What I Wanted

It was Spring, but it was Summer I wanted;
The warm days and the great outdoors.

It was Summer, but it was Fall I wanted;
The colorful leaves and the cool, dry air.

It was Fall, but it was Winter I wanted;
The beautiful snow and the joy of the holiday season.

It was Winter, but it was Spring I wanted;
The warmth and the blossoming of nature.

I was a child, and it was adulthood I wanted;
The freedom and the respect.

I was 20, but it was 30 I wanted;
The youth and the free spirit.

I was retired, but it was middle-aged I wanted;

The presence of mind without limitations.

My life was over;
and I never got what I wanted.

(quoted by Chuck Swindoll)

Why I Will Vote for the GCR Task Force Recommendations

If you are a Southern Baptist, by now you know that next week at our annual convention in Orlando we will vote on recommendations from a "Great Commission Resurgence Task Force" that was appointed at last year's convention in Louisville. The Task Force's work has been the focus of our attention for the last twelve months because the recommendations they put forward in their report have lasting ramifications for our denomination in the years to come.

If you aren't familiar with the group's report, I urge you to visit the GCR Blog and watch or read the entire report. If you would like to read several opposing viewpoints, go to Baptist Press.

I have a keen interest in the report and have read and prayed over it carefully for two key reasons: 1) I'm a lifelong Southern Baptist and a product of God's work in this denomination. Her mission is near and dear to my heart. 2) I'm being nominated next week to serve on our North American Mission Board as a trustee. As you'll see in the report, the mission and even the very existence of NAMB has been a key focus of the discussion.

I have good friends, fellow pastors and leaders in our state conventions, who strongly disagree with many of the key components of this report. And I will go on record as saying that I hope there will be consideration given to strengthening the language concerning the Cooperative Program as our key funding strategy. But at the end of the day, my conviction to support this initiative is three-fold:

First, Southern Baptists aren't the hope of the world. Yes, I said that. Jesus is the hope of the world. As I've pored over many of the opinion pieces on Baptist Press and other places, I'm often grieved that many of our leaders seem to feel that the preservation of a denominational structure should take priority over the spiritual darkness of the world. I know that there isn't a single one of them that actually believe this, but if our passion for the Great Commission is continually limited by our unwillingness to ruthlessly evaluate "sacred cows" (like cooperative agreements and the key mission of longstanding bodies like the Executive Committee) then will we ever really discover the true potential God has given this great denomination?

Second, the people of God should always be on a mission to seek God with fresh eyes and a pure heart. For too long I think we've been unwilling to consider a better way simply because it would require us to make changes that would put a strain on longstanding relationships between state conventions. My concern about "cooperative agreements" simply reflects my bewilderment at how we can keep doing something at the state and national level that we have already seen fail at the local level. For instance, how effective would our church's mission giving be if there were "cooperative agreements" with the student ministry, Sunday School classes, and committees? We would have to require that a certain amount of our missions giving each year be sent back to these groups so that they could fund their own mission projects. This obviously still gets some mission work done; it even involves and develops our own peope in missions, and there isn't anything wrong with that. But would it surprise us if our missions giving actually went down because people began to see that much of their giving never actually made it to missionaries and church planters on the field? Yet this is essentially how a great deal of our missions giving to foreign fields comes right back to the state level. Are good things being done? Absolutely. Is this the best way to fund missions work in the most spiritually lost places? I just don't think so.

Finally, time is short and Jesus is coming back soon. No one who has tracked the health of our convention over the last decade could argue that we are at a critical crossroads. We have to be willing to make the hard choices that give us the greatest potential to impact the world while God grants us the opportunity. I totally agree that if every individual would tithe, if every church would give at least a tithe or more to the CP (our church gives 14%), then it may have never occurred to us that we needed a Great Commission resurgence. But obedience to God has always meant that there is a crucial devotion to stewardship--stewardship of monies, personnel, as well as stewardship of our thinking and planning.

We all recognize that these recommendations aren't a cure-all. Nothing can replace our personal devotion to loving God with our hearts, souls, and strength. But my prayer is that if they pass, they might become a launching platform for the greatest Great Commission movement of our lifetimes. May we all come together under Jesus to make it so.

What Your Pastor Cherishes Most...

This year at Together for the Gospel, John MacArthur was asked what kind of counsel he might give to elders or church members who wonder what their pastor needs the most from them. For all of my friends who want to discover how to help their pastor be as successful as he can possibly be, these words are priceless:

"What I cherish the most is a true and loving loyalty. This disloyalty, betrayal, undermining, just cuts the heart out of your pastor. When I talk about loving loyalty, I mean when there is an issue that needs to be addressed you go eyeball-to-eyeball, man-to-man, and you confront it. And I love that. I love when guys come to me and say, “John, I think this is a problem. I think you are overlooking this. I think this is a misstep on your part.” Those are the men I cherish. Those are the men I pull to my heart. 


But what is just terribly debilitating is to feign that kind of affection to the man and then undermine that among the people. That is the most difficult thing. It is the betrayal that that brings. I could endure any problem in a church. I am challenged to solve any problem. But it is so hard when the men that you trust betray you behind your back. Because he is God’s man in your midst, you give him your love and you give him your loyalty. Be honest with him, face to face, man to man, open hearted. But understand the burden that he bears, and you need to be his true friend. You really do."

The Day He Died

When asked what God had taught him most deeply about life, George Mueller (1805-1898), pastor and philanthropist, explained:

“There was a day when I died, utterly died, died to George Mueller, his opinions, preferences, tastes and will, died to the world, its approval or censure, died to the approval or blame even of my brethren and friends, and since then I have studied only to show myself approved unto God.”

Quoted in A. T. Pierson, George Mueller of Bristol (London, 1899), page 367.

Just Preach Jesus

When I came out of seminary a few years ago, the new push towards "relevant," or "seeker-sensitive worship" was just beginning to gain steam. I remember being in preaching class with a lot of guys at Southwestern and that was the buzz. "You've got to exegete the culture around you before you exegete your sermon." And I have to confess that when I first started pastoring a few years later, this kind of thinking got inside my head. It's probably influenced more sermons I've preached than I care to admit.

But God's patience and extended time in the pressure cooker of local church ministry have a way of teaching you things that no conference or church growth seminar can. And over the years I began to realize that a steady, long-term commitment to passionate, in-your-face, biblical preaching produces more long-lasting fruit for the kingdom than any fancy church growth strategy ever did.

I love this recent quote from James MacDonald on his devotion to strong, biblical preaching:

I try not to spend any time in my message preparation thinking about what people want to hear or what questions the culture is asking. I just don’t spend any time on that at all. I have believed now for 21-plus years that if you try with all of your heart to say some things that God wants said—God has some things he wants said; that’s why he wrote a Book—God would get some people over here to hear it.

"I try not to spend any time in my message preparation thinking about what people want to hear or what questions the culture is asking." I had to laugh when I read that. Do you realize how many warehouses of paper have been used to print books and manuals that teach us how to do that exact thing? If you'd like to read the entire interview with James on preaching, you'll find it here.

And I say "Amen." God wrote a book. Let's read it, study it, memorize it, meditate on it, swim in it, and preach it with white-hot passion until the Savior returns. And trust God to get some people in the seats to hear it. I can't wait for Sunday to get here!

The New Tradition in Worship

If you hang around the local church long enough, you see trends come and go, especially when it comes to worship style. That's why the substance and the heartbeat of authentic worship has to be the proclamation and the celebration of the gospel, not creating a bigger and better musical experience every week. North Point put out a humorous video this week that illustrates how contemporary has become the new traditional.

"Sunday's Coming" Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

The Divine Architect

Thanks to Randy Alcorn for pointing me to this incredible excerpt from one of Spurgeon's sermons, "Laus Deo" (which is Latin for "Praise Be to God"). If you don't visit his blog it's well worth your time at www.randyalcorn.blogspot.com.

Meditate, dear friends, upon the whole range of God’s works in creation and providence. There was a period when God dwelt alone and creatures were not. In that time before all time, when there was no day but “The Ancient of Days,” when matter and created mind were alike unborn, and even space was not, God, the great I Am, was as perfect, glorious, and blessed as he is now. There was no sun, and yet Jehovah dwelt in light ineffable; there was no earth, and yet his throne stood fast and firm; there were no heavens, and yet his glory was unbounded. God inhabited eternity in the infinite majesty and happiness of his self-contained greatness.

If the Lord, thus abiding in awful solitude, should choose to create anything, the first thought and idea must come of him, for there was no other to think or suggest. All things must be of him in design. With whom can he take counsel? Who shall instruct him? There existed not another to come into the council-chamber, even if such an assistance could be supposable with the Most High.

In the beginning of his way before his works of old, eternal wisdom brought forth from its own mind the perfect plan of future creations, and every line and mark therein must clearly have been of the Lord alone. He ordained the pathway of every planet, and the abode of every fixed star. He poured forth the sweet influences of the Pleiades, and girt Orion with his bands. He appointed the bounds of the sea, and settled the course of the winds.

As to the earth, the Lord alone planned its foundations, and stretched his line upon it. He formed in his own mind the mould of all his creatures and found for them a dwelling and a service. He appointed the degree of strength with which he would endow each creature, settled its months of life, its hour of death, its coming and its going. Divine wisdom mapped this earth, its flowing rivers and foaming seas, the towering mountains, and the laughing valleys.

The divine Architect fixed the gates of the morning and the doors of the shadow of death. Nothing could have been suggested by any other, for there was no other to suggest. It was in his power to have made a universe very different from this, if he had so pleased; and that he has made it what it is, must have been merely because in his wisdom and prudence he saw fit to do so.

There cannot be any reason why he should not have created a world from which sin should have been for ever excluded; and that he suffered sin to enter into his creation must again be ascribed to his own infinite sovereignty. Had he not well known that he would be master over sin, and out of evil evolve the noblest display of his own glory, he had not permitted it to enter into the world: but, in sketching the whole history of the universe which he was about to create, he permitted even that black spot to defile his work, because he foreknew what songs of everlasting triumph would rise to himself when, in streams of his own blood, incarnate Deity should wash out the stain.

It cannot be doubted that whatever may be the whole drama of history in creation and providence, there is a high and mysterious sense in which it is all of God. The sin is not God’s, but the temporary permission of its existence formed part of the foreknown scheme, and to our faith the intervention of moral evil, and the purity of the divine character, do neither of them diminish the force of our belief that the whole scope of history is of God in the fullest sense.