Barnabas File

Questions are keys to growth.   A coach always thinks about whether he or she is asking good questions.   Good questions energize and encourage; poor questions lead to lack of focus and uncertainty. As you begin the New Year, what questions are you asking?   We ask questions of ourselves as individuals, setting priorities and goals for the coming year and planning how we will reach them.   We do this because we want to be better than we are now. Churches often ask questions about the future as well.   Especially at the end of the calendar year, church leaders—both clergy and laity—stop the think about what is happening or failing to happen in the life of congregation. In my experience, however, churches are often asking the wrong questions, questions based on survival rather than mission. In committee meetings and leadership groups, churches will commonly ask questions like: Will we subscribe the budget for next year? Are we spending too muc...

Vern Powers passed away last Saturday.   In his 94 years on this earth, Vern impacted the lives of many, beginning with his own family but also touching the lives of many others as well.  I was fortunate to be one of those. Vern pastored eight churches, served as the director of Protection Plans for Tennessee Baptists for 20 years, and then spent 14 years as denominational relations director for Baptist Hospital in Nashville for 14 years.   He was an active member of First Baptist Church, Nashville, and served there in many capacities—he was reelected as an active deacon at the age of 90! Vern was a denominational leader in the days when that involved uniting Baptists rather than dividing them. Although a man of conviction, he showed respect and love to those who disagreed with him.   A Christian gentleman with a servant heart, Vern always sought to resolve misunderstandings and conflict with grace and love. If you wanted a listening ear, as I often ...

We recently received an end-of-the-year letter from friends who serve in an Asian country.   One of their comments particularly caught my attention.   They wrote, “Our national leaders are making disciples, bringing transformation to their communities, and raising up new missional leaders without dependency on outside support.”   Although all of these actions are important, the last item stood out. When we talk about the missional church, we emphasize the idea that every believer is a missionary. No matter what one does for a living, he or she is on mission in that vocation—embodying and articulating the Christian mission in the marketplace.   To put a different twist on this, how important is it to equip and empower individual Christians to have a vocation and be self-supporting?   During the colonial missionary period, missionaries often referred to “rice Christians.”   These were native believers who participated as long as the free food las...

Walter Isaacson’s book The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution is an informative story not only about the science of the digital revolution but the artistic side as well.   As he introduces those who influenced the movement, Isaacson notes the frequent intersections of art and science in the quest. One example is J. C. R. Licklider, a man who might well be called the father of the Internet.   Both thoughtful and playful, Licklider began referring to his vision with the “intentionally grandiloquent” phrase “the Intergalactic Computer Network.”   He often spent hours just studying the brush strokes of paintings in order to understand the artist better. Isaacson notes, “[He] felt that his love of art made him more intuitive. He could process a wide array of information and sniff out patterns. Another attribute, which would serve him well when he helped put together the team that laid the foundations for the Int...

In recent years, I have become aware of people in our congregation who have significant ministries in the community — the lawyer who volunteers with the domestic violence center, the former heart patient who spends time each week visiting heart patients and sharing insights about how to live with their disease, the busy mother who tutors at-risk children, the business person who finds himself the “chaplain” in his workplace. This is what missional Christians do; they serve in the world. These are not church sponsored activities. These are ministries they have identified and pursued. In Missional Renaissance , Reggie McNeal notes: “People don’t go to church; they are the church. They don’t bring people to church; they bring the church to people.” Wherever a believer is, there the church is present. For some reason, we have erected an artificial dividing line between “sanctioned” and “unsanctioned” ministry. The challenge for the church is to give members the permission t...