shelf of Southern Baptists is largely empty.

I don’t doubt that some Southern Baptist writers have written apologetic materials in the past, but for whatever reason, these materials passed quickly into oblivion, exerting little influence over the denomination that produced them. They are just one category of writing, thinking, teaching and publishing that find Southern Baptists largely awol. Aside from books on church growth, evangelism and the “popular” level of devotional literature, Southern Baptists have shown little interest in making major contributions to the evangelical conversation, including areas that it would seem SBCers would have taken up their pens and addressed.

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Trustee Rick Thompson (OK) published on Sunday a rather foreboding post on his blog, “The Road We Travel,” in which he questions the frequency of board meetings, the number of trustees, and the “crisis creators” who perennially commandeer the work of the International Mission Board away from its primary task. Thompson also called for “logical, good sense, steady-handed leadership,” to keep the board focused.

We at SBCOutpost bemoan the fact that trustees like Rick Thompson are in short supply at the IMB. With appreciation to the next victim of John Floyd’s blogger-vendetta, we reproduce Rick Thompson’s article in full, after the jump.

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To most of you the name C. B. Scott will not be unfamiliar. C. B. serves a growing church in Birmingham, Alabama. He and his wife Karen have taken in four homeless children and are rearing them as their own. C. B. says, “My goal is to finish well as a follower of Christ. (I started pretty shaky) Karen and I love Jesus, our kids and any kids, our church, Alabama football, and Bulldogs. We love the SBC and pray that it will also finish well.”

He is praying for a cure for MS in his wife’s life time. She deals with it everyday. She is the toughest person he has ever known. And if she’s tougher than C. B., that’s saying a lot.

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I read a blog post that spoke to the possibility of women serving as pastors. I do not believe women serving in the role of a pastor or deacon in a local church is permitted in Scripture. It seems that those two roles and only those two roles in ministry are prohibited for women. I can see no prohibition for women teaching in seminaries or holding other ministry positions in churches. Frankly, women chaplains in women’s prisons and certain other institutions serve the cause of Christ far better than men for various reasons.

Before anyone starts to argue that point remember prisons are not churches. The prohibition is restricted only to local churches. Many have superimposed cultural and false theological presuppositions upon the scriptural prohibitions of women serving as pastors and deacons to the point Southern Baptists are now, possibly, going to be paying off law suits for such silliness and gross stupidity as to fire a woman for teaching Hebrew in a seminary. This is especially strangely stupid due to the fact that some of the same men that hired her to teach Hebrew in the first place voted to fire her for teaching what they hired her to teach. How stupid can we be? We Southern Baptists are truly a strange lot. Read the rest of this entry »

(David Phillips, pastor of Mission Fellowship Church in Middletown, Delaware, offers a guest editorial reflecting on seminary education and ministry outside of the “SBC belt,” as he refers to it. Last month Gary Soulsman of The News Journal  interviewed David after reading an article he wrote for the Baptist General Convention of Delaware. You may read Soulsman’s article here. After a recent occasion to host a SBC seminary professor, David wrote the following piece.)

I live in Delaware.  Ministry is different in Delaware.  It is unique in many ways, while having a few similarities to other parts of the country.  Ministry must be done differently than the institutional SBC church that is so prevalent in the South.  We don’t tell people we are Southern Baptist until we get to a membership class or unless our hand is forced.  The reputation of the SBC is extremely negative in these parts.  When people ask me if we are affiliated with any denomination I tell them we are baptist.  What kind of baptist?  Maryland/Delaware baptist.

SBC churches are few here in Delaware - 1 SBC church for every 25,000 people.  And that disparity is growing. 

Recently, I was talking with  a professor from one of the six SBC seminaries.  When this prof talked with me, I realized that his prospective of things was very Southern - very Southern Baptist.  He had not been in ministry outside the context of the deep South, and as a result, he couldn’t imagine some of the issues we were having to face.  I am also sure that most of what he teaches is aimed at the institutional SBC church family.

Now I really like the guy; he is one of the few guys at that Seminary that I think get it about ministry, about culture and about transition and change.  Anyone who actively deconstructs media with me in my presence and teaches it in multiple venues is someone I can immediately connect with.  Please don’t think I am knocking the professor.

So I asked this professor:  Why don’t you take a semester and come up here and stay with us.   Help us do ministry and learn what it is like to do ministry outside of the SBC culture and learn how to connect with people in the Mid-Atlantic?  It would certainly help your teaching.

His response? Our president “wouldn’t go for it.”  “The sabbatical needs to be a period of rest,” he said. 

He went on to say that it MIGHT get through if he could couch it as a research project, but there would be no funds available to do the research unless he could get a grant, and those are difficult to come by, or some other outside source of funding.

My evaluation of his response is that this particular seminary wants to simply put out little Southern Baptist ministers.  I took the time to look at the bios of each one of their professors and discovered a frightening fact:  none of them had listed any ministry experience outside of the SBC belt apart from a missions professor who served with the IMB and another professor who twenty years ago was an IMB missionary.  Their experience came from serving churches in Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Florida. 

There is little emphasis by this, and other seminaries, with the notable exception of Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, to get outside of their context and examine ministry outside of the SBC belt.  And that is a great shame.  It demonstrates that we don’t really want to impact the world, much less our own nation.  We simply want to perpetuate so much of the institutional SBC programs and processes.

There is such a great need to reach the cities - urban centers and regions where the SBC doesn’t have a great presence.  This is one of the reasons that NAMB has created strategic focus cities, of which Baltimore has become the latest.  But most of our seminary training doesn’t give us an understanding of ethnography and semiotics and missiology and anthropology.  These should be a mandatory part of our theological education because anywhere we go we have to learn to exegete culture.

Our ministers are missionally depleted.  And our professors are missionally depleted.  That’s because our seminaries are, for the most part, missionally uninformed. 

My wife and I have been discussing this and think that a mandatory part of being a professor at an SBC seminary should be to go outside of SBC belt of the country and learn and do ministry.  It should also include international service as well.  Each of our seminaries should allow for a regular semester’s leave for a learning practicum to answer at least this one question:  What do I need to incorporate in my teaching to help ministers serve in regions outside the areas where SBC culture is dominant?  We also believe that Lifeway should do the same thing.  Churches in those “pioneer” regions could partner with a particular seminary and host the professors as they immerse themselves in the culture and practices of that region of the country.  Instead of having the answers, the professor could be a resource for research and discovery.  The reason?  The SBC is becoming less dominant by the year.

Quite honestly, very few of the ministry-oriented writings of most SBC professors and ministers are of much value outside the SBC belt.  There are rare exceptions:  Reggie McNeal, Ed Stetzer, Calvin Miller, and Bob Roberts come to mind.  But it is their exposure to ministry outside the SBC culture that gives them credibility.  Most others do not have such exposure.  That needs to be corrected.

Our world is flat.  We need to be missional-minded.  Our seminaries haven’t made that an intentional part of who they are.  And the only way for them to become that way is to experience it.

The following is re-printed from Boyd Luter’s personal blog. The professor who wrote this post has given permission for this post to be re-printed here on SBC Outpost.

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I am very pleased to welcome the following opinion piece by a respected professor whom I have known for some time in one of our six Southern Baptist seminaries. Because of his fear of reprisal, I have assured him of complete anonymity as long as he chooses not to reveal his identity.

I have not told him what to write in any way, shape, form or fashion, nor did I know what he was going to say after he contacted me with the idea to do this until he submitted it. He has chosen for his thoughts to go public in this venue to most effectively voice his concerns about things of which he has extensive ‘up close’ knowledge in the academic arena of the SBC. His piece is published without any editing on my part.

Unfortunately, since I am the liaison here and I will be out of town when this is posted, neither he nor I will be able to take comments. However, if the Lord prompts him to say more or He gives other professors a voice in regard to these, or other important issues, comments are a real possibility, though each writer would have their own say-so in the matter.

Please note: This sort of guest posting is barely even a work in progress (i.e., it’s a new idea and I don’t really know the best way to handle this). But, if it develops, I hope it would be a forum for voices not heard otherwise.

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE TRUSTEES OF SBTS AND SWBTS

From a Current SBC Seminary Professor Read the rest of this entry »

(For today’s installment of Point Counter Point, our editors have selected the topic of global warming. Specifically, we have invited two compelling participants to engage the resolution on global warming adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention during the most recent annual session in San Antonio.)

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HAROLD L. HUTT — Global warming is a left-wing communist farce connived by radical tree-hugging, lizard-licking Birkenstock hippies to undermine American capitalism and elect Hillary Clinton to be the next occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. These liberals of the media establishment — most of whom are Jewish, I might add — are trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the American public and get us to think that the Atlantic Ocean is about to lick the pavement in Denver, Colorado. They use scare tactics to make people vote the way they want to, rather than logical arguments and facts like conservative, pro-family-values guys like Dr. James Dobson. Ask them how much hotter the earth’s atmosphere has gotten in the last 100 years, and they’ll point to a fraction of a degree.

Think of how stupid that is, running around like Chicken Little just because it’s a little hotter in Hoboken. Gas prices can go up a whole quarter in a week, and people hardly notice. If a woman’s waist size expands by the same fraction as they say the earth is getting hotter, she would scarcely start dieting. In fact, tell the average man that his investment on Wall Street will earn him a fraction of a cent more per every hundred shares, and you’ll never get him to invest.

But run around the country telling people that the temperature has gone up four-fifths of a degree, and mass hysteria breaks out. So let’s talk about this whole global warming conspiracy.

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SBCOutpost publishes an occasional series of point/counter-point opinion columns to stimulate dialogue. Our first in the series, “On the Biblical Roles of Women,” can be found here. Please enjoy this next “Count/Pointer-Count,” concerning:

WHETHER OR NOT THE SBC SHOULD ADOPT A RESOLUTION ON GLUTTONY

THE REV. DUB L. CHINN: Fat is the new thin. Oddly, American is one of the only countries in the world where being fat is not only acceptable, but it is encouraged, along with the island of Samoa, of course. Whether we’re only talking about the size of the average portion in a restaurant or our propensity to deep fry everything or the abundant availability of plus sizes, we Americans have no problem with getting fatter.

Southern Baptists, in particular, love to eat and hate to exercise. We flaunt our flabbiness. Our men have enormous girths, and the under arms of our women make one wonder if there is an elbow under there anywhere. Moreover, our convention has a weird and comfortable sense about obesity. We don’t like our convention president to be fat. When was the last really fat convention president? Tom Elliff was a little portly, but still lean enough in the face. Jimmy Draper’s weight swelled over the years, but when elected he was still the trim young pastor from Euless. Vines is in danger of blowing away, and Ed Young, Sr. is the paragon of ministerial discipline in all things consumable. Jim Henry is petite, James Merritt looks like a marathon runner, Bobby Welch could whip ‘em all, and Frank Page’s height is proportional to his circumference. Paige Patterson is about the only odd man out.

On the other hand, we allow a majority of entity presidents to expand their waists at about the same rate as they wish to they expand their percentage of the Cooperative Program allocation budget. There are, of course, a few exceptions. Danny Akin, Jeff Iorg, O.S. Hawkins, and Phil Roberts still retain leanness of gut. I originally thought I would give names of the rest of them, but I decided to let you figure it out for yourself. Suffice it to say that if you lined up our denominational leaders, most of them would have unhealthy problems with their weight.

Don’t even get me started on how fat most Southern Baptist preachers are. It’s almost like we’ve cloned the Moabite King Eglon and dropped him behind our pulpits. Preacher’s wives are even more notably rotund than their ordained counterparts. It is not mean to say we are fat. It is honest.

But whether or not we should adopt a resolution on gluttony is a different matter than acknowledging we are in violation of God’s commandments regarding our physical discipline, especially when that resolution is offered by a boy as skinny as the resolution’s author. If we had been coerced into adopting such a resolution by some strategic parliamentary finesse, we might not be worrying about the BFM issue.

Whatever the case, we all know that resolutions are non-binding. Nobody is obliged to enforce the resolution, and we all know it. It’s why we can pass resolutions that call for things but never really expect them to accomplish much except a few headlines every now and then. We can boycott Disney and still patronize the theme parks and purchase the boycotted brickabrack. Like Achan of old, we hid the banned items in our homes thinking neither God nor man would know. What’s the use in adopting another resolution that nobody intends to keep?

So what if a few Southern Baptists are discontent with the hypocrisy demonstrated by most of their leaders and many of their laymen. I say, let them eat cake.

MOSHI NGAMA: I am starving. For the past twenty years, my village has seen endless seasons of drought. When there is no rain, my people cannot farm our lands. When the rivers dry up, the wilderness bakes and the migratory animals depart. The only thing we have to eat, it seems, is dirt and the occasional bag of rice delivered by UNICEF.

Please pray for us. We do not know if God is judging us, but we hear that he is sovereign over the earth. We know that our Bible teaches us that God rains on the just and the unjust. We cannot understand why God will not rain on us, but he will send his blessing on people who deny him. In our villages, men are faithful to their wives and their wives are faithful homemakers. We do not have the money to pay for expensive furniture to fill our 10,000 sq.ft. homes. Our hut is barely large enough to accomodate our family. It used to be very uncomfortable for me, but since my sister and my aunt died, and since my brother has been taken by Peace Corps volunteers to a hospital in Nairobi for AIDS treatment, I have a space to sleep on the floor by myself.

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Bob Cleveland of Pelham, AL, is the kind of layman that Southern Baptists need. Pastors are notorious for assuming that they have the market cornered on sound doctrine. Regrettably, they either forget that the Southern Baptist Convention is a convention of laymen and women, or they seriously doubt that anybody actually listens to their sermons and learns something about the Bible. Along the way, we encounter a member of our congregation whose questions challenge us and whose insights enlighten us. The First Baptist Church of Pelham, AL, has such a man enumerated among its most active members. Over the course of the past two years, the reform movement in the SBC has been emboldened and nurtured by the tireless efforts of Bob Cleveland. At the request of SBCOutpost, Bob has written a brief exposition of his thoughts on one of the more controversial topics among Southern Baptist denominational elites. Whether Baptist churches should be governed by the congregation, by the pastor, or by the elders is a matter of substantive debate. Bob Cleveland shares his perspective on this issue as today’s guest columnist.

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I’m reminded of a story about a farmer who was visited by a preacher. When he told the preacher about his orchard, his herds, his cornfields, etc, the preacher reminded him that they were really God’s orchard, herds, and cornfields. The farmer agreed, but added, “You should have seen them when God was doing it all by Himself”.

Good point. We’re fond of saying “Jesus is the Head of our church”. Sure He is, but if all the other leaders went home, our church wouldn’t last very long. God uses people to lead as servants his Kingdom. In fact, the Scripture teaches that we will reign in eternity alongside Christ. I guess since there are no longer any clouds by day and the pillars of fire by night, we should look among God’s people for those whom he’s called and gifted to lead.

My background includes some years in the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod, and in The Presbyterian Church in America. In all three, I served the local churches as an Elder. This experience was formative in my thinking about the issue of church governance, and I’d like to share my uneducated, non-theological views about the role of elders.

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In an effort to keep things light-hearted, SBCOutpost will publish an occasional series of point/counter-point opinion pieces examining issues currently bouncing around the Baptist blogosphere. With malice toward none, we give you this, the first installment of “Count / Pointer-Count.”

ON THE BIBLICAL ROLES OF WOMEN

PASTOR BILLY JOE CONROE: I reckon all this talk about women’s roles goes back to Adam and Eve and the Garden. You know, if that woman hadn’t listened to a snake, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Which brings me to my point: Women must be dumb from the start. I mean, c’mon ladies. If some aardvark waddles up to me and says, “Hey, why don’t you eat this banana,” you think I’m about to take a bite? I don’t care how good that banana looks. I ain’t worried about how it tastes. I sure as fire know better than to think it’s some magic banana that’s gonna make me smarter than God Almighty. But no, you gals always have to go around stuffin’ your face, don’t ya? Of course, I guess the only time we can get you to stop talkin’ is when you’re eatin’.

Which brings me to my point. The Bible says you women aren’t supposed to be talkin’ in church anyway. But no, that just won’t do, will it? You always gotta run your mouth in Sunday School and share some Oprah Winfrey interpretation of something that ain’t got nothing to do with the Bible. Like that time my wife Sharon Jean got all cussed up about whether or not Christians could chew tobacco or not. I’d been tellin’ her for years that chewin’ was defilin’ her temple and all, but she weren’t listening. I mean, what in tarnation makes a good woman like that wanna run out and chew some half-rotten leaves that turns her teeth all yellow and makes her breath smell like pot liquor from a mess of collards? Which brings me to my point.

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(Whit Goodwin is a former M.Div student at SWBTS and is planning to complete his M.Div at Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, AL, where he moved earlier this summer. Previously, he has served as a speaker for various Southern Baptist churches and denominational camps; and for two years he was a Journeyman serving with the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. At the request of SBCOutpost, Whit has agreed to write about the trial of faith he has experienced in the past year. It is our prayer, and his, that this personal testimony will encourage and challenge our readers to think biblically, speak cautiously, and love unconditionally those whose lives and ministries have been affected by divorce.)

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I used to love Starbucks. There is nothing like entering a rich, aroma-filled coffee house busy and abuzz with the sound of bean grinders and baristas to recline in an oversized chair with a frothy white chocolate mocha in hand. I really loved Starbucks; that is, until a train blindsided me there one night.

Now, I’m not so crazy about the ubiquitous Seattle-based coffee bar. It was at a Starbucks on a Friday night that my wife of only four months told me that she no longer desired to be married to me. With those few words, I knew the covenant we had made together before God was broken.

“I am filing for divorce,” she said resolutely.

Can’t you hear the horn and see the sickening sight of a white chocolate mocha, a broken heart, a tramautized life, and possibly a shattered ministry all splashed mercilessly across the front of that long black train? Needless to say, the personal trauma, heartache, begging to God and my spouse, and hurt were extremely real for me that night.

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