The SBC Annual Report

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) recently released a report that shows declines in baptisms, church attendance, and the number of affiliated associations through which the SBC operates. Since the SBC’s annual convention is only weeks away, it is certainly the case that even now sermons are being edited and keynote addresses are being revised to present these less-than-rosy findings to the congregated messengers.

As someone who was raised comfortably within the boundaries of SBC life (my father and grandfather were both SBC pastors and involved in state-level convention work), this report is troubling. Regardless of the political or social mess that the SBC has waded through in the last 35 years such a report is no occasion for gloating or mockery. All Baptists must remember that these numbers represent people, not theology or politics.

As someone who has moved away from the center of SBC life into the BGCT first and now the CBF, I am developing something of an insider/outsider perspective on the report. I remember the Annual Church Survey that was delivered to my church each year and the questions that is asked. How many baptisms? How many professions of faith? How many in Sunday School? How many? How many?

Those reports eventually became for me something of an embarrassment. I lost the conviction that the numbers of those baptized or the quantity of those praying the “sinner’s prayer” was truly the mark of a ministry. Unfortunately, those numbers are translated into words about the success of a ministry or of a church, much like the way a congregation’s budgeted percentage given to the Cooperative Program is used to “prove” loyalty and faithfulness.

I understand the impulse to quantify and rank these things, though. We minister in an atmosphere of the Spirit; such a place is difficult to organize and nearly impossible to quantify. The ground-level work that we do involves the transformation of people’s hearts through the power of the Holy Spirit actualized through the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is the first-level work that we do, and it is of primary importance. But how does one measure a transformed heart? How do you quantify a progressive depth of faith and discipleship?

Therefore we quantify and categorize the second-level work that we do, things like tithes and Sunday School attendance. These things lend themselves naturally to the accounting arts, and are therefore things that we feel we can measure and rank. Baptism is trickier, though. Our Baptist churches are re-baptizing people at an alarming rate, rendering the quantity of our baptisms and the theology that motivates them almost irrelevant.

Herein lies the trap. By emphasizing these second-level quantifications we adopt and live into the language of business. We begin to speak of “growth” and “marketing” in our conversations about making successful churches and ministries. We attend conferences and seminars on being more “effective” and on the development of mission statements and vision statements. Because the world of Spirit is so difficult to explain and publicize, we inhabit the world of business, which is a world that views the numbers of the aforementioned report to be bad news indeed. McEntyre comments, “We have appropriated the language of investment and profit to describe endeavors that ought rightly to remain distinct and free from market considerations. Self-interest and increase pervade…churches’ evangelical campaigns.”[1] Saying further, “We lose at great cost common expressions that remind us that some things cannot be bought and sold. Some times, places, relationships, and words should not be subjected to the terms of economic transaction. At least the discourse of the church should reflect this.”[2]

It is this language of economy that has supplanted the language of the Spirit in many cases. When bureaucracy becomes so self-interested that it cannot tell the difference between the work of the Gospel and the number of people baptized something has gone wrong.

But the bureaucracy is not the Church. The quantification of our baptisms or giving or attendance is not the Word of God. No, these are things that are of the domain of the accountant. At the heart of this and every other report are the people. These are people who are actively living the Gospel, learning to be disciples, dealing with the world every day. They are not numbers, and they are not trends. They are the Spirit-enabled people of God worshipping together in congregations seeking after God in their community. They need relationships, they need resources, and they need the glad hand of fellowship much more than they need an Annual Church Report to tell them how good they’re doing at being made into the image of Christ.

We are not a business. We are not a corporation. We are a cooperative: we cooperate with the Spirit of God who has graciously allowed us to participate in God’s redemptive work for the world. Let us be careful in word and in thought that we do not give away that mighty work to reports of the bureaucracy. Let us be “people of careful speech.”[3] Let us carefully navigate between the Scylla of being business-savvy by the world’s accounting and the Charybdis of ecclesial isolationism and irrelevance. The work is too precious and the people too important to fail.

---

[1] McEntyre, Marilyn C., Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009; p. 15.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Thanks to Rev. Charles Poole for emphasizing this to me so strongly over the past two years.

Trying to Read Tone in the Text

In my sermon last Sunday (I didn’t post the manuscript here because in all honesty I’m terrible at manuscripting a sermon and didn’t write one) I hinted at my use of Scripture as I mature in the faith. I avoided the words “inerrant” and “infallible” because those terms are so loaded and misused that they had no meaning for me at the time. Instead, I tried to lead my congregation to see that the Gospel permeates even the awful, terrible, bloodthirsty passages of the Old Testament in hopes that they would see the beauty of God’s redemptive plan.

However we treat the Scriptures, there is one thing that cannot be interpreted away or perfectly resolved regardless of our syntactical skill or hermeneutical expertise: we cannot perfectly recreate the tone of voice used in the text. I realize that this is a prima face assumption of any textural interpretation, but in our use of Scripture we are at a loss when it comes to the tone of voice Paul or Moses or Jesus would have used were they speaking the words attributed to them. One principal example will serve to illustrate this: my life would be made considerably better if I could have heard Jesus say those words recoded in Mark 7:25-30/Matthew 15:21-28. How did he actually say “καὶ ἔλεγεν αὐτῇ, Ἄφες πρῶτον χορτασθῆναι τὰ τέκνα, οὐ γάρ ἐστιν καλὸν λαβεῖν τὸν ἄρτον τῶν τέκνων καὶ τοῖς κυναρίοις βαλεῖν.”[1]

The tone of voice, the facial expressions, the mountain of information that exists just out of sight in the text would all make such passages less troublesome. Alas, such context is absent. Thanks be to God that minds much sharper than mine and souls much more faithful than mine can help to make that context a little less murky.

In Galatians 1:24 I find another passage of such toneless-ness. After Paul’s lengthy autobiographical piece earlier in the chapter we find him coming full stop with the phrase “and they glorified God because of me.” There are so many ways one could say that simple sentence, each changing the meaning and emphasizing a different intention on the part of the writer. Consider just two of those options.

First, let’s assume that Paul is concluding an argument through which he wishes to convey his spiritual authority to the churches in Galatia. Much as in his Philippian correspondence he could be demonstrating his insufficiency to the task to which he has been set.[2] In Philippians he counts all of his accomplishments as “rubbish,” clinging only to the glory of Christ as his validation. In this introduction in Galatians, Paul seems to brag that he received no assistance in his preparation and early days of ministry. “and they glorified God because of me” could be read, then, as braggadocio-cum-humility. The tone of Paul’s voice as he dictated this sentence would tell us much about his intent.

Another alternative, though, is one of what I’d call surprised humility. By invoking the readers’ memories of his vicious persecution of the Church in years past (“You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the Church of God and trying to destroy it.”) Paul reminds the readers of just the sort of man he used to be. He went through a drastic conversion and an even more drastic formation experience, intentionally avoiding the goings-on of the young Church headquartered in Jerusalem. What if this is a confession? What if Paul’s tone in all of this was apologetic?

Hear those words again – “…and they glorified God because of me.” Yes, this sounds so braggadocios as to turn the stomach. But emphasized in another tone, this short phrase tugs on my soul. Allow me to paraphrase – “in spite of all that I had done, in spite of my avoiding the Church in Jerusalem, in spite of being known by reputation alone as a troublemaker and persecutor, still they praised God.” Paul (even Paul!) could lead people to glorify the God who takes enemies and makes them allies.

Oh, the tone. The tone of my life and my words often undermines the grace that I’d hope to communicate to every person I meet. This simple phrase of a verse bothers me, probably because I want so badly for Paul to be standing before his skeptics and testifying that in spite of all the hell he put the Church through God still redeemed his past and negotiated his future for the good of the Kingdom. That’s the story I want to tell – that regardless of the times I got it wrong, God worked it for God’s glory. The tone of voice makes this and other phrases cut to the bone or lift our heads.

Say it: “…and they glorified God because of me.”

Not in arrogance, but in surprised humility: “…and they glorified God because of me.”

Not to curry favor or for self-righteousness, but in shock and amazement: “…and they glorified God because of me.”

The tone makes all the difference.

---

[1] First let the children eat all they want," he told her, "for it is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to the dogs." (NIV).

[2] Cf. Philippians 3:7-11.

On the Teaching Ministry of a Congregation

I’m grateful for David Lewicki’s post last week on his congregation’s revision of its educational ministries.[1] His church is very similar to those of my experience, that is, they emphasize a Sunday School program that meets weekly at the church and leans heavily on “expert” teachers to communicate the church’s desired curriculum.

Lewicki points out that his congregation has a “wealth of leadership” that provides his Sunday School classes with highly educated teachers who can develop their own curricula and bring the lessons “to life.” By pointing out this uniqueness in his congregation, though, Lewicki has pointed out the inherent weakness in the Sunday School model that many of us have inherited: what if you don’t have expert teachers?

Because I grew up in a typical Southern Baptist church and have worshipped and served in four since, I can certainly say that this is not an isolated problem. Sunday School teachers are often those adults who would be so brave as to volunteer and have little to no theological training of their own. Yet this model is essentially Baptist – because we emphasize the Priesthood of the Believer so strongly it is not uncommon for the Sunday School teacher (especially in adult classes) to be more of a facilitator. By not having any theological training (or requisite spiritual maturity) as a prerequisite to being a Sunday School teacher, many classes are limited to peer groups who struggle through issues or Biblical passages together, consensus being the only curriculum to be taught.

Lewicki mentions that a weakness of the Sunday School model is that it does not inherently produce “experts.” For all the years that a believer sits in Sunday School classes, there never comes a time when they “graduate” or are heralded as an “expert.” Not even the teachers that prepare such wonderful curricula at Lewicki’s church hold accreditation or degrees from North Decatur Presbyterian Church. Instead, they have gone to other institutions where they earned degrees through intense study.

Both of the models in Lewicki’s article have strengths and weaknesses. Aside from the traditional Sunday School model he examines the now-passé “small group” model. Again, the lack of experts teaching or developing curricula shows up: “Prepared curriculum is always thinner than what a gifted teacher brings, and leaders often do not have the training and experience to guide participants through the deepest spiritual waters. Conversation gets easily sidetracked by individuals moving tangentially to the subject matter.” This is the same dilemma of the Sunday School class led by a peer of the students. While the small group is great at fellowship and democratic participation in the lesson, it is lacking in direction, focus, and rigor.

Lewicki’s church is determined to re-examine its teaching ministries by asking better questions of these ministries. He says, “We've focused on content rather than on the larger vision. We've wondered too much about "what topic should we be teaching?" and too little about "what is the goal of learning?" Topics and methods follow after the bigger vision.” Still, though, the language of these ministries seems trapped in the pedagogical vocabulary of 19^th-century America. Topics, methods, the goals of learning, all are right at home in the original intention of the Sunday School movement, that is, to educate children (and eventually adults) in basic literacy and decency by using the Bible as a textbook.[2]

Pedagogy, student expectations, curricula, and measurable outcomes are all good and necessary things to consider in our educational ministries. However, as our congregations re-envision just what our churches should be teaching, consider that our understanding of teaching must be tempered by the Christian goal of forming (i.e. making) disciples. We are not in the business of granting degrees to people who have attained a level of knowledge or expertise in Biblical knowledge; we are to be about the work of making disciples. This work extends far beyond whatever Sunday School has become and deeper still that whatever cell-groups hope to be.

Lewicki has 6 suggestions for a revised framework of Christian education in his congregation, and I say he’s spot-on. Making “self-feeding” disciples is exactly right, but it is never the end-goal. So long as we endeavor to make self-feeding sheep we continue in the ways of individualism in our discipleship, which unfortunately undercuts the “communal nature” of Lewicki’s second point of vision. Rather, let us emphasize spiritual formation leading to spiritual maturity in our congregations so that they can become “feeders” too.

Let us further not cling to the vocabulary of 19^th, 20^th, and 21^st century American education. We are the in heritors of a Great Tradition of making disciples that is more rich and varied even than our rigorous psychological/pedagogical paradigms. I would humbly suggest that we reach back to the vocabulary of catechesis when we discuss our educational ministries.[3] If it is true that “learning is about doing, not just knowing,” then let us emphasize the being of a disciple and let biblical and theological learning take its rightful place as a subordinate to the activity of being made into the image of Christ.

I am immensely interested in catechesis as a faithful practice of making disciples. I do not advocate the creation of a rigorous catechism by which a provincial interpretation of Scripture and Christian theology is ground into generation after generation of believers.[4] Instead, let us emphasize the formation of disciples through the rigorous and spirit-stretching practices of classic Christianity, all under the guide of mature believers acting as mentors for the immature. Then, I think, our Sunday Schools and small groups will not dissolve, but will be informed and enlightened by the mature “experts” that our churches produce year after year.

---

[1] http://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2013-05/what-church-supposed-teach

[2] See C. B. Eavey, History of Christian Education, Chicago: Moody Press, 1964; p. 222-37.

[3] For those readers keeping score at home, this is the subject of my Doctor of Ministry Project. Some valuable resources on catechesis include Packer, J. I. and Gary A. Parrett, Grounded in the Gospel: Building Believers the Old-Fashioned Way, Grand Rapids: Baker, 2010; Parrett, Gary A. and S. Steve Kang, Teaching the Faith, Forming the Faithful, Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2009; Harmon, Steven R., Towards Baptist Catholicity, Eugene OR: Paternoster, 2006.

[4] Contra Nettles who believes that static documents of “official” Baptist positions on Biblical interpretation should be re-introduced to ensure doctrinal purity in the local congregation. See Nettles, Tom J., Teaching Truth, Training Hearts: The Study of Catechisms in Baptist Life, Amityville, NY: Calvary Press, 1998.

Thinking About Suicide

Three events in the last few days have compelled me to consider the Church’s position on suicide. First, I was required to participate in a suicide prevention seminar developed by the Mississippi Department of Education. Secondly, I watched a Law and Order episode in which physician-assisted suicide was the issue at trial. Finally, Vermont’s legislative declaration on physician-assisted suicide was ratified on May 20^th.

I personally have a hard time talking about suicide from a theologically informed perspective, a struggle that I share with the Church at large. It wasn’t too long ago that suicide was categorized as a mortal sin, an act equitable with murder in its danger.[1] Christians who ended their own lives were not permitted burial in their own parish cemetery because suicide cut them off from God, and therefore also cut them off from the blessings of the Church.

In a more contemporary frame of reference, my Baptist peers have said little on suicide, opting instead to stand on pro-life issues like abortion.[2] Further, advances in medical technology have allowed us to prolong the life of many who would have otherwise died of injuries or illness, therefore creating entirely new ethical dilemmas that are infrequently addressed by the Church.[3]

What has been on my mind in the last two weeks, though, is a question of foundations. What is the fundamental, ground level motivation that informs our opinion of suicide? Regardless of my position on abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty, or suicide, I have a fundamental assumption about human life. That assumption is grounded in the Christian doctrine of humanity usually referred to as Christian Anthropology.

Allow me to illustrate this idea by means of contrast. In my state-mandated suicide prevention workshop my colleagues and I were required to answer a “myth or fact” questionnaire about suicide and to watch and discuss a video addressing how to recognize suicidal tendencies among students.[4] The seminar was necessary and useful, especially in our school’s context.[5] A student’s friends and teachers are certainly the first line of defense against suicide and therefore need to be aware of warning signs and tendencies that might help counselors assist the student.

I came away from the seminar asking why; why should a school be so involved in protecting the lives of its students from self-inflicted harm?  The only answer that the video and accompanying discussion gave was that suicide is a liability to the school district and therefore should be avoided. That’s it. We must prevent suicide because the institution is liable for the lives of the students within it.

This is not the fault of the school, or the state. Public schools cannot approach suicide or other moral issues as the Church does, because at its heart the public school is a secular institution that cannot promote any particular view of humanity other than that permitted by the terms of the state. In short, liability is the rationale of the suicide prevention training I underwent because the categories within which the school operates are legal and financial. It is not the state’s prerogative to make statements about the value of human life; it is the state’s prerogative to maintain the state.

I applaud my school for being vigilant and for keeping a keen eye out for emotionally distressed students. I am led to wonder, though, just how the church’s treatment of suicide would be different in such a seminar given that the Church has a much different foundational belief system than “mere” liability.

The church treats suicide differently than a state institution because the church is built on the theological position that human life is better than human non-life. I chose these words because I have become convinced in recent days that the Church should be about the work of humanizing people, for no fewer than two reasons.[6]

First, the church has an authentic word to speak about the nature of humanity, a word that a state institution (by definition) cannot utter. The Church sees human beings as created in the image of God, and therefore treats people as beings of great worth to God. This is not the language of “you’ll throw your future away” or “you’ll hurt your friends and family;” rather, this is language of the inherent value of every human being beyond the financial or legal value they represent to an institution. If, as we believe, every human being is created in the image of God, and that every person is the object of Christ’s atonement, then the Church has a unique word to say to suicide and to end-of-life issues and all of the other ethical issues that surround those things.

Secondly, the Church has a word to say to the de-humanizing powers of the world that lead to non-life.  When Jesus said to his disciples that “the thief comes to only to steal and destroy; I have come that they may have life and have it more abundantly” he is talking about humanizing people.[7] The Church’s mission, at least in part, is to demonstrate that real life is possible through the relentless seeking after God. It is the Church’s mission to stand as a witness against those things that de-humanize people by calling their attention to the life-giving Creator and Savior.

We are helpless in the face of depression and circumstances that lead people to suicide without this foundation. We have nothing to say about the worth of human beings if we do not first say a word about their value as human beings rather than their value to society.  I do not fault the state for doing what it can; I challenge the Church, though, to do what it must.

---

[1] See Nichols, Terence, Death and Afterlife, Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2010.

[2] The great irony of the typical pro-life position is that it generally only concerns abortion and ignores the death penalty, euthanasia, and quality of life issues related to persistent poverty.

[3] See Soulen, Kendall R. and Linda Woodhead, God and Human Dignity, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006. Also, we recall the Terri Schiavo case (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terri_Schiavo_case) and the Kavorkian case (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/04/us/04kevorkian.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0).

[4] http://www.mde.k12.ms.us/healthy-schools/health-services---counseling-psych-social-services/counseling-psychological-and-social-services---resources

[5] See my previous post, “On Hope and Disappointment” for a glimpse of our school’s operations.

[6] Thanks to Chuck Poole for his recent sermon “A Little Lower Than God” delivered at Northminster Baptist Church in Jackson, Mississippi.

[7] John 10:10.