Barnabas File

In the spring of 1970 I got on a plane in Nashville to return to Fort Worth after an interview for a position as director of Baptist student ministries at Middle Tennessee State University. I was in my last year of seminary with a wife, small daughter, and a baby on the way.  I had a good visit in Murfreesboro and was impressed by Glenn Yarbrough, the state director of student work for Tennessee, who had invited me to consider the position, and the local committee.  As I boarded the plane, I recognized Charles Roselle, the director of National Student Ministries at the Baptist Sunday School Board.  I had met Charlie once, so I went over and reintroduced myself and asked if I could sit with him. Charlie was not only the director of NSM, but he was the former director of student work in Tennessee (and I could not imagine that I would hold that Tennessee position one day!).  On the way back to Love Field, I “bent his ear” and learned what I could about MTSU and stu...

A couple of weeks ago, my wife, our daughter, and I were returning from the memorial service for a friend in east Tennessee.   Stephanie, our daughter, was providing our music from Pandora on her iPhone.   A song came up that I had probably heard before, but the words suddenly got my attention.   “A Strange Way to Save the World” is written from Joseph’s perspective and points out the incongruity of the birth of the Savior in Bethlehem.   Joseph voices his wonder at the strange way that God has chosen to work.   Imagine, God was placing the plan for the salvation of the world in the hands of a teenage girl and a village craftsman! The song reminds me that our God works in unusual and paradoxical ways more times than we imagine.  So many of us are obsessed with planning and control that we rarely leave time and space for God to intervene in our lives.  Is this because we do not really believe that God might break through the ordinary, mundane...

A friend recently shared with me a book written about 20 years ago by Henri Nouwen entitled In the Name of Jesus:  Reflections on Christian Leadership .  Nouwen was one of the most prolific and popular spiritual writers of the latter 20 th century.  He wrote more than 40 books and taught at Notre Dame, as well as at Yale and Harvard. For the 10 years before his death in 1996, he was part of the L Arche Daybreak community in Toronto, sharing life with people with developmental disabilities. After his move to this community, Nouwen was asked to address a group of clergy on the subject of leadership.  This little book contains the material he presented as part of that assignment.  The underlying theme for Nouwen was the lessons he had learned in moving from a high-profile academic setting to a chaplaincy role among “the least of these.” Using the biblical passages on the temptation of Christ (Matthew 4:1-11)  and Peter’s call to be a shepherd of ...

I caught the end of an interview with a Tennessee Titans player prior to the game with the New Orleans Saints today.  The interviewer had just asked some question about statistics.  The player’s reply went something like this:  “Look, the Packers are last in defense, but they are 12-0.  Those who are depending on statistics won’t be playing after December.”  In other words, the numbers we often count don’t always determine who is best at the game. When it comes to the church, we spend a lot of time on statistics—How many were in worship?  What were the contributions?  Are we meeting budget?  These can serve as measures of a church’s progress, but the real danger comes in letting these statistics be the sole determining factors in the choices we make as the people of God.    Too often we are called on to make decisions that protect the “bottom line”—decisions based on what is expedient rather than what is faithful to the missi...

I readily admit that I am a fan of Star Trek.  The original series started when I was in Vietnam, so I was not even aware of it until it had been on the air for a season.  When our children were young, we were regular viewers of Trek reruns in the afternoons after I picked them up from school.  Needless to say, my consciousness has been affected (warped?) by favorite characters and quotes. One quote that has stayed with me was one that Science Officer Spock often told Captain Kirk when the challenge was the greatest:  “There are always options, Captain.”  Although there is a certain optimism in this statement, we must acknowledge that not all options are positive.   For the most part we do have choices whatever our circumstances.  Viktor Frankl, the survivor of a Nazi concentration camp, said that he made two choices during his imprisonment—he would do his best to survive and to learn from the experience.  He did not have a choice abou...

Although the church is not a business, there are valuable resources from the business world that can be very helpful to those who lead churches, judicatories, or faith-based organizations.   I welcome the insights of people like Patrick Lencioni, Jim Collins, Seth Godin, Daniel Pink, and others who provide information and ideas that give us a new perspective on what we are doing as believers.   Of course, any writer, speaker, or leader—secular or sacred—needs to meet the tests of soundness and integrity but people like these often provide us with “best practices” that challenge us to do more.   They call us to do not just the minimum but to be better. Christians are called to do more than the bare minimum in their lives and kingdom service.  The little book of James is a valuable resource as we consider the criteria by which our lives and ministry should be evaluated.  In James 1:22-25, we find these words: "Do not merely listen to the word, and so de...

According to a person who has the opportunity to observe what is going on in theological education across the country, there are an increasing number of students in graduate theological education who haven’t grown up in the church, so they need spiritual formation while in seminary.  I don’t question the need, but I question the premise that those who HAVE grown up in congregations have been spiritually formed.  This is an unwarranted assumption.  Some have and some haven’t. I spent almost thirty years working with college and university students.  Many came from strong church backgrounds.  They were regular participants in worship services, youth programs, and summer camping programs.  Many were healthy, growing believers, but many had much to unlearn.  Although most of these young adults had sat through hours of Bible study, they did not know how to study the Bible for themselves.  They knew what their pastor or youth minister believe...

This past Friday night Dr. Sally Holt, who teaches Christian ethics at Central Baptist Theological Seminary Tennessee, arranged for her class in Murfreesboro to meet for dinner with a rabbi who teaches at a local university and the imam of the local mosque. Her purpose was to simply engage everyone in a time of informal dialogue in a non-threatening setting.   She was kind enough to invite me to participate.   The discussion touched on a number of topics, and I came away with many ideas, but two things particularly stimulated my thinking. First, the imam provided a good insight for our students who will serve local congregations.  He pointed out that their situation is very different from that of ministers just a few years ago.  At one point when a pastor stepped into the pulpit on Sunday morning,  there was a pretty good chance that the congregation was rather homogenous—they probably were born and raised in the local area, most were of the same ethnicit...

I was in a meeting several years ago with a person who called himself a “thought leader.”  Supposedly, a thought leader is someone who has innovative ideas that offer a new or unusual perspective in a situation. This person may well have fit that description, but I still am not sure I fully understand the concept. In his new book Growing Agile Leaders , Bob Dale introduced me to the idea of a “thought partner.”  This is a concept that I can understand.  Although in many ways a thought partner serves as a coach for a person, he or she may also slip into the roles of mentor or consultant from time to time. Dale points out that the thought partner not only provides the optimism, encouragement, and feedback of the coach, but he or she has a certain level of expertise or experience that “offsets blind spots and knowledge gaps.”  He suggests that this may also be a prophetic or even mystical role. Coaches always walk a fine line between coaching and consultin...

Let me tell you a story about some friends of mine.  This Christian couple are longtime church members. The husband’s family practiced the tithe (ten percent of one’s income BEFORE taxes, of course), believed that the church was the “storehouse” of God’s tithe, and taught him the same. The wife’s family were church donors but not tithers, but when they married, the couple decided to be regular contributors to the church, always giving ten percent of their income. The church they have attended for years was a generous supporter of the denominational missions program at one time, usually sending more than ten percent of its undesignated gifts to the denomination for “missions” (that included not only domestic and foreign field personnel, but seminary support, benevolences, etc.).  In fact, their church was one of the largest supporters of the denominational work in the state. Something interesting happened several years ago, however. The church found that it needed mo...

Each year churches and other Christian groups spend a great deal of time on strategic planning.  They consider their environment, assess their resources, and make goals for three, five, or ten years into the future.  Unfortunately, most of this is wasted effort.   Current realities change so quickly that it is difficult to know what will happen next week much less years into the future.  What’s the alternative?  In Great by Choice , the new book by Jim Collins and Morten Hansen, the authors address the question, “Why do some companies thrive in uncertainty, even chaos, and others do not?”  The answer is not simple, but an illustration early in the book reflects some of the characteristics of organizations that prosper in uncertain times. The authors tell the story of the competition between Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott in 1911 to reach the South Pole.  Amundsen’s team succeeded, reached the Pole, and returned home safely....

A couple of years ago, I read Missional Renaissance by Reggie McNeal.  McNeal calls for several shifts in emphasis for the church in the 21 st century: ·          From an internal to an external focus. ·          From program development to people development. ·          From church-based to kingdom-based leadership. The one that particularly got my attention was his strong appeal for the church to move from a program-driven focus to a people-centered focus.  He suggests that the effectiveness of a missional church is based more on the quality of its people than the quality (and quantity) of its programs. In the past, we often operated out of this mindset:  “Here is what we have for you. Come and plug into it.”  We accepted programs that were developed elsewhere and forced them to fit our context.  The question we need to b...

As I am involved in discussions with pastors and other church leaders, a question that surfaces frequently is “How do you measure success in the church?”  Traditionally, we have used the “nickels and noses” (giving and attendance) approach.  Some measure their success by baptismal rate and others by the numbers involved in Christian education programs or weekday ministries. Many leaders are moving beyond these metrics because they do not always reflect what the leaders are really seeking to form—committed followers of Jesus Christ.  Several years ago, Willow Creek church commissioned a study that revealed (it was called REVEAL) that the church was not achieving its goal:  “Willow Creek exists to turn irreligious people into fully devoted followers of Christ.”Some used this as a basis of criticizing the church and its methodologies.  In reality, the church should be praised for being willing to ask the hard question, “Are we really doing what we say we ...

Where will we find the next cohort of church leaders?  Traditionally, our leaders grew up in the church, were nurtured by youth ministries and collegiate ministries, responded to “the call” to ministry, and then prepared themselves through graduate theological education.  Although there were certainly exceptions to this pattern, most current leaders followed this path. Of course, this is no longer a truism. A recent article fromLeadership Network addresses significant changes in church leadership.  Two items caught my attention.  First, the article states that “an increasing number of key implementers and team leaders are coming from business vs. ministry backgrounds.”  I agree and could add that many are coming from other backgrounds as well, such as education and the not-for-profit sector.  These folks have unique skill sets that are needed by the church at this particular point in time, and their selection for such roles should be encouraged. ...

If you haven’t noticed, theological education in North America is going through a “shake-out” process. I learned this week of one free-standing denominational seminary that is negotiating to become the divinity school of a college in the same denomination.  Other seminaries are combining or closing their doors.  Those that survive with find new partners and strengthen their relationships with old partners. New approaches to theological education like those being offered by Central Baptist Theological Seminary require contextualization and creativity, but they will fail without cooperation.  Healthy, flexible, and supportive partners are needed for these efforts to be successful. Partners assist theological institutions in a number of ways.  For one thing, partners—church, judicatories, other institutions—link the theological schools with potential students.  Seminaries and divinity schools are exhibiting flexibility by offering programs to edu...

The decentralized model of theological education that Central Baptist Theological Seminary is offering not only in Tennessee and Wisconsin but through the Access Program depends on three things:  contextualization, creativity, and cooperation.  This post addresses creativity. In August 1967, Rita and I packed all of our worldly goods into a station wagon and a trailer and left Alabama for a sojourn of three years in Fort Worth, Texas.  In order to get a seminary degree in those days, a person needed to relocate (unless fortunate enough to have a seminary in their backyard) in order to get an education and a degree.  This meant finding a new job (for at least one family member), a place to live, and a new church (where you would serve either as volunteer or paid staff).  This also meant leaving behind family and friends (although some people we knew had made the same trek) and a church context that we were very familiar with and we deeply involved.  ...

For the past six years, I have had the opportunity to work with the leadership of Central Baptist Theological Seminary to “create a bridge as we walked across it.”   The bridge is the Murfreesboro center of CBTS, now known as “Central Baptist Theological Seminary Tennessee.”   Our goal has been to offer quality graduate level theological education that is affordable and accessible.   During these years, we have offered thirty-four classes, enrolled some forty individuals, and graduated six students with the Master of Divinity degree.   Although now fully accredited, the model of theological education we offer in Tennessee is still something of an experiment.   The ongoing viability of that experiment is contingent on three things:   contextualization, creativity, and cooperation.   I will address the first here and the other two in subsequent posts. In our situation, contextualization can mean many things, but I believe that it begins with ...

Seth Godin does good work.   Not only does he provide alternatives to old ways of doing things, he reminds us not to neglect proven concepts.   In a recent blog post , he wrote about the differences between managers and leaders.   He said: “Managers work to get their employees to do what they did yesterday, but a little faster and a little cheaper.   Leaders, on the other hand, know where they'd like to go, but understand that they can't get there without their tribe, without giving those they lead the tools to make something happen.   Managers want authority. Leaders take responsibility.” Godin goes on to point out that we need both managers and leaders, but he shows his bias when he says, “It helps to remember that leaders are scarce and thus more valuable.” Although I understand his sentiment, I have to disagree.   I would say that both are valuable, but only if they understand their respective roles and both accept the responsibilities tha...