Barnabas File

Several years ago I attended an ordination service where I heard McAfee professor Loyd Allen say something like this to the candidate:  “Love the church but don't worship it .” His admonition has stayed with me.  We worship God but we love the church that God’s Son established. Darrell Gwaltney, dean of the School of Religion at Belmont University, convened a lunch meeting yesterday with six ministers, seven including him.  Most are “retired” but still involved in some type of ongoing ministry.  It was quickly determined that this group represented over 300 years in combined ministerial experience.  As we talked about matters of mutual concern, it was very clear that each of these individuals loves the church. Now these are not neophytes nor are they naive.  As pastors, staff ministers, members, and interim pastors, they have seen the church at its worst as well as its best.  They have seen the church when one rejoices at its ability to love ...

As readers of this blog have observed, I believe that ministry entrepreneurs are serving a significant role in Kingdom work today and will continue to do so in the future.   I have had the chance to meet such creative people and to learn from them.   These gifted men and women have cast many of the old paradigms aside and are taking advantage of the new resources in our evolving context.   They learn not only from traditional Christian sources but from the marketplace as well.   In a recent blog , Claire Diaz-Ortiz shared some insights she learned from her involvement in the startup of Twitter that might be helpful to social entrepreneurs.  Let’s consider how these might apply to ministry entrepreneurs. First, take risks.  Diaz-Ortiz comments that “big risks bring big rewards.”  Every ministry entrepreneur must assess risk from his or her own perspective, but it is certain to involve some sense of skepticism and even rejection from religious...

The story goes that a politician was once asked where he stood on an issue.  He responded, “Some of my friends are for it. Some of my friends are against it.  I’m for my friends.”  I thought about this story when I read the news reports about the latest annual meeting of the Tennessee Baptist Convention held in Memphis.   Many of my friends still find their place of denominational service through the state Baptist convention, so I am always interested in learning how they are getting along. The report in the Baptist and Reflector , the TBC paper, stated that the meeting had “the lowest messenger count in decades”—926 registered messengers from 419 churches.  (There are 3200 churches affiliated with the state convention in Tennessee.) This is even more surprising when one considers that about one-tenth of those registered were probably denominational employees (including directors of missions from 66 district associations). Editor Lonnie Wilkey su...

The decline in traditional denominations continues.  This is not limited to mainline Protestants.  Catholics, Jews, and some conservative or evangelical groups are experiencing declines in membership and attendance as well.  In many cases, this decline started decades ago, but various groups are only now admitting the impact on their ministries and programs.  Endowments and financial reserves have helped to maintain the status quo, but these are not as robust as they once were and may even be depleted. We might identify any number of factors behind this decline—demographic (including ethnic shifts and birthrates), social, economic, and theological—but that is not the point of this blog.  I will leave that assessment to others. As denominations have declined, the structures they developed and supported have declined as well These bureaucracies (and I do not use that word in a pejorative way) once provided many services to local congregations—the coor...

Every time I visit my son and his family in the San Francisco area, I come back profoundly impacted by the diversity of the people I encounter—Japanese, Korean, Chinese, various East Asian and South Asian people, and Hispanics.   Sometimes the situation is almost surrealistic as one sees a Japanese family touring the USS Hornet, an aircraft carrier whose planes inflicted major damage on Japanese planes, ships, and facilities during World War Two! The fact that we are becoming a nation of minorities in which Euro-Americans will soon be one was emphasized by the recent Presidential elections.  Mr. Romney was not just defeated by President Obama and a well-run organization but by demographics—a country that is increasingly Hispanic and Asian, a country of diversity.  This is a trend that is not going to change. I have often commented on the growing ethnic diversity in our little part of Tennessee, but we have only begun to experience what will be a tidal wave of c...

Suffering is a part of life.   I don't say that lightly.  We are now walking with a family member, someone in the prime of life, who is undergoing treatment for cancer.   The prognosis is encouraging, but this is one of those situations where one is often moved to ask, “Why, God?   Why now and to this person?” Believers have struggled with the reality and mystery of suffering for ages.  Job and his friends in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Apostle Paul in his letters, theologians through the ages, and pastors in hospital waiting rooms have all attempted to deal with the problem of pain and suffering.  We know the classic statement of the problem:  “If God is good and all powerful, why does God allow suffering in the world?”  The failure to do so brands God as either evil or impotent in the eyes of many.  Some reject God because they cannot figure it all out.  Their argument goes something like this:  “If I can’t understan...

During the election season (which seems to grow longer every time it comes around), the focus is mostly on convincing rather than informing.  Ads, speakers, phone calls, e-mails and direct mail campaigns usually try to tell us where one candidate is wrong and another right. Even so, I have often found in this election that occasionally I AM informed and learn something from a candidate or one of their supporters that raises a significant question or makes me reassess one of my assumptions on an issue.  I have also realized that there are things that I can agree with another person about even if I do not buy into everything they say. This has been my approach in much of my reading, viewing, and listening.  Though I may differ with a person on some matters, I can learn from him or her.  I try to be aware of what people from a variety of perspectives—business, culture, religion—have to say and glean what is helpful for me.  I may have some theological di...