The Wisdom That Leads to Salvation

Paul's words in 2 Timothy 3 are important ones. We can aptly summarize the period in Southern Baptist life from 1979 through 2000 as a wrangling with the truth of 2 Timothy 3:16. All Scripture is indeed inspired by God and consequently is inerrant. Our convention is healthier for having affirmed that truth, which is still under attack from elements within the SBC.

As important as verse 16 is, verse 15 is also very important. Therein Paul reminds Timothy of how the young Christian first came into the faith—through the operation of the Bible in his life. The Scriptures, Paul flatly states, "are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation." This powerful truth does not only pertain to Westerners or those who grow up in a "Bible" culture; it is true for all people. The wisdom that leads to salvation does not come from the Qur'an, the Bhagavad Gita, or the Tao Te Ching; it comes from the Bible. Nor does the Bible require the help of any other writing to lead people to salvation.

A cogent illustration of this truth comes in the story of Christianity in the Korean Peninsula. The latest post on the ACB blog tells the amazing story of Christ's work in Korea. The history of that movement has been of interest to me for several years. Journey over to the ACB blog and enjoy Mike Morris's excellent paper (OK, the length restrictions over there make it something of a paper-ette).

In Pursuit of Biblical Literacy, Part Two

If I bring my children to your church every Sunday and Wednesday from birth until they leave home for college, what specifically ought they to know when they leave? And when I say "specifically," I mean items so specific that you could develop a standardized test (not that we ever would) with precise questions regarding items that you meant to teach.

I think that's a pretty important question. In my mind, it raises several other thought-provoking points to ponder, so I'll pass them along to you in the hopes of launching a conversation:

1. Whose job is it to ask this question? For many years I operated on the assumption that I didn't have to ask this question because somebody, somewhere in Nashville was asking and answering that question on my behalf. All I have to know is that I'm purchasing Lifeway literature, right?

   But now I'm convinced that it is my job as pastor to ask and to answer that question. It isn't Lifeway's fault that I had that false impression before—Lifeway's own mission statement clearly states their role as a helper to churches, not as some sort of vicar for designing and implementing our discipleship responsibilities as a church. It is my job to know what our church is trying to teach and Lifeway's job to provide biblical solutions to help me lead our church to accomplish our goals.

   The sort of thoughts that I posted in the first post of this series have arisen in my mind because I've been thinking more and more about the question at the top of this post and relying less and less upon other people to do this thinking for me.

2. How, specifically, does the work of the church dovetail with the work of parents and school in discipleship of children? As big a fan of church as I am, all of my "train up a child" eggs are not in the church-program basket. Most of them aren't there. My children are receiving deliberate biblical and devotional education at home. I regard such things as Sunday School and AWANA or TeamKid or Upward as resources in this overall task.

   But we have kids here whose parents are lost. And I'm not sure that we can assume that every family attending here has any sort of deliberate spiritual education ongoing for their children. How does the program of spiritual equipping in our church programming dovetail with home, or at least, how ought we to plan for it to interact with things going on at home as a basis for our church planning?

   Tracy and I are homeschooling. We have a lot of homeschooling families in our congregation. We have a lot of children in private Christian schooling in our congregation. We have a lot of children in our congregation who attend public schools. Each of these methodologies takes a slightly different approach toward spiritual education.

   And church programs do interact with a child's schooling. It may be as subtle as the fact that we start to presume at some point that the students in the classroom are able to read. One factor that impacts the design of most youth ministries is that assumption that youth are facing a barrage of temptations facilitated by their schoolday interactions. When you start to have a significant number of students who are studying the Bible in a structured daily curriculum, that impacts what you can expect of students in Sunday activities.

   So, when I ask myself what students ought to know when they go off to college, how much of that is the church supposed to accomplish, how much of it are the parents supposed to accomplish at home (ideally), and how much of that ought students to pick up in their formal education (however it is accomplished)? And how can the church communicate with these other institutions so that each of us knows what we're trying to accomplish?

3. Is attendance a large enough goal for discipleship? I don't think so. But I confess that it is easy to obsess over attendance. When our Sunday School directors meet to evaluate our Sunday School, we largely evaluate it on the basis of attendance. Johnny Hunt's poignant sermon at the Pastor's Conference in Indianapolis described a crisis in his own pastorate and his church over the fact that their attendance experienced a slight decline.

   But once we get those people to come, what are we doing with them? Do we know? Are we doing a good job at it? What's our goal? The question at the top of this post points in the direction of these other questions, and leads us not to stop looking at attendance, but to see attendance as something more important than a means toward self-aggrandizement—these are the people taking part in this marvelous journey of discipleship to which Christ has called us, which we have embraced, and which we are tackling in these specific ways.

4. Since we don't test, how can we measure our performance? Our state employs standardized testing not only to measure the performance of students but also to measure the performance of teachers and schools. Debate exists in the public schools as to whether this is the best way to evaluate teachers and schools. What about at church? Are we going to ask ourselves whether we're doing a good job? And if we will, how will we answer that question? And I mean not just the questions of whether this teacher is well-prepared, interacts well with parents and students, is doctrinally sound, shows up dependably, and all of the other things that we must watch and measure. Eventually, we have to ask the big question—is it all getting through to the students like we hoped it would?

5. What about those who show up in the middle of the process? Remediation is a big factor in determining a church's goals for spiritual education. How big of a factor ought it to be? Ought the church's programming to be "dumbed down" and designed especially for novices to the detriment of those I mentioned at the top of the post, whose children will be here weekly throughout their childhood? On the other hand, if your faithful core are going to be effective witnesses, isn't it going to discourage the fourteen-year-old friend whom they lead to Christ when that new convert perceives that he's in a decade-plus deficit that will take him years to overcome? Does he go into a different track? Or can the church achieve something of the ideal of the one-room schoolhouse, where we all mingle at different stages along the way, interacting with and helping one another? I think we can—that sounds pretty biblical to me. But it affects the way that we design discipleship, doesn't it?

I confess that I come to these questions with opinions the prejudice me. I found a great deal of my childhood at church to be unduly repetitive and boring. It seems to me that, since then, we've accommodated by adding glitz rather than substance. There are things that I didn't learn until Ph.D. studies that I think I could have (and should have) learned in Junior High. The Southern Baptist Texan published a special report two years ago on Biblical Literacy, and I am convinced that our efforts in biblical education for the past few decades leave room for improvement, not in sincerity or in the dedication of those involved, but in effectiveness.

And now I'm curious to hear from you. To get the conversation started, I pose a few pointed questions to guide our comments:

1. Does your local church have a detailed goal that defines what you're trying to teach and accomplish in the lives of students?
2. How does your church evaluate its progress in discipling students?
3. If you are a parent, what part do you see church programs playing among the other resources contributing to the spiritual development of your children?
4. How easy or hard do you think it is for new believers to "catch up" with more mature believers in your children's and youth programming?

UPDATE: My VBS-related workload has increased toward the end of this week. I may not get to participate much in the discussion, but I'm confident that you all can carry on well without me until I get back to it.

In Pursuit of Biblical Literacy, Part One

At the tender age of five and with lunchbox in hand, I walked across town to attend Kindergarten at Lake City Public Schools (our mascot was the Catfish!). There I was blessed with a wonderful teacher, Mrs. Norma Stotts. To this day all of my class members look back and remember Mrs. Stotts's class with fondness. The next year I was once again blessed to be under the tutelage of Mrs. Betty Owens, the wife of our superintendent. My mom's careful encouragement at home had me already reading the newspaper (somewhat) before showing up at Kindergarten, and by the time I left the First Grade, I was doing great at the three Rs.

Looking back, I realize that two factors contributed greatly to the excellence of these two ladies and many others like them in the teaching profession. First, they were passionately committed to their callings. Second, they had the opportunity to teach the same material year after year and to hone their proficiency in the subject matter to razor-sharpness.

1. In elementary school, teachers teach the same lessons year-after-year, refining them as time goes by to achieve excellent specialization in teaching that material.
2. In high school, teachers teach the same lessons year-after-year.
3. In college, professors specialize in a field of study and teach the same lessons year-after-year.
4. In flight training, flight instructors generally teach the same lessons to beginning students time-after-time.
5. In professional schools, instructors teach the same lessons year-after-year.
6. Indeed, in virtually every setting where people take education seriously, a fixed scope and sequence of curriculum enables teachers to specialize in teaching specific lessons year-after-year.

So why don't our Sunday Schools work that way?

If the Second-Grade Sunday School curriculum involved precisely the same lessons on the same weeks year-after-year, couldn't teachers achieve mastery of teaching those particular Bible stories? Couldn't the church invest in just the right books, manipulatives, and other materials to teach just those lessons, making capital expenditures toward the fixed curriculum of the class? Wouldn't service as an assistant in that particular class for a couple of years constitute a much better preparation for teaching the class on one's own?

Is there any advantage to a random rotation through Bible stories with new curriculum every year? I mean, of course, other than the fact that you get to sell new curriculum every year?

I don't have any degrees in education, religious or otherwise, so I'm sincerely asking questions. If we're serious about making biblically literate disciples, is our current method, which seems to depart so markedly from other educational systems around us, a good one?

The Storykeepers

Heard recently around the Barber household.

Bart:	Now I've got you, Tacticus, and I'm going to take you back to Nero!
Jim:	O no you won't, you mean old Nihilus. I'm going to knock you down with my sword. We will go to Shamadar and you will not catch us!

A battle generally ensues.

Welcome to the wonderful world of The StoryKeepers. In my opinion, the production of substantive, biblically faithful, high-quality, age-appropriate Christian edutainment is a compelling need. This series meets that need and does so in a manner that delights both the pastor and the historian within me.

The Frame Story

Ben, a rotund Roman baker, is the "storykeeper"; that is, he is the pastor of a Christian congregation in Rome around 64 A.D. Ben and his wife Helena have learned the stories of the life of Christ, and it is their duty to transmit them to the remainder of the congregation. Nero is hot on their trail, primarily through the agency of Praetorian thug Nihilus. The Christian community includes a number of displaced children who live with Ben and Helena, as well as converted Praetorian Guard Tacticus. Together, they are all fleeing Nero's wrath and seeking peace outside the Roman Empire in the Iranian city of Shamadar. Fierce battles (no Christian ever kills anyone), catacomb cave-ins, prison breaks on the eve of becoming Purina Lion Chow, and desperate escapes from the infamous Roman conflagration make the frame story one of gripping drama. I think you can tell, my four-year-old is not the only one in the household who enjoys it. The drama is not the only draw for me. I'm thrilled that my children are learning part of the story of Apostolic Christianity (after all, if you've learned about the Apostolic Church, you've learned something about being Baptist). I don't know about Ben and Helena, but I do know that our spiritual forefathers suffered persecution under Nero for their unswerving faith. I can't imagine anything but good coming from my children knowing about that. By the way, Ben is the official "imperial baker" in the story. The authors have apparently read the apocryphal suggestion (I can trace it as far back as Theodore Metochites, but I do not offer myself as an expert regarding this story) that Paul had been imprisoned by Nero for playing a role in the conversion of Nero's baker and one of Nero's consorts.

The Main Plots

Along the way, at contextually-appropriate moments, these early Christians (primarily Ben) tell stories from the gospels. Sometimes they retell Jesus' parables. Often they recount events from the life of Christ. The stories are theologically robust and gospel-centered (from what I've seen so far). The great thing about this structure is that the frame story strengthens the telling of the gospel. The story of the gospel becomes not just another tale—these are stories that have changed the lives of Roman Christians. They are valuable stories for which people risk their lives. People come to faith in Christ in these stories. I highly recommend that you check out The Storykeepers. The link at the top of this article is one place to start.

The Best Resolution from SBTC

On the Sufficiency of the Word of God for the Entire Christian Life

WHEREAS, the Word of God is the divinely inspired revelation of God (2 Tim. 3:16), holy men having been moved by the Holy Spirit to speak the Word of God and write the Bible (2 Pet. 1:19-21); and

WHEREAS, the Word of God accomplishes the purposes for which the all-wise God sends it (Isa. 55:8-11), being a living, active, searching, and judging instrument of God (Heb. 4:11-13); and

WHEREAS, the Word of God converts souls, makes wise, rejoices hearts, and enlightens eyes (Ps. 19:7-8); moreover, it endures forever, is altogether true and righteous, and is to be desired above all things (Ps. 19:9-10); and

WHEREAS, the Word of God brings warning against human sin and reveals eternal reward (Ps. 19:11-12), having the ability to make one wise unto salvation (2 Tim. 3:15), through the instrument of preaching and its reception by faith (Rom. 10:14, 17); and the Word approaches the human heart and mouth through preaching and must itself be internally believed and externally confessed for human salvation (Rom. 10:8-10); and

WHEREAS, the Word of God is the only source of wisdom and knowledge that is eternal (Isa. 40:6-8), that is profitable for teaching, reproving, correcting, and instructing in righteousness (2 Tim. 3:16), and that is able to bring completion to pious people, thoroughly equipping them for every work that is good (2 Tim. 3:17); and

WHEREAS, all human forms of wisdom and knowledge are temporary and thus ultimately lack relevance (Isa. 40:6-7), are corrupted by sin and thus utterly lack righteousness (Isa. 55:6-7), and are severely limited and thus are unable to redeem (Isa.55:8-9); now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the messengers to the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention meeting in Austin, Texas, November 13-14, 2006, call upon Southern Baptists to remember that the Word of God alone is relevant, and that the Word of God establishes the standards by which all forms of human wisdom and knowledge and all aspects of human culture and activity must be judged; and be it further

RESOLVED, That the we call upon Southern Baptists to remember that the Word of God alone is righteous, and that fallen human beings lack righteousness; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we encourage Southern Baptists to remember that the Word of God alone is able to redeem sinful human beings, and that they may look nowhere else than to the Bible for the source of redemption; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we encourage every Christian home to place the Word of God at the center of its life through daily family worship, private devotions, and personal memorization; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we encourage every church, every pastor, every Sunday School teacher, and other church leaders to keep the Word of God central in worship, proclamation, discipleship, evangelism, and in any and all methodologies adopted for these ends; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we encourage every missionary and every missionary board to keep the Word of God central in worship, proclamation, discipleship, and evangelism, and in any and all methodologies adopted for these ends; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we encourage every Southern Baptist educational institution, including home schools, schools, colleges, universities, and seminaries, to make the Word of God central to their educational goals, entire educational curriculum, and every course’s content; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we encourage every Southern Baptist engaged in secular education, including public elementary schools, high schools, technical schools, colleges, and universities to present the Word of God constantly, consistently, and compellingly to the lost people with whom they are engaged; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we encourage every Southern Baptist engaged in secular commerce, whether as an employer or employee or as a seller or buyer of goods or as a provider or recipient of services, to present the Word of God constantly, consistently, and compellingly to the lost people with whom they are engaged; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we encourage every Christian voter and every Christian magistrate to make their decisions with regard to the making, execution, and judgment of laws based upon and under the authority of the Word of God, and therefore with the highest regard for universal religious liberty; and be it finally

RESOLVED, In summary, that the totality of the Christian life, corporately and individually, in the family, in the church, and in the broader society, must be based upon, focused upon, and have as its goal the proclamation of, the Word of God.