sbc IMPACT!

Online Voting - A Common Sense Proposal for the SBC Annual Meeting

Dave Samples, pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Windsor, Colorado, published the following post on his personal blog on Friday, May 9. He gave sbc IMPACT! permission to re-publish this post for our reading audience.

This is an idea that is absolutely essential for the future of the SBC. Please read Dave’s proposal and resolution and offer your voice in support to the SBC Resoultions Committee.

***

What would it look like if our national convention this year in Indianapolis was actually composed of our churches? What if every one of our 42,000+ churches was engaged in the many conversations that will take place on the convention floor? What if hundereds of thousands of votes were cast from all around the world? What if IMB personnel overseas as well as bi-vocational pastors in small rural areas were allowed to watch the convention online and participate by voting online?

Last year in San Antonio only 3,567 churches sent messengers to the SBC. Less than 9% of our churches participated by sending messengers! How can we say that our national meeting in any way represents the views of Southern Baptists? It’s time we make a change.I have submitted a resolution to the Resolutions Committee calling for online voting at future conventions. Should it come out of committee than I will gladly speak for the need to engage all of our churches in these important decisions that are being made concerning the future of our denomination. If the SBC is declining (and it appears that it is) then it is time to bring the whole SBC family to the table to discuss solutions.

The resolution that I submitted is as follows:

Read the rest of this entry »

SNEAK PREVIEW!

Tomorrow at sbc IMPACT!, we will re-publish (with his permission, of course) a recent post that Colorado pastor Dave Samples recently placed on his personal blog. The subject? Online participation and voting in the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting.

Truly, an idea that is long overdue.

Dave has prepared and submitted a resolution to the SBC Resolutions Committee. The resolution will be included in tomorrow’s post. We’ll see how far it gets …

Thoughts on Breakthroughs in the SBC

My seven year old daughter is playing AYSO soccer. Calling it soccer is a tad unfair, because actually it is something more akin to what I call “ball herd”. A flurry of little arms and legs chases a small black and white (well…pink; they are little girls after all) ball around a field. As children, they are naturally self-centered, so a fundamental of the game has not come easily for them. Once one of the girls gets control of the ball they want to keep it; passing it to a teammate is a non-issue. The coach has struggled to get them to see the necessity of working together and that without teamwork they will not win any games.

This past Saturday however, the girls saw a breakthrough. They lost 5-0. Of course, this is soccer for small children, so scores and standings are not kept. But the girls worked together; they passed the ball, they communicated with one another, and they all but ceased stealing the ball from one another. Significant breakthroughs were seen even in the face of a dramatic loss last Saturday. At the end of the game, the coach told the girls how proud he was of them yet they each muttered, “We lost!” Sometimes losing is not a bad thing because it helps us to identify our weaknesses and see where we need to become stronger. We all left the field smiling. A breakthrough had been achieved.

I believe our convention is in need of some breakthroughs right now. My daughter’s soccer team is just learning the basics of the game; without dribbling and passing, they cannot play the game. Breakthroughs spur us to the next level of achievement. The girls were ready to learn and do more. They were excited when the coach said “let’s learn something new.” The SBC needs to see some breakthroughs and I am convinced we need to see them in several areas. Read the rest of this entry »

BREAKING NEWS! - Dwight McKissic to Nominate Les Puryear for SBC Presidency

sbc IMPACT! contributor and small church advocate, Les Puryear, Senior Pastor of Lewisville Baptist Church of Lewisville, North Carolina, will be nominated for president of the Southern Baptist Convention during the SBC’s June 10-11 annual meeting in Indianapolis. Rev. Wm. Dwight McKissic, Sr, senior pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, TX, will announce his intention to nominate Puryear in an official press release tomorrow.

A native of North Carolina, Puryear has been pastor of Lewisville Baptist Church since 2005. Prior to his call into fulltime vocational ministry in 1996, Puryear served as a telecommunications executive for 25 years. Puryear has degrees from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Fort Worth, TX and is currently working on a PhD at Trinity Seminary in Newburgh, IN.

Rev. McKissic commented:

Read the rest of this entry »

Quotable - Marty Duren

“As the Kingdom moves, our temptation will be to find security in our institutions, the same institutions that are themselves fighting to maintain control and importance. Our denominational structures are a primary place of such security. Without an ability to envision a future without denominations, some will continue to put forth extraordinary amounts of energy to re-animate that which is dying or already dead. Such folks are not able to envision a future without denominations; I cannot envision a future with them.”

Southern Baptist Pastor Marty Duren, commenting recently on his blog, ie.missional.

Saturday Video

Have some fun with this one.  It’s one of my favorites…

My Personal Testimony: “Saved By Grace Through Faith Without Work or Merit”

I have started a devotional/discipleship blog by re-creating my old blog name, ‘The Fearful Teacher’ - and if somebody could tell me how to get my widgets back up to the top of the sidebar, I might send them a gift card or something! My first purpose of starting my blog of two years ago was to begin a discussion with my folks in my church talking about discipleship and other daily issues affecting our walk together with Christ. As time went on, however, the blog just became (like many SBC bloggers) my personal venting place for the all the ills and wrongs in Southern Baptist life. I closed down that old blog because, frankly, I just did not have the time or the inclination to worry about the sins of others when I should have been worried about my own sins and issues, including my first priority as a husband and father, as well as a Minister of the Gospel in my local church and community.

No more political discussions. My new blog is mainly for my church (and any other lurkers who are interested) to come and have a discussion with me about our need to follow Him in a daily walk. My Pastor’s class on Sunday morning and Sunday night is going through the book by Curtis C. Thomas, Life in the Body of Christ: Privileges and Responsibilities in the Local Church (Cape Coral, Florida: Founders Press, 2006). My posts currently are my personal reflection of the biblical material, as well as the questions that are contained in each chapter contained in our secondary text book.

The first exercise of the work is of course purely fundamental. One cannot talk about the responsibilities of being in the Body of Christ without being in the Body of Christ. Our testimony is not determined by what we have done to merit God’s favor - a contraire - we do not by any means merit the grace and mercy of God. We manage to receive God’s love because of His grace and mercy through the deliverance of our very lives by the gift of His Son, Jesus Christ. Read the rest of this entry »

Studying The Bible For The Glory Of God

I believe that the one chief reason that I have been kept in happy useful service is that I have been a lover of Holy Scripture. It has been my habit to read the Bible through four times a year; in a prayerful spirit, to apply it to my heart, and practice what I find there. I have been for sixty-nine years a happy man; happy, happy, happy.” – George Muller

I have been teaching a series on Wednesday night titled Studying The Bible For The Glory Of God. This study is on habits and methods of personal and family devotions and is designed to remind our congregation how much we need the Word of God and why we love it in the first place. One of the things that has come of this is a renewed desire in several of our folks to read the Bible all the way through, for the first time, or again. Perhaps the most valuable time of our study has been spent learning from and encouraging each other in small groups of 4-6 people. Last night we asked them to talk through these questions in their small group time:

1. My favorite method of studying the Bible is…
2. A study or method I have not tried and would like to is…
3. The book or section I have read the most is…
4. The book or section I have read the least is…
5. Some characters in scripture I have enjoyed studying or would like to study are…

If some of our readers are willing to share, I would love to hear your answers to these questions and take them back to our study next week. I’ll even go first!

The One True Church

What I am going to say here is something that may be a new idea to some of you. However, I am convinced that it has a sound biblical basis, and that its implications for us regarding the way we conceive of and carry out Christian ministry can be important. I already wrote a little bit about this on several comments on SelahV’s post, LET THE AX FALL…Upon All the Dead Churches?, the other day. But here is the “official” version…

The Baptist Faith & Message speaks of two different “levels” of church:

A New Testament church of the Lord Jesus Christ is an autonomous local congregation of baptized believers, associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel; observing the two ordinances of Christ, governed by His laws, exercising the gifts, rights, and privileges invested in them by His Word, and seeking to extend the gospel to the ends of the earth.

The New Testament speaks also of the church as the Body of Christ which includes all of the redeemed of all the ages, believers from every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation..

I believe that as we study the Bible, we indeed see these two “levels” of church. Some in Baptist history, such as B. H. Carroll, and those involved in the Landmark movement of the 19^th century, have placed an almost exclusive emphasis on the first aspect or “level,” typically called the “local church.” In an important way, though, I believe that the second sense, what we typically call the Church Universal, is the most transcendent for us as we seek to understand the spiritual reality that is the Body of Christ.

Read the rest of this entry »

Southern Baptist VBS … Time to “Break the Mold?”

I’ll never forget that day.

It was late-June in 2003. Our one-year-old church was hosting its second-ever Vacation Bible School. A team of youth and adults from a sister church in Tennessee came to help us. Being the pastor, I was the “MC” of the event.

I cannot remember the theme … though something jungle-ish does come to mind. We were, of course, using LifeWay’s wonderful VBS curriculum that was designed specifically for Southern Baptist churches. Anyhow … as I welcomed the beautiful, lively children into the space that we had rented for the week-long extravaganza, one of the little angels looked into my eyes and spoke words that cut to the very depths of my heart. He said:

“I’ve already done this Bible School twice already.”

I asked him, “Whatever do you mean.” Then he proceeded to tell me the Bible stories and memory verses from each of the five days. Sure enough, the little tyke had (obviously) attended two other SBC churches in our small town and had completed the five-day curriculum. His command of the material and the memory verses was impressive.

I almost offered him a teaching position in the kindergarten class …

Read the rest of this entry »