Barnabas File

I made a visit to my primary care physician this week for my annual checkup.   Of course, I went in several days earlier for a little blood-letting. Although my doctor encouraged me to consider paying more attention to food and exercise, the indicators were all good—blood pressure, EKG, and all those numbers on the lab report.   The bottom line was that everything was very good (for a person my age).   Not perfect but healthy. I thought of this visit when I responded to an e-mail from my friend Dr. Heather Entrekin at Central Baptist Theological Seminary with these questions:  “ What is congregational health?”  “What does it look like in a church? ”  Good questions.  No body--ecclesiastical or human--is perfect, but we do look at certain indicators to see how things are going.  This gives us some idea of the life, viability, and sustainability of the organism. There are any number of taxonomies for evaluating congregational health....

Fear is a powerful emotion.   The common reactions that a person adopts when he or she is fearful are   either “fight” or “flight,” but fear can cause individuals to do other things as well.    Fear can cause one to lie and cheat, to see the other as somehow alien and hateful, and to see reality in a horribly distorted way.   Otherwise good people act in bad ways due to fear. In A HiddenWholeness , Parker Palmer points out that fear feeds an arrogance that provides justification for our unseemly actions.  We fear being powerless, so we adopt a feeling of arrogance.  Of course, arrogance is rooted in insecurity. My arrogance becomes a shield against my insecurity and fear. Palmer, “The more insecure I feel, the more arrogant I tend to become, and the most arrogant people I know are also the most insecure.” It’s a vicious circle, isn’t it?     So what do we do with this fear?  In 1 John 4:18 we read these words, “ There is ...

The life and accomplishments of the saint we call Patrick have certainly been embellished and enhanced by early hagiography and centuries of veneration.  Historians assume that some acts attributed to Patrick were either done by others or are simply good stories that have become part of his legend.  In death, Patrick is undoubtedly a much larger presence that he was in actual life.  This is true with so many religious and historical figures.  They may have been decisive, even heroic, figures but we can no longer separate the person from the legend. Not only is Patrick an iconic figure, he has also become linked with what we know call Celtic Christianity.  Thomas Cahill’s book How the Irish Saved Civilization introduced the rich tradition of the Celtic and specifically Irish contributions to a mass audience.  George Hunter drew on similar ideas for The Celtic Way of Evangelism.   Just as we add much on to the lives of honored individuals of the ...

Steve Inskeep interviewed Professor Shankar Vedantam on NPR this morning on the topic of compromise.  Studies show that Americans have ambivalent feelings about compromise in politics.  They vote for people who say they won’t compromise their values, but they are disappointed when those they elect fail to compromise in order to pass legislation.  If one reads the Constitution of the United States it will become readily apparent that compromise runs throughout the document.  We have survived as a nation by practicing give and take in governance. No politician runs on a platform of compromise but, once elected, he or she soon finds out that negotiation is necessary in order to make any impact as a legislator.  Perhaps I should say that this has been the name of the game, but both parties seem to have settled into ideological trench warfare on many issues.  As a result, movement is often lacking in the legislative process. Compromise simply recogniz...

There is an old story that I heard while I was in seminary. Several Baptists are sitting around and one asks, “If you were not a Baptist, what would you be?”  One thought a few minutes and said, “Well, I guess I could be a Methodist.”  Another said, “I could be comfortable as a Disciples of Christ member.”  One did not answer, so he was asked, “What would you be if you were not a Baptist?”  He readily responded, “I’d be ashamed.” I have learned a lot about Christian groups since then.  I now know that there are a lot of different kinds of Baptists. In their Handbook of Denominations in America (11 th ed.), Mead and Hill identify 20 Baptist groups in the United States alone.   Wikipedia lists over sixty.  The   Baptist World Alliance   reports more than 41 million members worldwide in more than 150,000 congregations .  I now understand that Baptists agree on certain principles, but they differ on others such as eschatology, ...

Women graduates of CBTS Tennessee "When the last days come,    I will give my Spirit    to everyone.    Your sons and daughters    will prophesy.    Your young men    will see visions,    and your old men    will have dreams.” These words from Acts 2:17 seem to have something for everyone, don’t they?  I thought of them today because this is International Women’s Day.  I understand that this is an artificial date on the calendar, but the day does cause me to reassess how far we have failed to come in providing women with the opportunity to use their gifts to build up the body of Christ. In my coaching practice, I coach several women ministers. Only one is a Baptist.  Two others were but they became weary of being told what they could not do and found a denomination that would let them do what they were gifted to do.  I h...

John Philip Newell has a mission.  He sees the brokenness of humanity, the division between nations, and the destruction of Creation and realizes that something must be done.  Newell’s solution, however, is not something new but something very old.  He calls us back to a time of oneness—a reuniting of the spirit, and the earth and the human soul.  In A New Harmony , Newell is actually presenting the case for an ancient harmony that underlies our world.  He argues that there are certain underlying principles of unity that we have rejected but can learn to embrace in order to overcome our brokenness. After presenting the case for this ancient harmony, Newell discusses how harmony has been broken and then provides a challenge to rediscover and practice that ancient harmony again.  In his concluding paragraph, he writes: “The Spirit is doing a new thing.  It is springing forth now in our consciousness, among every people, in every discipline, ...