This And That

OK. I spent the last two days at our state Baptist Evangelism conference and didn’t return home wishing for Superman to fly around the earth and recover all of that time for me. I doubt they’ll make the audio available online or for free. <cynical remark>You know us Baptists, if we can make a buck telling people how to share Jesus with others we’ll do it.</cynical remark>

Let it be known that Junior Hill is one funny man with a relevant message. He turned off the guilt and turned on the encouragement. Rare activities at an evangelism conference. Let it be further known that this was the first-ever evangelism conference I have attended in my lifetime in which a preacher used profanity and made a room full of Baptist preachers laugh at it. Let it also be known that Bobby Welch did not mention bloggers one time in the message I heard (I missed his Monday night message), did not bash any Calvinists and mentioned F.A.I.T.H.(C) less than a dozen times. In addition, John Randles slapped us all around with his little red Gideon New Testament yet left us all wanting to say, “Thank you sir, may I have another?” If Osama Bin Laden turns himself in and the BGCO puts the audio online for free, be sure to check out Junior Hill and John Randles.

Otherwise, for some really good audio from a theology conference hosted by the Northwestern Baptist Association in Woodward, OK go here. The speaker was Dr. Jonathan Pennington, Assistant Professor of New Testament at Southern Seminary. Best lecture I’ve heard from a man in a bow tie at least since Al Franken played Paul Simon in a Saturday Night Live sketch in 1988. Very, very good. Now if we can just get John Elam, their Director of Missions, off the golf course long enough to get the rest of the audio up then you can double your pleasure. [Update] It appears that John shot a respectable 83 with the orange ball (better visibility in the snow), and has now uploaded the rest of the audio. Excellent! A genuine thanks to John for making this audio available. It’s mmmmm, mmmmm, good. [/Update]

Out Of Office Reply

Today and tomorrow I’m in Oklahoma City for our state Baptist Evangelism Conference.  The lineup includes Bobby Welch (I’ll be interested to see if he feels the need to pillory bloggers yet again), Johnny "gimme a Hummer" Hunt, and vocational evangelists Rick Ousley, Junior Hill and John Randles, along with Alabama Director of Evangelism Sammy Gilbreath.

I’m leaving the laptop at home this time, so it is doubtful that I will post anything tomorrow, unless I get some access while at my parent’s house where I’ll be staying the night.

Speaking of evangelism, I had quite an intriguing conversation last Thursday with a man who grew up a cradle Catholic but left the church as a teenager (he appeared to be in his late 50s or early 60s).  In the mean time he’s been through a wild spiritual ride having a bit of a fruit salad faith (a little bit of this and a little bit of that all mixed together).  He believes in Jesus and karma and reincarnation.  He does not believe in hell, though I think he believes in heaven.

This is our new reality.  I know that we’d all like to be back in the day where we could simply open our Bibles to folks and say, "Here’s what God says" and they’d be all, like, "Cool.  Let’s pray."  Those days are gone.  If not forever, at least for the rest of the days that any of us will tread the face of this earth.  Ours is a day in which the postmoderns around you will tell you that is your reality and wish you a nice day.  I believe we must demonstrate the superiority of Jesus to all of the alternatives.  That is what I tried to do with this current follower of the Course In Miracles.  I did not beat him over the head.  I did not bloody his nose with the book of Romans.  But I did share how I could not believe in karma because it seems to me to result in a never-ending circle of tragedy, especially as he had described his own belief in it.  I shared the more excellent way of God’s grace and that Christ’s death on the cross was not a result of God’s anger toward his own Son, but was the ultimate act of love for us.  That no one took Jesus’ life from him, that he gave it willingly.

If you think about it, say a prayer for this man that God might remove the scales from his eyes and that he might see that his redemption draweth nigh.

Peacemakers

Rob Bell has a really good series of messages he titled Calling all Peacemakers.  There are three parts which he preached between December 3rd and December 17th.  They are listed at iTunes, but I was unable to download them there.  However, you can get them for free from the Mars Hill website.  I thought the first two were especially good, but I recommend them all.

Picture This

No time for taking any photos this week, so here are some family shots from our fall vacation.

(Click on an image to enlarge)

Jumping The Gun

Perhaps some Southern Baptists are jumping the gun regarding the recent move at Southwestern Seminary regarding Dr. Sheri Klouda.  It appears that our fine institution is not opposed to women teaching men at all.  At their internet site www.baptisttheology.org there is a white paper (actually pink, which seems rather fitting) on the front page on the subject "Should Women Serve As Pastors?"  This article is authored by Dorothy Kelley Patterson, the wife of Dr. Paige Patterson.

This white paper clearly appears on a theology site, which means that it’s theological nature is not bothersome.  It is also highly likely that such a site would be frequented overwhelmingly by men and being a "white paper" it has obvious instructional value.  It is also quite likely that many of the men who will read this white paper are either pastors or seminary students training for such pastoral responsibilities.

From these facts it can only be deduced that Dr. Klouda was told she would never be granted tenure on a basis other than her gender.  In addition, I must assume that this white paper is of the highest quality and value to the local church, though I would not know because I will not read it.  Despite what policies may or may not exist at Southwestern seminary regarding women teaching men I would not want to risk violating the Scriptures by learning from a woman.  Perhaps our 11 year old boy can read it and tell me what it says.

Theologians For The Church

On March 15, 2005 Stan Grenz passed away from a brain hemorrhage.  Grenz was a distinguished Baptist theologian, but more importantly in my mind he was a theologian for the church.  He thought and wrote with the average church and average believers in mind.  His book Revisioning Evangelical Theology proposed that theology should not be a simple matter of peer reviewed articles that never touch the church, or systematics that are rarely used outside of the seminary class room, but that theology should be married to a warm-hearted pietism.  Theology should not only be done for the church, but with and in the church.  Grenz was quickly becoming a prominent theologian in that very vein.

I agree with his thesis and believe the church would benefit from more men and (dare I say it) women like Stanley J. Grenz.  Many theologians, so it seems to me, view themselves as tutors for the church rather than partners with the church.  I’ve heard plenty of comments (more than I care to hear) from theologians who seem to speak down to the church.  Rather than coming along side the church they tell her that she’s full of poor theology and sloppy, uncritical thinking.  This seems to be a sad characteristic of my own denomination.  Thankfully the church was not left with a complete void.

I believe there are a number of people ably filling their own place within the life of the church.  I also believe they are having a far greater impact on the life of the church across a variety of denominations than are many of our paidagogoi.

One such theologian is N.T. Wright.  One of the geniuses of Wright is his ability to write for both academia and for the average person - and I don’t just mean the preachers.  His works range everywhere from the 741 page Jesus And The Victory of God which I definitely would not recommend to just anyone, to The Challenge of Jesus which contains much of the same content but in a much more readable style and in a much more readable 173 pages, to his commentaries in the For Everyone series which anyone ("everyone") in your church would enjoy and benefit from.  This is one of the reasons he has caused such a stir and is talked about in Presbyterian and Baptist circles, despite the fact that Wright is Anglican.  Wright may in fact be the most widely read and well known theologian alive at this moment.

Another great example of a theologian for the church is Scot McKnight.  McKnight is a professor at North Park University in Chicago.  Nearly all of his books, while well thought out, are written with the church as a whole in mind.  He is also one of the best known theologian bloggers and you can read him daily at his blog Jesus Creed (also the title of one of his best-known books).

Of course, there are a number of others who are coming along in this same line.  Perhaps the church needs theologians who debate what kind of hairspray Isaac Backus used or how long Thomas Aquinas allow his toe nails to grow or whether there was one Isaiah or two or three or fifteen.  But by and large the church needs a practical theology; something the accountant can take to work with him, that means something for the hairdresser and the policeman.  Something that is more (much more) thoughtful than what you’ll usually find on the top ten shelf at your local Christian bookstore without requiring a dictionary to be kept close by to explain all of the -isms and -ologies and three dollar words.

In the SBC we used to talk about our "pastor/theologians."  Southern Baptists have never been known for much heavy lifting where theology is concerned.  I grew up being told that all good Southern Baptists read the Presbyterian commentaries.  Today those pastor/theologians have become little more than pastor/politicians, having their Justice Sundays and formulating their new policies for denominational agencies and institutions.  Thankfully there are a good number of younger Southern Baptist pastors I’ve met who aren’t interested in the denominational politics, but are interested in theology and are doing it quite well.  I remain thankful for men like Stanley Grenz, N. T. Wright, Scot McKnight and others who have an eye for the church and not just the academia who are helping us on our way.  May their tribe increase.

A Momentary Lax Of Paramaters

It has recently come to my attention that Stephen Pastis was present at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary board of trustee meeting back in 2002 when Dr. Sheri Klouda, recently revealed to be a woman, was hired by the board to teach in the theology department.  Current board chairman Dr. T. Van McClain has recently called this move to hire "a momentary lax of the paramaters."  Apparently they had the wrong person manning the crystal ball.

Without further ado, here are the sketches of the meeting from Pastis:

The Elusively Mysterious Legend

…of the Southern Baptist Emergent crowd.

In the latest wave of fearmongering I am hearing more and more about those nasty, not-to-be-trusted, culture-chasing, apostate Emergents within the Southern Baptist Convention.  It is no hidden fact that I am and have been for the past year a part of our local Tulsa Emergent Cohort.  It is, in fact, a diverse group.  In the course of the past year there have been all of five local Southern Baptists who have attended one of our discussion times.  One has not been back for at least six months.  Two others are relatively new.  All but one are in traditional Southern Baptist churches and none have publicly professed their disbelief in the cardinal doctrines of the church.  One is involved extensively in overseas missions.

I’m quite certain that there are some things said in our meetings that might give a few the jitters.  But I’ve also been to the Emergent Gathering in New Mexico.  I was one of three or four Southern Baptists there.  One of the others was my brother Todd and another was Chris Seay - if he still claims to be either Southern Baptist or Emergent.  At any rate, I think it would be difficult to prove him to be a heretic.

Yet I keep reading about these dangerous Southern Baptist Emergents.  Malcolm Yarnell has called them "culture-chasers" (nevermind the non-emergent Southern Baptists who are doing church the Nickalodeon way or are giving away iPods and Hummers.  I would be interested to know what Dr. Yarnell believes they are chasing).  A site called Apprising Ministries claims that Dr. Walter Martin spoke against Southern Baptist Emergents, though reading the article I never saw Dr. Martin mention Southern Baptists at all and the author of the article never named one Southern Baptist Emergent. (It would be enough for most to know that the above mentioned post appeared over on the Slice of Laodicea.  ‘Nuf said.)  I’ve also seen The Right Honorable Rev. Senior Pastor Jeremy L. Green post about Southern Baptist Emergents.  But I come away from all of these with the feeling that I’ve been taken on a Snipe hunt.

I guess some need a boogey man to fight against so they can prove the purity of their cause.  To me it’s all pretty silly and seems to endanger their credibility.  But hey, maybe I’m one of "the dangerous ones."  At least Dan Paden seems to think so.

Late To The Game, I Am

I confess.  I may well be the only person my age who had never seen any of the Star Wars movies.  Nary a one.  The Star Wars geeks aficionados in high school were a little….uh…."different," not unlike who you’d expect to find at a Star Trek convention.

However, a while back my son got the Lego Star Wars for Gamecube and every time he gets stuck he calls me in for help.  Well, we’d pretty much defeated that one when he got Lego Star Wars II for Christmas.

This past week he came down with a cold - and we had our Apocalyptic Ice Storm, which meant being cooped up in the house most of the time.  Which meant watching lots of movies.  And since he was sick we let him pick out a movie just for him.  He chose Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (needless to say I had no idea what a "Sith" was).  Well, the longer the Apocalypse hung around the more inevitable it was that we’d see more Star Wars movies.

I can now say that I have seen all of them but the first two.  The odd thing about watching them in the order in which we did (starting with III, then in consecutive order) is that there was a significant cheese factor going from Episode III to Episode IV getting only slightly better through V and VI (Billy Dee Williams’ hair has almost come back in style and the Storm Troopers didn’t look quite so obviously plastic in the latter movies - though it was odd watching all of the Muppets in Episode VI.  I just knew Ms. Piggy would appear as the wife of Jabba the Hut at any moment).

At any rate, it is clear that Yoda is the best actor in the whole series and he looks much less like a hand puppet in the most recent Episodes (though sadly the same can’t be said of Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher).

Cabin Fever, Arrrrgh!

Much of Oklahoma exists under a thick sheet of ice for now going on a week.  I guess we should have listened to the weathermen who said that a frozen Apocalypse was near.  This much I know.  Being cooped up in a house with five children for six (going on seven) days can be quite the "experience."

As I watch the news I await Pat Robertson’s pronouncement that the judgment of God has come upon Oklahoma for our casinos, allowing refuge to the likes of Wade Burleson, the existence of the Habana Inn (residents around OKC will know what I mean), the Merle Haggard concert at ORU’s Maybee Center and other general wickedness.  I had to get out and go to Stuff-Mart yesterday and noticed a flyer advertising survival classes which will be taught by Ted Nugent.

More snow’s on the way and should be here Saturday and Sunday.  Yipee.

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