Conversational Sclerosis

Sclerosis.  From the Greek skleros, "to harden."  What to do when conversations and conversationalists become hardened.

Rick Davis has a good post over at aintsobad about how to combat conversational sclerosis.  Our denomination needs to hear it.  Our churches need to hear it.  Our relationships  need it.  I need to hear it.

And The Winner Is….

This was a very difficult decision.  I want to give the Heretic’s Guide To Eternity to Alan because every time I think of his comment I laugh out loud.  The thought of Alan and Roger Moran being in a book reading group together is just too funny (Matt on American Idol made me laugh more than once also. No offense, Matt!).  And I do believe Alan would read the book.  I feel a bit of obligation to send it to Kevin S. because he sent me a free book a while back.  But in the end I said that I would give the book away based on two things: creativity of the comment and my sense that the person might actually want to read it.  Therefore, I’m going to give the book to Dino.  I expected funny.  I did not expect a bribe. ;)  And I know Dino will read it.  Dino, e-mail me your address and I’ll get it in the mail to you.

By the way, the book giveaway will likely become an occasional thing around here at CITM.  I’ve almost finished Patty Kirk’s Confessions of an Amateur Believer and when I’m done I will put that one up for grabs next.  I have not marked in it and I treat books like babies, so it’s in perfect condition.  I’ll let you know when that giveaway will begin - probably next week.

Do Mega-Churches Suck?

I’m a little late getting to this, but my friend Wade Hodges has co-written an article for Leadership Journal that tells the story of the ongoing transition of the church he pastors, the Garnett Road Church of Christ in Tulsa.  It’s an interesting read.  When you’re done with the article you might want to check out the comments he received about it on his blog.  You might also want to check out the follow-up post here.

Later today I’ll post the happy winner of the Heretic’s Guide.

Happy Birthday To Me

Three years ago today, February 26, 2004, I entered the world of blogdom.  It all started as a hastily-put-together Blogger blog which I moved to TypePad last April.

I want to thank everyone who has made this milestone possible.  First, thanks to my brother Todd who got me interested in the blogging revolution.  Thanks also to so many creative thinkers who have regularly given me some really good stuff to which I could link - like John Frye, Scot McKnight and Michael Bird who consistently make me think and challenge me.  Thanks to so many of my fellow Southern Baptists who seem to regularly do and say things so outrageous, or goofy, and sometimes even profound, that has given me great fodder for my little home of electronic graffiti.

Thanks to my readers, and especially my commentors who challenge my assumptions and occasionally agree with me.

But thanks most of all to Ed Stetzer.  Until I started taking Ed’s name in vain around here I floundered along with six or seven readers.  Now my site hits have gone crazy wild with literally thousands of hits per day, no more than 990 of those hits officially coming from a NAMB server.

You, Too, Can Be A Heretic

In my review of Spencer Burke’s book Heretic’s Guide To Eternity I mentioned that Spencer gave me a signed copy (thanks, Spencer!  I love me some free books!).  Well, as one of the coordinators for our local Emergent Cohort I was given a free copy from Emergent US as well.  I’m not giving you the one Spencer signed for me (and that I’ve underlined), but I have an untainted copy that I thought I’d give away to one of my loyal (or not-so-loyal) readers.

Here are the rules:
Leave a comment telling me why you think I should send you this book.  I’ll judge the comments based on the creativity of the comment and my sense that you actually want to read this book, not warm yourself by its fire.

I’ll pick up the postage, so this is totally free to you.  Be sure to leave your comment by Monday, Feb.  26th.

Screaeaeach!!

[That’s me, putting on the breaks.]

We interrupt the regularly scheduled program to bring you this important message. 

There’s nothing that gets the questions genin’ like a post on the rapture.  Some have kept their questions/comments off-line, which is perfectly ok by me.  Let me pause for a moment to say a little something about what I do believe about the return of Christ.

First, I’m not a full preterist.  A full preterist believes that everything written about the coming of Christ has already occurred, including, well, his coming.  In that case, his coming was a coming in judgment on Israel, Jerusalem and the Temple which found historical fulfillment in 70 A.D.  Revelation is about the early church and the Roman Empire.  End of story, pretty much.  [If someone Googles their way here who is a full preterist and wants to clarify/fill in details/correct my little summary feel welcome to do so.]  I’m not a full preterist, but I don’t want to misrepresent anyone, either.

Second, I do believe Jesus will return, bodily, to the earth.  I simply don’t believe he will return a third time after that.  I don’t believe either the Old Testament or the New is able to sustain the idea of a second coming (rapture) and a third coming.  He will come again, then the end (1 Cor. 15:22ff, esp. vv. 23-24).

I’ve written some more detailed thoughts at my other, woefully neglected blog here.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Rapture Ready

As you know I occasionally take it upon myself to update my readers on the current status of the Rapture Index.  Bad news.  It’s at 163 which is the highest it’s been since at least 2004 and already equals the high for 2006.  If those danged Democrats hadn’t taken over congress we might very well be sitting at a more comfortable 145 or so.

Of course, I was checking the Rapture Index out because I’m preaching through Matthew 24 right now and since there is no such thing as the rapture I was looking for a little something to make me smile to start the day.  I rather like Ben Witherington’s statement on the rapture (HT: Michael Bird):

Since the rapture is not a Biblical doctrine at all but rather something dreamed up by a teenage girl in about 1820 at a revival in Glasgow Scotland and then preached by Darby and Moody neither of whom were ever Bible experts, perhaps we had better pay attention and see what a proper Christian response should be to this crisis, especially for the sake of being a good witness.

Ummm.  Am I playing my hand too strongly?  I realize that a Southern Baptist hammering those words out on a keyboard for all to see is a bit like going all-in in Texas hold ‘em with a 2-3 off-suit  [What you don’t know is that I’ve seen the flop and I get three more deuces].

At any rate, I take a fairly strong preterist view, particularly of Matthew 24 (Mark 13, Luke 21).  I was somewhat surprised to see that Craig Blomberg does as well, though he sneaks a little millenarianism in the back door.  And just when he was starting to sound like a good amillennialist, too.

I’m wondering, though….how do you see it?  Do you have any exegetical insights you might share with me before Sunday?  I’ll specifically be looking at verses 15-28.  Here’s your chance to set me straight.

Definitions

<shameless name dropping> Last Thursday I was talking to my "good friend" Ed Stetzer </shameless name dropping> and I mentioned my post from that day on Stetzerification.  And so he says, "What’s ‘Stetzerification?’"  Well…if Ed didn’t get it I figure there may be others who would benefit from further clarification.

If you ever watched Star Trek: The Next Generation then you are familiar with The Borg.  The Borg are a race of cyborgs intent on assimilating as many people as possible.  Well, when I talk about "Stetzerification" I am talking about the process of being assimilated into Ed.  It is to become a part of the missional guru himself.

Now, the Stetzerification process occurs on at least three levels.  Full-blown Stetzerification means that you end up a soft version of Mark Driscoll.  Like, maybe a Baptist Driscoll without all the profanity.  Partial Stetzerification means that you are perhaps more like Andy Stanley - seeker-sensitive with Baptist roots but hopefully on the way to missional.  However, as any system can get a "bug" or "virus" the process can, on occasion go awry.  When someone who is becoming Stetzerified gets a bug then you end up with Joel Osteen.  In that case, pray that they find a vaccination.

I thought an analogy might help in understanding the Stetzerification process, so I thought of another prominent Southern Baptist figure as an analogy, our beloved Dr. Paige Patterson.  The Pattersonification process looks like the following: Full-blown Pattersonification will turn you into Darwin Fish, or one who believes that nearly everyone not particularly in his certain camp is a heretic.  Partial Pattersonification will turn you into Malcolm Yarnell, a bright theologian who has a tendency to condescend toward others and doesn’t really publish much of anything useful to the local church, yet isn’t fully beholden to "the man."  As with the Stetzerification process, Pattersonification can be susceptible to "bugs" as well.  In that case you will end up with e-Cole-I, or one who was trained well by the master but may turn on him; a sort-of Aniken Skywalker who at one point was an innocent young man with good intentions, was turned to the Dark Side, yet who found his own redemption in the end.

Hopefully that helps your understanding.  Let me sign off with a few observations from the Compelling Church Conference in Norman, OK last week and particularly Ed’s fine contribution.  The following are things that Ed definitely did NOT say or do (as in "you can’t blog this!"):

• Ed did NOT cast a demon out of a Texas Longhorn fan (though it is possible that he tried).
• Ed did NOT say that he had an upcoming debate with Ergun Caner.
• Ed did NOT attend his own breakout session wearing a Speedo, despite receiving at least one "cat call" from the room.
• Ed did NOT make fun of me in front of everyone when my cell phone went off.  I’m pretty sure he was serious. [Memo to self: Must figure out "silent mode"]

Finally, here are a couple of pics from the event.

The first pic is of me and Ed prior to Siamese twin separation surgery.  The second is proof that Ed did NOT wear a Speedo to his breakout sessions [that picture was definitely not digitally retouched to add clothes.  No, really.  I promise.]

A Virtue of Being Baptist

Some might expect this to be a very short post. ;)  We’ll see.

It’s been said that Baptists do not have a good reputation.  We tend to be fighters.  Judgmental.  Recently Tom Ascol pointed to a LifeWay study that may challenge that perception somewhat.  I’m certain that a part of the problem with perception surrounding Southern Baptists comes from our size.  In a denomination of 43,000 churches there will certainly be plenty to criticize.  Unless you are new here you’ve had plenty of opportunity to read my own criticisms of the Southern Baptist denomination.  I’ve even been accused by some of being very near the "jumping off" point of Baptist life.  But here I am.  Why?

There are a number of reasons and I don’t intend to go into them all.  Just one, really.  One great virtue of being Baptist is that we are, on the whole, a diverse bunch.  I recognize that there is at least an appearance (and my personal belief is that it is more than just an appearance) that some important segments of Baptist life do not appreciate that diversity and would like to do away with it as much as possible.  That is much of what the present struggles in our denomination are about.

Last week I heard Ed Stetzer lament the reality that we have already run off the seeker-sensitive churches.  Andy Stanley, son of Charles, no longer considers himself a Baptist.  Neither does Ed Young, Jr., the son of Sr., and Rick Warren and Erwin McManus are only hanging on by a thread, if by that.  Who, asks Stetzer, will we run off next?  We already regularly hear negative comments about emergents and Calvinists.  And it is certainly true that there is a strong sentiment within the denomination that positions of influence should not be held by any who are a part of those groups.  Well, that pretty much leaves the traditionalists.

But I’ve never been a Baptist so that I can serve on this board or that.  Jesus didn’t die for a denomination and he didn’t say that the gates of hell would not prevail against the SBC.  Those things are true of the church.  And that is the virtue of the SBC.  Someone in Nashville or Richmond or Ft Worth may not like aspects of what our church stands for, believes or promotes, but they can’t send down an edict forbidding us to be who we are.  Our church is, in many ways, different from other Baptist churches.  We’re somewhat different in our polity.  We are intentionally not closed communionists.  Even within our body we have strident five-point Calvinists and Calvinists of a much lesser degree (perhaps Amyrauldians, or even something closer to Arminians).  I, myself, identify to some degree with the Emergent movement, taking part in our local Tulsa Emergent Cohort (though I’m probably more in the line of a Scot McKnight/Andrew Jones/Bob Hyatt emergent than a Tony Jones/Doug Pagitt one).  And the thing is, the only thing the SBC can do is prevent me from being a part of the bureaucracy.  Darn!

We’re a convention of Justice Sundayers, Memphis Declarers and Joshua Convergers.  We have our cessationists, semi-cessationists, practical cessationists, continualists and even a few charismatics.  We have more than a healthy quota of dispensationalists (not-so-ironically the spell checker suggested "sensationalists" as a substitute for this one) along with historic-pre’s, amillennialists and some who sound terribly close to theonomists.  We have contemporaries and traditionalists, irenic conservatives and neo-fundamentalists.  Many don’t like the diversity.  They may well succeed in doing away with it - and destroying the SBC in the process.  But for now there is a tolerated diversity that allows a particular local church to be a-typical.  We even have a few in our church who thought they’d never be a part of a Southern Baptist church.  Yet they’re here, and we’re better because of it.

I also I believe in mutual accountability.  I need to hear the criticisms, even if I don’t agree with them.  If we were to become flagrantly heretical the SBC could still respond by breaking fellowship with us, and I view that as a good thing.  So, there are still some virtues to being Baptist.  At least for now.

The Biblical Docrtine Of Hair

Several SBC bloggers, not least of all Wade Burleson, have been warning us against the increasing narrowing of cooperation within the Southern Baptist Convention.  There seems to be a growing trend toward neo-fundamentalism.  Could this be where we’re headed?

HT: Gary Snowden

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