Those rare moments when I think "I am a Baptist..."

Let's be honest. I've often not been proud of my Baptist heritage.

I grew up in Texas Southern Baptist (SBC) churches. Multiple generations of SBC members and ministers in my family. But in the past couple of decades as an adult, I've shied away from self-identifying as a Baptist.

Part of it is my postmodern bent, I guess, or the times in which we live. Brand loyalty is gone, especially in religious communal choices. Our pro-choice, consumeristic church world has left us skeptical of any labels. Especially labels that come with the baggage of Southern Baptists.

Last week I read Christine Wicker's book from last year called "The Fall of the Evangelical Nation." I thought I was cynical. Wicker, who I heard speak at last year's Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) general assembly, was for more than a decade the religion editor at the Dallas Morning News. My guess is you learn enough in a job like that about the human frailties of supposed holy men and women that cynicism almost sounds optimistic.

The book by and large was good, written primarily to introduce a non-evangelical-church-going world to the realm of Evangelicalism. She makes the case that the conservative Christian movement is not what it has claimed to be, not a powerful force of maybe 50% of the population, but in reality something more like 7% at best. But that's not really the point of this little thought. Just wanted to note that I read that back and was reminded again of my shame at my traditionally Baptist brethren, or at least at some of them.

But tonight, back at this year's CBF assembly, I heard a man speak that always makes me think "I AM a Baptist." His name is Bill Leonard, and he's the founding dean of the divinity school at Wake Forest.

Bill Leonard is a historian, maybe the premier Baptist historian of our time. Okay, not maybe. I say he is. The first time I heard Dr. Leonard speak at Baylor University a few years ago, it was at a conference discussing among other things, how the Baptist influence has waned and the Christian light has dimmed at several traditionally Baptist schools, and Wake Forest was listed among them. This physically small man in a bowtie stood before the crowd and challenged the supposition that because a university no longer touts a certain line, it means that God has departed and the light has left. He basically said that he would wait right there for a few moments for an apology, and if one was not forthcoming he would return to North Carolina without delivering anything further of his speech. An apology was offered, and he continued, showing only grace and wisdom in the rest of his speech.

As a Baptist historian, he understands about the last 400 years since the first self-identified Baptists returned to England and opposed the state church there. (NOTE: Happy Birthday, Baptists.) Baptists have from the beginning been dissidents, who believe that religious liberty is not true of anyone if it's not true of everyone. Baptists were kicked out of most of the colonies, tried and often killed as heretics. My forbears believed that the church was a local community of believers who were called to prophetically bear witness to the grace and love and liberty found in Jesus Christ.

When I hear Bill speak, I think that perhaps I am a Baptist.

Perhaps. But then I think of stuff like this, and I think perhaps not. At least not in today's vernacular.

Intentional Diversity or Quotas?

A few weeks back I had a brief but good conversation on the Strong Coffee blog with longtime Texas Baptist leader Ken Coffee about the approach churches or Christian orgs should/could take in hiring diverse leaders. The basic discussion centered around the phrase "hiring the best person for the job" regarding of ethnic or cultural background. I tried to articulate that sometimes this phrase doesn't work, in particular on the basis of generational training up of minority leaders. I basically said that it was unjust of us to not allow minority leaders (and by minority I am thinking of ethnic, socio-economic, and more, not just country of origin) to have access to proper training and then overlook them for ministry leadership roles because they weren't the best for the job.

Here's an article from CT about a church in Little Rock of all places, not far from where the "Little Rock Nine" were denied access to school in 1957. This church takes intentional diversity as a biblical mandate. What do you think?

The emergence of diverse leadership

I was on the Strong Coffee blog this morning and responded to a comment about the sometimes competing values of excellence and diversity in our world. This particular situation was in response to struggles and challenges in denominational life for Texas Baptists. In his original post, Ken made this comment:

Suffice it to say that when excellence is supplanted by the pursuit of diversity, the organization will have some people in it who are simply not up to the task. It is not that they are bad people. It is that they are in over their heads. I know some of you will think I am racist, but I am just being honest as to what I have observed.

I definitely don't think Ken is a racist. But his comment made me think--is excellence a more important value than diversity? They don't have to be in competition with each other, but the reality is that sometimes they are in the short term. Over the long haul of generations, I do not believe that pursuing diversity is detrimental to excellence in organizational leadership. Here's part of what I wrote:

Second, while I don't believe what you said was racist, I will say that I believe the value of excellence does not trump the value of diversity. Yes, in the short term there will be OTJ training issues for those who have not had the kinds of experience in the worlds of church and organizational leadership that maybe a "more qualified" person might have. But I do believe that as a convention we must surf on the wave of diversity and not be trying to swim catch-up from behind. If the environmental ethos of the last half of the 20th century-both inside and outside the church-constructed obstacles that did not allow non-white Texas Baptists leaders to emerge and grow, we should not be surprised if there appears to be a dearth of "more qualified" leaders in those communities. We cannot spend several generations prohibiting ethnically diverse believers access to the experiences that lead to the natural emergence of leadership and then decry the apparent lack of experienced, qualified leaders to serve on the convention staff. The BGCT EB staff should be proactive in identifying, recruiting, hiring and training for convention leadership members of those communities who may not yet have all the experience to be "up to the task" but are emerging leaders and influencers in their communities. Yes, this may mean that someone gets in over their heads. But I have seen in my young life plenty of successful white ministers that have become ineffective as they moved into denominational or parachurch leadership roles. The Peter Principle knows no ethnicity.

Now let me state it here, I think there are some awesome leaders in the BGCT staff from all ethnic communities. I think that there is often only the appearance of a lack of quality because of the differing cultural values among diverse people. There are hundreds of illustrations of this, but perhaps none more poignant than the views of time vs. people in various cultures. Those who value time over people will make certain decisions that those who value people over time will not. This is NOT a matter of excellence, it is a matter of value, and the case can be made for either to be right or wrong, but usually they are just different. Diversity demands a gracious spirit to those kinds of differences, especially on the part of the dominant culture.

I'm not a proponent of hiring quotas, but I believe diversity is just as important as excellence when it comes to corporate values.

Ministry among immigrants...

Two experiences this week brought this hot topic to the forefront of my life. First, Baptists from all over Texas gathered in Amarillo earlier this week for the annual meeting of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. There's not much more fun to be had than 2,500 Baptists in Amarillo!

Because of the University I work for being a Hispanic-serving institution, I was asked to lead a workshop on ministry among immigrants. It was a great discussion, with about 30 people in the room asking questions about how to best be Jesus in the migratory flow of humanity we're experiencing in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Of course, the hottest debates are reserved for issues surrounding how to best deal with the 12-14 million undocumented immigrants in the US. Our workshop had a cordial but tough discussion (what you can manage in 15 minutes of dialogue within a one-hour workshop anyway) on how to best do ministry among "illegal" immigrants. Some felt that it was important to share ALL the story right off the bat, something like "Jesus loves you, here's some food, now go back to your country and stop breaking our laws." Others wanted to serve them in the name of Jesus without talking about immigration status, others still wanted to help them become US citizens. Like I said, it was a cordial discussion, hopefully healthy.

But then I heard today about something that just kills me. We often try to place our students in churches as interns, especially in predominantly Anglo churches that have a growing Hispanic community around them. One such church's pastor had been working with our staff for some time, and we thought we have found the right student to come and help this church.

But some in the church had other ideas.

Apparently, when the student went in view of a call (Baptist speak for a church hiring someone as a minister), some church members voiced their concern about a Hispanic being on church staff and Mexicans taking over their church. In the meeting. In front of our student and his wife. With other Hispanic church members also present.

So what is the church for someone who thinks this way? It is a protector of a culture, a bastion of a time when those people heard God's voice and it ministered to them. But it has become a hollow shell, and the Spirit's voice is no longer heard, when the cultural icon that is a church becomes more vital, more important to protect, than getting the life-changing message of Jesus into the world across cultural boundaries and barriers.

These are children for crying out loud!

One of the bloggers I read each week is Big Daddy Weave. He will forever be remembered in my book as the guy who outed Richard Land's man-crush on recent presidential hopeful addition Fred Thompson. I'm not usually one for blogging too much about politics, but the whole SCHIP thing with Bush's veto, well, I disagree with the President to say the least. But the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (misnomers galore) headed by Land agreed with the President on this. And on the war in Iraq. And on virtually every other neo-con point.

Where's the prophetic nature of such a commission? Well, to the shame of Southern Baptists, BDW points out that the voice of the prophet is coming from a Methodist. Specifically from the Rev. Joel Hunter. Apparently in a recent sermon he had this to say:

"There are people in this country - Children - and I hear these arguments all the time about these dirty filthy immigrants, these illegal immigrants who come into this country. And they are getting all these benefits because their kids get sick enough to get into an emergency and go to an emergency room. And somehow those children don't deserve care because they come from another country and they are not like us and maybe they don't believe what we do and maybe they don't speak the same language we do. And we want to deny those children healthcare? God would say "what are you doing?" I don't believe health care is a right. But I believe healthcare is the test of our character as a nation. And I believe that any nation that does not take care of the children among us is not much of a nation, is not much of a people, is certainly not much of a Christian......And I gotta tell ya, what are we doing?!? These are children for crying out loud! God would say - there are 100,000 in the city who don't know their right hand from their left, and you would ignore them and not give them what they need because they don't happen to have what you have. If you're a nation that don't take care of your own children, you're not much of a nation, as a matter of a fact you're not much of a people, let alone much of a Christian. These are Children! Here's what we have to understand. We gotta know that God cares for the vulnerable. This is a message to us all. We are to love the ones that we might not love naturally but God does. We are to love according to his standards not according to ours. And I know I may have just made some of you really mad. But I don't care. It's what the word of God says and I will always tell you what the word of God says. Pray with me."

Press on!

Religious Liberty

A couple of weeks ago I attended the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) General Assembly in Washington, DC. Two highlights of this meeting of moderate, traditional Baptists were worth the trip by themselves: the joint worship on Friday night with participants from the American Baptist Churches USA and Progressive Baptists, and the Religious Liberty Council lunch, which featured a great speech from Randall Balmer. Here's his opening line:

“Dear Sir,” the letter began. “Start looking for a new job. The moral majority is going to put you and President Carter type of Christians out of a job.” This letter, written in August 1980 by a man from Dallas, was addressed to Jimmy Carter’s religious liaison, Robert Maddox, a Baptist. “Any staunch Christian would not support gays, would not support the ERA which contradicts God’s plan for women and would support voluntary prayer in the school. You guys are real bummers. You don’t even deserve to be called Baptists.”

Ballmer, a professor at Columbia and an ordained Episcopal priest, hammered today's most well-known Baptist leaders, particularly those within the Southern Baptist Convention, for their tossing out the window one of the top two or three historical Baptist distinctives--religious liberty. You can read the text of his entire speech (it's worth it!) here...

Probably my favorite lines came about the public posting of religious stuff, especially the 10 Commandments. He says:

Why the Decalogue, first of all? Why not the Sermon on the Mount, for those who want to make the argument that the United States is a “Christian nation”? The Sermon on the Mount, after all, is the highest expression of Christian ethics, although it does contain some of that unfortunate language about peacemakers and those who show mercy and turning the other cheek and loving one’s enemies and storing treasures on earth. It also talks about the dangers of praying in public, after the manner of the hypocrites. Perhaps that’s why we prefer the retributive justice of the Ten Commandments over the ethic of love outlined in the Sermon on the Mount. Still, the soaring aspirations of the Sermon on the Mount surely would comport better with the American temperament than the prohibitions of the Ten Commandments.
But why not post the Decalogue in public places? Because, quite simply, it trivializes the faith and makes the Ten Commandments into a fetish. I was one of the expert witnesses in the Alabama Ten Commandments case, where Roy S. Moore, chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, plopped a two-and-one-half-ton granite monument emblazoned with the Decalogue into the lobby of the Judicial Building in Montgomery. Moore, who had run for office as the “Ten Commandments judge” and who claims to be a Baptist, repeatedly refused the requests of other religious traditions to have their sacred texts represented in the Judicial Building. And he also refused to acknowledge other precedents for American jurisprudence: the Code of Hammurabi, the Justinian Code, or the English Common Law tradition. He wanted only the Decalogue.

Religious liberty is important not because the religion diminishes the government, but because the religious principles get diminished when tied to governmental rule! My favorite Balmer zinger:

The lesson of Montgomery, Alabama, is that when religion looks for sanction from the state, religion is diminished. Faith is reduced to a fetish. Some of you may recall that after Judge Thompson ruled, properly, that “Roy’s Rock” violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment, and workers were preparing to remove it, one of the protesters screamed, “Get your hands off my God!”
Unless I’m mistaken, one of the Commandments etched into the side of that granite monument says something about graven images.

In our zeal for Christian morality, are we often putting aside our own Christian morality?

BUA Names New President

My difficult job may soon get better...

Infant Baptism, Baptist style

The tradition I was born into was Baptist. It's been an up and down relationship ever since.

One of the key tenets of being a Baptist is the whole baptizing thing. Baptists believe that only believers should be baptized. Where covenant theologians would see baptism as more the seal of the new covenant like circumcision was the seal of the old covenant, Baptists have historically focused more on the identification of the believer with the death and resurrection of Jesus in baptism, so the preacher will say "buried with Christ in baptism" when he dunks the person under, then "raised to walk in newness of life" when he pulls them back up.

Consequently, through most of Baptist history, only older children or adults were baptized. But there is a trend in current USAmerican Baptist life to baptize younger and younger children as a response to their professing their faith in Jesus. Is this a good thing? Is it true to our theology?

Now lest I be casting stones while living in a glass house, I should note that I baptized my own son when he was 9, and I myself was 9 when I was baptized. So I'm really asking the questions above.

But maybe what gets to me more is the younger and younger focus on evangelizing children. It's one thing to have a few 9 or 10 year olds who seem to genuinely want to commit their lives to following the Way of Jesus. It's a whole other thing to target groups of kids as young as 4, 5 or 6 and be teaching adults how to lead a group of 6 year olds in a prayer of repentance and commitment to Jesus. Is this really viable strategy for churches today? Are there legitimate or illegitimate reasons for this?

Getting Off the God-Cycle

"Nothing conflicts with the love of Christ like service to Christ."

Henri Nouwen

Maturity in Christ comes in a cycle. If practiced in humility, it is truly self-perpetuating. And it solves many human problems: it does good, it feeds the soul, it encourages a proper self-esteem, it brings glory to God--I'm sure there is more. At the risk of simplifying it into a formula, here's the cycle I'm aiming to be on:

1. Through the grace of God, I have an intense spiritual event that leads to an intense devotion to God.

2. That devotion leads me to the passionate pursuit of some ministry aim, some good work that was "prepared in advance" for me to do (see Ephesians 2.10).

3. In God's grace, there is substantial success in that good work.

4. This creates in me a sense of accomplishment and responsibility, which becomes it's own intense spiritual event and I return to step 1.

This is the cycle as it is supposed to work. Unfortunately, as Henri Nouwen knew, we tend to get a little side-tracked, especially as step 3 moves into step 4. Where do we go wrong?

We realize that we have become successful in other people's eyes, become fearful of losing whatever gain we have received from our successes, and move to perpetuate the success instead of the relationship with God.

In that case, instead of step 4 leading back to another intense experience with God, we are diverted into the place where our view of success--or the view of those we deem important--becomes the goal. We forget about the vision of God, and seek to fulfill our own visions. Suddenly we find ourselves with a sacred cow on our hands. And service to our mission becomes equal in our own minds with service to God. We no longer love God, because we are not seeking him in the intensity of life events, but are assuming and eventually demanding that OUR mission be equal to HIS mission.

There are tons of examples of this, but let me pick one or two and follow my logic through. In the mid-19th century, the idea of an altar call or an "invitation" really came into vogue among the revivalists like Charles Finney. Every service ended with the call to respond. Even into the 20th century Billy Graham continued to make this the culmination of his crusades, the invitation to accept the gospel, as Bev Shea and the choir sang 45 stanzas of "Just As I Am." Churches in the "low church" tradition in particular (like my Baptist upbringing) adopted this as an every-week part of the worship service.

But people in the late 20th century began noticing that the invitation was not having its intended response. It had become ineffective in a different kind of world than the one it was invented for. So many began to drop it. Traditionalists (at least those that thought 100 years of practicing something was tradition) decried the "loss of evangelism" in churches. It didn't matter what God's vision was, what God was trying to do in the lives of people. Only the mission of having an invitation mattered.

Maybe a better example is to look at the man God uses to plant a church. The Spirit of God is evident in him. He preaches boldly but with love. Early on he lives in a magnificent faith, knowing God will provide for his needs in Christ Jesus. God blesses, and the church grows. The man humbly seeks God's face, God again blesses, and the church again grows. But then it happens. Others begin to praise the man for his faith. They develop principles for growing churches based on his methods. Other churches spring up practicing the church growth principles of the man, and he becomes a success. He writes a book. Or two. Get's listed in Time magazines 25 most influential evangelicals. But now his life is built on his success. Risking that is no longer an option, he must perpetuate his ministry. Something is lost.

Henri Nouwen had it right. Nothing hinders our love and worship for God like our service to God.

Spring Break

Just so everyone knows, I'm on spring break in El Paso. Not sure if I'll get to post. The passing of John Baugh last week through my schedule for a loop as well. He was a wonderful Baptist leader, and it was an honor to be at his funeral and see the lives he had touched.

I finished reading "Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust" today. It is the story of Immaculee Ilibagiza, a Rwandan Tutsi who survived the genocide by hiding with 7 other women in a bathroom that was 4 feet by 3 feet for 3 months. Incredible story.