The second point iMonk made was especially outstanding:

Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people the evangelical Christian faith in an orthodox form that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. In what must be the most ironic of all possible factors, an evangelical culture that has spent billions of youth ministers, Christian music, Christian publishing and Christian media has produced an entire burgeoning culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures that they will endure.

Reality shows this to be true. I’ve watched as countless youth have fallen away from their faith (if it was ever faith in Christ to begin with) when given the simple freedom of college… or any alternative. When they finally gained the choice to attend church, more often they chose against it. Perhaps the problem is that they view it as attending, rather than being, living, and serving the church. I have no doubt that’s part of the issue. iMonk is completely right- these kids don’t have the foundation in Christ. Some youth ministers are more stuck on finding the new gimmick to bring youth into the group than actually solidifying the faith of those who are already there. They’re so busy trying to be cute that they forget the reason they were hired. (Or maybe that’s why the youth ministers were hired: to babysit and entertain rather than lay the foundation of the Gospel that might endure and spread throughout the lives of the youth.)

When people are more enthralled by Joel Osteen’s “Jesus wants you to be rich” philosophy than they are the words of the Jesus himself, we are surely doomed. When we’re spending more time trying to rig ropes in a gym so we can preach while hanging from the ceiling in an effort to make a five second illustration, rather than focusing wholly on the message of Christ, we are doing the church and God a disservice. What it comes down to is this: the Gospel we preach produces the churches we get. And that statement works from the individual family unit to the youth group to the senior adult Sunday School class to the entire church. It’s reflected in the local associations. It’s obvious in the state and national conventions. It’s clear in the whole of evangelicalism.

This isn’t a condemnation of pastors, churches, or evangelicalism. It’s a condemnation of our nature. It’s a condemnation of our lack of focus on Christ. It’s a condemnation of our silliness and our cuteness. OURS. Mine. Yours. Ours. I’m not sure if I care whether evangelicalism lasts ten or twenty more years. God worked pretty well in the world before they existed, and will do just fine without us. There’s plenty of evidence that shows the church becomes much more unified and stronger when it’s persecuted. There’s evidence that smaller churches are more prone to plant churches than megachurches are. There’s a growing voice that says the days of Sunday-go-to-meeting church are soon coming to an end, and that the organic homegrown church is the future. Could be. But the only way any of it lasts is if the Gospel becomes the foundation of our lives and is at the forefront of our tongues. At least, that’s what I think.

*I wanted to find a source for this statistic, and couldn’t find it. Thus it’s simply something I heard once, and likewise not particularly famous at that. Still, I’m not sure it’s that far off.

My friend Brad has followed up on his initial detective work regarding Lifeway’s new “read with discernment” labels.  You can read his post here.

The folks he interviewed at his Lifeway are friends of mine as well.  Your local Lifeway employees are not to blame for this, so if you go in and ask them about the “read with discernment” policy, please be nice.  Just because the company has an asinine policy doesn’t mean the employees should be harassed.  I’m just making that especially clear.

On the other hand, if you’d like to send a letter to Lifeway (or email), I say go for it.  At least let them be equal opportunity labelers, taking into consideration many of the authors I previously mentioned.

A friend of mine (I just found out he blogs) found this warning by Lifeway underneath some Donald Miller books the other day.  I had him go back and take a picture for me to post.  If Don Miller’s books require extra discernment when reading, then I hate to see what warning Lifeway would give this blog.  Personally, I think the warning should be under any John Maxwell books.  The same for any of the garbage Joel Osteen publishes.  (I can’t say it’s not, but I have a feeling…)

Update: I went to the website listed on the warning, and found there are only three authors considered potentially “inconsistent with historical evangelical theology.” Those authors are Rob Bell, Donald Miller, Brian McLaren, and William P. Young (who I’ve never heard of). Also, a search of Lifeway’s site produces no results for Joel Osteen, which is good. However, they do produce results for Hal Lindsey, which I consider much more concerning than anything Miller, Bell, or McLaren have written.

I want to pray first for our leaders in the SBC. I ask that you would humble our convention. I am boldly asking that your mission be continued through the SBC, and that any hindrances from that goal be removed. I pray that you would use whatever means necessary to bring us back to a strong pursuit of you, and you alone.

Second I pray that our church members would renew their hearts toward the pursuit of holiness, both on a personal and a collective level. I ask that you would enlighten our minds and soften our hearts, so that we would be more apt to love our neighbors and pray for our enemies. We are so guilty of those things. I pray that we would not take your Word lightly, and by doing so become ultra-conservative to the point of liberalism, or so liberal that the Word has no true meaning in our lives. The Word became flesh. I ask that you would bring your Spirit upon the true Christ-followers in the SBC; that we would walk in your Spirit; and we would be known as “Little Christs” once more.

I pray for the convention’s unity. I ask that you would unify us, not behind a human ego, but behind Christ alone. I pray that we would all, as a whole, repent. For all of us who are blind, I ask that you would give us eyes to see our wicked ways.  I believe that you will convict us of our collective and individual sins. I trust that you will do that, and I ask that you do it soon. Raise up your followers in the SBC. Deliver us from the Evil One, and deliver us from his those who do his work.

I beg you for revival in the SBC. True revival. A renewal of our hearts, a renewal of our minds, and a renewal of our souls. Show us the way again. Help us to crucify ourselves, and in doing so fill ourselves with Christ. Less of us, more of you, Lord. Your way, not ours. Let it begin with me. May it never cease.

Amen.

My health is good and I’ve got my passport (although apparently I no longer need it). I’m going to Canada for two weeks from June 23rd through July 8th. It’ll be a solo road trip. New Orleans to Calgary and back. I’m scouting a couple towns for potential church plants, and hoping the CCSB likes me enough to maybe bring me on one day. I know there are good non-CCSB folks doing hard work for Jesus up there, but there are few CCSB churches. In Manitoba, you can find two of the (give or take) 240 CCSB churches in the country. You can find almost twice that in Tarrant County, Texas alone. Just a thought.

Here are some of the stops (even if only for a few minutes) along the way.

Alberta: Calgary, Cochrane, Medicine Hat, Okotoks
Iowa: Sioux City
Kansas: Mushroom Rock State Park, Wichita
Louisiana: Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Lake Charles, New Orleans
Manitoba: Brandon, Winnipeg
Minnesota: Dilworth (just to say I’ve been to Minnesota)
Montana: Bozeman, Glacier National Park, Helena
Nebraska: Lincoln, North Platte
North Dakota: Fargo
Oklahoma: Enid, Oklahoma City, Ponca City
Saskatchewan: Moose Jaw, Regina, Swift Current
South Dakota: Badlands National Park, Mount Rushmore, Rapid City, Sioux Falls
Texas: Denton, Fort Worth, Glen Rose, Houston, Waco
Wyoming: Sheridan, Yellowstone National Park

Of course I’ll be blogging and photoblogging the entire trip, to the best of my abilities.

We had a team of Baptists from Georgia scheduled to work on our sanctuary for last week. Two weeks ago, we found out that the sanctuary had suffered extreme termite damage over the years. One contractor suggested we tear the building down. (We just put a brand new roof on both of our buildings, so that would have been pretty crappy.) Another contractor said it would cost about $200,000 to fix the damage. That’s about what we have in our building fund, and the goal since the beginning of our rebuilding has been to stay as much out of debt as we can. Basically option two was to spend all of our money to bring it back to the point it’s at now- gutted and empty. Well here’s the neat thing. That team of Baptists scheduled to work last week came down, and four of them were all very knowledgeable in construction. In particular, they knew exactly what to do and how to fix our termite damage. So we told them to go at it, and forget cleaning up after themselves. Spend all their time fixing it and forget the rest. And they did. And our sanctuary is good to go. Termite damage fixed.

We were all very excited about that news. This week our building coordinator said he had all this work to clean up but no workers. Then he ran into someone who said there was a MissionLab group on campus whose week-long plans had been sidelined. There was a mission group staying on campus at NOBTS with nothing to do… until now.

Cool, huh?

And then there are those times when I sit back and am completely blow away by the generosity and compassion of the traditional old school Baptist world that put out folks like Bobby Welsh (who, to clarify my position, is probably a very nice man, even if I think that whole 1 Million Campaign is… anyway).

After the hurricanes (Katrina and Rita), I saw a Southern Baptist Convention that responded fast. Disaster relief teams into badly damaged areas within a day or two. Individual volunteers. Seminary teams. People working double time. When many folks were still stumbling over themselves to get into storm-ravaged areas, the Baptists were there. And you know what? I think that’s awesome.

This week I’m in Atlanta for NOBTS Workshops. We kicked off today with a one hour chapel service at First Baptist Church of Atlanta, where classes are being held. Dr. Kelley, the NOBTS president, spoke on Romans 8:21. But before he did, Charles Stanley, the pastor of FBC Atlanta and the father of North Point Community Church’s Andy Stanley, gave NOBTS a check for $100,000. And to me, as much as I know FBC Atlanta is a very wealthy church, I know that it was sincere.

And maybe some folks feel like they’ve gotta be hard about the SBC and what it does. I know they’ve gotta rail against it all the time. I know there’s a lot messed up about the way we do things. But there’s a lot of good. And I know some people will take the open shot and say Baptists know how to take care of their own, but can’t help anybody else. But I think that’s crap. Because the support that’s been shown for New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary is wonderful. Because when we’re rebuilding that campus- so that we can train and equip more followers of Christ to go out into the world and make a difference. And I, for one, know that I’ll be back and I can’t wait to reshape New Orleans, to change it, to make that difference.

And those SBC disaster relief teams. Those Charles Stanleys. Those First Baptist Churches. They’re making it happen. And I appreciate it.

I have a strong desire to unify. I spent a summer as the community missions intern at First Baptist Tillman’s Corner , so this is something that I dealt with a lot. I recognize that Baptist polity emphasizes local church autonomy. That is, they work as independent churches. This, taken to its extreme, leads to isolation. There is a tendency, in that thinking, to become self-providing and very inward-focused. There is a strong likelihood that it is the root of many of the SBC’s problems, but I do not take issue with Baptist polity. Instead, I offer unity. Local associations like BAGNO or MBA exist to bring Baptist churches together to work in the larger community. I would like to see, instead of encouraging association-wide that churches work individually on giving out school supplies, the entire association bring all the churches that have school supplies programs together. I would like to see an association-wide school supplies distribution event. One central location, one set time (even if that’s over a week’s time), with set workers.

The proposal is this: each church, over the course of the year, gathers school supplies as they normally do for their own distribution. Those who organize and work them in their own churches would work the association event. All the churches who can and will offer supplies to a common pool. Those who work with their church events would volunteer likewise for the association event. So the same people would be working on the same projects, just under the umbrella of the association. This would require no more manpower than before. In fact, it would most likely consolidate costs and time, and help cut down on distribution abuse. Each church or organization generally requires the family that gets assistance to register with them, so they cannot come back a few days later and cheat the system. If all the Baptist churches in the association participated together in one event at one place at one time, then this would severely reduce the instances of abuse.

It grows bigger. That’s just one program. I’d like to see even bigger programs. House building, like BAGNO does through FBCNO. I’d like to see inter-denominational cooperation. Eventually, I would like to start a non-profit organization that organizes such events, bringing together all sorts of Christian services. I recognize that there are doctrinal differences, and some might offer that “we do outreach to evangelize, and they’re not evangelizing, or their doctrinal beliefs are different than ours, so we don’t want to work with them.” But really, how often do you share the gospel with someone while they pick up school supplies? I think there’s more to evangelism than that. Anyway, eventually this is something I’d like to get up and running.

I think there is a time for cooperation and a time for separation. When it’s an effort to evangelize, that’s an individual effort. In terms of worship or doctrine, that’s a church or associational deal. In terms of local service, perhaps it’s best to break down some barriers for the greater good. As far as global issues, perhaps it’s best for us all to come together- Muslims, Christians, Hindus, agnostics, or whatever- as in the One Campaign , to put an end to poverty and help research for global diseases and catastrophes. It’s never right to not do the right thing, just because that group or this group doesn’t agree with you. The Truth is the Truth, and it’s up to us to take it to all nations, but in our services, perhaps we can work together a little more. And I think, really, this is one of my larger goals.

I was talking to my roommate Mark tonight about that, in light of Bobby Welsh’s “baptize one million in a year” campaign. We both see it as asinine. I said, “There are three problems with that whole deal. One, nobody was paying attention. Two, they prayed a ridiculous prayer that didn’t do any good because they didn’t know what they were doing. And now we’re going to go back and tell the church that seven kids came to Christ. Give me a break.”

Mark responded, “And four, we’ve inoculated them. Like when you give someone an inoculation for a disease, you usually give them a dead or very mild version of the same virus. That allows them to be immune to the real disease when it comes.”

It’s amazing to me that often we refer to the old story, “if someone had the cure for cancer, wouldn’t you want to share the cure for it with them?” in response to evangelism. And here what we offer is a mild and often dead version of a very live Christianity, which immunizes them from the real thing later in life. And one day, someone will say, “did you pray this prayer?” because evangelistic styles will never change in the SBC, and those kids will say, “yes, we did.” And likely, they will die without knowing their Creator.

Just something to reflect on.