Doubts in the Darkness

Jesus Christ is worthy of having the worlds greatest messenger prepare the way for His life and work. This man was named John the Baptist.

John was destined for greatness from the time of his conception. Luke tells us that he was born supernaturally of aged parents (Luke 1:12-13).

John was a prophet that was a fulfillment of prophecy (Malachi 3:1). He was a type of Elijah–not Elijah reincarnated, but like Elijah in his anointing (and even his sense of fashion).

John was the first prophetic voice Israel had heard in 400 years, so his ministry created quite a stir. He called people to repent, return to God, and be baptized as a publish profession of this change of heart. His preaching was so powerful that he had to quell rumors that he was himself the Messiah (John 1:20).

Matthew’s Gospel quotes one of John’s fiery sermons:

11 “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

Matthew 3:11-12

John was even given the task of baptizing Jesus–an assignment he was very reluctant to take on (Matthew 3:13-15). John, in essence, had the privilege of publicly introducing Jesus to a people that were anxiously waiting for their messiah.

But John abruptly disappeared from the Gospel accounts after he baptized Jesus. His ministry came to a screeching halt after he confronted Herod over his unlawful marriage to his sister-in-law (his brother’s wife). Herod promptly threw him in prison, only keeping him alive because he feared the public backlash that might come from executing a prophet.

John was apparently allowed some interaction with his disciples during his imprisonment. He sent them to ask Jesus a question:

2 Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples 3 and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”

Matthew 11:2-3

It seemed John was doubting his own message as far as Jesus was concerned.

But it doesn’t take much imagination to sympathize with John’s question. He was languishing in a dungeon and probably had been for several months. The wild man of the desert was now confined to a suffocating prison cell. He no longer had the privilege of seeing crowds listen and respond with tears of repentance. The Kingdom he so boldly spoke of did not seem to match his current reality.

Jesus understood John’s plight, for there is no apparent rebuke in His response to John’s disciples:

4 And Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5 the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.6 And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”

Matthew 11:4-6

Jesus’ answer was a message of reassurance and confirmation. His miracles and His message confirmed His true identity and matched Old Testament prophesies (Isaiah 35:5-6; Isaiah 61:1). There was no need to lose faith.

There’s a powerful message in John’s questions if we’ll take the time to see it. It goes something like this:

Even giants in the faith have moments confusion, disappointment, and doubt.

Jesus, in fact, went on to tell the observers that John’s question did not detract from his legacy in any way (Matthew 11:7-14).

Most of us will not be thrown into prison for our faith. But most of us will have moments of bitter disappointment.

Jesus simply asks us to keep trusting Him in these harsh seasons. He will faithfully reveal Himself in due time. He will carry you through doubts in the darkness.

The Best Intentions: How A Plan to Revitalize the SBC Accelerated Its Decline (Book Review)

Allow me to share a little of my background for those who may be reading this blog for the first time:

I’m a lifelong Southern Baptist. I grew up attending the Southern Baptist church that my family has now attended for four generations. I responded to the gospel and was baptized in that church. I was also licensed and ordained into ministry in that church.

I have benefited greatly from what we Southern Baptist do cooperatively. I have been blessed to attend two of our seminaries at a significant discount due to the funding these schools receive from the Cooperative Program. I also spent three of my eleven years in the Philippines as a missionary of the International Mission Board.

I have now been the pastor of a Southern Baptist church for over 6 years here in El Paso, Texas.

I haven’t been deeply involved in the politics of my denomination, but do I care about what happens within it.

I first learned about The Best Intentions book on Facebook. I have been very eager to read it, so I asked Dr. Kelley for a review copy. His publisher has granted my request, so here goes:

Summary

Kelley begins the book by answering two questions: “Who are Southern Baptist,” and “What Do Southern Baptists Do?”

I’ll give an abbreviated version of his answer: Southern Baptists are a network of autonomous churches that cooperate for the sake of the gospel. Part of this cooperation is accomplished through the Cooperative Program (CP), a system implemented in 1926. This system allows all churches to support ministry at the local, state, national and international level by giving a percentage of their offerings to the CP. This ingenious system means SBC churches of every size can contribute to ministry efforts that none of them would be able to do individually.

Kelley also gives a historical sketch of the Conservative Resurgence, a movement within the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) that began in 1979. The Conservative Resurgence shifted the SBC entities and seminaries in a more theologically conservative direction after years of liberal drift. One important aspect of the Conservative Resurgence, Kelley notes, is the grassroots nature of the movement. In other words, the movement was driven by the expressed beliefs of typical SBC churches/members (a high view of Scripture, etc.).

The Great Commission Resurgence (GCR) is a term that appeared years later (2008). The term was intentionally fashioned after the Conservative Resurgence. But Kelley notes a very important distinction between the two movements: the GCR was not grassroots in nature. There was not a widespread call among rank-and-file Southern Baptist for reforms in the way we do ministry and missions. The initiatives were top-down, or as Kelley puts it, “Convention-driven initiatives rather than church-based initiatives.”

The initiatives of the Great Commission Resurgence were approved by the Southern Baptist Convention in 2010. Some of the initiatives that were passed (such as the mission statement) were completely inconsequential. But the GRC led to two radical changes in the way the North American Mission Board functioned.

The first change was a drastic reduction in resources devoted to evangelism. The NAMB has historically helped Southern Baptist churches and agencies develop strategies to evangelize the lost. But the NAMB’s emphasis has overwhelmingly shifted to church-planting. Unfortunately, it does not seem this has resulted in more churches being planted than with previous strategies: “In the ten years after GCR, NAMB spent $439,943,569 more money on church planting but employed significantly fewer church planters and started significantly fewer new churches.”

The second major change came the way the NAMB related to state conventions. Previously, the NAMB had “Cooperative Agreements” with each state convention. The NAMB and the state leadership would negotiate the amount of funding the state would receive as well as who was responsible for what. This required compromise on the part of both entities, but it also built mutual trust and created buy-in for the Cooperative Program. States could see first-hand how their cooperative program promotion and giving benefited the ministries within their conventions.

Even southern states would get some NAMB funding for certain ministries. I am, for example, originally from Alabama. The NAMB used to fund campus ministry in two of our historically black colleges.

The GCR changed this. The NAMB was given unprecedented control of cooperative program dollars, in essence bypassing the states conventions: “Having eliminated the Cooperative Agreements, NAMB chose to do much more than simply not increase its support for non-South conventions. It actually pulled funding for evangelism and church planting out of several of these convention budgets, creating a fiscal crisis for the Great Commission work in the most unreached parts of North America.”

NAMB leadership has gone so far as to require some state convention leaders to sign Non-Disclosure agreements. These contracts forbid state leaders from discussing their financial arrangement with the NAMB or criticising the NAMB.

As you can imagine, this has been a recipe for conflict between the NAMB and state conventions—conflicts which have not fully been resolved. These conflicts have likely harmed the cooperative spirit that historically fueled cooperative giving among our churches.

Kelley has included a lot more details than what I have written in this summary (a lot more eye-opening details). What I’ve tried to do here is present some of the highlights that stood out to me as I read.

Thoughts/Review

Change is often painful but necessary part of ministry. Here is the crucial question: were the changes brought about by the Great Commission Resurgence good for our convention? Based on the data presented in the book, the answer is “no.” The SBC has seen dramatic decline in virtually every meaningful metric over the past decade (the data is in the book).

Many states, for example, have responded to the GCR challenge of passing along a higher percentage of their offerings along to the national-level entities/ministries. The GCR was “successful” in that sense. But the higher percentage has come from an overall lower amount, meaning the net effect is less money going to missions.

I think Dr. Kelley has brought up some very serious concerns regarding the consequences of the Great Commission Resurgence and the current direction of the Southern Baptist Convention. I encourage my fellow Southern Baptists to read this book and examine the data for themselves.

The book is available here: The Best Intentions (Northeastern Baptist Press).