convention

This past week the Southern Baptist Convention was in it's annual existence. By that I mean the SBC is only actually in existence for a few days a year when local church "messengers" meet in annual session. As Southern Baptists, we are not a denomination or ecclesiastical hierarchy, we are a body of cooperating churches that meet once a year to empower our various entities to carry out their work under the authority of our local churches. In the SBC, the local church is the only real authority. Our entities do not rule us- they are instead the servants of the local churches. That's how it's supposed to work anyway.

Although there were some very significant things that happened at the convention, like the election of Johnny Hunt on the first ballot, who in a BP interview a few weeks ago revealed that he is not in favor of the recently enacted IMB policies (guidelines) on baptism and private prayer language.

I think the most significant news coming out of the convention this year was this resolution on membership:

"WHEREAS, The ideal of a regenerate church membership has long been and remains a cherished Baptist principle, with Article VI of the Baptist Faith and Message describing the church as a “local congregation of baptized believers”; and

WHEREAS, A New Testament church is composed only of those who have been born again by the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the Word, becoming disciples of Jesus Christ, the local church’s only Lord, by grace through faith (John 3:5; Ephesians 2:8-9), which church practices believers’ only baptism by immersion (Matthew 28:16-20), and the Lord’s supper (Matthew 26:26-30); and

WHEREAS, Local associations, state conventions, and the Southern Baptist Convention compile statistics reported by the churches to make decisions for the future; and

WHEREAS, the 2007 Southern Baptist Convention annual Church Profiles indicate that there are 16,266,920 members in Southern Baptist churches; and

WHEREAS, Those same profiles indicate that only 6,148,868 of those members attend a primary worship service of their church in a typical week; and

WHEREAS, The Scriptures admonish us to exercise church discipline as we seek to restore any professed brother or sister in Christ who has strayed from the truth and is in sin (Matthew 18:15-35; Galatians 6:1); and now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana, June 10-11, 2008, urge churches to maintain a regenerate membership by acknowledging the necessity of spiritual regeneration and Christ’s lordship for all members; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we humbly urge our churches to maintain accurate membership rolls for the purpose of fostering ministry and accountability among all members of the congregation; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we urge the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention to repent of the failure among us to live up to our professed commitment to regenerate church membership and any failure to obey Jesus Christ in the practice of lovingly correcting wayward church members (Matthew 18:15-18); and be it further

RESOLVED, That we humbly encourage denominational servants to support and encourage churches that seek to recover and implement our Savior’s teachings on church discipline, even if such efforts result in the reduction in the number of members that are reported in those churches, and be it finally

RESOLVED, That we humbly urge the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention and their pastors to implement a plan to minister to, counsel, and restore wayward church members based upon the commands and principles given in Scripture (Matthew 18:15-35; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-15; Galatians 6:1; James 5:19-20)."

The motion passed with a sizable majority.

To that I say, "Amen!"

justin

On June 2, 2002 a young man in our church by the name of Justin Sullivan was named High School baseball player of the year by the Daily Oklahoman. But what the members of our congregation knew about Justin was something that ran much deeper than his recognition as an athlete or mere athletic skill.

Justin was a young man who was passionate about his faith. He had a walk with Christ that was emphatic and disciplined. He shared his faith with others. He was humble and gracious. He was heavily involved in the youth group even though baseball took a great deal of his time. He studied his Bible. He kept a daily journal and logged his spiritual growth.

Chris Wall, our youth pastor at the time and now one of our lead pastors said that he believed Justin would one day be a pro player who would have significant impact on the sport of baseball for the cause of Christ.

But the following day on June 3, Justin was tragically killed on Hefner Parkway when a semi tractor trailer tire dislodged from a truck bed and collided with his car.

It was one of the most devastating weeks in the life of our church.

When a life so full of promise is taken away from us, it is impossible get over. The grief of his loss is close to surface even today. Until we get to eternity some day and can see clearly we will never fully understand something this tragic. We naturally have many questions on this side of the veil that will not be answered.

But although we don't have all the answers, last Sunday we saw one of the answers.

Last Sunday we commissioned a baseball team to do ministry and missions throughout the central U.S. utilizing Justin's life and testimony as a model and inspiration.

As many of you know, Chris Wall took Justin's prayer journal and wrote a book with it. The book is an 8 week discipleship course designed especially for baseball players and utilizes many of the daily quotations from Justin's journal.

The book has become so popular it is now in it's third printing.

All of the proceeds of the book are supporting a competitive High School baseball team that has been put together for the purpose of leading baseball clinics and spreading the gospel of Christ.

The head coach of the team is Lee Tunnel. Lee and his family first came to our church the week that Justin was killed. He was especially drawn to Justin's story because of his own passion for ministry and his love for baseball.

Lee was the pitching coach for the Oklahoma City Redhawks and former pro baseball pitcher (He pitched in the 82 World Series with the Cardinals). When Lee was about Justin's age, he surrendered into the ministry, but three weeks later was drafted into professional baseball. He played and coached in baseball for many years but always had in the back of his mind that he would go into full time ministry at some point in his life.

Earlier this year Lee and Chris Wall began to plan together for the convergence of Lee's ministry passion and for what God was doing through the new book about Justin's life. The result is a baseball ministry that has a unique missions platform.

This past weekend the team lead their first clinic. At the end of the day, 10 young people and 4 parents came to know Christ.

Last Tuesday they played their first game.

Chris Wall called me just minutes before the game started and said, "do you know what today is?"

"Tell me", I said.

"Today is the day 6 years ago that Justin was killed". He said.

"Did you plan it that way?", I asked.

"No, we didn't." Chris said.

"But just think, God in His providence worked this out for us. It is six years almost to the very moment that Justin was taken from us that we launch this new ministry and this team starts playing baseball."

"God is good." I said.

God is good all the time.

Even when we don't have all the answers.

For more information about the baseball ministry or to purchase the book , "A Life Worth Following, click here.

pain

Last week the five year old daughter of Steven Curtis and Mary Beth Chapman was tragically killed in an accident at their home in Franklin Tennessee. Mary Ann was the youngest of the their six children and their third adopted child from China. As many of you know, the Chapman's have been passionate about adoption and have created an organization that helps defray the tremendous expense of overseas adoption. In many ways this hits our church family close to home, as many of our own families have adopted from China and in other parts of the world and have partnered with the Chapman organization.

This is the kind of tragedy that rips at the heart. Anyone who has heard Steven Curtis Chapman talk about his family and especially his passion for adoption knows how devastating this must be for them. We are praying for the Chapman family during this time of terrible loss and heartbreak.

There are inevitable questions. How could this happen to a family that has given so much? Where is God in this kind of tragedy? Why do bad things happen to such good people?

Of course, there are no words anyone could say that provide complete perspective at a time like this. One never gets over the loss of a child. Some answers we just won't get this side of eternity.

But I do think it is important remind ourselves of a few very important Biblical truths:

1. Just because you are a believer, it does not mean you will not suffer. The Bible teaches that the rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous. The promise of salvation and redemption is not a promise of a pain free life. To the contrary, very often people who serve God with great fervor and passion suffer with what seems like disproportionate intensity. Abraham suffered, Isaac suffered, Jacob suffered, Joseph suffered, Naomi lost everything, Ruth was displaced, Sarah was barren, Hagar was cast out and rejected. The apostles (save John) were all martyred, Paul the apostle begged God to take his "thorn" away, but God taught him that through his weakness he is made strong. You would be hard pressed to find a single champion in the Bible who did not suffer. Additionally, no one suffered like Christ. (Hebrews 11:39-40)

2. Because of the suffering of Christ, we know that God identifies with us in our tragedy. Only in Christianity do you have a God who says "I've been there". (Philippians 2:5-8). In fact, the Bible teaches us that although tragedy in our life breaks the heart of God (remember Jesus weeping for Mary and Martha), God can use the tragedy in our life in way we can't imagine. (Romans 8:28)

3. This life is not all there is. The Bible teaches this life is like a vapor of smoke- it is here and it is gone (James 4:14). It is only through the perspective of eternity and the reality of the risen Lord that we are able to make sense of evil and suffering in this life.

Think of it this way- because of the resurrection of Christ, we are able to say,

"bring it on death, bring it on suffering, the lower you lay me, the higher He'll raise me!"

We have much to learn from His suffering. Because He will have His wounds in a perfect Heaven, it must mean that God will use whatever suffering we have in this life to intensify our joy in the next. Whatever loss we feel in this life, will only multiply the sense of joy and gain in the life to come. (Romans 8:18-21)

My favorite quote from C.S. Lewis:

"I believe our first words in heaven will be,

'Ah haw!'

'Now I understand.'"

how missional works

There are some within the missiological community who argue that there is a distinction between "missions" and "evangelism". The thinking here is that when one uses the term "missions" it most certainly is within the context of a call into the unreached parts of the earth. The point is that those places around the earth that already have a functioning church reproducing itself are in affect not part of the mission. If you are in a country that has a reproducing church movement and you are committed to spreading the gospel then you are not doing missions, you are doing evangelism- the thinking goes.

So call it evangelism, but please don't confuse the point and call it missions or "missional".

While I understand the point and deeply appreciate the necessity of focusing especially on those parts of the earth that have yet to be reached, I am not as reluctant to call what we do in North American culture as we engage an increasingly "post-Christian" environment with the meaning and message of the gospel a "missional" approach.

My rationale:

1. I do not see a distinction between the call of every believer/disciple to engage the world they work, play, live in and the call of a missionary to cross over into a different culture for the purpose of engaging that unreached people group with the gospel. I think the overuse of the term "call" is regretful. I see that we are all called. I see that the great commission was given to all of His disciples. I see that if we come to believe that there are a select few who are called out for the purpose of missions we are in danger of excusing ourselves from the very thing our Lord has called all of us to do.

2. North America is now the third largest mission field on the planet. As Ed Stetzer puts it in "The Missional Code": North America is a missions context, not because people are less Christian than they once were (although that is true), but because God “sent” us to North America. It is a mission field because God sent us here as missionaries. However, we are missing a clear reality if we do not recognize that this a harder mission field than it once was. Historically, the Christian church was the first choice of spiritually minded North Americans – today, it often does not make the top ten list. Years ago, when people looked for spiritual answers they looked to the church. Now, many look to anybody and anything but us. The fact that historically the U.S. has been heavily influenced by Christianity does not change the current reality we face. Increasingly the people we encounter each day are antagonistic to the gospel, but no less a people group who are loved by God and therefore a focus of our mission. A lost person in Bethany Oklahoma is no less lost than an unredeemed person in Showbach Jordan.

3. To say that we seek to be missional includes both our global and local emphasis. Click here for a terrific analysis of the difference between a church with an evangelistic emphasis and a missoinal church. Our understanding of a missional strategy in unreached parts of the world informs and invigorates our missional approach in a post-Christian North American culture.

4. When we say that we seek to become a church in which every member considers himself or herself a missionary we are simply saying that the natural outcome of a life in Christ is a pull into a life of purpose and mission. "As the Father has sent me so send I you.." (John 20:21) , has direct and undeniable meaning to every believer. The incarnation of Christ was the ultimate example of contextualizing. He is our prototype in this sense. He came into our context for the purpose of the gospel. So if we are sent out as he was sent out, we also have a strategic mission. Our meaning and purpose as believers is to make the Word flesh in our own context. The more our life is given away the more we gain life.

As this approach becomes more and more clear to me- I see that some of the most significant missional activity going on in our church is outside the property lines of our campus on 30th and Council. I see a businessman who recently raised over 100,000 dollars for our orphanage in Motipur; I see a physician in our church who is feeding 300 kids in Rawanda a week; I see a couple in our church who are giving their lives for physically and sexually abused girls who have no place to turn; I see a young couple who lead a world wide medical missions ministry; I see a Connection Class that has adopted Cambodia; I see a retired business executive who has pioneered a way for missionaries to find a platform to reach some of the most unreached people groups in the Middle East by setting up an interactive internet program; I see a group of coaches who are taking a competitive team of young baseball players to not just play baseball this summer but to go overseas for the purpose of missions; I see a retired school teacher who has begun a ministry to people living on the streets.

Everywhere I look I see that increasingly our membership understands that God has placed each of us strategically in a mission field for the purpose of the gospel. I see that we are grasping the biblical truth that the church is to be populated with people who see themselves as on mission. We are a church of missionaries, not a church of consumers.

That is how missional works.

bob roberts

I enjoyed lunch today with Bob Roberts, pastor of Northwood Church in North Richland Hills Texas, and author of the books "Transformation" and "Glocalization". Bob's church has planted over 100 churches around the world and actively plants dozens of churches a year. His ministry and global vision is a refreshing and invigorating model for the future of missional churches. He was in Oklahoma City to help cast a vision for "Vision 360", which is a growing movement of like-minded pastors and businessmen around the country who are joining together for the purpose of planting churches worldwide. Bob is a fellow Southern Baptist who sees beyond the "Baptist Bubble" into global Kingdom work and understands the importance of not just planting churches, but planting Kingdom minded churches. There are few people in the world who know more about church planting than Bob Roberts. Bob and I agreed that we need to get together more often. I will look forward to our continued friendship. Here are a few things that stood out for me in our conversation:

1. There is no such thing as a "church planting movement". There is a Jesus movement that results in church planting.

2. If your church plants just 3 churches a year, it is one of the top church planting churches in the U.S.

3. The Chinese church has much to teach the American church about church planting and the spread of the gospel. There is no church growth movement in America. It is happening in China.

4. It is essential that a church become a "Kingdom" church- that is to say a church that plants churches in other cultures.

5. It is more important for a church to operate out of a model where all cultures and ethnic groups build something together around the same vision and values than it is to have a "multi-cultural" church. We should not be defined by our differences.

6. To try to "redefine" the church is a waste of time. The identity of the ethos of the church is secondary to the gospel. Regardless of what "kind" of church it is, the crucial issue is how disciples are made and what kind of vision you have for the Kingdom. Just stick to the basics of disciple-making and Kingdom growth and don't obsess over style.

7. One of the keys to reaching the Muslim world for Christ will be Palestinian Christians. When you actually go to the Middle East and you meet Arab believers and Muslims, you can see that Christianity will one day spring out of that land as it did 2000 years ago- but in a much different way.

8. When individual churches target particular people groups around the world, there is much more buy in and long term effect.

9. The message of the gospel has such power, it will overcome whatever stumbling blogs God's people tend to put in front of it.

10. Salvation belongs to the Lord. It does not come about by our manipulation or tactics. It comes about by His grace as a result of our faithfulness and obedience.

To all of this I can only say, "Amen!"

the reason i no longer believe in atheists

In my study of the book of Galatians last week something occurred to me that I don't remember ever giving much consideration before. It is that given the Bible's definition of idolatry, that scripture never really conceptualizes an "atheist".

After all, an "idol" is anything put before God. In other words, anything that I believe will bring me salvation- that is to say life or joy or fulfillment- whatever that thing is that I have made my savior and Lord- is my idol. Another way of saying it is that whatever good thing in my life has become the best thing in my life- has in affect become my idol, and therefore my Lord.

I know my idols by looking at my sin. If my sin is worry, it must mean that my heart is telling me that whatever I think I am losing I cannot live without. If my sin is bitterness, then it must mean that my heart is telling me that I have lost something that I cannot stand to lose. If my sin is some addiction, it must mean that there is something in the center that I cannot see myself living without.

The best way to understand my idolatry, therefore, is to ask myself what sin there is in my life that I feel like I MUST commit.

In this sense, we all have some god (little g) at the center of our heart and therefore we all have some "theos" controlling us, even if we tell ourselves and others that we don't believe in God. Our unbelief in the God of the Bible may well be true, but what the Bible teaches us is that even if we deny the THEOS, we all have some theos in the center of our lives, that has taken the place of the true one.

So, as the atheist says he does not believe in God, the Bible says that it does not believe in atheists.

Click here for an excellent synopsis of C.S. Lewis's journey from atheism to theism.

glimpsing hell

None of us really knows what it is like to live one second outside of the presence of God. Even the most devout atheist is covered in some way by the common grace of God.

"In Him we live and breath and have our being" (Acts 17:28)

Therefore, every single person, no matter how much they may profess an ambivalence or even total disbelief in God, is still in a sense enjoying the effects of His covering grace.

In other words, no one really knows what it would be like to not know love or joy or laughter or oxygen or sunshine- at least not in this life. Because it is in Him that we have our "being". To not have Him is to come apart. Which is of course a good definition of death.

In death, a body comes apart physically. Similarly, to die spiritually is to come apart emotionally and to disconnect more and more from reality and from the life God gives.

Hell is the only one place that is totally void of the presence of God.

But there are places on the earth that are so spiritually dark it seems to me a person can at least get brief glimpses of what Hell would be like.

I think about the drive I took from Luknow to Motipur in India last October. On the way, I watched as a tuk tuk packed full of people side-swiped a moped driven by a young mother with two small children. The children and their mother all flew in different directions.

No one stopped.
Not the tuk-tuk.
Not the people driving by.
Not our taxi driver.
Not the bus driving past us.
Nobody.

"Why didn't we stop?" I asked our taxi driver.

"Too many people" he said.

As Thomas Friedman has said, "If you are one in a million in India, there are 10 million people just like you..."

Annie Dillard once reflected:

"Ted Bundy, the serial killer, after his arrest, could not fathom the fuss. What was the big deal? David Von Drehle quotes an exasperated Bundy in Among the Lowest of the Dead: “I mean, there are so many people.” One R. Houwink, of Amsterdam, uncovered this unnerving fact: The human population of earth, arranged tidily, would just fit into Lake Windermere, in England’s Lake District. Recently in the Peruvian Amazon a man asked the writer Alex Shoumatoff, “Isn’t it true that the whole population of the United States can be fitted into their cars?” How are we doing in numbers, we who have been alive for this most recent installment of human life? How many people have lived and died? “The dead outnumber the living, in a ratio that could be as high as 20 to 1,” a demographer, Nathan Keyfitz, wrote in a 1991 letter to the historian Justin Kaplan. “Credible estimates of the number of people who have ever lived on the earth run from 70 billion to 100 billion.” Averaging those figures puts the total persons ever born at about 85 billion. We living people now number 5.8 billion. By these moderate figures, the dead outnumber us about fourteen to one. The dead will always outnumber the living. Dead Americans, however, if all proceeds, will not outnumber living Americans until the year 2030, because the nation is young. Some of us will be among the dead then. Will we know or care, we who once owned the still bones under the quick ones, we who spin inside the planet with our heels in the air? The living might well seem foolishly self-important to us, if overexcited. We who are here now make up about 6.8 percent of all people who have appeared to date. This is not a meaningful figure. These times are, one might say, ordinary times, a slice of life like any other. Who can bear to hear this, or who will consider it? Are we not especially significant because our century is – our century and its nuclear bombs, its unique and unprecedented Holocaust, its serial exterminations and refugee populations, our century and its warming, its silicon chips, men on the moon, and spliced genes? No, we are not and it is not."

Of course her point is that each of us has no value, really, unless there is a God who loves us.

Why worry about a few people on a moped in India? There are so many of them- "Too many" our taxi driver said. But the God of the universe died for each of them.

The extent of God's love is not just that God loves the entire world, but that He loves everyone in the world as if they were the only one to love.

It is His love that gives us our humanity. It is His grace that gives us our being.

How terrible to live without it.

But truly, there are places we can go in this world and see glimpses of hell. Some of them are very close to home. Like the religious compound in central Texas we've heard about this week where children were physically and sexually abused - all in the name of God.

I think about the YouTube video that came out recently that showed 9 teenage girls from Florida brutally beating a girl they had kidnapped and trapped so that they could film her beating and post it for all their friends to see on YouTube. What strikes me about the video was there was no justice, no love, no compassion, no one stopping the madness and saying, "Hey, this is wrong..."

Right there in Middle Class suburban America - a tiny glimpse of hell.

A few days ago I was talking to one of my son's friends who moved here a few years ago from Nigeria. "How did you get here?" I asked.

"We won the lottery" he told me.

His father won a visa lottery off a Coke bottle lid and his entire family was given the opportunity to begin a new life in America.

"I thank God every day for America" Rilwon told me.

"Really" I said, "why is that?"

"In Nigeria, the government is very corrupt- very selfish. Human life means nothing to them."

"That must have been very hard for your family, to grow up in a place like that", I said to him.

He told me about a time in his life when he was very young when he saw a man's corpse laying on the side of the road.

"The body was burst open", he said.

He looked at me, shaking his head. "Nobody cared enough about this man to stop the car and get out and dig him a grave..."

"No little kid should have to see such things", Rilwan said. "A person should not be left on the side of the road."

"It is only by God's grace that you know that to be true, Rilwan" I told him.