Barnabas File

When Rita and I moved to Columbus, Georgia, in 1965, we visited Benning Hills Baptist Church where Sidney Waterhouse was pastor.     The following Sunday I was an usher and within a few weeks we were teaching a Sunday school class.     I certainly would like to think that this is because we were such apparently outstanding leaders (Rita is, I am not).     That was not the case, however. Benning Hills was located just outside the main gate of Fort Benning (now Fort Moore), and the post had recently sent several units to the Republic of Vietnam.     They had lost not only a number of military personnel but families who chose to relocate.   The church was experiencing what I refer to as “churn.”  This is a rather robust word.  As a noun,  It means “ a container in which cream is stirred or shaken to make butter ” (yes, I have seen one).  As a verb, it means “to stir or agitate violently .”  Benning Hi...

My friend, Mike Smith, says, “Don’t say Baptists have never done a certain thing.     Baptists have done a lot of things.”     This is not only true for the Baptist tribe, but the Christian Church historically.     As we study the history of the Church, we observe a continuing evolution of thought and practice.    This is especially true in relation to what we call the mission of the church. Mission has been continually reconceptualized down through the last two thousand years. Missiologist David Bosch and theologian Han Kung suggested that the church has gone through several “paradigm shifts” in relation to its mission.  We might consider the changes in this way: The apocalyptic paradigm of primitive Christianity was based on the expectation of the imminent or impending return of Christ. The Hellenistic paradigm of the patristic period addressed this situation: “What do you do when Christ does not return as expected?” T...

What do you see? The first time I learned about paradigms and paradigm shifting was through Joel Barker’s book on the topic. Barker helped us to see that if we can shift the way that we look at something, we can change our entire perspective on the subject.  He used optical illusions as an illustration of this concept.  If you look at something once, you see it in one particular way, but if you concentrate, you may see something new. Barker also pointed out that this idea applies to business.  Those who started laying tracks and placing locomotives on them thought they were in the railroad business when actually they were in the transportation business.  One approach led to a dead end; the other opened up new possibilities. The same is true of the church.  Hans Kung and David Bosch applied this to the work of the church through two millennia. Building on their work, we can identify seven  major subdivisions ...

My friend Mark Tidsworth recently shared this quote by Hans Kung in The Church as the People of God:   "A church which pitches its tents without constantly looking out for new horizons, which does not continually strike camp, is being untrue to its calling. ... [We must] play down our longing for certainty, accept what is risky, and live by improvisation and experiment." You will rarely hear this preached in a Sunday morning worship service.   Most of those who step into pulpits feel compelled to preach about certainty, stability, and safety.   Even those who do not proclaim a gospel of prosperity are reluctant to tell their congregants, “Don’t get too comfortable.   Not only are things going to change but, if we are the people of God, we should expect them to change.” When rightly lived, the message we proclaim of the Kingdom of God is about instability, change, and new challenges.   My pastor preached on Luke 13:18-19 yesterday.   In this pas...