Growing
It is amazing that I have kidS! It was difficult enough to get my head around being a parent period, but to have more than one has been a little overwhelming. What is even more amazing is how fast it all goes by. I am constantly amazed that the speed by which my kid(s) are growing. I’ve posted a few new pictures to illustrate my point. Aren’t they something else?
Two good… no, great….. no, amazing guys
God is doing amazing things at our church. We are rural, and yet contemporary; we sit in the middle of corn fields yet we’re reaching 20 somethings like crazy; we’ve been around for 140 years and yet the average age of our church attender is probably around 28-34; we’ve just been practicing an outreach program for two years now and yet our baptism’s have doubled every year for 3 years; we don’t have any wealthy people in the church and yet our budget has climbed by 300% in 3 years. I could go on and on. I am consistently amazed at the goodness of God to our church. In light of all this it’s time for me to say thanks to a couple of amazing guys. I haven’t really mentioned them as much in this blog as I should, but John and Nick are not only my best friends but they are, by far, the best parts of our church staff. Their faithfulness has been much of what has made our church go for the past two years. John is certainly the most talented musician/songwriter that I’ve ever personally known. His ability to lead people into worship is unmatched in my experience. I don’t know if I’ll ever get over how many times he’s shown up on a Sunday morning with a brand new song he’s written “while playing around” the day before that works with our service topic in amazing fashion! Nick has got to be the most persistent evangelist that I’ve ever met. It is impossible to have a conversation with someone whithout them hearing the gospel from Nick. He challenges me every day through his life to be more consistent in mine. His faithfulness to work with our students for almost 3 years now is unbelievable. In both of these guys’ cases they could have left long ago for much larger churches with much bigger paychecks but they have stayed because they feel certain that God put them with us. I don’t think it’s ever possible to understand how much I love, and value their partnership at Missouri Valley. John and Nick, you guys rock!
Driscollized
Can you imagine someone preaching, and holding the attention, of 5,000 20 somethings every weekend in 5 worship services? I’ll have to admit I’ve been amazed at the thought. Well, Mark Driscoll is able to do just that. In a more exciting development than just about anything Driscoll has offered before, he is now offering his sermons (in video) online for free. Unbelievable! Check them out here.
The bag is cat free
The truth appears to be coming out. Although Chairman Hatley informed me that specific information about the reasons for removing Burleson from the trustee board would not come out until later, it appears that one of the trustee’s who disagreed with Burleson has already let the cat out of the bag. In this article, published in The Christian Index of Georgia, Mr. John Schaefer who is a layman at Johnson Ferry Baptist Church claims that the problems do, in fact, lie with Burleson’s blog (as many previously assumed). He seems to say in the article that the trustee’s believe that Burleson’s online posts are a grievous action worthy of significant retribution. Read the article and stop by in a day or two when I’ll post my thoughts about this most recent revelation.
A tad excited
I haven’t been this excited about a SBC Pastor’s Conference since I was 17 and going to my first one. This year’s conference has been put together by Pastor’s Conference President, Bryant Wright of Johnson Ferry Baptist Church. It appears that Wright has done a really good job of trying to reach out across ages, cultures and worship preferences to assemble a very strong conference. With speakers like Erwin McManus of Mosaic in Los Angeles and Nelson Searcy of The Journey Church in Manhattan, New York City, it looks to be something that I will really enjoy. What’s even more exciting is that on Monday morning of the conference they are holding a series of breakout meetings which helps it to become a functional conference for me. Some of the breakout sessions look to be interesting, and helpful. All in all, it looks to be a good year in Greensboro.
A voice of reason
Dr. Jimmy Draper, the President of LifeWay, will retire effective Tuesday evening. This is sad in that he has provided tremendous leadership over the years. It is exciting, however, in that Dr. Thom Ranier will be his replacement and Dr. Ranier will do a tremendous job, I am confident.
Dr. Draper has written a column for some time now called LifeWay@Heart that is emailed to those on it’s mailing list. In his most recent, and final, article Draper says goodbye to Southern Baptist’s from his position of leadership. He has some tremendous things to say but in light of the recent struggle regarding cooperation I thought that a good portion of the article was aprropriate for us today. Enjoy!
A second tension we face is what I spoke of at the Southern Baptist Convention last June. We are in danger of choking the life out of the future of the SBC by dabbling in peripheral matters and neglecting the heart of our convention, which has always been missions, evangelism and cooperation. The added challenge here is to incorporate younger Southern Baptists into the leadership of our convention.
I spent a lot of time the past two years calling for the inclusion of younger leaders, but also for younger leaders to engage the convention and not back away. I have met many of these men and women and I am impressed. They are accepting the challenge. They want to earn the right of relevancy and to partnership in the ministry of the SBC. They want to push to the spiritually hard places and they are willing to suffer hardships to press into those places to share the gospel among individuals in the world’s out-of-the way places or in their own neighborhoods.
Some across the convention point to the complainers among the younger leaders and despise the youth of the entire group. As a result we often get side-tracked into nonessential matters. This in turn can create larger barriers for our work together. We may become guilty of sacrificing cooperation with the sword of inflexibility. All the while the white fields waiting to be harvested stand decaying.
This is not new rhetoric; several of us entity leaders have been saying this stuff for years. It all sounds good when stated, but there is a disconnect between what is said and what is done. We should all–not just the SBC’s leadership–set an example of devotion to Scripture, personal integrity and cooperation.
A place to begin is on our knees. It is tough to criticize those for whom we pray. How my heart aches at the research that reveals we spend less than 7 minutes a day in prayer. Brothers and sisters, we cannot do God’s work in our way. The only way to know and do the will of God is to fall on our face before Him, asking for His direction and responding in obedience. We must pray more purposefully and more passionately.
Closely related is humility. Individuals motivated by personal agendas reek of arrogance. God hates arrogance. I am encouraged because I believe there is a growing desire for humility in the hearts of God’s people. I believe there is a movement beginning to take place where Christians are dissatisfied with the comfortable, materialistic, ineffective Christianity they’ve been living and are truly seeking God. My heart’s desire is that humility will consume the Church and consume our convention.
Morris Chapman said four years ago that the Southern Baptist Convention stands at a crossroads, that we can be a convention that reaches the ends of the earth with the gospel or one that relegates itself to being an inconsequential regional convention. The choice is ours. Time is slipping by, and I believe God has allowed the SBC to linger a bit longer at that crossroads.
A marginalized sexual minority
There are very few Christian leaders today that I have come to enjoy as much as Mark Driscoll. His communication style is as bare bones and easy to understand as there is. His commitment to scripture alone stands in stark contrast to the teachings of many leaders out there, regardless of their statement’s otherwise. There is a new article written by Driscoll in response to a statement on homosexuality written by Brian Mclaren. I would really recommend that you read it, and read everything you can by Driscoll. Check out his church site while you’re at it as well.
A Personal Call
I personally wrote each of the trustees of the IMB today. I would encourage you to do the same. One thing I noticed when they wrote back, was that apparently they have been blasted for their positions, as a board, on Wade and the new policies. I would encourage everyone to be gracious in their correspondence. Remember, these are believers who simply have a disagreement with many of us, not our enemies. In every letter, without fail, they thanked me for being nice. That’s horrible that we aren’t being nice in our dealing with them.
On an additional note, Dr. Tom Hatley called me tonight to discuss my questions personally. I appreciated his thoughtfulness very, very much. I certainly didn’t expect for him to do that. Our discussion was very profitable in that it helped me to see his point of view I appreciated his attempt to help me understand the decisions that have been made. As a result I am more ready than ever to work together with those whom I have disagreed with in this discussion.
Having said that, however, let me say that I still stand in disagreement with the decisions that the board made. It was very helpful to understand the thought behind the decisions and it helps me to know that it’s not what many have portrayed it to be. It is, however, in my mind still too restrictive. We’ll have to see how it plays out.
Howdy! My name is Micah Fries and I am a husband, daddy and pastor who loves to discuss life, theology, culture and variety of other issues.
I love to hear what others are thinking so consider this an invitation to jump in and join the dialogue.
Comments