SBC Today

Dr. Chuck Kelley is President and Professor of Evangelism at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary



This is the fourth of a four part series of articles taken from Dr. Kelley’s presentation on the New Methodists. In part one, he walked us through the history of evangelism in the SBC. In part two, he examined our current state of evangelism. In the third part, he explained where we’ve gone wrong. And in this final installment, Dr. Kelley presents a way to fix the problem.

Part 4: What Do We Have to Do to Fix Things?

What I have come to realize is that also included in our evangelistic process was a very aggressive discipleship process. Here is a snapshot of some of the elements of the discipleship process that were found in the typical Southern Baptist church of any size and location.

• A Sunday night program that included small group discipleship training for all ages of the church and an evening service.
• Each January there was a four to six day Bible conference teaching one book of the Bible to all ages.
• At least once and often more frequently there were special events called study courses to train every age group in some aspect of Baptist and church life.
• In addition there was a weekly missions training program for young boys and girls, along with youth camp and children’s camp in the summer. Plus more.

Though often criticized for overemphasizing conversion, in reality the opposite is true.

In the era of our greatest evangelistic growth, typical SBC churches had more discipleship activities than evangelistic activities. Aggressive evangelism was matched by aggressive discipleship. We were disciplistic. That is another one of my words. By it I mean an evangelistic discipleship that continually seeks to incorporate both evangelism and discipleship at the same time.

When did this emphasis on aggressive discipleship began to fade? During the late sixties.

When did our evangelistic fruitfulness began to fade? During the seventies.
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By Franklin L. Kirksey, Pastor, First Baptist Church of Spanish Fort, Alabama, and author of Sound Biblical Preaching: Giving the Bible a Voice.

These expositions by Dr. Kirksey are offered to suggest sermon or Bible study ideas for pastors and other church leaders, both from the exposition and from the illustrative material, or simply for personal devotion.

Introduction

The saint’s highest calling is suffering and death. Oswald Chambers (1874-1917) explains, “Choosing to suffer means that there must be something wrong with you, but choosing God’s will-even if it means you will suffer-is something very different.”[1]

We read in Isaiah 66:1-6,

Thus says the Lord:
¹ “Heaven is My throne,
And earth is My footstool.
Where is the house that you will build Me?
And where is the place of My rest?
² For all those things My hand has made,
And all those things exist,”
Says the Lord.
“But on this one will I look:
On him who is poor and of a contrite spirit,
And who trembles at My word.
³ “He who kills a bull is as if he slays a man;
He who sacrifices a lamb, as if he breaks a dog’s neck;
He who offers a grain offering, as if he offers swine’s blood;
He who burns incense, as if he blesses an idol.
Just as they have chosen their own ways,
And their soul delights in their abominations,
⁴ So will I choose their delusions,
And bring their fears on them;
Because, when I called, no one answered,
When I spoke they did not hear;
But they did evil before My eyes,
And chose that in which I do not delight.”
⁵ Hear the word of the Lord,
You who tremble at His word:
“Your brethren who hated you,
Who cast you out for My name’s sake, said,
‘Let the Lord be glorified,
That we may see your joy.’
But they shall be ashamed.”
⁶ The sound of noise from the city!
A voice from the temple!
The voice of the Lord,
Who fully repays His enemies!

From our passage we will note several things about God’s people.
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by the Contributing Editors of SBC Today

This is a list of recent blog posts which we found interesting.  That we found them interesting doesn’t mean we necessarily agree with or endorse the ideas presented in the posts, but that we found them to be intriguing and thought-provoking.  (They are listed in no particular order of interest). Please post your comments to discuss  any article that strikes your interest. If you have recent blog posts to nominate, please send the link to sbctoday@gmail.com.

App of the Week

• The SBC Annual Meeting app – This is a free application for iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry users. It has helpful information about New Orleans and the convention. Download it at m.core-apps.com/sbc2012am from a smartphone or type “SBC Annual Meeting 2012″ in the smartphone’s app store.

About Theology

• “Which Distinctive Practices and Beliefs of Anabaptists Are Important for the Church Today?” by Alan Knox in The Assembling of the Church blog, noting ten helpful doctrines of the Anabaptists.
• “An Encounter with What Is NOT in Scripture,” by Johnathan Pritchett,” by Hariette Peterson in the SBC Encounters blog, citing Pritchett’s exegesis of Acts 4:27-28 (relating to the determinism that some find in the passage).
• “Being Biblical more than Logical, or Why I Am a Four-Point Calvinist,” by John Hammett in the Between the Times blog, explaining his difficulties with the doctrine of limited atonement.
• “Michael Shermer and The Believing Brain,” by Randy Everist in the Possible Worlds blog, commenting on atheist Michael Shermer’s book The Believing Brain.
  

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By Joe McKeever, Preacher, Cartoonist, Pastor, and retired Director of Missions at the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans.

Evangelism and spiritual harvesting are not for everyone calling themselves followers of Jesus. Fruitbearing is for the obedient. Believers aiming to obey the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-10) should not miss one huge fact: No one not living as a faithful disciple himself can make someone else a disciple of Jesus Christ. Only disciples make disciples. Only the faithful can bear fruit. Put another way: No one can teach others to “obey all the things I have commanded you” who is not obeying those things himself.

The church which is rebellious or wayward or chronically immature or systemically sick has no business trying to convert outsiders to what they are doing and how they are living. (Note: “Systemically” is not “systematically.” When the sickness is throughout the body, we say it is “systemic.” The problem is not with one person or two, but throughout the body.)

The sick church should get well first and then it will be able to help others.

Here are several churches that have no business sending soul-winning/visitation teams into their community or hosting evangelistic crusades.

1. Until Clearview Church leaders and members stop fighting and learn to love one another, they need to cancel all outreach.

I saw Clearview Church run off a pastor and half its members. They then proceeded to call a new preacher who walked in, saw all those empty pews and announced, “We need an evangelism program around here.” They scheduled a meeting, brought in an evangelist, papered the town with posters, and held their gatherings. All to no avail. Even if the new preacher did not know the character of his congregation, the community did. They wanted none of what that bunch had to offer.

Jesus prayed, “I pray not for these (disciples) alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word, that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me and I in You; that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that You sent Me” (John 17:20-21).

The Savior who redeemed us and reigns now as Lord has laid down a fundamental law here: if we expect people to believe in Him, we must live in love and unity.

No wonder our efforts fall pitifully short.
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Dr. Chuck Kelley is President and Professor of Evangelism at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary



This is the third of a four part series of articles taken from Dr. Kelley’s presentation on the New Methodists. In part one, he walked us through the history of evangelism in the SBC. In part two, he examined our current state of evangelism. In this third part, he explains where we’ve gone wrong. And in the final installment, Dr. Kelley will present a way to fix the problem.

Part 3: What Has Gone Wrong?

Discipleship is the crucial issue. The spiritual state of the farmer (our churches and leadership), not the abundance of the harvest is the root of problems in SBC evangelism. At the end of the day, this is the hard truth staring at me. The best question then, is: What is wrong with us?

First, We are not anointed. The conversion of a soul to Christ is the work of the Holy Spirit. The stirring of a church and community in revival and awakening is a work of the Holy Spirit. Neither of these works of the Spirit are typical in SBC churches today. We are not anointed – that “we” would be you, me and all of us at work in places with little evidence of the activity of the Holy Spirit. We are so not anointed we have come to accept not being anointed as normal.

Second, we have been “atom”ized. Scientists tell us that what looks like a solid wood pulpit is actually a composition of small particles called atoms. Those atoms are actually composed of even smaller particles, which are composed of even smaller particles. Thinking about atomic particles can make one forget that whatever its composition, this pulpit does function as a single large and rather solid-feeling piece of wood. At the end of the day it is a pulpit, after all.
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Dr. Chuck Kelley is President and Professor of Evangelism at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary



This is the second of a four part series of articles taken from Dr. Kelley’s presentation on the New Methodists. In part one, he walked us through the history of evangelism in the SBC. In this second part, he examines our current state of evangelism. In the third part, he will explain where we’ve gone wrong. And in the final installment, Dr. Kelley will present a way to fix the problem.

Part 2: The Current State of Evangelism in the SBC

It is important that we understand the true nature of the genius of Southern Baptist evangelism.

It was not the individual methods used that produced such an incredible harvest. Rather, the interaction of those methods with each other created an integrated process described in the New Testament as sowing and reaping. Wheels alone can generate power. But if you add cogs to those wheels so that they form a gear, you multiply the power those wheels produce.

The SBC way of doing church embodied the biblical process of sowing and reaping (see for example 1 Cor. 3:6 “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase”), but these particular interactive methods were not the result of a search for a way to embody that process in churches. The lack of comment on the way these individual methods became an integrated process characteristic of SBC churches is one of the more astounding discoveries of my research. We will come back to this later.

Let’s go back to those baptism statistics that I mentioned in part 1. In 1945 the SBC baptized about 257,000 people. In 1955 the SBC baptized about 417,000 people. But since 1955 the SBC never yet reached the mark of 450,000 baptisms. We doubled in baptisms in ten years, but then could not increase 35,000 in more than 50 years. What happened to the harvest? What happened to the farm?
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Dr. Dorsett is a bivocational pastor and church planting missionary in Vermont. He is the author of Developing Leadership Teams in the Bivocational Church and Bible Brain Teasers: Fun Adventures through the Bible. He also serves as a church planting catalyst with the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. He has a passion for helping the next generation discover a meaningful faith and become leaders in sharing that faith with others.

This series looks at the importance of bivocational ministry and bivocational ministers in today’s church. The previous articles in this series are:
Part 1: Bivocational Ministry is a Growing Method for Ministry.
Part 2: Lay People Are Willing to Help Pastors – But Only If They Are Trained.
Part 3: Rethinking Our Perception of Bivocational Ministry.
Part 4: Bivocational Ministry is Normal.
Part 5: Bivocational Ministry Is More Common Than Most People Realize.
Part 6: Bivocational Pastors Must Learn to Delegate.

Many small churches have become accustomed to a single-pastor model of church leadership. Though this model can be effective, it does limit the size of the church because one leader can only accomplish so much regardless of how great a leader that person may be. In larger churches this model may be modified somewhat because there may be a staff of pastors who serve under a senior pastor, but the basic concept is still that the senior pastor has a great deal of authority over the church.

This single-pastor model is especially evident in the preaching and pastoral care ministries of the church. In a small church the pastor is often expected to do almost all of the preaching and pastoral care. Since most pastors enjoy those ministries, they do not mind doing them. But in situations when the pastor is bivocational and has to work a second job, having all of the preaching and pastoral care duties can be challenging.

Not only can preaching and pastoral care be overwhelming for bivocational pastors; but if the pastor does all of these ministries on his own, it creates the impression that the pastor has more authority than the New Testament grants. Once the congregation perceives that the pastor has all the authority, it follows that the pastor also bears all the responsibility for getting everything done. This tension between authority and responsibility can be significant. Yet this is exactly what many bivocational pastors face in their churches. The church expects them to provide most of the leadership in the church as well as to accept most of the blame for any faults in the church. This is not how the church was led in the New Testament; and it often puts bivocational pastors in unrealistic situations.
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Eric Hankins is the Pastor of First Baptist, Oxford, Mississippi

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is the fourth of a four-part series by Eric Hankins entitled “Beyond Calvinism and Arminianism: Toward a Baptist Soteriology.” This series attempts to frame Baptist soteriology in a different structure than the traditional “TULIP” comparisons with the doctrines of Calvinism or Arminianism.

• In Part 1, Hankins contrasts “individual election” (a key Biblical Presupposition in Calvinism and Arminianism) with “corporate election” in a Baptist soteriology.
• In Part 2, he contrasts the Philosophical Presuppositions of “The ‘Problem’ of Determinism and Free-Will” in Calvinism with “The Freedom of God and the Free-Will of People” in a Baptist soteriology.
• In Part 3, he contrasts the Theological Presuppositions of “Federal Theology” in Calvinist soteriology with “Covenant in Christ” in a Baptist soteriology.

Total Depravity

The Scriptures clearly affirm that all people are sinners. Because of sin, humans are in a disastrous state, unable to alter the trajectory of their rebellion against God, unable to clear their debt of sin against Him, unable to work their way back to Him through their best efforts. This situation is one of their own creating and for which they are ultimately responsible.[1]

About these realities, there is little debate in evangelical theology. What is at issue is what being a sinner means when it comes to responding to God’s offer of covenant relationship through the power of the gospel.

Both Calvinism and Arminianism affirm that the Fall resulted in “total depravity,” the complete incapacitation of humanity’s free response to God’s gracious offer of covenant relationship.[2] In Calvinism, the only remedies for this state-of-affairs are the “doctrines of grace” in which the free response of individuals is not decisive. For Arminianism, total depravity, which is purely speculative, is corrected by prevenient grace, which is even more speculative, and makes total depravity ultimately meaningless because God never allows it to have any effect on any person.

Nothing in Scripture indicates that humans have been rendered “totally depraved” through Adam’s sin. Genesis 3 gives an extensive account of the consequences of Adam’s sin, but nowhere is there the idea that Adam or his progeny lost the ability to respond to God in faith, a condition which then required some sort of restoration by regeneration or prevenient grac