The Steely Backbone of the School of Jerry Falwell

I have a confession to make.

In my late preteen years, when forced to tag along on my mother's grocery shopping trips, I (an avid reader) used to kill time at the magazine rack. Here's the confession part: On those occasions I used to read Mad Magazine.

In 1982 I distinctly recall picking up an episode of Mad Magazine that contained a satirical "interview" with Jerry Falwell. The interview was not as bad as Hustler's infamous counterpart that portrayed Falwell as confessing to furtive erotic fixations upon his mother. It was nevertheless trash...absolute trash, and I knew as much even as a twelve-year-old. I confess that I laughed anyway, and I continued to read the magazine.

I'm thankful that God has granted me the gift of maturing spiritually somewhat (although not nearly as much as I would like) in the intervening years since I was twelve. No longer am I at all inclined to fill my mind with such garbage. I find it repugnant.

I think I would have found it repugnant in 1982 if somehow, at that tender age, I had possessed the slightest inkling of how difficult it must have been to withstand the continual assault directed toward Jerry Falwell by those who made themselves his foes. Everything that could be attacked about the man was attacked. People questioned his motives, lampooned his convictions, and dedicated their lives to his destruction.

Not that it all was entirely the fault of his accusers. We all have feet of clay, don't we? I can recall several times when Falwell wound up retracting, at least partially, something that he had said. He made several public apologies. He apologized when he called South African Bishop Desmond Tutu a "phony" (see here). He apologized for his remarks immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks (see here). Down through the years he issued many clarifications and many apologies. None of these trivialities blunted the force of his overall message, nor did his supporters, his organization, or his family ever allow these distractions to draw their attention away from the things that mattered in his ministry.

Considering all of this, I find it comical to observe bloggers thinking that, by turning up a little blogging heat upon Dr. Ergun Caner, they are going to be able to unseat him from his position at the helm of the Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. I'm not going to name the bloggers and I'm not going to link to their posts, because I have no desire to be responsible for driving any traffic in that direction. But it appears to me that, just because Ergun has apologized and clarified a thing or two and because they are so ravenously going after him, they think that school of Jerry Falwell is going to cower under their attacks and boot Ergun out the door. The school that Jerry built? The people who weathered the onslaught of vicious attacks from the entire leftish establishment of media and government for more than 30 years? These people are going to bow to the pressure of bloggers in bathrobes? I'm just not seeing it. They may get a few hits every day, but these bloggers have neither the writing skills that Alfred E Newman had nor the audience that Tinky-Winky had.

So, like a seasoned palm tree in the Florida keys, the school that Jerry built will sway with the howling winds that blow from people who are never going to be a friend to Liberty under any circumstances, and in the end the school's steely backbone will hold intact as it always has, and the truth will continue to sound forth from Lynchburg.

Personal Transportation Reform

The federal government must immediately adopt legislation to provide a reliable, late-model automobile for every U.S. citizen and resident.

1. To do so would create jobs. Imagine how many Americans could go to work to produce the new cars that the government would have to purchase!

2. It would help to reduce the deficit. After all, we now own General Motors. Anything that increases car sales by the government car company would necessarily bring in lots of money to reduce the deficit.

3. You should hear the sad stories of Americans who do not have reliable transportation! These people are stranded. They can't go to the grocery store. You just can't survive in most of America today without a dependable car.

4. Health care depends upon it. All of the insurance in the world is worthless if you can't get to your doctor. Also, we're having to pay for the unnecessary utilization of ambulances and helicopters by people who can't get to the hospital on their own because they don't have a reliable car. For some of these people whose health problems make it difficult for them to drive themselves, it would likely save us a great deal of money if we also provided them with a full-time chauffeur.

5. Providing a new car for everyone is vital to Interstate Commerce. I long ago lost count of the number of people seeking financial assistance from our church who couldn't keep a job because they didn't have dependable personal transportation. The productivity of the nation is hampered by our heartless system that denies personal transportation to millions of people.

6. Automobile costs have skyrocketed out of control! Some vehicles cost over $50,000 these days. People are plunged into debt just to try to provide transportation for their families. The government could buy in bulk and get the same low, low costs that they achieve in defense contracts.

7. A car for every American represents the culmination of the dream that our parents and grandparents had for us.

All of the cars should be blue. Dark blue. Turn signals will operate only to the left.

Meditations Upon Proverbs 1:7

Vividly I remember my parents, in the midst of some vacation journey, taking me as a child to see a large dam in the Ozarks (I think it was Beaver Lake Dam in Northwest Arkansas). The highway went across the top of the dam, along with a few places to park, get out, and take pictures. Of course, Dad did exactly that.

I was too short to look over the side, and I was thankful to be too short. Dad wanted to pick me up and let me look over the edge, down the sheer concrete wall to the river in the chasm below. No thank you! I yelped, bucked, and cried until he abandoned his plan and let me go. (Who would've thought that boy would earn a pilot's license?!)

It is one of my earliest recollections of fear. Mind you, my fear amounted to no judgment whatsoever regarding the moral nature of the location. I did not conclude that the White River harbored some sinister desire to slay me. Furthermore, there is no human being on the planet whom I trusted more than I trusted my Dad. I had never heard a story about boys inadvertently plummeting from dams to their demise, nor had I ever known anyone who had died after a fall from a great height. In fact, I had not yet encountered death at all, as it pertained to anyone who mattered much in my life. No statistical or experiential reason existed to justify my fear.

Yet I was afraid.

I had seen pictures of great dams before, and had watched television footage of dams in all of their immensity. None of those things made me fearful in the least. Not in the least. But here I was in the actual presence of something so much bigger than I was. Here, right beneath my feet, was power many orders of magnitude beyond such as I possessed. To be in its presence—to be so small—is to imagine dreadful possibilities and to fear.

A lifetime later, in 2002, Tracy and I celebrated 10 years of marriage by journeying to Colorado. Tourists that we were, we went to the ultimate tourist trap: Royal Gorge. Standing on that suspension bridge high above the Arkansas River, I felt fear once again, albeit with the marginal increase of courage that can come with age. The strangest thing happened, and perhaps it reveals some psychological defect in me, finally enabling those of you who are convinced that I am insane to identify precisely in what way. As I stood on the bridge and peered off into the abyss, I feared that I would jump.

I was not despondent at all—I was on a great vacation! As far as I know, I've never had a suicidal moment in my life. The thought that I would jump off of the Royal Gorge Bridge was thoroughly nonsensical. I feared it nonetheless and stepped back from the precipice.

Politicians and preachers alike speak about God. Musicians both secular and sacred make frequent reference to God. Ever and always, you can identify those for whom God is merely a concept that they have read in a book or casually absorbed from a largely theistic culture. Of their God, they are never the slightest bit afraid.

Every person who has ever truly been in His presence has trembled, not because He is evil or untrustworthy but because I am both evil and untrustworthy. Even if I live every moment of my life convinced or trying to convince others that I am not evil and untrustworthy, the moment that I am in His presence I know that I am precisely those things, and worse. Did anybody, no matter how holy, ever encounter God, or even His angels, without cowering? Aren't the first words from God in these encounters ever a statement to address the terror in God's subjects?

So I fear this God whom I know to be merciful. Entirely secure in my salvation, I am nonetheless terrified in His presence. Delighting in His presence, I fear Him still. He is not a tame lion. And yet, even while fearing that in His presence I will surely die, it is only there that I am ever surely alive.

The Craziness of Modern Discourse About Human Rights

<rant>

Reuters reported yesterday that 78% of 27,000 people polled in 26 countries "believe access to the Internet is a fundamental right." I submit that this sentiment, popular as it may be, is utter balderdash.

It demeans the important subject of fundamental human rights when we shovel trivia into this important category. The US Declaration of Independence famously asserted: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." That's a nice, modest, defensible statement. People have a fundamental right to live, and the government ought not to deprive anyone of life apart from compelling mitigation. People have a fundamental right to liberty, and likewise the government ought not to deprive anyone of liberty without due and just cause. People have a fundamental right to the pursuit of happiness (a phrase not so easy to interpret as you might presume, but not entirely indecipherable either). Those are modest and timeless assertions, and ones that I believe to be true.

The fundamental human rights are those for which I would gladly give my life to secure them for my children. They are those that motivated our forefathers to risk everything in their protection on our behalf. I would not die to secure DSL to my posterity.

BARBER'S LAW OF FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS: If your great-grandparents could not have possibly had it, then it is not a fundamental human right.

• You do not have a fundamental human right to an MRI.
• You do not have a fundamental human right to air travel.
• You do not have a fundamental human right to cable TV.
• You do not have a fundamental human right to a five-day work week.
• You do not have a fundamental human right to retirement.
• You do not have a fundamental human right to own a house.
• You do not have a fundamental human right to Internet access.
• You do not have a fundamental human right to a car.

Yes, I want all of those things (except for retirement). None of them are bad things (except for cable TV and Internet access sometimes). But people better than you have lived their entire lives without any of those things. Jesus, as far as I know, lived His entire life without any of those things.

There are fundamental human rights. They are imperiled in many places in this world. We ought to be concerned on behalf of those whose fundamental human rights are being deprived. But sometimes it makes me sick to know that Christian believers in many parts of the world do not have basic religious liberty and yet go unnoticed, but the world goes nuts that China censors the Internet.

</rant>

I feel better now.

How To Resurge

This is the last of three posts in response to the GCR Task Force progress report. The other two posts are here and here. In the previous two posts I stated why I will be voting in favor of these proposals, obviously hoping that you will join me in doing so this summer in Orlando.

The name of the task force and of the vision that it represents (The Great Commission Resurgence) obviously hearkens back to the Conservative Resurgence. It seems to me that, whatever similarities exist, there is at least one profound difference between the Conservative Resurgence and the Great Commission Resurgence: The Conservative Resurgence addressed a situation in which the Southern Baptist people, generally not proponents of leftish treatments of the Bible, stood up and used their voice to bring the denominational apparatus back to the position (biblical inerrancy) that they already held on that question. The Conservative Resurgence therefore didn't really require of Southern Baptist individuals (broadly considered) that they change, but merely that they assert themselves. The present situation with regard to the Great Commission, on the other hand, presents a reality completely different from that. Individual Southern Baptist Christians must find the nerve (or whatever it might be that is lacking) to walk across the street and present the gospel to their neighbors, as they presently are generally not doing. Individual Southern Baptist churches must become evangelistically passionate, as they generally are not (sufficiently) now.

We must do more than vote; we must submit to and obey the Lordship of Christ. The Great Commission is, first of all, a command. Obey or disobey—those are our choices.

This is the most important post in this series. It is not that I know for certain that I have all of the right answers that makes this post the most important; this is the most important post because I know for certain that these are the most important questions. I have concluded that, in order for their to be any sort of a real Great Commission Resurgence, I and Southern Baptists like me must do more than vote. Our leaders can do some things to help us, and I will indicate some recommendations, but make no mistake—it is you and I who must resurge.

The progress report seems to acknowledge this concept, referring to last year's vote in Louisville as the beginning of "a grassroots spiritual movement." The report then moves to a call to repentance from Joel. Specifically, the task force identifies pridefulness and cynicism as hinderances to our Great Commission effectiveness. Although the task force has neither the authority nor the ability to address these problems, they obviously wish to motivate the rest of us and to point us in the right direction. They acknowledge in the report that Southern Baptists "expect the leaders in our convention to lead us towards the changes that are needed." So, let's consider how our leaders can lead, and then let's look at what we all can do.

Things Our Leaders Can Do

Ronnie Floyd and his task force are spot-on when they identify a "caustic cynicism" in the Southern Baptist Convention. I'm sure that they speak from experience, having likely been the focus of a great deal of cynicism in our convention. Yes, our cynicism is unhealthy. Also unhealthy would be any sense among our leaders of entitlement to unquestioning, prayerless, mindless submission to whatever they desire or recommend. The replacement for cynicism must not be anything like this. Rather, we should replace both cynicism and entitlement with mutual submission and respect under the Lord.

Let's not be in denial about the cynicism in the Southern Baptist Convention, but let's also not be in denial about the causes of that cynicism. The GCR Task Force has brought forward a very good progress report. I sense that it is building a positive enthusiasm among Southern Baptists. I believe that we will come together in a healthy sense of unity and optimism in Orlando. The Task Force, obviously desiring to accomplish these things, is (in my estimation) succeeding.

Hallelujah!

As exciting as this moment is, the Task Force still needs to learn a lesson from the story of President Obama: When you cause people to embrace optimism and hope, the higher that you lift people, the further you can cause them to fall if you disillusion them. If, as I hope and pray, the level of cynicism in the Southern Baptist Convention will decrease, then the GCR Task Force must be very careful not to do anything to cause a resurgence of cynicism among Southern Baptists.

I would encourage the members of the Task Force to consider carefully the words of Gary Ledbetter. It is critically important that the members of this GCR Task Force not move from the Task Force into denominational employ. Two facts make this requirement all the more relevant today.

First, consider the similar movement of Bob Reccord from a previous task force to the helm of NAMB. Whatever the realities of this move, very many Southern Baptists were made more cynical by their perception of the move as an instance of inside dealing within our denomination. If the Task Force members wish to inaugurate a new day in Southern Baptist life, then let them show it by demonstrating to us new patterns of behavior. I can think of no better manner for us to show by our actions a break from the past.

Second, this concept is made more relevant by the quantity of high-profile denominational posts that are presently open and by the quality of the candidates who are members of the Task Force. The temptation to the Task Force members could be intense. The fact that some task force members would do an excellent job at some of the presently open positions is somewhat beside the point. The individual members have to decide which is more important, abating ongoing cynicism about their work and preserving a fresh wind in the SBC or securing influential denominational employment.

Our leaders can also covenant with us that "Great Commission Giving" will not be promoted at all in denominational publications, media, or events. In my mind the differentiation between Cooperative Program and "Great Commission Giving" is clear—we encourage people to give through the Cooperative Program; we thankfully acknowledge that people sometimes designate their giving.

It isn't that it is morally wrong to promote another giving plan; it's just foolish. A church survives on undesignated gifts. All we pastors know this. So does the SBC. We need increased promotion of the Cooperative Program (not diverted one iota to the new category of giving) or the heyday of the SBC is in our past. Anybody who promotes "Great Commission Giving" is hurting the future of the SBC to help the image of someone else.

These reasons have been enough for some people to oppose the Task Force recommendations, but I do not believe it is necessary to do so. We track, report, and celebrate designated gifts already. I have in my office awards reflective of designated gifts that FBC Farmersville has given to the IMB (Lottie Moon), NAMB (Annie Armstrong), and SWBTS. The only difference that I can see inaugurated here is that a new name has been given to this collective category of giving that we've had all along.

Our leaders on the task force tell us that the Cooperative Program is still the giving plan that we will promote as Southern Baptists. This cannot be a "wink is as good as a nod" situation. They must keep firmly to that promise. I believe that they will, and so long as that remains the case, I see nothing unprecedented here. Perhaps I've missed something. I'm open to enlightenment.

Things We Can Do as Individual Southern Baptists and as SBC Churches

Help Your State Convention and Association Figure Out Their Roles: We're going to have to help to sort out the implications of these changes at every level of SBC life. In the long run, it may prove to be more important that you attend your state convention's annual meeting this year than that you go to Orlando. Don't get me wrong—you should be in Orlando. But the state convention meetings for the next few years will be the place where difficult decisions will be made in the aftermath of these changes. We will all need to pull together and work hard to make those decisions.

It will be helpful, as more of the details emerge about the Task Force's work, if the Task Force were to provide their specific ideas about how state conventions should adapt to the changes that they have proposed at the national SBC level. I'm confident that they have given full consideration to these questions before making those recommendations. It would be far less helpful to tell the state conventions, "We've made our decision, now you adapt to it," than to join the state conventions as brothers and say, "Let's work this out together as brothers—we've had some ideas about how to make this work. . ."

One or two of the state conventions will probably leap at the justification to reduce further their already paltry support of national and international causes, but I'm really speaking only of those few conventions that are really bad-faith participants in the SBC system already. Some other state conventions that really do have their hearts in the right place may have no choice but to make difficult decisions with regard to their own budgets and their CP allocations, particularly if they are located in pioneer areas where the changing role of NAMB may have the most profound effect.

I'm involved in the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention—the leading state convention in terms of the percentage of funds forwarded to the SBC. I hope to help our convention to look for ways, if it is possible, that we can move forward after the NAMB cooperative agreement reductions without reducing at all the percentage (55%) that we forward to national and international missions. Each of us needs to be involved at the state convention level to help to determine state policies that will maximize Great Commission effectiveness by keeping the SBC base strong while sending all of the resources that we can send to the areas of greatest need.

It is your right as a member church of your state convention to send messengers to state convention meetings and to make those decisions. No matter who else in the structure of your denomination makes statements about the GCR Task Force, they do not have the authority to decide how any state convention will react to changes at the SBC level. Your church and churches like yours will make this decision.

The bright hope of this moment is really not found in any of the specific recommendations from the Task Force, but in the thought that individual members of individual Southern Baptist Churches will take a moment to re-think how each tier of Southern Baptist life contributes to the work of your church in carrying forward the Great Commission. I call for us to "re-think" this not because I believe that the old answers are wrong, but because I believe that they are largely forgotten. Cooperative Program giving has become, for some of us, as reflexive as paying the Electric bill. What we greatly need is for every local church to have clearly in its collective mind:

• We have a church because Jesus Christ founded the church.
• We have a local association because?
• We have a state convention because?
• We have a Southern Baptist Convention because?

I believe that there are good answers for every one of those questions. I also believe that the existence of those good answers is a reason to ask the questions and to ask them forcefully, not a reason to refuse to ask them. The questions further need to be asked of every entity supported by these conventions and every line item of their budgets. Are there any cases in which we will conclude that the answers are not good enough? I think so. For example, I believe that there are universities historically affiliated with Southern Baptist life that are no longer good investments of Cooperative Program funds—that really no longer essentially see or conduct themselves as Great Commission entities. On the whole, however, I believe that the value of asking the questions is not found in the rooting out of such entities (although that would be a virtue), but is rather found in each of us clarifying in the strategies of our churches what is the purpose and vision for each of these institutions as it relates to Christ's mandate upon our churches.

What the GCR Task Force has attempted to do with regard to the national Southern Baptist Convention, we need to do with regard to our churches and with regard to every other tier of Southern Baptist life. Let me be perfectly clear—you need to attend your state and associational meetings and assist in the work of determining how to redouble our efforts and our effectiveness right now.

Lead Your Church to Pick Up the Slack. Commit as a church to give more through the Cooperative Program. Commit to be more interactive and supportive with your sister churches. Our historical myopia leads us to forget that, for quite some time, Baptist churches had robust associations on shoestring budgets with virtually no employees. How did they manage that? The churches pitched in and made it work. The churches WERE the associations and conventions, and they did not regard "the denomination" as consisting of an executive and a headquarters building. The work that needed to be done for the denomination? They just did it.

Just do it.

Don't just pick up the slack in your own back yard. Help to plant a church far, far away from yours. Go to Montana or Massachusetts. This goes just as well for those of you who do not favor the NAMB church planting proposal. Do you believe that local churches ought to be planting churches in pioneer areas and major cities? Go plant one, then. I promise you, no NAMB church planting missionary is going to firebomb your church plant in an effort to drive you out. The church that you plant will be one that no NAMB missionary will have to plant, and there will be plenty of work left to go around.

The more that our local churches focus on what we can do, the more that the NAMB will be able to focus on what we cannot do. My church cannot afford to plant a new church in Manhattan. Yours probably can't either. Meeting space is prohibitively expensive. Cost-of-living for church planters in the area is ridiculous. We simply don't have the budget to swing that kind of a plant.

But the Southern Baptist Convention does have the budget. We have the access to budgetary funds that exceed what most religious groups could dedicate to such projects. I firmly believe that the NAMB's best role is to dedicate coordinated strategies toward making bold moves in those high-cost, high-population-density areas—to do the things that few individual churches have the resources to do alone, but that we can all do together through the SBC. They'll be better able to do the things that we can't do if we will take up the yoke of the things that we can do.

Pray for Spiritual Awakening.

Samuel Morris was a farmer, not a preacher. I'm not merely asserting that Morris was not a particular good preacher; he was no preacher at all and did not attempt to be one. Perhaps, precisely because he was not a preacher, he easily deduced that neither was the minister at St. Paul's Anglican Church (Rev. Patrick Henry, uncle of the famous patriot named after him). Morris and a number of his fellow parishioners at St. Paul's decided to shirk Henry's ministrations and seek better spiritual sustenance on their own.

There being no preacher among them, Morris determined to build a little shack on his farm and invite people therein to listen to him as he read aloud from religious works. The first item on the menu at Morris's Reading House was Martin Luther's Galaterbrief, followed by such works as John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and the sermons of George Whitefield.

Morris is the father of the First Great Awakening in Virginia. Other people began to build reading houses, and they clamored to invite Morris to come and to read at their reading houses. No other person in all of Christian History comes to my mind who had built a ministry not of itinerant preaching but of itinerant reading!

If God can birth revival among disgruntled Anglicans by the means of an "itinerant reader" offering up selections of German Bible commentaries, then God certainly can move through you, no matter what size your church is or how good your preacher (who might be you!) is at preaching. Why not ask Him to do so? Like Samuel Morris, why not find whatever you can do to carry forward the Great Commission, jump in and do it, and then see how God might bless your obedience? We were not too small for God to work through us in the past; we are not presently too big for Him to do so today.

Perhaps one good thing you could do to facilitate a renewed prayer life as regards spiritual awakening here in our own backyard and to assist in your own evaluation of our Southern Baptist efforts to pursue the Great Commission would be to reacquaint yourself with the text of the Great Commission itself. Jerry Rankin has asserted that "[Great Commission] is not a biblical term" and therefore that it needs to be defined for us. With all due respect, every fifth grader in my church could tell Dr. Rankin what the Great Commission is. It is not some theological abstraction open to various definitions; it is the name we use to refer to Jesus' instructions recorded in Matthew 28:18-20.

Open that text once again. Meditate upon it. Pray about it. Do you remember that it is about teaching ALL of Christ's commandments? Do you remember that it is about baptism? Yes, the Great Commission includes a great deal that needs to be done in the People's Republic of China, but it also includes a great deal that needs to be done in the pulpit of FBC Farmersville. Listen for the Commissioner's voice. Embrace the Commission. Pray. Obey. God blesses such things.

Bravo to the GCR Task Force, Part 2

Picking up from my previous post, I also want to make certain that you did not miss the updated report that I later linked in a new first paragraph to that blog. GCR Task Force Chairman Ronnie Floyd has engaged in a little Q&A with the press in the aftermath of Monday night's report.

The full text of the GCR Task Force Progress Report is here. The six numbered initiatives in that report, abridged and paraphrased by myself, are (as you recall from the previous post):

1. The adoption of a new mission statement for the SBC.
2. The thoroughgoing reorganization of the NAMB.
3. The handing-over of international people groups living within the USA to the IMB.
4. The reassignment of CP promotion and education to the state conventions.
5. The addition of "Great Commission Giving" as a statistical category alongside "Cooperative Program Giving"
6. The reallocation of 1% of the CP budget away from the Executive Committee to the IMB

I covered items 1-3 in the first post. Let's pick up the thread at item 4.

State Conventions to Resume Primary Role in Promoting the Cooperative Program

This will appear to many as a merely clerical move. It will affect the "preferred items" portion of state convention budgets. It will mean that less money and fewer assignments now belong to the Executive Committee, causing that entity to be marginally less powerful and important within the Southern Baptist Convention.

But I really believe that the best analysis of this fourth recommendation pertains to a consideration of the next two planks of the GCR platform. Let's move to an analysis of these items in sequence without letting go of this fourth item entirely. The fifth item is:

"Great Commission Giving"

Southern Baptists have always acknowledged designated giving to Southern Baptist causes. We give awards to top Lottie Moon Christmas Offering givers. Putting a new label ("Great Commission Giving") on these designated contributions, in and of itself, is no substantial change from what Southern Baptists have always done. I know of no reason to withhold support from something that is, in its substance, merely the status quo.

However, there is clearly a symbolic aspect of this plank. Some churches give very little through the Cooperative Program. At times in the past, Southern Baptists have engaged in the shaming of such churches. This is something of an effort to put an end to that practice once and for all.

What do I think of that?

Well, first of all, I think that the Cooperative Program has been misused in our recent past. The denominational apparatus of the Southern Baptist Convention should not be using CP litmus tests to determine who will serve the denomination as officers or trustees. Also, it is very unseemly for the Southern Baptist Convention to be sending denominational employees to upbraid churches about their CP giving (if such has ever happened). If I, as a member of a church giving 10% through the Cooperative Program, wish to complain to the SBC church down the pike that they are not pulling their weight in partnering with us, then that's one thing. For CP-paid denominational employees to try to dictate terms to an autonomous local church is repugnant to what I believe about the churches.

Secondly, I would note that some churches have VERY good reasons for not giving through their particular state conventions. If a local church has a beef with a state convention precisely because that state convention is not very supportive of the SBC, then it is foolish for the SBC to step into that squabble on behalf of the state convention. Somebody really smart once said that "A house divided against itself cannot stand."

There certainly are churches that give very little through the CP because (at least in part) they like to spend that money in their own churches. If a church were to (a) give around 0.02% of its receipts through the Cooperative Program while (b) the church leased and operated a private jet for the pastor, then in that hypothetical situation I would affirm the church's right to operate in that manner, but would not personally celebrate that situation in any sense. But not every low-CP church can be classified together with the churches that make no good-faith effort to join us in our cooperative mission.

I said that we would consider the third plank together with these latter two planks. When the reassignment of CP promotion responsibilities is combined with the advent of a new "Great Commission Giving" category, I do believe that we need to be careful that we are not setting aside the Cooperative Program as the primary giving emphasis of the national Southern Baptist Convention. The task force report clearly states that this is not the intention of the task force, and I applaud them both for having the foresight to see that this would be a danger and for having the decisiveness to state plainly that the Cooperative Program should neither be altered nor should share the spotlight with an unproven newcomer.

Nevertheless, the primacy of the Cooperative Program will not be secured merely by the well-wishes of the task force. We must be diligent that we continue to speak from the platform about the Cooperative Program. We should not introduce speakers by talking about their "Great Commission Giving" totals, nor should denominational magazines or emails trumpet anyone's "Great Commission Giving."

In other words, to state the matter more plainly, "Great Commission Giving" should not stand at any disadvantage to Cooperative Program giving as it pertains to giving tests for any aspect of participation in the SBC, but I think it is terribly important that Cooperative Program be the only giving plan promoted at all by Southern Baptists at any tier. We should never do anything to promote "Great Commission Giving" as a convention.

To do so is simply to embrace societal missions and to discard the convention method.

Now it appears why the third plank is relevant to the fourth one. The relinquishment of the task of promoting the Cooperative Program must not be a move that makes way for the SBC at the national level to perform any promotion of "Great Commission Giving."

Clearly, the task force has not given any indication that such an attempt lies behind this plank at all. My point is not that these two actions are designed to make this happen. I just think that, taken together, they open the vulnerability. This is not a reason for us to oppose these actions; rather, it is an indication of the areas in which we must be careful as we adopt them.

Moving 1% from Executive Committee to IMB

The task force is proposing that we reallocate 1% of the Cooperative Program receipts away from the Executive Committee to the International Mission Board. This follows logically from the fact that the task force is adding to the job of the IMB (domestic internationals) while taking away from the job of the Executive Committee (CP promotion).

One is tempted to wonder whether a whopping 1% reallocation lives up to all of the hype about getting more resources to lostness and all of the criticisms about how little Southern Baptist missions money makes it out of the USA. It is not clear from these recommendations that the task force will succeed in getting any more money out of the USA. The IMB will indeed receive 1% more funding, but it will also, for the first time in its history, start having to spend money on missionary activity here in the USA. It is possible that the IMB will spend more money to get programs going within the USA than it will receive by the 1% reallocation—possible, but not likely. The point being that some percentage demonstrably less than 1% will additionally go overseas from the SBC because of these changes.

I don't say this in criticism of the task force recommendations. I think that these are good recommendations. I say what I have said more in criticism of some of the more radical recommendations and appeals to the task force—appeals that they have obviously (and wisely) set aside.

This is not a report that "blows up" anything. Praise the Lord. This is a report that respectfully recognizes the value and substance of previous generations' accomplishments and then determines to build upon them.

Were you expecting this report to amount to Moses come down from the mountain with the thing that somebody else was going to do to inaugurate a third great awakening to spread across the globe? Then you're likely to be underwhelmed by this progress report. Obviously, a <1% reallocation of money and a few points of restructuring are not going to mark the sea-change of our spiritual future.

If, however, you were expecting (as I was) a few points of denominational restructuring that stand a chance of helping a little bit, then maybe you're pleased with this progress report. I know that I am. I plan to vote in support of these measures, and I hope that you will do so, too.

I also think that the task force has identified in the prolegomena and in some of the content of the first proposal a few of the really powerful concepts that do indeed have the potential to propel Southern Baptists into an unprecedented age of Great Commission effectiveness. None of these things can really be put into place by a ballot vote. None of these things can really be accomplished by a task force.

The greatest potential that we have for a decisive step forward as Southern Baptists lies not in programmatic restructuring but in spiritual renewal. The best parts of the report are the other areas besides the six recommendations (or maybe that statement reflects my lack of wonkishness). The lack of sensationalism in the six items listed in this proposal may be the best feature of the report. Perhaps the absence of seminary mergers and name changes among the six restructuring proposals will cause us to pay less attention to them, and to pay more attention to the spiritual concepts embedded within the report.

To realize all that God would love to do through our obedience will take hard work on our part—on the part of vast numbers of Southern Baptists. In my final post in this series, I want to move away from the six specific proposals and consider some of the things that I believe we all will need to do as Southern Baptists in order to see these efforts succeed.

Bravo to the GCR Task Force

We have now seen a progress report from the GCR Task Force, with details promised to follow in the coming months. Unless the details include covert funding for an Alaskan bridge to Gravina Island, a renewed attempt to rename Discipleship Training as "Quest", or a proposed merger into the Alliance of Baptists, I firmly plan to do two things with regard to this Task Force Proposal:

1. Cast an enthusiastic ballot in favor of the associated motions in Orlando; and,
2. Work hard personally to see this initiative succeed.

The remainder of my post will consist of my endeavoring to elicit the same response from you.

Why You Should Vote in the Affirmative

Well, before you determine how to vote, you probably should become familiar with the contents of the progress report. You might consider watching the video report, which has the approximate running time of the average Lord of the Rings movie, or you could peruse the PDF file linked above. The content of each is identical, so suit yourself. Setting aside prolegomena for later analysis, I direct your attention to the six major planks of this platform:

1. The adoption of a new mission statement for the SBC.
2. The thoroughgoing reorganization of the NAMB.
3. The handing-over of international people groups living within the USA to the IMB.
4. The reassignment of CP promotion and education to the state conventions.
5. The addition of "Great Commission Giving" as a statistical category alongside "Cooperative Program Giving"
6. The reallocation of 1% of the CP budget away from the Executive Committee to the IMB

Let's consider these one-by-one.

The New Mission Statement

The task force proposes a new mission statement as follows:

As a convention of churches, our missional vision is to present the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every person in the world and to make disciples of all the nations.

• Ecclesiology leads off the mission statement. We are a convention of churches. The Great Commission was given to churches, and all that we do as the SBC we do not as atomic individuals but as a convention of churches. The report urges upon us a return to the primacy and efficacy of the local church as the central headquarters of the Great Commission.

  In order for this Great Commission Resurgence to occur, each church has to own the responsibility of fulfilling the Great Commission. Each church has to own Matthew 28:19-20 and Acts 1:8. Each church has to own the responsibility of reaching their village or community or town or city with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Each church has to own the responsibility of reaching their region, America, and the world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

• The evangelistic emphasis of this vision statement is upon the presentation of the gospel to individuals, and not to "people groups." Our vision is not accomplished until we have presented to gospel to each and every individual on the planet.

  Note: I acknowledge that people groups can be a convenient construct for the training and deployment of missionaries. I am not arguing that the concept of a people group must be ignored in Southern Baptist life. I am merely agreeing with the proposed mission statement that it is our task to present the gospel to people (and to all of them), and not just to people groups.

• If the Great Commission mission statement is going to follow the actual text of the Great Commission, it should say something about the immersion of disciples. Jesus didn't flinch from saying that, nor should we. I would support anybody's motion to amend the mission statement by adding something about baptism in order to bring the statement into line with what Jesus said.

• But the mission statement does mention the discipleship of believers, and no believer who has not been immersed as a believer is properly pursuing discipleship. If there are other things that you would prefer to see in the mission statement, I'm betting that it is probably something that you can shoehorn into "discipleship" somewhere.

  Discipleship means teaching disciples to obey all that Christ has commanded. That includes adherence to the principles taught in appropriate portions of the Old Testament law (which Christ exegeted quite a bit and which was the subject matter of many of His commandments). It includes proper ecclesiology, which arises out of the commandments of Christ. It includes believers' immersion (although I believe that immersion deserves separate mention simply because Christ mentioned it separately). It includes Christian citizenship. It includes the training of pastors to pursue their callings.

Along with the mission statement are a number of core values. Let's save those for consideration in the third post. I support this mission statement and plan to vote for it.

The Reorganization of the NAMB

The North American Mission Board needs to rise above its most recent history. Surely all Southern Baptists can agree upon that statement. Furthermore, the United States of America is being lost to the gospel; therefore, Southern Baptists have never needed the North American Mission Board to be vital and successful more than we need it today.

From the very beginning of this discussion I stated my opinion that it would be a bad idea to dissolve the NAMB into the IMB. We now see—me thankfully so—that the GCR Task Force has not only preserved the NAMB but has also articulated for it a strong, focused vision. The vision expressed for NAMB in this report is one that I support enthusiastically.

• I support a renewed emphasis upon church planting in urban North America outside the present strength areas of the SBC. FBC Farmersville is already on the move in this direction, recognizing its strategic importance to all that our convention is doing. In many ways, even INTERNATIONAL missions become easier and more effective the more that we reach New York, Boston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco with the gospel.

  The more I consider the idea, I think that the NAMB ought to coordinate a synchronized splash in major cities like New York City. What would happen if we set a date in early 2012 upon which we were simultaneously going to launch 100 new church plants in the city? The church planters could be secured in advance and trained together. They would have a ready-made association (not that they couldn't participate in existing associations) for mutual support, brainstorming, and encouragement. The NAMB could fund a coordinated advertising campaign leading up to the launch date. We've done simultaneous revivals; why not have a simultaneous church planting day?

  But I digress. This post is about the GCR Task Force's ideas, not about my ideas.

• I support a strong emphasis upon evangelism at the NAMB. I'm enthusiastic about the imminent GPS emphasis, and I'm thankful that more NAMB resources will be devoted to the cultivation of evangelism among Southern Baptists.

• I support the direct appointment of missionaries by the NAMB. I believe that this simpler model can lead to greater effectiveness.

• I support the elimination of cooperative agreements and cooperative budgets by which the NAMB passes funds back to the state conventions. Like many people, I have always thought that this boomerang missions funding arrangement was queer. I grieve not at all to think about it going away.

  I confess, however, that I am unsure as to what the unintended consequences of this measure may be. Pioneer area state conventions will doubtless fear this change, and may lobby against it. State conventions in historic SBC territories may take this action as an excuse to decrease further the percentage of Cooperative Program money that they forward to national and international causes, which (along with other portions of the report) may push us even further away from the 50/50 goal that I so long to see us achieve at the state convention level.

I do recognize that some of these actions could be viewed as preliminary steps toward the outcome that I have opposed: A merger of the NAMB into the IMB. The gutting of the Alpharetta, GA, headquarters and the assignment of a smaller task to the NAMB may indeed work out to make the NAMB "easier" for the IMB just to swallow some day in the future. Nevertheless, I choose to be thankful that the NAMB is definitely being resuscitated now rather than to worry that the NAMB might be euthanized later. Furthermore, any potential future NAMB-IMB merger cannot take place unless Southern Baptists approve it by ballot. We can deal with it then, if it comes up at all. Also, if it should be that Southern Baptists would EVER approve an IMB-NAMB merger, then I would rather that it take place incrementally than hastily.

I also confess that I am wondering whatever will become of the elements of the NAMB that do not fit within the vision articulated by the Task Force. For example, what of Disaster Relief? Southern Baptists need national coordination for Disaster Relief. Will the NAMB consider this something that belongs under Evangelism?

It seems to me that the plan for the NAMB is, in some ways, a return to what we had before the Covenant for a New Century—a board tasked with home missions assignments as its primary focus. Having folded other things into the NAMB in the 1990s, will we spin them back out in the 2010s, or will the cumulative effect be the destruction of these other worthy ministry efforts? I don't know, and the progress report doesn't say.

There are many details yet unstated, and yes, I worry about some of those. But we ought not to let imagined problems prevent us from celebrating realized achievements. I also don't want to be the guy who gets 95% of what he wanted, but acknowledges none of that while he carps over the 5% that didn't succeed in negotiations. I support the NAMB proposal.

The IMB Invasion :-)

Before considering the new task added for IMB, which I support, I will take a moment to mention one thing about the IMB. The GCR Task Force report is refreshingly honest about the challenges faced and weaknesses evidenced at the NAMB and among our local SBC churches. That can be a good thing. Playing Pollyanna is unlikely to lead us forward, and it is a sizable portion of what I expect and desire from this task force that they both take for themselves and offer to us Southern Baptists a hard, realistic look at where we stand as a denomination.

I note, however, that the task force has not shown the same healthy, searching, probing honesty toward the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. How is it that such imperfect and struggling churches who (unsurprisingly) cooperate in an imperfect and struggling effort to pursue the Great Commission on our own collective doorstep have somehow birthed and nurtured utter perfection in an international missions agency?

Come on, guys. The IMB needs to face up to some things, too, if we will be more effective in pursuing the Great Commission together. If we can't talk about those things now, then when? Or do we suffer from a blinding IMB mystique that permeates our convention even all the way up to the task force?

Now don't misunderstand me. I think that the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention is the greatest missionary organization in the history of post-biblical Christianity. I'm not trying to allege that the IMB is bad; I'm just trying to assert the difference between "great" and "perfect." We need to be mature enough to discuss the IMB's flaws as well as the NAMB's.

Oh, well. Enough of that. Leaving behind what isn't in the report, let's consider what is in the report.

The GCR Task Force recommends that the International Mission Board be allowed to work among internationals living within the United States of America. Presently, the relationship between the NAMB and the IMB is in at least one way like the relationship between the FBI and the CIA in our national government. Just as the CIA cannot legally conduct espionage within the border of the USA, the IMB cannot conduct missions activities within the USA and Canada. The proposal would lift that restriction.

I think that this could lead to some great ideas. Perhaps domestic work with an international group could become a training step that missionaries take before going overseas. It costs a serious bundle of money to get a missionary onto a foreign field, sometimes only to have the missionaries serve one term and then drop out. I wonder whether domestic international groups might become a cheaper training ground in which truly successful missionaries might be identified for placement overseas?

That's probably a horrible idea—missiology isn't my field. Suffice it to say that I see positive possibilities in allowing the IMB to perform this sort of work within the USA. It ought to be limited, however, to first-generation, non-English-speaking groups. I plan to vote for this measure.

I'm now halfway through the outline that I drew up earlier today, and entirely through my stamina for writing. I'm also feeling a bit like the pot-calling-the-kettle-black for my "Lord of the Rings" comment in the beginning of this post.

What say we end this post here to make it a manageable chunk? The next post will consider the last three planks of the platform. The final post will entail the things that I believe that we will all have to do as Southern Baptists to make all of this succeed.

The very fact that I am making a third post is indicative of and necessarily entails an important point—I don't believe that these proposals, in and of themselves, will solve anything substantial for Southern Baptists. Take it as comforting or take it as challenging: The success of the SBC does not rise or fall on the thoughts or actions of twenty or so leaders in the SBC; it rises or falls on you, the individual Southern Baptist church member reading these words right now. If this initiative will succeed, I believe that there are several essential things that we all must do together. The third post will elaborate upon them.