Integrating Missionally

Read an article I posted on examiner.com about one Delaware pastor’s frustration with the Cooperative Program. I made a suggestion to him. What would you suggest?

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How we frame something determines how we understand it.

My own denomination is calling for a Great Commission Resurgence. One reason they are doing so is because they want to restructure the denomination. They are attempting to own it the Conservative Resurgence of the 1970’s-1990’s in this way. Their heart is in the right place in that they also want to see the convention be a leader in churches who are baptizing people. Others are calling for a Gospel-Centered lifestyle and a Gospel-Centered church.

Both ideas sound great. This is a movement calling for people to live and speak the Gospel and to go and tell the world of Christ’s love. What could be wrong with that? It sounds biblical. But is that really the case? How are we framing the discussion by using these terms?

Please Note: This is not necessarily an attack on those pushing for these ideas. This is as much a discussion on how we frame our words and how those words affect meaning as the methods being promoted.

To use Gospel-Centered in reference to Christianity or the Church places the church and Christianity in submission to the Gospel. That sounds nice, but its not biblical. The church is to be submissive to Christ alone. Otherwise, it is not a church, but a community organization.

To use Great Commission Resurgence language frames the discussion that a whole-hearted allegiance to Christ has been there all along, people are just not carrying out the Great Commission. I get the concept. It is an attempt to emphasize the behavior that corresponds to our belief. This is a danger of those who are trapped in modernity’s tentacles. This requires us to agree that belief and behavior can be separated. It cannot. You live what you believe.

One reason people aren’t sharing the Gospel is because they do not really believe the Gospel – with all their heart, soul, mind and strength. Another reason they do not share may be because of how we have taught them to frame the message of the Gospel. We frame the conversation in terms of the future, not the present. We tell people they can get out of hell and get into heaven. All they have to do is intellectually ascent to a few truths, and all is well. That is not the Gospel. That is an attempt to get people into a baptismal pool to increase numbers.

So why do we not need a Great Commission Resurgence?

1. We are emphasizing action without a consideration of the heart.

We are challenging people to tell what they may intellectually know, but do not fundamentally believe. Intellectual knowledge is not belief. What you believe will be demonstrated by behavior. If we want to see the Gospel shared more, we need to address the issue of relationship, not behavior.

2. Action stems from emotions and passions first, not intellectual knowledge.

According to Steve Addison’s new book, Movements That Change the World, every movement is a result of white-hot faith, then a commitment to a cause, then contagious relationships. Only then will rapid mobilization and adaptable methods take place. In other words, passion born out of a relationship leads to commitment and then passionate, contagious relationships. Those relationships lead to mobilization and methods. Until our passionate relationship with God through Christ is in place, a movement cannot happen.

3. We are focusing on the Great Commission while not emphasizing the Great Commandment.

The Great Commandment must come before the Great Commission. The great commandment speaks to relationships. The Great Commission speaks to behaviors that occur as a result of relationships. If we do not get the relationships part right, there will be no great commandment.

What do we need to do?

1. We must help people fall in love with Jesus all over again before we guilt people into actions that will be unsustainable. Again, we have framed the Gospel as unnecessary for this life. We have framed it as future focused, and all we need to do to ensure our eternal condition. How it has been framed means that there is no need for people to be involved in a community of Faith or in a relationship with Christ because it is not about relationships, it is about an intellectual understanding of events two thousand years ago. It may be that we need to share the real Gospel so that people can begin a real relationship with Christ.

2. We need to reframe the meaning of success for our churches. We have turned success into a numbers game that is killing pastors. They are so worried about the numbers they are burning out. Their relationships with God, Christ, themselves and others are unhealthy. We must help people understand that being obedient to God is more important than numbers. We must help people learn how to be healthy emotionally and spiritually. We don’t know how to do that; we aren’t even there ourselves.

3. We need to help our pastors model a healthy relationship with Christ, not necessarily a great understanding of theology. Theology is important, but only in the context of a relationship with Jesus. We need relational theology, theology learned and experienced in the crucibles of a relationship with Jesus. A life immersed in the power and presence of Jesus will be broadcast to the masses without words. Systems will not pronounce the Gospel; love will. Love of God, of ourselves, of others. They will know, by our love – of God, ourselves, and others – that we are followers of Jesus.

To say we need to focus on an object or behavior rather than Jesus to describe our Christianity or our community of Faith. We need to let our lifestyle, our actions, our communities be defined by Jesus and him alone.

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Great post by Marty Duren over at MissioScapes.com. He challenges the SBC’s Great Commission Task Force to level the playing field. Of his recommendations to do that, I really like what he says here:

Finally, because there has been concern about #IX becoming the focus of the entire work of the GCR Task Force, we would make sure that every recommendation concerning restructuring was tied into at least one of the other nine points of the declaration, since, arguably, the other nine stand head and shoulders above it in relation to the gospel.

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Reframing the discussion. Always a fun enterprise, but never easy. Buzzwords tend to send the discussion into a diluted primordial ooze, destroying its meaning forever. Sometimes hijacking the conversation is the only way to save it.

Concerned with the buzz, a group has formed to move the discussion from the center where it dies a slow death back to the fringe, where it thrives and where it changes the thoughts and ideas of the masses. Call us heretics if you wish. We just want to see the missio dei change the world. And our denomination.

MissioScapes has been born. Formed from the heat of denominational battles of old, we have reformed for a new mission – the mission of God in the contexts in which we live. Join us as part of this new of group of heretics. We would love to have you.

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Love Out Loud. Really?

I was having dinner with Len Sweet last year, just my wife and myself. I suggested to Len that I was tired of being Southern Baptist. The lack of authentic leadership, the politics and the hyper-fundamentalism that exists have left me with no energy for the denomination as a whole. I even swore off blogging about it unless it was a missional issue. However, Len told me something that has come back to my mind in the last month. He said something to the effect of, “David, stay in and help the SBC become real Baptists again!” I have decided to engage the convention in a limited way. Thus the previous post, and this one.

Recently, Clark Logan was asked to resign from the Executive Committee of the SBC. Apparently, some did not like the fact that he was asked to resign and an attack on Morris Chapman ensued. Al Mohler, Danny Akin, and Johnny Hunt began the attack (among others) and Hunt via Twitter has kept up the attack. Morris was the ideal person to attack because he was not in favor of the GCR and said so publicly. They want him gone.

I am not a Morris Chapman apologist. However, when I see what is being done to him by the architects of the GCR, it is a reminder of the politics of the Conservative Resurgence. The charge is that Clark Logan was not treated fairly when asked to resign. Let me first address that issue. Regardless of how he was treated (and there are differing opinions as to how he was treated), in the corporate world, particularly for those who are in the financial areas, if a person quits or is fired, they are shown the door that minute. The reason they are shown the door is because that person is dealing with money. Documents could be shredded. Documents can be taken. Numbers can be changed. It can get dicey for the company if the person leaving wanted to leave his employer in a difficult situation. I’ve seen this happen. My mother worked in a bank for almost 40 years. This is standard practice.

Now I acknowledge that the church should treat people differently from the world’s standards. However, even in a non-profit, the leadership has to be careful how the finances are managed and in the financial industries, they generally ask the person to go ahead and leave. It can be done nicely.

I also want to say that I think it is great that Clark’s new friends are sticking up for him. They feel he was mistreated in how he was dismissed. That is admirable! However, I want to ask them one question. If the issue is that a person in a SBC entity was not treated fairly in their dismissal, where were those who are calling for Morris’ head when the following happened:

1. Sheri Klouda was dismissed inappropriately from SWBTS
2. Dwight McKissic was all but forced out as a trustee from SWBTS
3. Wade Burleson was unfairly treated and then resigned as trustee of the IMB
4. Ken Hemphill was forced out at SWBTS
5. Russell Dilday was unfairly treated in his removal from SWBTS
6. Conservative people in the convention were labeled and blackballed because they would not play politics
7. Jerry Rankin was being beaten up in the past five plus years?

Where were the calls by Al Mohler, Danny Akin, and Johnny Hunt (et. al) when these unfair treatments were going on? They held positions of influence and leadership during a large portion of that time. Why were there not calls for people to be held accountable for their actions? It seems that expediency and politics are at play again. The leaders in the GCR want Morris gone. This is the way to fan the flames of anger against him. Politics as usual? The excuse that someone was mistreated doesn’t really fly. It is politics.

It simply appears we have not learned our lesson. We are saying one thing and doing another. Our actions are not lining up with our words. Ethics, consistency and honesty are gone. The political machine is ramping up again.

Other evidence? In a recent article on Baptist Press, Ronnie Floyd said:

Floyd said it was a “great question” whether the “Great Commission Resurgence” declaration issued April 27 by Hunt and Daniel L. Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, would give total direction to the task or whether it was just a starting point. The declaration, which is posted at greatcommissionresurgence.com, sparked lengthy discussion of its clarity, tone and content, especially a section that called for restructuring the denomination “at every level.” Although messengers to the SBC annual meeting in Louisville, Ky., voted overwhelmingly in June to appoint the task force, the declaration itself was never presented for discussion and adoption.

“I can honestly tell you I don’t know the answer to that right now,” Floyd said. “Our group has to decide that. I do believe … the document served as the catalyst for the motion that received such a high commitment at the SBC. So to minimize the document would not be wise. At the same time, the convention did not vote the document in…. It will have a significant place. But I don’t think it will chart everything by any means.”

The only reason the task force got appointed was because of the GCR document. People were not looking to restructure the convention. People were signing on to the ideas present in that document. This reminds me of an old-fashioned bait-and-switch. It appears that some want to use this document to allow them to restructure the convention yet not use that document as a guiding principle. In other words, “Thanks for the ability to recommend changes, but we will do it our own way and with our own ideas of what should be the guiding principle.”

Is that really what the convention asked them to do?

They still have time to change what they do. Unfortunately, it will not change what they have done up until now. I believe the conversation can be shaped into a missional conversation. If not, all that will happen is that they will suggest a re-positioning of the deck chairs on the Titantic. And until I see otherwise, it all looks as if it is just politics.

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