Barnabas File

I visited today with a friend who is a missionary in Western Europe. His task is to share the Gospel in an area that is post-Christian. We may want to unpack that term a bit. For centuries, Europe was part of Christendom—an institutionalized form of Christianity characterized by established or state churches (with a few dissenting groups thrown in to keep it interesting). My friend points out that he tries to differentiate among the terms Christendom , Christianity , and being a follower of Christ . Many people with whom he works look upon Christianity as a failed experiment—“Been there, done that”—when what has really failed is the institution of Christendom. His role is to bring people to Christ, not Christianity. In order to do this, he and his team are taking some unique approaches to “doing church.” Although his context is different from that of my friends in Southeast Asia who are developing an indigenous church in a country that has never been Christian, the tasks are similar—es...

I love books. My wife said recently, “I don’t know if we have room for another book in the house!” Of course, she loves books, too, and has an extensive collection of children’s books that she has used in teaching over the years and shares with our grandchildren. We are readers. We have read to our children, and we now read to our grandchildren. I always have at least one book or magazine with me to read in spare moments. When I was in seminary, I enjoyed browsing the library. There were always unexpected discoveries and insights. Although I visit libraries from time to time now, my browsing takes place more often these days in a bookstore. I am in something of a transition, however. Today I tend to buy my books on line. In fact, I may find a book in a bookstore and then buy it through Amazon.com (sorry, Barnes and Noble) because I can get it at less expense. The transition from bricks and mortar bookstore to online bookseller was a precursor to my latest change—from paper book to e-bo...

It’s back to school time! When I was a campus minister, this was one of the most exciting (and taxing) times of the year. Students were back from their summer work or mission service, new students were arriving for the first time, and the possibilities seemed limitless. For 14 years, this was the time of the year I worked the hardest. If we didn’t make contact with some of these new folks in the first two or three weeks, they probably would not connect with the Baptist ministry on campus. I thought about the excitement of this time of year when I visited at University Heights Baptist Church in Springfield, Missouri, this morning. This beautiful stone church sits across the street from Missouri State University. For the past ten years, the church has hosted the MSU Pride Band for worship and lunch on the first Sunday before classes begin. The place was packed with the band members and a number of other students. Pastor Danny Chisholm preached an appropriate sermon on “A New Beginning,” ...

Dr. Molly Marshall and the folks at Central Baptist Theological Seminary have been very kind to me. Since I became volunteer director of the Murfreesboro center of the seminary three years ago, they have graciously accepted me as a co-worker and colleague although I am something of a “barbarian within the gates.” I am not an academic, but I do enjoy working with them to develop men and women for Christian leadership. Most recently, I was invited to be part of a faculty retreat at Lied Lodge on the Arbor Day Farm, a beautiful setting in Nebraska City, Nebraska. The primary presenter was Dr. Dan Aleshire, executive director of the Association of Theological Schools. I know Dan from his days at Southern Seminary. I was a guest presenter in a couple of his classes, and he was the outside reader on my doctor of ministry project. Over the three days we were at the conference center, Dan made several presentations on the state of theological education and the church. Much of it was not new, b...

(These are my remarks to the Tennessee CBF Coordinating Council on responding to the challenges that face the organization today.) You don’t fight trends. You discern them, try to understand them, and learn to live with them. This is the dawning of a new reality. What resources can we bring to bear on such trends? 1. Agility --We are still young enough as an organization to be flexible and adapt to the needs of our constituents; however, this may mean adapting a new paradigm for a middle judicatory like ours. 2. Relationships —We are relational. “Fellowship” is our last name. This is one of our basic values. a. We have the good will of many people in the churches. b. We continue to develop new relationships with churches, ministries, and other partners. c. Our future growth will not be based on bringing established churches “over to CBF ” but in strengthening ties with the churches who already identify with us and establishing new churches. 3. Grace —I believe that in all we do, we ha...

(Today, I met with the Coordinating Council of the Tennessee Cooperative Baptist Fellowship for the last time. In this post, I want to share the challenges I presented to that group.) In I Chronicles 12: 32, we read about the people of Issachar who “understood the times” and “what Israel should do” (NASB). I don’t claim to have such a gift, but let me share several challenges that we should understand and leave it up to you to determine what we should do. 1. Pastoral change . In the next year, three of our top ten giving churches will undergo pastoral change—one is seeking a pastor, one pastor will take early retirement in December, and the other has announced that he will retire next year. Of course, there may be others! Although we believe in congregational polity, the pastor is a person of great influence in the Baptist church. I make it a practice to work with pastors and avoid “end runs” around pastors. Where the church is already supportive, pastoral change in the wro...

In A New Kind of Christian , Brian McLaren briefly presents a model for theological education that would support the church of the future. He refers to this model as “one part monastery, one part mission agency, and one part seminary.” The monastery would care for spiritual formation, the mission agency for involvement in God’s work in the world, and the seminary would provide the content. Of course, this is not a fully formed approach to seminary education, but it does move beyond the academic model that predominates today. The key is the interaction between the three elements—spiritual, practical, and intellectual. Each of the elements is vital not only for the practice of ministry but for the life of the church. When any model of doing church leaves out one of these ingredients, it becomes malformed. If theological education is meant to serve the church (and that is what its most vocal advocates say that it is supposed to do), then it must equip leaders who can help to form a...

Believe it or not, you can learn a lot in Baptist Sunday school. One week ago yesterday I taught a class and yesterday I was the participant in another class. Although the topics were very different, I detected a common thread. The class I taught was based on I Corinthians 14. The passage deals with the chaotic worship of the Corinthian church. The theme of the lesson was that we should avoid creating barriers in worship that would exclude newcomers. Of course, we spent a good bit of time talking about glossolalia —speaking in tongues. In writing to the Corinthians, Paul never says that they should not speak in tongues. In fact, he testifies that he has the gift himself and often uses it in his private times of prayer. His point is not that the gift of speaking in tongues is not a valid gift but that it is a spiritual gift that needs to be used properly to build up the body of Christ. Paul embraced the mystery of the work of the Spirit of God. The more recent class was the concluding p...