Malick Wanted To, But I Wouldn't Let Him

Malick walked right up to me in Senegal and asked to become a Christian. I told him no.

I had met Malick because of his job in low-level government. Several days later he sought me out. Malick explained that he had been born a Muslim but had never actually practiced Islam. A young seeker for truth, he had been exposed to animism, to the Roman Catholic veneer that is thinly-veiled animism in that part of the world, and to several different sects of Islam. Throughout all of his journey, he had never encountered anything that interested him. He had never practiced anything. He had never been an actual adherent of any faith.

And so, he walked up to me that evening and declared, "I've found what I'm looking for. I want to be a follower of this new religion of yours."

But then I asked Malick what new religion that was. He didn't know. I asked him what we were teaching. He didn't know. I asked him what was the difference between us and the Roman Catholics in town—between us and Islam. Malick didn't know.

What Malick knew was this: Americans were in town preaching something, and he wanted in on it.

So, I told Malick about Jesus' parable of counting the cost. I told him the story of the Philippian Jailer. I told him that following Jesus would necessarily mean abandoning Islam, animism, and any other system of belief that is contrary to the gospel in order to follow Jesus alone. I told him that we weren't proclaiming a new religion at all, but that we were simply people reading the Word of God and trying to obey it.

Malick pondered over these things for a while, and then he left.

A couple of days later, I gave Malick a Bible as my last action before leaving the village. He eagerly accepted it, promising to study the scriptures.

I thought about the rich young ruler. I thought about the way that Jesus was comfortable in confronting people who aren't ready to make a real commitment and turning them away. I'm praying for Malick, thankful that I haven't lulled his questions to sleep by indulging him in some knee-jerk, unconsidered, rash action. Next time, he should be ready to say yes or no. Next time, if all goes as I expect, I won't need to hold him back. Next time, maybe we'll kneel together on that little porch and Malick will not only find something new, but will himself be found.

On the Brink of Eternity

It was hot in North Texas yesterday. This morning the weatherman reported that we've exceeded 100° for eleven out of the past twelve days. Yesterday was among the hotter of those days. I think they were forecasting an afternoon high of 104° F.

I was walking toward my car in the church parking lot, on my way to Rotary Club when my wife Tracy rang my cell phone. "Are you in Rotary Club yet?"

"Not yet, but I'm headed that way. What's up?"

"I'm out here East of town on 380, and there are two elderly couples riding together in a car. They've had a flat tire, and it is way too hot for them to be changing a flat tire. Can you round up somebody to help?"

I replied, "I don't need anybody to help with just a flat tire. I'll be out there in a minute."

So I rolled through the Shell station here in town and picked up five bottles of Dasani (I figure I'll be overheated, too, in a few minutes). I made quick work of the three miles or so to the spot on U.S. 380 where the immaculate Cadillac had been sidelined by a blowout.

By that time another young man had pulled over. He had a truck with a toolbox and a "real" jack. Between the two of us, we quickly had the donut spare on the car. I instructed the family to follow me to a tire shop in Farmersville.

A brief conversation revealed that all four were Christians and were active members of their Baptist church back in Longview, Texas. The owner of the Caddy was, in fact, a Cadillac dealer there—thus the new and pristine car they were driving. The foursome declined to share lunch with me at a local establishment (lunch at Rotary club was no longer a possibility for me), anxious to make their way onward toward McKinney and then Plano for a shopping outing. We made our farewells and I went on to clean up and eat.

A few minutes later, a concrete truck struck them in Princeton (the next town up the road). The owner of the car was killed. One of the ladies wound up in a McKinney hospital with a fractured pelvis. A member of our church—a nurse—prayed with them and was encouraging them and ministering to them when they learned that she is a member here. They asked her to call me and let me know.

I preach it, so I ought to know and remember that any person we meet any day might be standing on the brink of eternity. But I forget, too—not intellectually, but in my heart. Occasions like this one shock me back into the harsh reality that surrounds us. Let us be faithful to be a witness for Christ whenever and wherever we can.

Bart's Analysis of Ed's Analysis of the SBC

Dr. Ed Stetzer has offered his analysis of the current state of the Southern Baptist Convention arising out of his interpretation of Lifeway Research's latest report on ACP figures. The ripples have spread throughout Christenblogdom (see several reactions traced here). Stetzer on the same day recorded an interview with Chris Elrod (available at SBC Voices) discussing the report.

I suppose the reaction has been precisely what we all might expect—everyone in Southern Baptist life has used the statistics as a "See, I told you so" for whatever they presently dislike about the SBC (Calvinism, a dogged insistence upon being Baptist, the Conservative Resurgence, not chasing the culture fast enough). Along with every "See, I told you so," has been a stern "You guys just don't get it," in reply to the other groups' "See, I told you so."

And, of course, I'm eager to join the party and assert that the situation addressed in The Fifth Century Initiative is precisely the cause for the present Southern Baptist malaise. In fact, Ed's very next post supports the theory that a return to regenerate church membership alone would do wonders for our evangelistic effectiveness, even if nothing else in the SBC changed.

Eventually, somebody is going to ask how so many people can look at the same numbers and come to such vastly differing interpretations of the data. Some of those who are so enthusiastic about abandoning any hope of arriving at a clear interpretive answer with regard to what the Bible says are the most emphatic that we must all come to the one and only uniform interpretive answer with regard to what the latest ACP says (I love irony). But maybe it will be helpful for me to go a different direction with this post. Why does Ed see these numbers as calling for one set of actions in the SBC, while I see them calling for another? Perhaps a starting point for an answer will be to examine things that I think are presumptions that I do not share with Ed.

First, I do not agree that Southern Baptists are still doing what we did in the 1950s. The only people who say such things are people who were not alive and ministering in the 1950s. In the 1950s Southern Baptists were faithfully going to church three times weekly. They had robust Discipleship Training programs ongoing. They had two evangelistic crusades (which they called revival meetings) every year. Some of these would last two weeks. People in the churches not only attended, but they also invited lost people to come to these meetings and sought their salvation. The Southern Baptist Convention was able to coordinate a nationwide revival strategy entitled "A Million More in '54" during the 1950s.

Now, setting aside the discussion as to whether a similar approach would work today, can anyone with a straight face suggest that the Southern Baptist people are doing today what they were doing in the 1950s? One might make a very cogent case that the problem with Southern Baptists is that we have stopped doing what we did in the 1950s and can't seem to find the resolve to do it again. The members of my congregation are not 1950s people, they are not emulating the 1950s. They weren't alive then. They can't emulate the 1950s. But even if they were 1950s people—even if they just stepped out of Marty McFly's Delorean—a people busy sharing the gospel are doing their jobs as Christian witnesses. I firmly believe that a geek, a dork, a cowboy, a jock, a prom queen, a Napoleon Dynamite, a wallflower, or anyone else can be equally effective in sharing the faith just by being equally persistent in sharing the faith. Sometimes it just seems like Ed is suggesting that the world can't hear us share the gospel until they think we're cool. Ed probably wouldn't say it in those words, but that's what it sounds like. I don't agree with that presumption, because the power is in the gospel, not in our contextualization of it. And no, I'm not opposed to contextualization, I just think that the power is in the gospel and not in the contextualization.

Second, I do not agree that Southern Baptists can improve our missional PR by becoming less controversial. I agree that the world often regards us as controversialists. I agree that many people know us more for what we're against than for what we're for. But here's the thing: That's not a phenomenon that has anything to do with private prayer language, the relationship between eternal security and baptism, or even the inerrancy of scripture. Most lost people don't even know what those things are. Those who know us by what we're against, well, they know that we're against homosexuality and abortion and universalism. They know that we dare to think that the Bible teaches that Jews and Muslims and most Catholics are going to Hell. They've never heard of the Conservative Resurgence. When they complain that Christianity is divided and fractious (in my experience of witnessing to hostile lost people), they're talking about the fact that there are so many denominations of Christianity and they're talking about the crusades or the Civil War or the Civil Rights movement. They're not talking about appointment guidelines for the IMB.

So, if we could wave a magic wand and make all of the blog wars of the past two years vanish overnight, that wouldn't get anyone's attention outside our little ghetto. The only reason that the recent climate change statement had legs press-wise is because it was interpreted as an in-your-face toward other Southern Baptists, and therefore, as a controversy. Unless and until we are prepared to jettison biblical morality and compromise the gospel, we're not going to improve our PR status in this world. Ed Stetzer knows the research well enough to know that our stance on homosexuality alone is a huge obstacle for young lost people when it comes to the SBC.

But, Ed Stetzer is not prepared to jettison those things. I know that he's not. And they can much more readily be attached to our declining numbers than can our internecine debates. If Ed wants those debates to end, it must be for other reasons or because of some way in which he conjectures that the two topics are related.

I do not agree that declining numbers alone are a clarion call for action in the SBC. I think that there is a clarion call for action in the SBC, but the indicators are in our eroding beliefs and anemia in obedience to Christ's commands. If we were solid in our theology and faithful in our obedience to share the gospel, live transformed lives, and order ourselves biblically, then we shouldn't change no matter how much our numbers might decline. Stetzer's quote from Cal Guy measures the pragmatic impact of a person's theology in terms of what believers do, not in terms of how unbelievers respond to what believers do. Ultimately, our theology must make some account for Matthew 7:13-14.

I can count on my hands and feet the number of Southern Baptists I know who ever present the gospel to anybody. And I've been a member of six SBC churches in three states over a period covering more than three decades. Unless I've just been extremely unlucky in my acquaintances, these facts alone indicate a problem regardless of our membership numbers.

I say this because there are bad ways to chase numbers. Joel Osteen has great numbers, and you call tell from the videos that Ed's not on the same page as Osteen. We've got to have a different standard by which we can measure fruit, and we need to promote those standards of biblical obedience rather than statistical benchmarks.

I do not agree that we are necessarily losing the leaders we need to survive into the next century. Having a promising ministry in a local church is not the same thing as being a potential leader in a network of churches. Different tasks require different skills and callings. William Carey was pretty ineffective as a local church pastor, but brilliant as a missionary translator and strategist. James P. Eagle was never any more than an itinerant bivocational pastor, with no formal pastoral training and no record of significant accomplishment as a pastor, yet he is the patriarch of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention and gave strong leadership to the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1890s and 1900s. We ought always to be careful of thinking that we can identify whom God will or will not raise up to lead His people. Here's a thought experiment for you: Our denominational contests of the past three years have witnessed the emergence of key leaders on the respective sides. How many of them could you have identified or predicted five years ago?

How many lapsed Southern Baptists are becoming key leaders in some other denomination? From my observation, most of the individuals whom I would guess that Stetzer has in view are choosing to forego denominations entirely and either do their own thing in isolation or work in some small homogenous group. If the Southern Baptist Convention is becoming small and homogenous, it is more likely because it is emulating these people than because it is rejecting them. For whatever my opinion is worth (and I'm sure you'll all tell me!), a great many people reject working in established denominations for the same reasons that they reject working in established congregations—they want to work in a context in which they can do things the way they want without having to convince anyone else. Such is not the mark of our great potential leaders of the future, IMHO. They're great at leading people who are already going in the direction that they want to go.

In conclusion, Ed Stetzer and I agree about a lot of things. Maybe Chadwick Ivester ought to Photoshop Ed Stetzer and myself into some sort of photo. Ed can leave me at home on his next trip to an Acts 29 meeting, but I wish I could have been at the Building Bridges Conference with him. It's a mixed bag. We agree about some of the things in his blog post that has precipitated so much gnashing of teeth. In some areas, I believe that Ed proceeds from a few false assumptions. But we ought to be careful to make the distinction that Ed himself has made in his comment stream. One can join Ed in having recognized a problem in the SBC long before these ACP data came out—one can see clearly the symptoms—without agreeing with Ed about his diagnosis or his prescription. If the denomination's vital signs are diminishing, then that just makes it all the more important that we choose the right prescription and administer it with rapidity and resolve. That's why I'm spending time engaging the SBC in its decision making process, because I think the need is just that important and the prescription is clear.

Getting Along

If you ever need to know anything about the Cancun, Mexico, airport, I'm your man. Our nation's embargo against the island nation of Cuba ensures that the journey to Cuba will always be interesting, in a boring sort of way (please note that I have never in my life set foot illegally upon the soil of Cuba, but have always followed the laws both of my nation and of theirs). One cannot sit at a computer in Dallas and purchase an airline ticket to Havana with one's Visa card. Travel through a third nation is usually required (although I did go once to Santiago from Miami), and purchase of the Cuba-bound ticket takes place after leaving the United States, and by cash. I like to go through Cancun. Spend the night at a cheap Mexican hotel, arrive at the airport first thing in the morning, wait for the ticket counter to open, wait for your religious work visas to come in by fax, pay for your tickets, check your luggage, clear security, and wait for your plane to come. It's all very simple. It also takes about six hours, most of it spent sitting, studying the people, shops, amenities, and ceiling tiles of the Cancun airport. As for me, I'd rather talk to somebody than look at ceiling tiles. Thus on the day in question I struck up a conversation with the older gentleman sitting just across from me. I'll call him Saul (not really his name). There he sat, Israeli passport in hand, waiting for exactly the same flight that we were taking. He was incredibly intelligent—I soon learned that he is the inventor of a revolutionary piece of technology that you all use every day (even if you don't know it). A famous man, stuck here with me in the Cancun airport with nowhere to go. Sounds to me like a great opportunity to present the gospel. It isn't that difficult to steer the conversation to faith when you're talking to an Israeli citizen. Saul was an atheist, but he had grown up in an observant Jewish household. Curious about this birthplace of my faith, I had several questions that I wanted to ask Saul: Suppose I'm an honest, hardworking, nonviolent, democracy-oriented, Jewish-state-supportive, Christian Palestinian…can I achieve citizenship in the State of Israel? Do you really think a two-state solution offers a viable hope for reconciliation in Israel? (Well, you get the gist of things.) We had a fascinating conversation for more than two hours while sitting out in the public concourse. I told him about my faith in Christ…told him what our team was going to Cuba to do. I told him about the gospel. We talked about the war-torn Middle East, and he gave me an insider's perspective (this guy had also invented several military-oriented devices). Then, the visas came in on the fax machine, security opened up, and my team went back into the gate area. In a few minutes, Saul also cleared security, walked into the gate area, sought me out, and sat next to me. Our conversation resumed. Saul eventually said, "The reason we have so many problems in the world is that Muslims, Christians, and Jews don't realize that they are all praying to the same God." "You mean, the One that you don't believe exists?" I smirked (not that I commend to you the idea of smirking as evangelistic technique). "Well, you've got me there," he replied, "but if these three great religions would acknowledge that they all serve the same God, then they would set aside all of this fighting." "Ah," I said, "you mean loosening our doctrine for the sake of peace?" "Precisely" "But you know, Saul, that doesn't work—never works," I answered. "Different varieties of Christianity realize that they are worshipping the same God, yet the Roman Catholic bunch spent centuries killing off people who believe like I do. Sunnis and Shiites worship the same God, yet they manage to hate and kill one another nonetheless. People kill one another because we are sinners, not because we are uninformed." But, I told Saul, there is another way. I explained to him the Baptist ideal of religious liberty. Within our church, we try to be all that God wants us to be. We believe that all people are sinners. We believe that Jesus has died to purchase our pardon. We believe that God has given us voluminous instruction in the Bible as to how we ought to worship and live—enough to keep a person busy for a lifetime pursuing growth as a Christian. We're zealous; we're passionate; we're strict sometimes; we fail often, but we will not water down what we believe to make it match how we sometimes act. However… …We believe that God has given no person the right to coerce another person's faith. "If I will not permit you to say no," I told Saul, "then your yes is meaningless." We will not convert people at the point of a sword or the tip of a gun. Rather, we put before people the gospel of Jesus Christ and we freely say with Him, "Let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost." "So you see, Saul," I concluded, "I do not concede that all people worship the same God. There is One God. He loves all people. He loves me. He loves you. He invites you to worship and serve Him. You face the choice. If you choose to accept Him and serve Him, you will be my brother. If you choose to reject His offer, that does not make you my enemy. I will have no urge to explode incendiary devices in front of your house. I will not berate you or disparage you. I will still enjoy your company and will still consider you my newest friend. But I will accomplish all of this without taking you into my church, embracing your atheism, or watering down at all what I believe and hold dear. I believe that strife comes from failing to do what the Bible teaches, not from being too strict about it. And I invite all people to join me in worshipping and serving the Prince of Peace." Saul did not receive Jesus that day. We visited for at least another two hours, and then our flight boarded. His concluding comments to me: "I visit with Rabbis and religious leaders in Israel all of the time. Their beliefs are much closer to mine than yours, which are a strange version of Christianity that I've never encountered before. Yet, for all of the distance that separates us, I feel much more comfortable talking about God with you than I ever have with anyone else." Those final words gave me hope that the end of our visit was not the end of God's work in Saul's life. When last I saw him, we were in Passport Control in Havana. Something apparently wasn't quite right with Saul's paperwork, and he was having trouble getting into the country. I continue to pray for Saul, remembering the spark of interest in his eyes, praying that God will visit Saul with His grace, and that when I see him hereafter, Saul's papers will be in order, and he will have no trouble at all getting in.

De Natura Boni

If you estimated that telling someone a lie would substantially increase the chances of them becoming a Christian, would you do it?