From White Horse Inn:

Powerful. From Churches Helping Churches.

After reading about biblical illiteracy it occurs to me that the theological diversity within the SBC is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing as it encourages our people to unify around the essentials without dividing over non-essentials. There do remain some matters not essential to salvation that nonetheless divide us from other denominations: ecclesiology, baptism, the ordination of women, etc. But there is also remarkable diversity allowed within SBC life. Calvinists work alongside non-Calvinists. Dispensationalists and amillennialists go to church together (okay, not often). The Baptist Faith and Message establishes what is considered the minimum level of acceptable belief. It presents the least common denominator of Baptist faith. And as it stands the BF&M is a good document. Everything it affirms is right and true. But many topics are left unaddressed, providing freedom for individual Baptists to follow diverse convictions on these issues.

The curse of our diversity is that we also try to over establish uniformity. From a least-common-denominator confession of faith we also have a least-common-denominator body of teaching material through Lifeway, once known as the Baptist Sunday School Board. Lifeway’s approach follows that of the Baptist Faith and Message: teach things held in common by all Southern Baptists without crossing into areas of disagreement. This is not an altogether bad approach. As a Calvinist, I would not be happy knowing my money to Lifeway helped pay for material specifically opposing Calvinism. I imagine my non-Calvinist brothers and sisters would be equally appalled if Lifeway started promoting Calvinism.

The problem is with the end result. We wind up with a denomination full of people who have never been trained to go beyond the basics, never trained to dive into Scripture and emerge with rich jewels of truth.

The Lifeway material is fine for what it does, but what it does is not sufficient for the week-in-week-out growth and edification of the people of God. Our people need to be led deeper and further into biblical truth, not dancing around issues where Southern Baptists disagree but confronting those issues head on and emerging with strong convictions about what the Bible says on every subject that it addresses. For Lifeway, the solution might be to offer a variety of material coming from different theological persuasions. Not really a good solution, but I’m not sure what else they could do. In the meantime, individual churches using Lifeway material will need to go places the material will not go, augmenting the weekly lesson with more time spent in the Bible and less time spent in the Sunday school book. In the end this is the best approach anyway, no matter what material is used.

Picked this up from David Wayne at Evangel. The following quote comes from Ann Douglas’ book The Feminization of American Culture.

For some time, roughly between 1740 and 1820 the rigor exhibited by the Edwardsean ministers seemed representative of the wider culture or at least welcomed by it. Edwardsean theology, however, outlived its popular support. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as in the twentieth, the vast majority of American Christians identified themselves as members of one of the various Protestant groups. Yet, the differences between the Protestants of, say, 1800 and their descendants of 1875 and after are greater than the similarities. The everyday Protestant of 1800 subscribed to a rather complicated and rigidly defined body of dogma; attendance at a certain church had a markedly theological function. By 1875 American Protestants were much more likely to define their faith in terms of family morals, civic responsibility, and above all, in terms of the social function of churchgoing. Their actual creed was usually a liberal, even a sentimental one for which Edwards and his contemporaries would have felt scorn and horror. In an analogous way, Protestant churches over the same period shifted their emphasis from a primary concern with the doctrinal beliefs of their members to a preoccupation with numbers. In ecclesiastical and religious circles, attendance came to count for more than genuine adherence. Nothing could show better the nineteenth-century Protestant Church’s altered identity as an eager participant in the emerging consumer society than its obsession with popularity and its increasing disregard of intellectual issues.

This was written in the 1970’s. It’s far more true today.

At any given time I am usually working through three or four books. Among them I always have going at least one book that gives help for pastoral or church ministry. At the moment that book is Light and Heat: The Puritan View of the Pulpit by R. Bruce Bickel.

The Puritans saw the pulpit as the central part of corporate worship. The preaching of God’s Word is the principle work of a minister and the central, most important part of a church service. Because of the great gap between the Creator and the creature and our great need for divine truth, it is more important that the assembled believers hear what God has to say than that they speak to God. Prayer and singing certainly have an essential place in church but it is through the expounding of God’s Word that the people hear from God.

Bickel says the Puritans “note clearly the progression that begins with God giving the ministry of preaching to His Son, the Son giving the ministry to His apostles, and thence to all ministers of the gospel.” He then quotes the Puritan Paul Bayne who points out Ephesians 2:17 which mentions Christ preaching to the Ephesians. Jesus was never in Ephesus so the preaching must have been through Christ’s messengers, those appointed as ministers of the Word. When those men speak it is as though Christ speaks, as Jesus said in Luke 10:16: “The one who hears you hears me…”

The Puritan sermon was divided into three parts: Doctrine, Reason, and Use; or Declaration, Explanation, and Application. The sermon always followed a text of Scripture. The first part of the sermon would lay out the doctrinal teaching from the text. The second part would present the argument and respond to objections. The third part would give specific application of the text on the Christian life. Bickel includes a quote from Richard Baxter about the development of a sermon and appeal to the hearer:

The preacher’s aim should be first to convince the understanding and then to engage the heart. Light first, then heat. Begin with a careful opening of the text, then proceed to the clearance of possible difficulties or objections; next, to a statement of uses; and lastly to a fervent appeal for acceptance by conscience and heart.

I’m only part of the way through the book so there is much more to see and learn, but already my preaching has been challenged. To what degree do we look for light and heat in the pulpit? Are we as preachers really trying to speak in a way that Jesus speaks through us? Are we watering down his message with the world? Are the hearers looking for solid, biblical preaching that unfolds Scripture before them? How much will today’s congregations tolerate poor preaching?

Brothers, hold me accountable, and preach the Word. Person in the pew, hold your preachers accountable.

One thing that will quickly turn me off to a preacher is if I hear him using facts or information in an imprecise or incorrect manner. I knew one such preacher a few years ago. Just about every sermon contained questionable factual data. In one instance he was talking about a new Muslim place of worship in the city, explaining how it was paid for by oil money from tycoons in the Middle East. Evidently some of the people had had enough. Someone called out that it was a Shriner’s club, not a Muslim mosque. He had a hard time regaining his balance after that correction.

If you are going to claim something in a sermon, be sure it is true.

Dan, one of the Pyro guys, has written about the use of Greek and Hebrew in a sermon. His post applies to any facts used while preaching. He says well why we should not say what we do not know:

Suppose I choose to draw an illustration from the field of biology, or anatomy, or a physical science, or an historical event. Suppose, further, someone in my audience happens to be well-studied in that field. And suppose he instantly recognizes that I’m full of beans, that I pulled out some old chestnut that every well-studied ____ist/ian/ologist immediately knows to be an urban myth, or a common but long-since-exploded misconception.

What will he think of my faithfulness? of the seriousness of my intent? of the thoroughness with which I research what I am about to hold out for people’s trust and acceptance?

He’ll instantly know I’m willing to say things of which I haven’t taken the time to make sure.

And he’ll wonder — he’ll have good reason to wonder — how thoroughly I have researched and thought through the other claims I’m making. He’ll have good reason to think, “Okay, I know anatomy, and I know that what he just said is simply beans. But I don’t know Greek, or theology, or much about the Bible. How do I know whether he knows what he’s talking about on those subjects, or whether he’s just as sloppy about them as he was about this?”

A few weeks ago SBC president Johnny Hunt released the document The Great Commission Resurgence. Since its release it has received over 3500 signatures and has generated quite a bit of discussion.

On the whole it is a good document. As others have stated, almost any pastor can agree with 98% of it. Most of the controversy has focused on section IX which deals with the need for structural changes in the convention.

Regarding section 9, I tend to think Hunt is right – there do need to be some changes in convention funding, structure, and support. My feeling is we have more bureaucracy than we need. We’ve become the Oscar Wilde quote – “Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.” .

I like some of the things in the document. Hunt recognizes the need to adapt to a changing culture, moving beyond programs that worked yesterday and looking for what is effective today. From section 8: “In the past, Southern Baptists were characterized by a remarkable uniformity in both style and substance, but those days have long passed.” Then in section 9: “...the denomination has too often failed to adapt its structure and programs to the changing culture. We are frequently aiming at a culture that went out of existence years ago, failing to understand how mid-20th century methods and strategies are not working in the 21st century.”

Children and families are also affirmed: “Too often we believe that children are a burden rather than a blessing and smaller families are more ‘responsible’ than large families. Too many believe that motherhood is not valuable as a woman’s unique and primary calling and is not as ‘fulfilling’ as other occupations. Too many believe that husbands and fathers are not uniquely called and gifted for leadership in the home and that biblical gender roles destroy authentic equality.” We have three children and someone once commented that we have a large family. That astonished me. Society’s view of children and family has certainly changed, and not for the better.

I have a few little concerns with the document. I wish section 1 focused more on obedience to Jesus and section 2 said more about the Bible as a whole. Section 4 should say more about sufficiency and the need to strive to understand all of Scripture. Section 5 could use a little more clarifying. Section 6, I wish the phrase “Baptist identity” had been left out, though I think I know what Hunt means in the sentence and if so I’m fully in agreement. Section 7 should say a little more about pastoral ministry, and the last sentence of the section is a little quirky. Section 9 is nonspecific enough to cause a desire for clarification.

My main concern is with the overwhelming focus of the document being to seek a resurgence of great commission fulfillment. We need to be carrying out the great commission. We need to be bolder, more faithful in evangelism. But that is not the only, or primary, purpose of the church. The church is given to carry out Ephesians 2:7, to be a sort of trophy room for God, displaying his glory. Evangelism aids in this, so does discipleship. Historically, Southern Baptists have emphasized (though perhaps not carried out) evangelism fairly well but in the past several decades we have been very weak on discipleship. The whole push is to go and tell with little energy left for come and learn and grow. Even those things done as discipleship are often structured to be lures to get the lost into church rather than helping believers grow in the faith.

I appreciate Hunt’s work on this document and his desire to see Christians become more faithful in carrying out the great commission, but I wish the document also called believers to greater faithfulness in studying and knowing and applying God’s Word. I wish that it called churches to increase their discipling work. Many Baptists have declared the Bible inerrant while simultaneously forgetting what it says. I hope we see this change.

What is the God-centered goal of preaching? To borrow language from Piper it is to make much of God. My goal in my ministry – preaching, teaching, visiting, etc – is to help people love God more each day. I do this by trying to help them see more about God, his incredible character, his holy nature, his boundless grace.

The more people love God the more they will desire to serve and obey him. Luther, quoting Augustine, said, “Love God, and do what you will.” (Could someone point me to where those quotes are found?) The idea behind this is not that if you love God then anything else you do is permissible. Luther understood that if you love God then what you will to do is that which is pleasing to God. This is similar to Psalm 37:4: “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” It is not that God says, “Oh, this person delights in me! I’ll give them anything they want!” rather it is that the person says, “I delight in God! The desire of my heart is to live for him, to enjoy him forever!” When you love God your heart and focus change to God himself.

The person who delights in the Lord does not desire a new car more than he desires God. He desires God more than he desires adultery or drugs or possessions or pornography or pride or power or a host of other worldly things. Preaching that focuses on doing rather than thinking and feeling gets at the symptom while neglecting the problem.

Consider Matthew 12:43-45:
[esvbible format="inline" header="off" reference="Matthew 12:43-45"]Matthew 12:43-45[/esvbible]

To empty a house of demons is all well and good but is ultimately a useless act of the house is left ready for reoccupation. If soldiers on the battlefield clear a stronghold they have done well, but if the stronghold is not secure the enemy will just return in even greater numbers and the problem will be worse than ever. If preaching leads people to change behavior without first leading them to be consumed with love for God then little good has been done. It has probably caused harm, creating people who seem moral on the outside but are dead and rotten on the inside. Teach people about God. Show them Jesus, the image of the eternal, invisible God, in all his glory. Pray for the Spirit to grow in them and for the first fruit of the Spirit, love, to grow wildly for God and then for others.

This is what I want to see happen through my preaching – people loving God, delighting in him, and becoming so filled with wonder at the glory of his goodness and grace that the things of this world grow strangely dim. Teach people to be filled with God. To desire him. To honor him and delight in doing so. That is how the Holy Spirit will work through us in the process of sanctification. That is how disciples are made.

Much has been made about the resurgence of Calvinism in the SBC. More young people, and not a few older pastors, are embracing a theology of salvation that closely resembles that which was taught by John Calvin. 

The label Calvinism is a convenience. Use the word and people (sometimes) know (sort of) what you are talking about, though to my surprise I see several people claim the title Calvinist who really aren’t very Calvinistic in their thinking. But the label tends to imply something untrue: that people have studied the teachings of John Calvin and have devoted themselves to those teachings. The truth is that Calvinists are those who have studied Scripture and have drawn conclusions from Scripture similar to the conclusions drawn by John Calvin.

What we have in the SBC is not a resurgence of Calvinism but a resurgence of Scripture. Conservatives won the struggle in the 80’s and 90’s to move the denomination away from liberalism, but too many conservative pastors did little more than give lip service to the Bible, failing to use the Bible any more than the liberals. I attended a revival service several weeks ago during which the preacher talked a lot about how important the Bible is but he never once faithfully unfolded Scripture. He used a few springboard text and filled his long sermon with personal anecdotes. This can also be seen in most of the material that comes out of Lifeway. I often get angry when I look at how they handle various texts. Irresponsible, shallow, misleading, sour milk, frequently missing the point, using the word of God as a springboard to the things they want to talk about. These things happen too often in the SBC but by the grace of God this pattern just might be changing.

Again, what we have in the SBC is not a resurgence of Calvinism but a resurgence of Scripture. We have people faithfully studying the Scriptures. The end result is their theology looks like that of John Calvin. But these people are also talking about and teaching the Bible with greater faithfulness. This in itself can be a challenge to churches that are not used to well grounded biblical preaching but it is a challenge we must push through if we are to grow in the Lord.

Praise God for the resurgence of the Bible in the SBC. May it continue and may it spread.

Will Willimon is bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church and he blogs occasionally at A Peculiar Prophet. Yesterday he posted an entry titled A Faith that is Based on the Testimony of Women. The title itself is problematic – the Christian faith is not based on anyone’s testimony, the Christian faith comes from the work of God in Christ. But Willimon was trying to be provocative with his title, a frequent characteristic of his speaking and writing, so I will give him a little leeway.

More problematic is the content of his entry. For example:

The angel preached the first Easter sermon: “Don’t be afraid. You seek Jesus, who was crucified? He is risen! Come, look at where he once lay in the tomb.” Then the angel commissioned the women to become Jesus’ first preachers: “Go, tell the men that he has already gone back to Galilee. There you will meet him.”

Two issues here. First, the proclamation of the angel was not a sermon. I suppose if we use the term as loosely as Willimon does we could say that any religious proclamation is a sermon. But the angel was not unfolding the word of God to the people of God, he was proclaiming an event. He was testifying. He was evangelizing. 

Second, the women were not then commissioned to preach but were called to do what the angel had done. If we define preaching loosely we could say that anyone presenting the gospel is preaching, but the word is more specific than that.

The women were sent out to spread the good news that Jesus Christ was risen from the dead. This is not preaching, this is evangelizing. 

In his attempt to defend the role of women as preachers Willimon misses something more important. Not everyone is called to preach but everyone is called to evangelize. Not everyone is called to stand in the pulpit but everyone is called to do what the women did here, proclaim the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

Willimon then brings up the Great Commission and reminds us that we are called to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth. But he doesn’t seem to realize that this is what the women at the tomb were doing. They were not commissioned to be preachers, pastors, or spiritual leaders. They were told to spread the good news of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In his discussion Willimon includes this lament:

How sad that there are still churches that continue, despite this clear witness of scripture, to deny the testimony of women and to prohibit them from preaching the gospel that God has given to them – but I digress.

Once again he seems to be confusing what preaching is. Giving a testimony about the work of God is not preaching. Men and women alike are called to testify of the goodness of God, in particular the work of salvation by which we are brought from sin to righteousness, from death to life, from darkness to light. Scripture does not limit the call to evangelize. Scripture does limit the call to pastor.

The clear witness of Scripture is that all believers are called to spread the good news. The clear witness of Scripture is also that men and women are different and have been given different work within the church and the world. We share some of the work but not all of the work.

What is truly sad is that many churches have chosen worldly egalitarianism over biblical complementarianism. God created men and women to work together and to complement one another in the work of the church. So much is lost when we try to force men and women into the same roles.

Bishop Willimon, please be true to Scripture. Do not take one example and try to force it to be something it isn’t. And please consider the whole counsel of God, that God made human beings male and female with a particular hierarchy and particular roles. Only when we are ordered according to the purpose of God can we find liberty and joy.