Blog Archive
for February, 2008
Theology Bleeds: Great Commission Emphasis
— Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 —
Below is a copy of a memo that I sent out to all of our students and faculty here in the School of Theology at The Southern Baptist Thelogical Seminary about our Theology Bleeds Great Commission emphasis. Next week I will be posting a five-part series on a theology of the Great Commission.
I’m concerned about something, and I’d like to ask you to join me in prayer and action about it.
It seems to me that too many of our churches–and too many of us–think of the Great Commission as little more than Jesus’ way of promoting a Christmas offering or of marketing an evangelistic video series.
Too many theologians–even pastor-theologians–tend sometimes to ignore the Great Commission. After all, isn’t it a “practical” exhortation, better left to denominational bureaucrats and women’s missionary auxiliary leaders? At the same time, too many missionaries and evangelists tend to ignore theology. After all, what does abstract theorizing have to do with Jesus’ ultimate church-wide missions emphasis–the Great Commission?
As a result, we are left with theologians who lust more for recognition by the American Academy of Religion than for the global expansion of the gospel. And far too many missionaries, evangelists, and church planters see themselves as the ecclesial equivalent of the civil service–organizing initiatives and promoting programs.
The problem, whenever the Great Commission is taken for granted, is the eclipse of Jesus.
Keep Reading...Is Elmer Gantry Knocking at the Door of Your Heart?
— Monday, February 25th, 2008 —
If National Public Radio wanted you to explain the difference between a Christian and a charlatan, what would you say?
My assistant Robbie Sagers and intern Phillip Bethancourt, along with their fellow Southern Seminary student Jenny Clark, had the opportunity to do just that tonight on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” And all three took the opportunity to point the listening audience to the Gospel.
The segment, part of an ongoing series examining fictional characters in American culture, looked at the shady title character of Sinclair Lewis’ Elmer Gantry.
Sagers told host Noah Adams that Christian ministry is about more than charisma or speaking ability or knowledge of Scripture. There are people in hell who have books of Scripture memorized, he said. Instead, the difference between salvation and doom is knowing Christ.
Bethancourt noted that there’s no such thing among us, ultimately, as a non-hypocrite. “There’s an Elmer Gantry in each of our hearts,” he said, affirming that all of us are sinners in need of a Savior.
Keep Reading...Pastoral Leadership and the Gender Issue: What Does Courage Look Like?
— Thursday, February 21st, 2008 —
The problem with preaching on manhood and womanhood in most evangelical churches is that it is simply not being done. Sure, pastors will preach on “gender” occasionally, including on male headship and on female submission, but it is done in an abstract, vague manner that doesn’t hit at the cosmic seriousness of this issue. Abstraction cannot replace the avalanche of cultural influences toward feminism on the one hand and a predatory form of pagan patriarchy on the other.
A pastor must be willing to lose his pulpit in order to save it. He cannot simply denounce the same “culture war” opponents that might be demonized by Fox News. He must talk about issues that will be sensitive to people in his own congregation–a dating culture that by its very definition anticipates fornication, the outsourcing of parenting to daycare “professionals” in order to carry out dual-income households, and so forth. A pastor who addresses such issues will find some hostility, but he will also find Christians–and seeking lost people–who are willing to give him a hearing because of his honesty and conviction.
This means, first of all, that complementarian pastors must give up on the notion that one can be comfortably anonymous in the ambient culture and still hold to biblical ideas of manhood and womanhood.
Keep Reading...EPPC on Election ‘08
— Sunday, February 17th, 2008 —
The Ethics and Public Policy Center offers several thought-provoking essays on election 2008. Yuval Levin writes a piece, originally published in National Review, on Sen. John McCain as an “honor politician,” a breed of politico not quite “conservative” in a traditional sense but that’s not necessarilly, in Levin’s view, an entirely bad thing. Levin concludes: “Conservatives should view McCain not as a hostile force, but as a foreign and unfamiliar presence, bearing real potential as well as real risk.”
Even more interesting is Christine Rosen’s article on gender politics and the campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton. Clinton offers the worst of American feminism, without its more positive claims. Rosen writes:
Keep Reading...The political has always been personal for Hillary. It is this eerily seamless merging of the two that leaves some voters unsettled and others impressed with her discipline. In the final primary debate in Los Angeles, she avoided answering a question about her husband’s role in the campaign by saying, “I have made it very clear that I want the campaign to stay focused on the issues that I’m concerned about, the kind of future that I want for our country, the work that I have done for all of these years. And that is what the campaign is about.” Hillary’s choice of language is noteworthy: she talks about “the kind of future I want for our country” rather than what the country needs. This is the language of paternalism, and just as “paternalistic” has become a pejorative term in political parlance, so too, might Hillary’s unique brand of maternalism - a stern and instrumental, mommy-knows-best progressivism that has at least had the effect of irrevocably undermining the tenets of difference feminism.
Please Pray for President Mohler
— Thursday, February 14th, 2008 —
LOUISVILLE, Ky.–R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, will require additional surgery after a scheduled colonoscopy Feb. 11 revealed a tumor in his colon. An initial biopsy indicated that the tumor is pre-cancerous and further tests are to be scheduled, along with surgical options.
The surgery will require that he forego nomination as president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Mohler said.
Mohler, 48, underwent major abdominal surgery in late December 2006, complicated by the development of bilateral blood clots in his lungs. Doctors will take special precautions to prevent a recurrence of the blood clots with this new surgery. Specialists are consulting on the case and a decision on the date and location for the surgery is to be made in the near future. The procedure is likely to require an extensive period for recuperation and recovery.
Mohler said the time of recuperation would necessarily alter some of his plans as he gives first priority to his health and his family.
Keep Reading...What Hath Jerusalem to Do with Jerusalem? Evangelical Politics and the Future of Israel
— Thursday, February 7th, 2008 —
What do your prophecy charts have to do with your election ballots? What do the maps at the back of my Bible have to do with U.S. foreign policy? Do I have to be a dispensationalist to support Israel? Do the promises to Abraham apply to Jesus, to me, to a state in the Middle East…or to some combination thereof?
These are the questions I examine in an article, “From the House of Jacob to the Iowa Caucuses: The Future of Israel in Contemporary Evangelical Political Ethics,” in the newest issue of the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology.
The article can be accessed here, and the table of contents of the current issue, on the theme of “Church and State” can be accessed here.
The SBJT, edited by Southern Baptist theologian Stephen J. Wellum, is an excellent resource for pastors and church leaders. This issue includes articles by Richard Land, Barrett Duke, Mark Coppenger, Ken Magnuson, and Jim Hamilton, among several others. You can (and should!) subscribe here.
Keep Reading...
