God of the fifth cast

Dann Allendar tells a great story about taking his son fishing the end result of which was one of those great moments dads dream about.

He had promised his son a fish.

In fact, more than promise, he guaranteed that before the morning was through, one or more fish would be in the boat (note to self- be careful what you promise your son!).

You have probably already guessed that after several hours they were bone dry. Not a fish, not a bite, not a ripple in the water. His son was crushed. "Dad, you promised." Every dad reading this knows this dreadful refrain.

"Just one more cast, and then we have to go." And so it went, for three, four more casts.

Nothing.

Allendar knew they had to give up, but his own dissappointment and the pleading of his son worked him into one more cast.

It was the one that caught the fish.

Allendar and his son rejoiced in the glory of his son catching his first fish. The morning was saved and the boys emotions were raptured into ecstacy. "My first fish!"

As they were rowing back to shore, his son said "Dad, I have just discovered a new name for God."

"Oh yeah, what is that son?"

"God of the fifth cast!"

Allendar, who is president of Mars Hill Seminary and a terrific Bible scholar and theologian, observed that in our simplist and most surprising moments, God teaches lessons that can sustain us for eternity.

These past two weeks have been tough.

My dads declining health (while dad was in the waiting room, my father in law was admitted)
The week from Hades on the IMB
A staff position I had worked on for many months fell through at the last minute
My nephew's baby was heliflighted to Oklahoma Childrens on Friday (He is doing much better).

All of this converged togther in a very compressed period. I know you can identify- as I have said many times, when we have struggles, that's just called life, when good things happen, that's called a blessing!

I have a had a big dose of LIFE the past few weeks.

Many of my casts have come back empty.

But it is the wonderful memories of how God has worked in the past that sustain me and even bring me great joy. I know that God is faithful. I know that His purposes are true and His paths straight. I know that He is leading us and that in His providence all things work out for His glory when we are called according to His purpose.

He is the God of the Fifth cast.

And for that matter, all the other casts that lead up to it!

hands on missions

A part of our missional strategy at CRBC is to send people on to the field to assist our SBC missionaries around the world. As a member of the personnel committee on the IMB I have noticed that the great majority of our missionary candidates were inspired into their life calling after actually spending a short time on the field. We have already seen many of our own members make lifetime commitments after one of these trips.

Last year we had some incredible experiences in distant places like Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Turkey. The picture above was taken in the Middle East on one of our trips. A little boy broke his jaw falling from the rocks above. Our missionary ran to help help him, and in the process was able to proclaim the name of Christ to an entire Saudi Wahibi Muslim family. It was an amazing experience. Most of the family had never met Christians before. Because of her care and love for their son, she made a great impact. She asked the father of the boy if she could pray for him. He said, "how do you pray?" She said "I pray in the name of Isis (Jesus)". The man said, "we have learned about him in our Koran, you can pray in his name."

It was amazing to watch her gather this muslim family around and pray for their son in the name of Jesus.

We are already planning our short term missions trips for this next year. I am very excited about how these plans are coming together. This next year Council Road teams will go to Mexico (three times), Portugal, the Middle East, West Africa, New York City and South Asia.

I would encourage you to begin praying now about taking some vacation time and do some global missions work hands on.

how a question changes things

Sometimes a question clarifies an issue.

Consider some famous questions:

• Can electricity be used to light a room?
• What role do germs play in infection?
• Did the the low temperature the morning of the Challenger disaster cause the O rings to shrink significantly?
• Does smoking cause lung cancer?
• Are the stars randomly spread in the sky?
• How do we decide the odds that a DNA sample came from a particular defendant?

Jesus, as change agent, often helped people open their hearts to new ideas by asking good questions. Good questions are powerful because they demand answers and can redirect thinking and open our minds to new possibilities. They can also show us the dangers of our preconcieved ideas.

This was the case in 1848 when Southern Baptists were wrestling with the growing influence of landmarkism. The champion of this new and exciting teaching among Baptists was a man by the name of J.R. Graves. Graves was a dynamic and powerful preacher who loved debate and could hold a crowds attention for up to three hours at a time. He was a force to be reckoned with as a strong leader, teacher and publisher of his own Sunday School literature. His influence across the southwest was unquestioned. Graves hooked up with a famous preacher from Bowling Green Kentucky by the name J.M. Pendleton, who had written a popular pamphlet entitled "An Old Landmark Re-set".

Graves, Pendleton, Dayton and other "Landmarkers" believed like the followers of Alexander Campbell (Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ) that "there is no society but the Church of Christ". They argued a high church position that there was an unbroken chain of (Baptist) church succession down through time from the baptism of John the Baptist to the true church, the Baptist Church. They opposed the boards and missions organizations of the SBC as currupted by proponents of alien immersion and improper disciplines and doctrine. They attacked ministerial education as "dangerous" and taught that the ONLY true church was the Baptist Church, and that every other church was just a religious institution.

They held to these basic "landmarks":

1. Baptist Churches are the only true churches in the world.
2. The true church is a local, visible institution.
3. Baptist churches and the "Kingdom of God" are the same thing.
4. There must be no affiliation with other non-Baptist churches
5. Only a church can do churchly acts (such as Baptism and the Lord's Supper).

This movement grew and gained momentum in the mid to late 19th century. Baptists in the south were captivated by the idea that they were a part of not only THE Church but the ONLY true church down through the ages. In fact, it might have taken over the convention if it had not been for a good question that was asked. A question that framed the issue and focused attention on the natural conclusion of such erroneous thinking.

The question:

"Is the immersion of a person in water in to the name of the Trinity, upon a credible profession of faith in Christ, by a Paedo-Baptist minister who has not been immersed a valid baptism?"

Many Baptists in the south had in fact been baptized by itenerate Presbyterian ministers serving mulitple congregations. The answer given was by John L. Waller, champion of Baptist doctrine and editor of "The Western Baptist Review" in Kentucky. Read slowly and carefully:

If the validity of baptism depends upon the "baptizedness" of the administrator, then no one can be sure he has been baptized. If any link in the succession be broken, the most skillful spiritual smith under the whole heaven cannot mend the chain... An improper adminstrator twenty generations removed, is as fatal to the genuiness of the ordinance as such a one but one generation removed.

It was a question and an answer that turned the tide. Baptists soon realized that the hand of the administrator is not as important as the heart of the believer. Who was the questioner?

Richard B. Burleson of Alabama.

Interesting, isn't it, how a good question at just the right time can change things?

trustee meetings in glass rooms

One of the things I have reflected on a lot for the past few days is the impact of the blogging world and the inner workings of the SBC. It was clear to me in our last IMB meeting that many were greatly concerned and even offended that so many people out there in cyberspace were sticking their collective noses in IMB business. "Blog" is the new four letter word on the trustee board. Several confessed they had never read, seen or heard of a blog until they were inundated with the emails from so many who had read them. The internet culture has now collided with the relative tranquility of the board room.

Is this a good thing? Or not?

Fortune (January 2005) features 10 tech trends to watch in 2005. Trend No.1: "Why you can't ignore bloggers" (irony?)

So I throw the question out to you, fellow bloggers. Should trustees blog? How are we going to handle SBC business in the future if trustees are running to their blogs after each meeting? How can we be exptected to conduct business if the whole SBC world is looking over our shoulder?

Is it a good thing? Or not?

aslan vs. king kong

What was your take on the movie version of "The Chronicles of Narnia"? Did it come up to your standard for the original work by C.S. Lewis?

Listen to Michael Collendar's radio commentary on the irony of the Aslan character versus King Kong.

the inspired idea of cooperation

This picture was taken in South Asia on one of our "well team" mission trips this summer. The boy in this picture is the son of one of the men who came to Christ. I believe this boy and his entire family will grow up in a Christian home by the grace of God as a result of the phenomonal work of the IMB personnel and volunteers. In this boys region there were no IMB missionaries and very little Christian witness until after the tsunami. Today there are six house churches.

This boys father is a key leader, a "man of peace" in his neighborhood and has already been instrumental in others coming to Christ. He was nearly stabbed to death shortly after we left. Our missionary there stayed with him around the clock and "convinced" some doctors to take care of him. Our church prayed and Christians around the world prayed and he was healed.

I tell you this because I had a front row seat on something that happens all around the world every single day as a result of missionaries who have left their homes and families here in the states and have relocated (often with small children) in order to serve in places we can't even tell you about. Hundreds of thousands are coming to Christ around th world because of the IMB.

And it is only possible because we cooperate.

That has been the strength of the IMB from the beginning. The money that has funded the organization by which this little boy and his family have made such a life change is the result of cooperating conservative Baptists from around th country putting their mission dollars together.

It is a missions organization that has no equal. I have talked to many full time missionaries with other organizations who agree. The IMB is the creme of the crop.

It is for this missions initiative that Southern Baptists first began their cooperative effort. What makes us unique, and by His grace so effective, is that we do it together. Though different in our application of scripture, we are united around the essential doctrines and our call to the nations. That is a gift and an idea for which all of us must take a stand.

thoughts on worship leading

Worship is an end in itself. It is not a process by which we get to something else. It is the ultimate aim of eternity for the elect. We were made for worship. Our highest persuit is to seek joy in the joy of the Lord.

"Honor and majesty are before him, strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength! Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name (Ps. 96:6-8)."

For the past several weeks we have been praying for and seeking our next celebration team lead. This is the person we put in charge of leading our worshp teams. It is an enormously important position for a fellowship of worshippers. We have been looking for someone who loves Jesus, loves His church, knows worship and can lead teams.

When I look for someone to come on to our staff, I use the following criterea:

1. Calling. I believe God calls people here. I believe in His providence in sending us the right person. I believe in the power of prayer and in God's perfect timing. I put a lot of stock in the constant and fervent prayer of His people in leading us to the right person. When a staff member doesn't work out, I just assume we were not praying as we should.

2. Competance. His or her gifts and ability should speak for themselves and should be obvious to all.

3. Character. Again, this is an absolute and should be obvious to all. People simply will not follow someone who has no integrity.

4. Chemistry. This may be the hardest to predict. Our leadership depends upon the trust and forward movement of the team in leadership. The stakes are too high for us not to have good chemistry. I spend a lot of time with prospective staff members to try to determine how they will get along with me and others.