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The Kingdom of God and the Church: A Baptist Reappraisal
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Some Baptists are debating right now whether or not our church rolls ought to contain the names only of those who are actually worshippers of the Lord Jesus. Some see this as a minor issue, one we ought to avoid so that we can get back to "Kingdom business."
But what if our church membership rosters have everything to do with the business of the Kingdom?
The Kingdom of God is everywhere across the pages of the Bible. Some of us would even argue that God's establishment of the Kingdom of Christ is the central theme of the Scripture itself. So why sometimes do Baptists act as though the Kingdom is a denominational program or an individual devotional exercise rather than as the invasion force forming the church itself?
My friend Robert Sagers and I have written an article together on the ways in which Kingdom theology informs a Baptist understanding of the church, and vice-versa. We think our vision of the Kingdom of God has much to do with some of our contemporary debates over worship, the ordinances, preaching, and regenerate church membership.
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Southern Baptist Sexual Revolutionaries
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Southern Baptists like to think of ourselves as evangelistic, but we're not as evangelistic as we think we are. Southern Baptists like to think of ourselves as massive in numbers, but we're not as big as we claim we are. Southern Baptists like to think of ourselves as standing boldly against the culture for family values, but we're not the culture warriors we pretend we are.
What if Southern Baptists are just slow-train sexual revolutionaries?
The forthcoming issue of the Southwestern Journal of Theology contains an article I wrote, entitled "Southern Baptist Sexual Revolutionaries: Cultural Accomodation, Spiritual Conflict, and the Baptist Vision of the Family," that explores this question. The journal is dated Fall 2006 because the serial is catching up on its volume sequence, but it will be released this Spring. In the meantime, you can access this article here.
The central point of the article is that Southern Baptists accomodate ourselves quite easily to the ambient culture's redefinitions of the family, just twenty or thirty years behind everybody else. We rail against a decadent culture, but only those aspects of the culture that we haven't yet adopted. Just look at the difference between the way we speak of gender reassignment surgery versus the way we speak of divorce. Could it be that the difference between the two modes of discourse is because we have fewer transgendered deacons and Sunday school teachers than divorced ones? Or, worse, could it be because divorce now seems "normal" to us?
There are several ways we've adapted to the culture mentioned in the article, but the most tragic and burdensome in my view is divorce. This is, I firmly believe, the most significant theological issue facing Southern Baptists right now.
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Serpent-Sensitive Worship
Saturday, April 26, 2008
About ten years ago now, I was impressed by a "seeker-sensitive" worship service at Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago. That morning's service featured an "open mic" question and answer opportunity for those gathered to direct queries at a panel of pastors and church leaders. I will never forget being surprised that the questions were not at all representative of the kind of stereotype many had of the congregants there at Willow Creek. They were not asking about superficial "life principles," but instead were asking real and pressing questions about theology and discipleship.
One question, particularly, weighed on my mind. I don't know if the questioner was a believer or a seeker, but she asked about the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden. "If God knew that Eve would be deceived," she asked, "then why did he let the Serpent into the Garden?" The panelists responded with an appeal to the free will of Adam and Eve and God's refusal to coerce them into obedience.
The woman clarified her question to make clear that she wasn't questioning the free will of the primeval pair. Why though, she wanted to know, did God allow the snake to go in to the Garden, if God knew what would result? I remember thinking that her question was perceptive and sophisticated. After all, it would not violate the man and the woman's freedom for God to place a "force field" around the Garden, preventing the old Dragon from ever offering them the tree. Isn't that what we pray: "Lead us not into temptation; deliver us from the Evil One"?
I thought about that lady, and her question, this week. Willow Creek hosted a conference on youth ministry, and featured author Brian McLaren as a speaker. At the conference, McLaren called on his hearers to rethink some doctrines of the faith, to decrease their focus on eternity in favor of social justice in the here and now.
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In Cod They Trust?
Monday, April 14, 2008
You may never have seen Adam Dorsey, but chances are you've heard him. Adam was a country music songwriter with a successful career in the industry. He penned the words to the song, "That's What I Love about Sundays," a chart-topping song recorded by Craig Morgan. Adam left his musical career behind him when he followed a call to ministry here in the School of Theology at Southern Seminary.
Or so he thought.
Adam and I had a lot to talk about, given my lifelong love for country music. He once sheepishly approached me after class to say that he had attended a Country Music Association awards show in Nashville, and that his primary goal was to get an personalized autograph for his Dean from one of the artists whose music I love: Charley Pride, maybe, or George Jones, or Loretta Lynn.
Adam was embarrassed to say that the only musician he could get close enough to was a newcomer to the world of Hank and Willie. Adam handed me the autograph, which reads, "To Dr. Moore, Livin' on a Prayer, Jon Bon Jovi." I was shot through the heart. And Adam demonstrated that maybe his days of influence on Music Row were coming to an end.
Since then, though, Adam's found a new kind of influence. Not long ago Adam and his family moved to Newfoundland in Canada to plant a new Baptist congregation there. This economically-distressed part of Canada could not seem more distant from the sequins and lights of the Grand Ole Opry.
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You're a Lost Soul, Charlie Brown
Monday, April 07, 2008
Very early in my ministry, I found myself in a bitterly divided congregation. I saw things I wished I'd never seen and heard things I wished I'd never heard. More depressingly, I thought things I wish I'd never thought.
Finally, I did the best thing I knew to do for my family and for me, and resigned my position. While the church voted to accept my resignation, I sat at home wondering if I really wanted to serve in church ministry--or even to go to church--knowing what I knew about human depravity. I turned on the television for some background noise to quiet my mind, to see the opening credits of A Charlie Brown Christmas.
As a child of the 1970s, I had seen this thing a thousand times, with all of its maudlin sentimentalism about commercialism and the "real meaning of Christmas." But then the cartoon figure of Linus, dressed as a shepherd complete with blanket headdress, recited Luke 2, a text I had heard thousands of times before. This time was different, though, and I wept violently, shaking in the chair.
"And the glory of the Lord shown round about them, and they were sore afraid." The gospel was true, and it was beautiful, and nothing else mattered.
I thought about that television special as I opened the cover of the promised definitive biography of Charles M. Schulz, the creator of the Peanuts comic strip. It appears that the Charlie Brown Christmas special plays a revealing role in the Schulz story--a story that should speak sadly to any Christian, whether or not he has ever opened the Sunday funny pages.
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Beyond the Burning in the Bosom: Why Mormonism Spreads
Friday, April 04, 2008
Evangelicals often wonder why Mormons believe such an incredible system: golden tablets translated with "magic glasses," an advanced society of ancient American Indian Israelites who left behind no archaeological evidence at all, a "revelation" of polygamy that was reversed when Utah needed to do so for statehood, a "revelation" barring black Mormons from the priesthood that was reversed after the triumph of the civil rights movement, an eternity of godhood producing spirit babies, and special protective underwear.
What we must understand is that Latter-day Saints (LDS) believe these things for the same reason that people everywhere believe the things they do: they want to believe them. Very few Mormon converts become convinced by rational arguments of the prophetic office of Joseph Smith. Indeed, Mormon missionaries don't ask one to do so; instead relying on a "burning in the bosom" that the claims of Smith are true.
To understand the draw of Mormonism, evangelicals should read the works of Latter-day Saints who explain why they love their religion.
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