Read "Ode to the Grinch" at the SBC Outpost.

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1 Man, that's awesome Thanks for the shout out, dude.

Posted by: Marty Duren at December 10, 2005 04:43 PM (1y681)

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An update on this issue -- one of my concerns has been answered.

Marty Duren posted about this a couple days ago -- the vote numbers and the number of trustees present for the votes aren't as bad as I thought they were. From an email Marty received from the Assistant Recording Secretary: "There were 78 trustees present at the Huntsville meeting. The actual votes were not counted except to indicate that the recommendations made by the Personnel Committee were approved by a majority of those voting."

I'm still not quite sure where the numbers came from in the initial report, but that clarifies things (and makes me feel better about the attendance). It doesn't make me much happier about the actual outcome, though.

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Still think that the "Religious Right" is running things in the US? Still think that evangelical Christians have all kinds of political muscle? Well try this on for size:

We can't even influence the White House Christmas card. Excuse me -- holiday card.

While everyone is up in arms about the "War on Christmas"(tm), the White House (where George W. "What a Fine Born-Again President" Bush lives) sends out a Christmas card that wishes everyone a happy holiday season.

I personally have no problem with this. It is, after all, a season of many holidays. There are a LOT of holidays crammed into the space on the calendar between Thanksgiving and New Year's Eve, so calling it the holiday season is completely correct and accurate in my own humble opinion.

But haven't we been complaining about this? (And by 'we' I mean evangelical Christians in general, specifically those whom the rest of the world consider our "spokesmen") Yet "our President" isn't on message. We can't even get him to change. How much political power do we really have? Or are we all finally ready to admit that the GOP treats us like the crazy rich aunt that nobody admits they're related to until she's got presents to hand out.

We have a lot more to be concerned about this year. There are better places to spend our resources. I don't like the idea that companies are putting policies in place that don't allow employees to say "Merry Christmas" to people, but I can't change people's stupid misunderstandings of the word tolerance. What I can do is share the truth of Christmas with as many people as I can, in the knowledge that this truth can transform lives.

And I can wish everyone I see a Merry Christmas.

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Most of what we actually know about St. Nicholas of Myra is legendary. He was wealthy, having inherited a fortune as a young man when his parents died. He gave gifts from his wealth to the needy, but preferred to do it secretly -- giving rise to part of the Santa Claus legend. Some even say that he threw gold coins down the chimney, where it would lodge in the stockings that were hung up to dry overnight.

Nicholas later became the bishop of Myra -- rather against his will, according to the accounts we have. He was a champion of orthodoxy, and was especially incenseced at the Arian heresy that was running rampant. Legend has it that he actually punched Arius in the face during the council of Nicea, and would have been removed from his bishopric had a vision of CHrist not told the other assembled bishops that Nicholas had done well.

We do not know when Nicholas was born, so his Feast Day is the day of his death, somewhere between 341 and 352. Nicholas is venerated by both the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, but it is the Russian Orthodox Church that holds him in the highest regard. He is the patron saint of seafarers, scholars, bankers, pawnbrokers, jurists, brewers, coopers, travelers, perfumers, unmarried girls, brides, robbers and children.

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I'm on a roll with Christmas posts today. This one also touches a bit on the whole politically-correct view of tolerance.

Story 1: A chaplain at Georgetown University in Washington DC threatened to resign if the school went through with plans to remove crucifixes from it's classrooms -- a move toward a policy of tolerance at the once Catholic school. No surprise there.

The chaplain is Muslim.

Story 2: From the Cincinnatti Enquirer interview with Karen Dabdoub, president of the Council on American-Islamic Relations:

Who are we fooling? The Jews donÂ’t put up a tree for Hanukah; the Muslims donÂ’t put up a tree for Ramadan. It doesnÂ’t take away from my celebration of my holiday for other people to celebrate their holiday. I donÂ’t want anybodyÂ’s holidays to be watered-down. I think theyÂ’re all wonderful.

Now that's tolerance. I don't have any serious awards that I give out, or Ms Dabdoub would get one. BIG thanks to GetReligion for this one.

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OK, when I first heard it, I thought it was a joke. I figured someone had pulled a Larknews and written a fake story, and then some folks with an axe to grind picked it up and ran with it. It's happened before.

But no -- it's true. The "mega-churches" have cancelled their Christmas day services.

I was going to parody this decision, but I can't. And I'm not going to pull any punches on this. more...

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I'm torn on this issue, I admit. On the one hand, the pig-ignorance of people who insist on calling them "holiday trees" when Christmas is the only holiday currently being celebrated that features a tree as a symbol bothers me beyond belief. I think that it's stupid to ignore the fact that the nativity is an important symbol of the season. And I plan on sending the ACLU a nice "Wise men still seek Him" Christmas card this year.

But, on the other hand, I've been an advocate of less commercialization at Christmas for a while now, and it seems that when we boycot and protest and complain that stores aren't saying "Merry Christmas" we are actually encouraging the increased commercialization of this holiday. We're telling them that our idea of Christmas includes sales and shopping, charge cards at the ready.

I really don't care what the rest of the world calls this time of year. Last year about this time, I asked the non-Christian world to get their hands off our holiday, and it was pointed out to me that Christians are at the front of the charge, making the "holiday season" more a celebration of conspicuous consumption and debt than a celebration of the birth of our Saviour. What is our main purpose this time of year?

Don't get me wrong -- I'm still planning on exchanging gifts with my family this year. My daughter loves the idea that Santa is going to come -- though she's worried about how he's getting into the house, since we have no chimney. It's a fun time of year.

But we act as if it's our main focus. We get mad if the stores where we're spending our money don't recognize our holiday. We make sure that everyone knows it's Christmas, not "the holiday season."

And our Jewish friends sit back, with their ages-old tradition of Hannukah, safe from the commercial exploitation that we've brought on ourselves, and smile. Or maybe they laugh.

{edit -- a VERY well-written commentary on this can be found here}

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{I'm changing the way I label these Advent posts, so that where they fit in with the liturgy will be obvious. I'll change the first one so it will fit in.}

In my last Advent post, I talked about our anticipation -- Christ brings us hope, both in His first coming (the hope of forgiveness from sins) and in His second (the hope of ultimate redemption of all creation). This week I want to talk about peace.

What kind of peace do we have in Christ? When we look around the world, we see just as clearly as Longfellow did that "hate is strong and mocks the song Of peace on earth, good will to men." If Christ came to bring us an immediate, temporal peace, then His mission failed.

But wait a minute. What did Christ Himself say? ""Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword."

I think the answer lies in Christ's words in John 14. "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid." He doesn't give peace as the world gives it -- the peace of Christ is an eternal peace. It is the peace of the Gospel -- Christ's death, burial, and resurrection, the atonement for our sins. This is the peace that He gave us in His first coming.

We anticipate the day to come, when the rule and reign of Christ will bring true peace to earth. Sickness and disease will be gone. Warfare will be no more. Everyone will live in peace because we will be ruled by the Prince of Peace. When all of creation is redeemed, we will live in harmony with each other -- that is the ultimate result of Christ's atonement, and the peace that we will live in is the peace of the Gospel of Christ.

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From the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message

Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer in water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is an act of obedience symbolizing the believer's faith in a crucified, buried, and risen Saviour, the believer's death to sin, the burial of the old life, and the resurrection to walk in newness of life in Christ Jesus. It is a testimony to his faith in the final resurrection of the dead. Being a church ordinance, it is prerequisite to the privileges of church membership and to the Lord's Supper.

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. Each congregation operates under the Lordship of Christ through democratic processes. In such a congregation each member is responsible and accountable to Christ as Lord. Its scriptural officers are pastors and deacons.

Now, from the IMB

Regarding a candidateÂ’s baptism, trustees voted two to one to establish a guideline that specifies (1) believerÂ’s baptism by immersion; (2) baptism follows salvation; (3) baptism is symbolic, picturing the experience of the believerÂ’s death to sin and resurrection to a new life in Christ; (4) baptism does not regenerate; and (5) baptism is a church ordinance.

The guideline establishes that candidates must have been baptized in a Southern Baptist church or in a church of another denomination that practices believerÂ’s baptism by immersion alone. Also, the baptism must not be viewed as sacramental or regenerative, and the church must embrace the doctrine of the security of the believer.

I believe that baptism is not regenerative. I believe in the doctrine of eternal security. I would have to have the term 'sacrament' defined, but as I think it's being used, I would probably agree with the IMB there as well. My issue is not that I disagree with the doctrines being affirmed -- my problem is that the IMB has taken it upon itself to decide what Southern Baptists consider Scriptural baptism. That is the role of the local church, since baptism is an ordinance of the local church.

Regarding the 'private prayer language' issue, I have to agree with Marty Duren:

It seems that this had less to do with missionary guidelines and more to do with insulting Jerry Rankin. If you truly believe that this is an unbiblical practice, you should have fired him ...

I'm still disturbed that barely half of the trustees actually voted in this election. It's telling that the vote numbers are no longer present in the IMB article about the vote. I think that we, as Southern Baptists, deserve some answers from the trustees concerning this vote.

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OK, so in my other post about this, I mentioned my concern with the location of the baptism that the IMB was saying was unscriptural. Reading more about the decision, I have a LOT more concerns.

There is a concern that the IMB is overstepping it's boundaries. It is, in effect, telling churches that baptisms that they have accepted as Biblical and proper are, in fact, neither. The International Missions Board of the Southern Baptist Convention has decided to tell churches what constitutes scriptural baptism and what doesn't.

There is a concern that the majority of the trustees of the IMB didn't vote at all on this issue. The meeting conflicted with some state conventions, apparently, which makes me wonder who was responsible for the scheduling in the first place. It does seem that the deck was stacked, to me at least.

There is a concern that this will expand to other areas. What happens when this is extended to other areas of Baptist polity -- ordinations, for example. I may not be ordained by the Southern Baptist Convention. I was baptized in an independent Baptist church, not a Southern Baptist church. My church has determined that my baptism is scriptural. The IMB would disagree, it seems. But that's not their responsibility.

I think that it's great that the SBC is moving away from the liberal influences of its past. I'm thankful for the conservative resurgance. But this is an area that we are wrong on. A missionary board has no business telling churches that the baptism they have declared Scriptural aren't good enough -- especially a mission board that is funded by those churches. If memory serves, the Soutehrn Baptist Convention was formed because of a disagreement about the qualifications of missionaries. Maybe the IMB folks need to read their history books a bit more.

{And I haven't even started about the "private prayer language" thing. Maybe that's one for another post.}

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Tim Challies started something. In an innocent movie review, Tim remarked about the amount of profanity:

Before I continue allow me to provide a bit of a warning. I was quite surprised at the volume of swearing in this film. Usually I would not be surprised to find bad language in a war movie, but was surprised at this one primarily because the people who recommended it to me made no mention of it. Thankfully, because of the subject matter, it was not a film we decided to watch with the children present.

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Ryan DeBarr has written something that needs to be read by a lot of people. I told him to send it to Baptist Press, but he doesn't think they'd run it. I've read it twice so far, and it really has a lot to say about the state of the church, and evangelicalism in general.

And for some reason, Ryan's feed isn't showing up on the SBC aggregator. I'll have to try to figure out why. Anyway -- go here and read. Comment. Tell other people.

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One of the most attractive things about podcasting is the "pirate radio" attitude -- WITH decent production values. You can listen to niche podcasts about anything at all. Podcasting builds community, and artists benefit. It's also cheap (free) PR, and some folks are starting to get that idea.

Now mainstream radio is jumping in, using podcasting as a revenue source.

With radio trying to find new revenue streams, this is one of the obvious ones,” said Matt Feinberg, senior vp of national radio for Zenith Media, who has bought podcast advertising for a client.

We podcast because they're fun. I did radio in college, and it's like owning your own radio station. I'm even starting to get demo CDs sent to me from bands around the country, asking me to play their stuff on the podcast.

Podcasting has changed the way a lot of people listen to music. But right now there are FAR too many professionally-done podcasts that are free for radio stations to even be thinking about subscription-based podcasts. They're going to have to do some serious value-adding to make that model go.

By the way -- if you want to hear some great music podcasts that are professionally done, check out a few of my fellow members of AMP. Right now, we're running a contest to rename iPodderX -- you can win some incredible prizes.

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Advent actually started on Sunday, but I didn't have time to post -- I was preaching at First Baptist South Shore in South Shore, Kentucky -- just on the other side of the Ohio River from me. If I'd had a boat, it probably would have been quicker to get there just by crossing the Ohio than driving WAY out of my way to get to the bridge, but I digress. . . .

I talked about Advent before, and how I see it as a time of anticipation. In fact, the Advent calendar I have on the computer has Psalm 80:14-15 as the verse for the 27th (even thought they say 15-16) -- Psalms 80:14-15 Turn again, O God of hosts! Look down from heaven, and see; have regard for this vine, the stock that your right hand planted, and for the son whom you made strong for yourself.

We prepare ourselves for Christmas, and we prepare ourselves for the return of Christ.

Others are blogging about Advent:

• 19th Century Baptist has a meditation on Genesis 3:15.
  
• Discoshaman has a brief post about Advent at Le Sabot Post-Moderne.
  
• Dr. Michael Haykin has an advent post commenting on Dr. Russell Moore's post. Both are well worth reading.
  

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A tip of my nonexistent hat to Steve at the Missional Baptist Blog for this one. From the Baptist Press story:

Regarding a candidate's baptism, trustees voted by a 2-1 margin to establish a guideline that specifies (1) believer's baptism by immersion; (2) baptism follows salvation; (3) baptism is symbolic, picturing the experience of the believer's death to sin and resurrection to a new life in Christ; (4) baptism does not regenerate; and (5) baptism is a church ordinance.

The guideline establishes that candidates must have been baptized in a Southern Baptist church or in a church of another denomination that practices believer's baptism by immersion alone. Also, the baptism must not be viewed as sacramental or regenerative, and the church must embrace the doctrine of the security of the believer.

IF they are saying that a legitimate, Scriptural baptism has to take place INSIDE a church, then I have a HUGE problem with this language, and someone at the IMB needs to examine Baptist history, because indoor baptisms were not a part of early Baptist practice. Baptisms were public, performed in streams or rivers -- not in churches. Location does not, and should NEVER, matter -- what matters is that the subject of the baptism is a believer, and that he is being baptized under the guidance and authority of a local church. If THAT is what the IMB is trying to affirm, then I don't see any conflicts.

I've been planning on doing a series of posts concerning Baptist "distinctives," which would touch on Baptist polity issues such as church ordinances and offices. I've been holding off until I had a chance to take Dr. Moore's Systematic Theology III class at Southern (because ecclesiology is NOT my strong suit), but I think I feel a rush of independent study coming on. Maybe in a couple weeks.

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Not long ago, I reviewed Tim Bete's book In the Beginning, There Were No Diapers. Tim is a great person, and a very funny guy, and I get the occasional email from him letting me know about his book or something else he's written. He sent me permission to use this poem at the beginning of November, and I've saved it until now -- the beginning of the Christmas season.
more...

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OK, I said I wasn't going out. I did.

I wasn't happy about going out, but I went because we took my daughter to see Santa Claus today. We got a 5x7, a CD, AND the copyright to the picture for a decent price. And I learned something interesting.

Black Friday at about 3PM is a perfect time to visit Santa. No line, no crowd. Santa talked to my daughter for quite a while (no line!) and posed for several pictures.

I didn't buy anything. My wife attempted to get one of the cheap laptops that WalMart was selling, but she was too late. She heard from employees that security had to be called because of people cutting in line. Some people actually called 911 to report line-cutters.

Tim Challies has an excellent post touching on this American phenomenon called Black Friday. You need to read the whole thing, but pay special attention to this part:

While I am somewhat envious of American Thanksgiving I am in no way envious of Black Friday. In fact, one could make the argument that the entire long weekend is a celebration not of thanksgiving, but of excess and gluttony. On Thursday people eat far too much and follow that on Friday by spending far too much. Excess: it's the American way! Wouldn't it make for a nicer weekend if, instead of shopping, people went out and shared what they had rather than spend it?

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Wow, this one is WAY far afield of what I usually post here, but it touches on something that I've talked about before, and I'll get to that in a second.

On the 19th, Jerry Falwell fired his football coach and two assistant athletic directors. The AD resigned. And the condemnation began.

Now, a bit of important background. LU's football team makes my own Pewie Podcasters look talented. Liberty's football team is the only team at LU that isn't competative. Hasn't been in a long time. When I was at Liberty, the team was good. Competative. Had a tight end go in the first round to Pittsburg (then it turned out that the Christian influence at Liberty really hadn't taken hold on him -- he was busted for drug violations. I still have the rookie cards). Got some national attention.

But not recently. Losing seasons have piled up, and frustrations have built among LU fans. And when the football team is losing, what do you do?

Clean house. And the coach got a good severence package, as did the assistants, so there wasn't anyone left broke and penniless. But the sports writers have piled on.

One example is here. Cook takes advantage of the situation to ridicule Liberty for it's rules, especially the dress code. Hey -- he should have seen the dress code when I was there!! One section, though, really shows what upsets me.

That Falwell would fire a good part of his athletic staff over something as relatively unimportant as wins and losses, when it seemingly undermines his Christian values, shouldn't be all that shocking, and not just because that's what college presidents do. You don't start with a little Baptist church in rural Virginia and make it the underpinning for America's conservative Christian movement, probably the most influential political movement of the last 25 years, without an eye on wins and losses.

So Falwell, whether his coach and athletic directors are good Christians or not, is not going to countenance losing in his organization, whether or not anyone believes that firing the coach and athletic staff is not WWJD. God may forgive them; Falwell will not. If you're going to coach the Flames, Falwell will tell you to give him Liberty victories, or he will give you death.

This is probably the stupidest thing I've ever read. You hire people to produce results. If results aren't produced, they are replaced by people who can do the job. That is a fact of life. There are ways that Christians should do this that differentiate us from the rest of the world -- generous severnce packages are a start, which all three men who were fired received. Not talking trash about them is another -- Jerry simply said that there was a difference in vision.

People enjoy holding Christians to a higher standard -- as long as they get to make that standard. Bob Cook has decided that Christians cannot do business and succeed in that business if it means that they have to fire anyone. Bob Cook has earned the coveted View From the Pew Get a Clue Award (also known as the Clewie. Congrats, Bob.

{ function(){q=document.getSelection(); if(!q){void(q=prompt('Wikipedia keywords:',''))}; if(q)location.href='http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?search='+escape(q)})()">Here's a great take on the whole controversy}

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I've been thinking a lot about how we celebrate Christmas, and how to make that celebration more joyful and fulfilling, while still focusing on Christmas as the birth of Christ. My wife and I have been talking about a family celebration of Advent for a few years now, and I think that this year is the year to start it.

more...

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Why I will not be out shopping on Firday, in spite of the "great deals" that the stores have every year.

From the time I left college until about five years ago, I worked retail. There is a reason people call the day after Thanksgiving "Black Friday" -- it is. I never had that day off -- in fact, I drove from Florida back to Atlanta on Thanksgiving day more than once so I could be at work at 6 in the morning on Black Friday. Most places won't have actual lunches scheduled for their employees -- they will have some food brought in (most places I worked found it was worth it to have local restaurants cater, but once we did pot luck) and employees will eat and run back to the floor, to be greeted by mobs of people whose only concern is what they have been wanting to buy.

I swore to myself that I'd never be a part of the mobs, and with a few minor exceptions I never have. I enjoy the Friday the way the Pilgrims did -- feet up, munching on leftovers. I may do some online shopping, but that isn't a sure thing. It's a tradition I plan on sticking to -- they really don't need my money badly enough for me to go out on Friday.

Unless someone is selling laptops for under $100. Then I might be interested.

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