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Why We Should Pray for a Great Commission Resurgence

Many of you know that I am serving on the Great Commission Task Force, a task force appointed by  Johnny Hunt, President of the Southern Baptist Commission.

From time to time I get questions about why I would give my time to something like this. In short, here is why, and why I'd ask that you pray for us.

• It is for the sake of the 1.48 billion in the world that have no access to the Gospel, and the 3.06 billion that have little to no access. The SBC is the largest, organized, funded missionary force on the planet. Together, we have 5600 missionaries--44 of those currently come from the Summit Church. Through the SBC, we were able to send them without asking them to raise support for 2-3 years as missionaries in other traditions often have to do. It is for them, their work--and for the sake of people we don't yet know that will be reached around the world.

• It is about our children. Honestly, I don't care one whit whether my children are Southern Baptist. But I do want to establish a legacy of radical sacrifice on behalf the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20). I want my children to be able to see what God is doing around the world as their great opportunity and to have the chance to participate in that with as few encumbrances as possible. Thus, helping to re-establish an efficient, effective church-planting organization seems a worthy endeavor.

• Sometimes the question is why I'd 'waste' my time being 'Southern Baptist' at all, and not just lead our church to be non-denominational. The answer to that is that we are, in fact, an "independent" church. The Southern Baptist Convention is not a "denomination" in the way most people think of denominations. The SBC has no hierarchy--our church does not report to any "bishops" or other authorities. Each congregation is responsible only to the Word of God and their conscience. So in that sense we are non-denominational, as the SBC is fundamentally unlike, in its structure, to other denomination. The SBC is simply a group of churches that give together to sponsor church planting and mission efforts. We believe that our church planting efforts will be more effective when combined with other like-minded churches. In other words, we like to cooperate with as many churches as we can for the purposes of the Kingdom of GodThat answer is more fully explained here.

Again, I'd request that you go to www.pray4gcr.com, sign up as one of the 5000 prayer partners we desire, and join us in "praying the Lord of the Harvest" that He would help us be an effective part of His "sending forth laborers into the harvest."

Why We Need a Great Commission Resurgence Task Force

Some reflections/fragments, if not random, from my time at the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force meeting. These show why we need a Great Commission Resurgence:

Here's some good news:

• In 1970, there were over 7000 "unreached" people groups (groups with no access to the Gospel) that numbered over 1 million in population. Due to a massive missions movement in the US and elsewhere, that number is now down to 400!
• In 1997, church planters in the IMB were training only 30,000 national believers in church leadership/church planting. Today that number is over 250,000! The Great Commission is not the white man's burden. It is the property of believers in every nation, and we are recognizing that!

But here's the bad news:

• Currently, 1.48 billion people have NO access to the Gospel. 3.06 billion have little (or nearly no) access to the Gospel.
• Southern Baptists have only one missionary on the field for every 1.6 million people out there.
• Southern Baptist churches report about $12.5 billion in revenue. Overseas work gets less than 2.5% of that.
• Southern Baptists spend $1.31 per person for missions in North America, and spend $0.04 per person for missions to reach the world. (Source)

"The Gospel is only good news if it gets there in time." Carl F. H. Henry

And more bad news:

"The SBC is a bureaucracy that seems to have a passionate commitment to mediocrity at best, and to our own self-destruction at worst." (I've got to let this one remain anonymous).

“Institutional self-perpetuation holds no legitimate place in a world of scarce resources; institutional mediocrity should be terminated, if not transformed into excellence."

Go to pray4GCR.com to pray for a much needed Great Commission Resurgence in the SBC!

The SBC as GM and a Shopping Mall

For those interested, this is a fascinating presentation by Al Mohler that I heard him give that explains how the Southern Baptist Convention was organized after the pattern of GM and what the implications are for the future.

Great Commssion Resurgence Task Force

If 36 still counts as young, then I am a young Southern Baptist pastor. (I'm not sure it does, but whenever I'm at Southern Baptist events people are always calling me "son" and "boy.")

I have been given the great honor of serving on the SBC’s Great Commission Resurgence Task Force. The task force is assigned the task of praying and "dreaming" about what a more efficient, more effective SBC would look like. How can we realign our agencies, refocus our spending, repent of our wrongdoing, and re-present ourselves to our community? Summit, this directly affects us in that, while we don't wear the label "Southern Baptist" on our sleeve, almost all our international church planting work goes through the International Mission Board, an agency of the SBC. Currently we have over 40 of our members working in them, and each year we give them tens, even hundreds, of thousands of dollars.

Yesterday in Atlanta was our first official meeting... I have a great deal of hope serving on this team, as I know that the God who purchased the church with His own blood will supply all that we need to thrive and prosper in the days to come.

One of the keys for a Great Commission Resurgence, I believe, is for the Southern Baptist Convention to restore the initiative in ministry to the local church. The local church is the primary institution of the New Testament. Jesus established it right after giving the great commission (Acts 2:42–47), intending for it to be His vehicle in accomplishing that commission.

Parachurch ministries (and, denominations and networks) exist to facilitate the ministry of the local church. Denominations are not biblical institutions. That is not to say they are unbiblical institutions… denominational networks are simply functional tools that churches can use to accomplish the mission given to them (as, after all, Christians have historically found they can accomplish more cooperating together than they can acting independently).

Good parachurch ministries FACILITATE the ministry of the church. BAD parachurch takes ministry from a local church and does it for her. Bad parachurch says, "Give us money and people and we'll do ministry for you."

In my opinion, the SBC has, in many places, descended into a “bad parachurch” model. The perception is that local churches should give, send people, and allow the institutions to do the work.

Many pastors, particularly younger ones, are no longer content with that model. They believe that the Great Commission was given to them, not to the denomination. They want to use cooperative networks to plant churches, but they don’t want the networks to do the work for them.

Furthermore, they question whether or not giving money to the Convention is the best use of their resources. They see what they believe to be a great deal of bureaucracy, inefficiency, and activity in the Convention not related to church planting.

Whether right or wrong, most younger pastors will not give to the SBC solely out of a since of loyalty. They want to know if the Convention will assist them in the fulfillment of the commission God has given to them as church pastors. While some of us are young, arrogant, and naïve, we also have the understanding that we must be more committed to the Great Commission than we are the Convention. If the SBC is an efficient tool in fulfilling that commission, we will use it. If it is not, most younger pastors will discard it.

Many younger pastors are not actively participating in the Convention because they don't see the SBC helping them (that is, the local church) fulfill the call God has given to them to plant churches. They are not interested in funding an institution or bureaucracy. Many gladly would give to support seminaries and other strategic initiatives that help train and produce church planters, but they want to see these institutions as partners in the work, not as those who will take over the work.

Part of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force's assignment is to address the issue of how younger pastors can be brought back in. How can we align the Convention so that local Baptist churches see the SBC as an effective partner for accomplishing their commission?

Summit... there is an official site www.pray4gcr.com I'd ask you to sign up for. Currently, there are 2500 people who are signed up, and I'd love for us to radically increase that number!

A Time to Sacrifice

Summit Church and other likeminded pastors,

The below is from one of our church planters, regarding some recent cutbacks at the International Mission Board due to the economic recession. The bottom line is that all of us have less now, so we are able to give less. That said, I do think that the global progress of the Gospel should be the LAST thing to suffer. I think we should consider making radical changes to our lifestyles before we see missionaries have to come home.

The elders at the Summit Church are considering a special offering to help address what our church planter below said. I hope that next week, at the Southern Baptist Convention, there will be a public call to address this:

The 2008 Lottie Moon Christmas Offering goal was $170 million.  As you may already know, the total receipts fell approximately $29 million short of that goal… the single biggest drop from one year to the next in the history of the offering.  When just looking at those numbers it’s pretty overwhelming. However, it all comes into perspective when you realize that entire shortfall could be made up by each SB giving only about $2. That’s giving up one cup of coffee, one hamburger, one Route 44 from Sonic, one tots and cheese… for those of you that know what I’m talking about!  Our missionary-force is having to be reduced by almost 700 personnel.  That is a pretty sobering figure.  

Our denomination was born out of a passion for the nations to hear the Gospel. Sometimes it is a good thing to step back and remember where you came from.  We realize that these are difficult economic times for everyone, and we certainly want to show gratitude and appreciation of the funding we have received.  However, God has not called us (SB’s) out to wait on the sidelines until the economy recovers.   

During the company's meetings last week, we were informed that one of the most disappointing things about this situation is not the amount of LMCO shortfall, but the fact that there has been little, if any, real outrage from SB’s that our ISC program has been suspended.  The ISC program is the program that allows married couples or singles who are outside of their 20's to go overseas for 2 or 3 years.  

If the financial crunch had hit before the team I'm on left, we would have 1 career couple here, and the other 5 adults on the team, including me, would be gone.  When October of next year hits, we will all be gone, and chances are the one remaining career unit here will not be able to stay in our city.  Generally we try not to have anyone alone in a city, and I assume this would be the case with us.  Please pray for them in this time, and please do anything you can to help out during this hard time.

11,626 people groups worldwide

6,510 unreached 

3,431 unengaged unreached

2,650 with no known evangelical witness

345 unengaged unreached in CA

4 out of every 10,000 persons in CA is a follower of Christ

I know this is kind a sobering, but so was the email that said we were going to have to bring missionaries home early.  Thanks SO MUCH for your support, prayer and otherwise.

Great Commission Resurgence

Below is info on something you might consider signing...

I know I have blogged a lot about the SBC of late... (see, for example, Orthodox, Committed, and Unconventional and Jesus vs. Religion and What do you mean you're Southern Baptist?)

I am VERY excited about this "great commission declaration" that came out recently... I think it is a good thing, and one I am excited to be a part of.

In short, we believe that Christians can do their most effective work when they are networked with other Christians. What this says is that we want to be a part of a church planting network that is committed to the Gospel in the Spirit of the New Testament. It's something you can sign... and my name is on it! Consider putting yours, too!

The New, Young Southern Baptist: Orthodox, Connected, Unconventional

If 35 still counts as young, I am a young Southern Baptist pastor. I'm not sure it does, but whenever I'm at Southern Baptist events people are always calling me "son" and "boy." :)

In all this talk about what a young Southern Baptist pastor is, or is not, there are 3 words that come to mind... I have not been appointed spokesmen for anybody, but I'd say these things are fairly representative of the many I interact with, and many that I see coming out of Southeastern and other great Southern Baptist seminaries:

Orthodox

We are very conservative. We believe in the inerrancy of the Bible. We believe in the exclusivity of Christ for salvation. We believe God has given complementary roles for men and women in the church and home, and that men should lead in these arenas. We know this is unpopular, but we don't care. We believe abortion and homosexuality are sin, though Christ loves the homosexual and the abortionist just like He loves us. We think we must first preach against our own sins and secondarily those of others. We are still fairly politically conservative. However, belonging to one political party and having the right checklist of things to tick at the polls are no longer defining issues for us. We believe in expository, Gospel centered, prophetic, hard hitting, relevant, deep, culturally sensitive and counter cultural preaching. We believe that God wants to establish His church in every nation on earth, and we're doggedly committed to international church planting. We believe Jesus is coming back and we want to get everyone, including ourselves, ready. We believe the local church is the only God-given institution in the New Testament, chosen and ordained by Him to accomplish His Kingdom work on earth. Most of us are still fairly socially conservative, believing, for example, that drinking alcohol is an unwise decision, but we don't believe that it is sin in and of itself, and don't want to make it a defining issue of fellowship. We want the Gospel to be our center, and we believe the Baptist Faith and Message sets an appropriate doctrinal parameter for cooperation in ministry.

We're not angry about these things. We hold them dearly, but we're ready to move on to winning our communities for Christ. Johnny Hunt gave a group of us a great illustration the other day. He said that in Vietnam, after a platoon had taken a hill, there was a temptation to sit back and simply maintain that occupied hill. This was disastrous, however. It disengaged you from the real battle and led you to focus on secondary matters. You are not there to occupy, you are there to take new hills. 

We are grateful for those who have helped establish the orthodox faith in our churches, but we are ready to go take some new hills. There's lots and lots and lots of lost people. We recognize that our enemy will never relent in attacking our foundation, and when opportunity arises where we need to defend our core doctrines, we will, by God's grace, defend them just as our fathers have done.

Connected

We believe that cooperation and networking between churches are necessary for success in every generation. We learned that from the SBC. The first place we usually look for that network is fellow Southern Baptists, because they believe much like we do.

However, we recognize that denominations are not "biblical" institutions. The only institution of the New Testament is the local church. Denominations, however, are not "unbiblical," either. They are simply networks. Denominations, in that way, are simply tools to help the local church accomplish her mission. If the tool is rusty, you have to decide whether to throw away the tool or sharpen it. That's what we're wondering about the Southern Baptist Convention. Many of us see that it is the most expansive, well-resourced network for the accomplishment of the worldwide Great Commission on earth. But we will not remain faithful to the Convention just because our parents were in it or because we've had a great 150 years. We love our Bibles and the ministry of our local churches too much for that. We will stay in the Convention if it is a functional, efficient network for accomplishing the mission given to our local churches, i.e. the planting of more churches.

In the 1970's, when you gave $1 to the Cooperative Program of the SBC, most of it never got to the mission field, but instead got sucked into liberal agendas and institutions. That was unacceptable, and there was (thank God) a conservative resurgence that changed that. Today, however, when you give $1 to the Cooperative Program, most of it gets sucked into bureaucratic costs. I suppose that is better than getting funneled into liberalism, but the point is IT IS STILL NOT MAKING IT TO THE MISSION FIELD, THE REASON FOR WHICH WE GAVE IT. I think you will find fewer and fewer of us willing to fund bureaucracy out of a sake of filial loyalty. We're grateful for our heritage, and owe the SBC a lot, but not as much as we owe Jesus and lost people (Romans 1:14). Our first loyalty is to our mission.

We live in flat world where the internet makes "tribes" (think Seth Godin) easy to form, which makes local associations and denominational loyalty not as necessary as it used to be.  But we really, really want to be connected to others who believe like we do in order to plant churches--and the Baptist Faith and Message is the best reflection of our beliefs, so we really would like for the SBC to be the primary network we can work through. We want to be connected, but if the SBC doesn't provide that for us, we turn to any other number of available "tribes" out there.

Unconventional

What I've said above makes us "unconventional." We are conservatively orthodox and practically connected, which is, I believe, the essence of the SBC spirit given to us by our fathers. But we won't do SBC just because it's the "conventional" thing to do.

Furthermore, some of our ministry "style" may appear different than how our fathers did it. Sometimes we will get things wrong. We need an older generation to mentor us, guide us, correct us... but let us put the wine of the Gospel into new wineskins.

We are grateful for the 1950's but know they are not coming back. We are called to reach people today. Why should the Gospel for this generation be put in the clothes of the previous generation? We want to take the wisdom, good tradition, and belief structure of our Southern Baptist parents and re-express it in its counter-cultural, revolutionary form for today. We may not look just like our parents, but we believe like them. We are not content to mimic the forms of God's movement yesterday. We want to experience our own movement today.

The race we are trying to win is not ascendancy in SBC politics, but to win the lost. As Paul instructed us to, we will shed everything that weighs us down in that race (1 Cor 9:19-27). The SBC has been helpful for the cause of the Gospel in the past, we hope that it can be so for the future.

Jesus' Condemnation of Religion

I’ve been spending a lot of time in the 23rd chapter of Matthew... and thinking about the "religious" circles I run in.  I find Matthew 23 to be one of the most insightful and, at the same time, most incredibly disturbing chapters of Scripture. It is Jesus’ famous chapter against religion. I have gleaned 3 things in my time studying this chapter.

 

First, Jesus acknowledges that over time, religion tends to creep in and replace the Gospel among God’s people. In vv. 34–35, Jesus speaks about a war between religion and the Gospel within the people of God, which dates back to the time of Adam and Eve.  This war between religion and the Gospel penetrates so deep even to separate people of the same family. God has sent Prophets, wise men and scribes (from among their own people) to avert this great conflict, as described in verse 34, but the religious people have killed them. 

 

Secondly, Jesus tells us that we have a tendency to see this conflict in the past but not in ourselves. Jesus states in verse 29, “You build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.” 

The Pharisees do not identify themselves with religious in the past who killed the prophets; rather they thought of themselves as the friends of God! Notice what they have going for them... what they pride themselves on, what they told themselves proved they "loved" God:

• They love missions: Verse 15, they “travel across sea and land” to make converts.  They are hefty "Lottie Moon Christmas Offering" givers and they boasted the sending of a lot of missionaries.
• They love doctrine: Verse 5, they wore broad “phylacteries.”  These were small cubed shaped cases made of leather, containing Scripture passages written on parchment they’d wear on the arm.  In other words, this was the Jewish version of the AWANA vest.  Then in verse 16, you see they get into a minute discussion of what made for a proper and improper approach to swearing. 
• They taught disciplined obedience: verse 23, they “tithe mint and cumin…”  When you go through your spice drawer and tithe the powders... well, that’s pretty intense.

In other words, the Pharisees knew God’s book and they cherished God’s teachings. Because they stood for God’s standards and genuinely tried to live them out, they looked back at Cain and the generations of faithless Israelites and bemoaned their sin.  “Oh, we’re not like that," they declared. "We serve God zealously. We’re His friends. We stand for truth. We would never have resisted, much less killed, the prophets of God." The irony is that they were about to kill the greatest prophet of all time.

Generations later, the papists in the time of Luther would look back at the Pharisees and think, “We’d never do that,” while at the same time trying everything they could to shut up Martin Luther.  We have a tendency to see this conflict in the past but not in ourselves. But we need to see that we are they. That we love doctrine and missions and discipline is good; that we have replaced them for the love of God is detrimental.

 

Third, religiosity makes us horribly ineffective at evangelism. Jesus chides the Pharisees in verse 15 saying, “You travel across sea and land to make a single convert.”  In other words, you search and search to try and get converts, but it’s incredibly difficult for you. That's because religion repels people, especially those unlike us in the culture. Compare that to Jesus.  People flocked to be around Jesus, including sinners and prostitutes and tax collectors and Roman soldiers. He didn’t have to go around the world, He just walked down the street and all cultures flocked to Him!

We have a tendency to dismiss that by saying, “Well, that was Jesus, He worked miracles.”  But this doesn't hold up.  Jesus said in Luke 5 to Peter, after he filled his boat to overflowing with fish, "from now on you will catch men like that.” 

For how many of us has that (i.e. having a boat overflowing with converts) been our experience?  Do we attract people like Jesus did, or are we more like the religious people Jesus was describing?  The baptism numbers of the Southern Baptist Convention, with which our church cooperates, have steadily dropped for years now. Many of the churches are half full, and in large part many of the churches are graying and dying. Furthermore, most Southern Baptists look very alike culturally--same race, same background, same political convictions. Many of us "travel the world to make a convert..." and seem to struggle even with that... is it because we're more defined by our traditions than we are the Gospel?

We defend our lack of growth by saying, “Well, that’s because our culture doesn’t like hard preaching, discipleship preaching.” The fact is, Jesus preached hard about discipleship, and sometimes He turned people away, but we don’t even have the people to turn away! We have to recognize and acknowledge that there’s a difference in driving people away and no one showing up!

What exactly does religion replacing the Gospel look like? Jesus gives 7 woes... I would describe them in these 5 categories:

• Religious people are obsessed with recognition (vv. 5-6). They love conventions, titles, and public praise.
• Religious people focus on external conformity to tradition and not inward transformation (vv. 25-26). It's not to say that they don't also teach inward transformation, just that they are defined more by the externals than the internals. As D. A. Carson says, "Error is truth out of proportion."
• Religious people focus on the sins of other rather than on their own sins (vv 2, 28).
• Religious people esteem secondary traditions over a love for God (vv 16, 23-24). If you conform to their traditions, they consider you godly. If you don't, there's no way you possibly could be. They strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.
• Religious people are generally judgmental and angry in their tone (v. 23)

I can write about these things because they have described me so well. Not just in the past, but many of these are my own tendencies now.

My whole point is this: pharisaism is alive and well and at work in the church. Especially in Baptist churches.

 

Acts 29 and the SBC

I had a chance to spend some time last week with some good pastor friends in the Acts 29 network, namely Tyler Jones, Daniel Montgomery and Sean Cordell. The purpose was a to do a podcast interview about church networks designed to link Gospel-loving, church planting churches. We got a chance to discuss what should and should not be the basis of unity among churches, and what that means for things like the Acts 29 network and the Southern Baptist Convention. If you're interested, you can hear it here.

My conviction is that the local church is THE institution of the New Testament. Other organizations can be helpful--like conventions, parachurch ministries, etc. But they are simply tools that can (and should) be used by the church in fulfilling her goals. Tools come and go, as does their usefulness. Sometimes they should be sharpened, sometimes re-invented, sometimes discarded. I am grateful for both the Acts 29 network and the SBC, both "tools" with their own set of problems--but effective networks for church planting.

The Humor behind the AP Story, "Young Baptist Preachers Chart Different Courses"

Some of you will see in the coming days an AP story on Real Clear Politics and some other places entitled "Young Baptist Preachers Chart Different Courses" in which I was featured. I thought the guy writing the article, Eric Gorski, did a pretty good job. I had to laugh at my depiction as the "non-traditional," "progressive," and "not quite sure he's southern" guy. Any of you that know my background and general persona will probably get a kick out of that.

A few things I wanted to make clear:

The phrase "humble orthodoxy" is not originally mine. I owe that one to Josh Harris. I'm not sure if he made it up or not. I also did not say "I am humbly orthodox," but that humble orthodoxy is what I strive for. To say "I am humbly orthodox" would seem to contradict the very thing I want to be, like saying "I'm pretty darn humble and proud of it!"

The phrase "we may not believe what the Summit Church believes but thank God they are here because otherwise we'd have to raise our taxes" is not mine either. I owe that to Robert Lewis. As I've often said, "I've never had an original thought in my life." Including that one. I heard C.J. Mahaney first make that statement.

Eric (the author) seemed to make a big deal out of the Southern Baptist Global Climate initiative I signed... perhaps a bigger deal than it is to me. The article says that me and a more traditional pastor, Eric Hankins, "part" on global warming--implying that Eric is skeptical of global warming claims while I buy into them. Not necessarily. I would say, if anything, I am more skeptical than believing.

Actually, I don't think that determining the science of global warming is the job of the local church or a convention of local churches. Other Christians can and should devote themselves to that question, JUST NOT THE LOCAL CHURCH. Our role is the preaching of the Gospel, and I don't want to let ANYTHING, including my stance on various, more minor political issues, come in the way of life's most important message.

I see my role as a pastor as teaching biblical principles you can apply to politics, but, with a few exceptions, I stay out of the political ramifications of those. In the words of Mark Dever, I might be wrong about global warming, but I'm not wrong about the Gospel. I don't want my opinion on the former to be a stumbling block on the latter.

That's why I would only sign the Southern Baptist Global Climate Initiative (SBECI) after it was denuded of any policy directives. Jonathan Merritt, author of the document goes to our church and asked me to be one of the original signers of it. In its first draft, I would not sign, because it called for (what I thought were) specific policy suggestions. I told Jonathan I thought that making specific policy suggestions was "out of bounds" for the church. I told him that as a pastor I did not want to speak in areas that were beyond my calling. I urged him to reword the directives of the document so that it stayed out of declaring what were the causes of or cures for global warming. I told him I could sign a document that simply declared our understanding that we need to be good stewards of the earth and that this was an issue we needed to pay attention to. He graciously reworded it and then I signed it.

Here's another example: In 2003, I was on a committee asked to issue a statement on behalf of the Southern Baptist Convention about the war in Iraq. I told the committee that I didn't think it was our place, as a convention of churches, to determine which wars were just and which were not. My suggestion was that we issue a general statement about the need for just wars in certain situations and that we urge our leaders to investigate whether Iraq was a just war and, if so, to pursue it with all their might. I have my opinion about Iraq, but I don't want to make that the official opinion of "the church." Again, I might be wrong in my opinions on the war in Iraq, but I'm not wrong about the Gospel. I don't want my opinions on the war in Iraq to cause someone to miss the message I've been called to preach: THE GOSPEL.

There are times, of course, where we MUST speak into specific policy issues. For example, if I were a pastor in Richmond, VA in 1860 I don't think it would please God for me not to preach against racism just because it was a "politically charged issue" (nor should I avoid talking about it today!). If I were a German pastor in 1939 I don't think I should keep my mouth shut about anti-semitism. Today, I can't call myself a follower of Jesus and keep my mouth shut about the mass-murdering of an entire generation of children, particularly the children of minorities, in the name of "freedom of choice." The issue of what should be recognized as a "marriage" is another. These are issues that I think are of such importance to the general welfare of society that, out of love, we have to speak clearly. (As the church we are called to be salt and light and to lovingly help preserve our society.) However, on many (even, most) other political issues, I choose, as a pastor, to stay out of them because it is not my calling. "No man that wars entangles himself in the affairs of this life."

I do not mean that all Christians should stay out of them. We need some Christians working full-time in politics, applying the Christian worldview to all areas. I simply mean that my role, as a Pastor, is building a community around the Gospel. I do not want our church or the Southern Baptist Convention of churches mired in politics, even (what I see to be) good and right politics. More on that here.

Anyway, hope that makes sense and helps provide a little clarity. Eric Gorski, good job on the article. Eric Hankins, you sound like a guy I'd really like and would love to meet. Obviously, we have all the right things in common.