This should probably be my last post before heading to Indianapolis. I’m backed up with work to do and I’ve got a wedding to perform this weekend so I don’t think I’ll have time to write anymore. I wanted to write a quick note and mention a couple of things to look for while I’m gone to the convention.

• First, I will not be live blogging. I’m not planning to take my laptop into the convention hall this year which will be a first compared to the past couple of years. I will, however, be in communication during the convention with my good friend, Alan Cross. Alan can’t be in Indy this year but will have access to his computer. If anything important pops up, I will let Alan know and he will get the word out asap. Be sure to bookmark his site and be prepared to check his updates out.
• Although I won’t be live blogging, I’ll try to provide a nightly update on the convention. I am often very busy during this week so I’m not promising anything. I know, however, that it is pretty typical for my site traffic to triple during convention week so I know many of you are looking for info. I’ll do the best I can to provide it.
• I’m privileged to be a part of Ed Stetzer and Philip Nation’s blog tour to promote their new book, “Compelled by Love“. As part of that I will be posting a two part interview on Tuesday during the convention. Part 1 will feature a written interview which we did this week. Part 2, however, will feature an audio interview with Ed that we’ll be recording Monday morning in Indy. Be sure to watch for that. The book is fantastic and Stetzer and Nation help provide some excellent resources.
• Thankfully our church has been very generous in their commitment to missions giving through the Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong offerings and as a result Tracy and I have been invited to a dinner with the IMB and then a luncheon with NAMB. I’m looking forward to spending that time with the great missions thinkers in our convention.
• Ok, this one is kind of goofy, but I figured I’d have some fun this year and mix everybody up. I think I’m going to sport a suit every day of the convention. After my jeans and shirts over the past two years, I thought that would be a fun change of pace.

David Dockery has recently written a fantastic book called “Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal“. I enjoyed having the opportunity to read it over the past couple of days.

Dockery is the President of Union University in Jackson, Tennessee and the former Dean of the School of Theology and Vice-President for Academic Administration at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. This book is an effort on Dockery’s behalf to propose a path for Southern Baptists to take which will lead to a renewed sense of unity and cooperation. Through the use of history, both Baptist and Theological, Dockery establishes an understandable foundation to describe how we got to where we are today. Through the use of easy to understand writing, however, Dockery also proposes a series of steps that we can take to build a new consensus. In a bit of a sense, this book is a response to the efforts of those involved in the recent “New Baptist Covenant” while at the same time retaining some of the necessary Biblical parameters that make us Southern Baptists.

If you are a pastor or layman who believes that there is hope that our SBC can be even greater in the future than she has been in the past, this book should be on your short list of books to read. I would strongly encourage you to pick this up and enjoy.

Following up on the book release, Dockery has also participated in an interview as well. I would recommend that you consider listening to the interview if you have opportunity as well. You can do so by clicking here.

New research came out today that highlighted a recent SBC trend away from baptisms. [click here] Oh, we still say that they are important, and we still communicate that we’re an evangelistic denomination, but the truth is that we are not. No, today we are more known for which side of the methodological fences we stand on than we are known for our passion for connecting disconnected people with the Gospel.

Ed Stetzer has written a great article detailing what these statistics mean for our convention. I would highly encourage you to read his thoughts. You can do so by clicking here. In his article, Stetzer makes a tremendous statement, but one which I predict will not be kindly received by everyone. He says,

The Conservative Resurgence failed to produce a Great Commission Resurgence. It restored our denomination’s value of Scripture but application is often absent, at least in the area of evangelism.

Stetzer is absolutely right. Our battle for the priority of scripture was absolutely necessary. If we are not a people who believe in the supremacy and innerancy of God’s word, we are nothing in my opinion. Having said that, right belief means nothing if it is not accompanied by right action. In other words, orthodoxy must be partnered with orthopraxy for it to be beneficial. Our convention, and the churches that make up her number, claim a great commitment to God’s word. We are proud of our positions. We are so strongly tied to them that the word “innerancy” has almost become our club’s secret password without which one cannot serve. Now, I do not want to diminish innerancy at all, but if our behavior doesn’t link hands with our belief, what good is our belief?

It’s time that we heed well the other words of Stetzer and rally around the gospel. Frank Page’s words from his initial election as SBC president should be embraced. It’s beyond time that people know us for what we are for, rather than simply know us for what we are against. We are for the gospel. We are for the sufficiency of Christ on behalf of those who are separated from the Gospel due to sin. We are for people experiencing grace, hope and forgiveness through the cross of Christ.

In my own town, here in St. Joseph, MO, we have a population of 105,000 in the metro area. Of that number approximately 80,000 are in a group that I refer to as “disconnected”. In other words, they are either unchurched, dechurched or are not involved in the church that they claim to belong to. My passion in life is to help connect those 80,000 disconnected people with the gospel. Our church specifically must do whatever it takes to accomplish that task. Up to this point, we are not fulfilling that task as we should.

Each person reading this post lives in a city or area where the majority of the population does not appear to have an active relationship with Jesus Christ. Our charge must be to somehow connect them with the Gospel. Beyond that, it is time we think creatively about ways to effectively do so. So many of our churches are convinced that if they can just hold another revival meeting, and beat on a few more doors, that will do the trick. Statistics are also bearing out that those methods are simply not seeing success. When we become desperate to fulfill the task that God has given us, we will throw off any unsuccessful efforts and continue to work until we find more effective ways to engage people with the Gospel.

Someone asked me the other day how our church, Frederick Boulevard, was doing. I told them honestly that attendance and finances are at an all time high but that I was disappointed right now. When asked why I shared that our baptisms are plateaued at the same place they were last year. We may have seen a few more, but not many. I’ve shared the gospel with a number of people lately, but I haven’t shared with enough. I’m afraid that too often it’s easy for us to become satisfied in our churches. We want to reach other people as long as we can continue to be happy. The truth is, maybe it’s time that we become uncomfortable for the gospel. Maybe it is time that we step outside of our usual pattern so that our neighbors who don’t know Christ can respond to His grace. Maybe it’s time that we get desperate to complete the task God has given us.

I’m afraid that if we don’t the downward spiral that we are seeing today, will only be the tip of the iceberg.

It’s time to again remind everyone of the upcoming conference designed with the leadership of small Southern Baptist churches in mind. Les Puryear has gone way above and beyond to offer something that has been often requested, and that is a leadership conference that helps those in the small church setting which make up the majority of our convention. I hope you would avail yourselves of the opportunity to attend . The lineup of speakers is a very strong one, with speakers from NAMB, the IMB, LifeWay, Southeastern Seminary as well as Dr. Frank Page, SBC President. Registration is merely $50 per person in an attempt to make it affordable to all those attending.

If you are a small church pastor, consider asking your church to sponsor your travel costs so that you can attend. Even in the churches that I’ve worked in that run less than 50, they can usually afford this conference. If you are a layman at a small church, make sure your church provides an opportunity for your pastor to go. This will be a one of a kind opporuntity for small church pastors to get tools that they need to enhance their ministry in the local setting.
I’ll look forward to seeing many of you there!

Click here to register.

The guys over in Nashville at LifeWay Research keep cranking out statistical data that continues to prove helpful in our pursuit of more effective means of evangelism and growth. This time they are releasing a new study that they say shows “Unchurched Americans [are] turned off by church, [but are] open to Christians.” This study, which is released over at LifeWayResearch.com as well as EdStetzer.com, has some surprising and intriguing insights that we would do well to consider. I want to mention a couple in particular that I found to be particularly insightful. If you would like a copy of the article that accompanies the survey click here. For the PowerPoint, click here.

First of all I found it interesting, yet not surprising, that according to their data 72% of those polled felt like the church was “full of hypocrites”. This is particularly interesting when you note that the poll included only those who have not attended a religious service at a church, synagogue or mosque within the past 6 months. This perception is one that I find to be extremely relevant in my context. With the significant number of those who perceive the church in this manner, I am of the opinion that it is probably a reputation that has been earned. What is incredibly fascinating, however, is that the study claims that 78% of those polled would “be willing to listen” to someone who wanted to share what they believed about Christianity. That is highly encouraging to me. It also seems to point to the fact that evangelism that exists in relationship must become more and more of a priority for us.

The study goes on to say that the church, in generic terms, and not the people who make up the church are what is seen as most offensive by unchurched people. 79% of those polled claim that Christianity “is more about organized religion than about loving God and loving people”. I think this is another area where this, and other studies like it, must direct our focus outside the walls of the church. In the article that accompanies the study, Scott McConnell says “People outside the church see it [the church] as candles, pews and flowers, rather than people living their love for God by loving others.” Ed Stetzer then gives us the money quote when he says “There will always be the stumbling block of the cross. Yet our study shows that many are tripping over the church before they hear the message of the cross.”

I wonder when we will start recognizing that people are being offended and turning away from the gospel, not because of the gospel itself but because of our presentation of ourselves and the gospel? We have got to start communicating the need to live authentic, transparent lives that mimic Christ-likeness and which are careful to communicate the message of the gospel. In fact, the previous statistic that I quoted about the 78% who would “be willing to listen” to someone talk about their Christian beliefs rises to 89% when you consider only those in the 18-29 year old category. In fact, the study goes on to say that only 28% of adults 30 yrs old and older say that the Christians they know talk too much about their Christian beliefs. There must be a commitment in our churches to examining ourselves critically and considering whether or not we communicate well to those who are unchurched. I’ll share, for instance, one idea that we will begin soon at our church. We are asking some of our church leadership to contact a few unchurched families and giving them a critique sheet and asking them to be a “secret shopper” for us to give us their general impressions of our church. It is our opinion that we will almost always be biased in our understanding of our church. While we never want to water down the message of the cross, we understand that there are often additional barriers to effective evangelism that we may never recognize but which a visitor may notice that can help our evaluation of ourselves.

I’m grateful to Ed Stetzer and the other guys at LifeWay Research for producing this study and I’m hopeful that it will provoke us to reconsider some methods of evangelism and to become more evangelistic than ever before, but to do so in a way that is more effective than ever before. I’m of the opinion that relational evangelism must become our most prevalent method of evangelism, and I think this study supports it. The problem historically has been that our relational evangelism is heavy on relational and light on evangelism. I think this study also supports the idea that our friends are interested in hearing about our faith, and we cannot be reticent to communicate about it. One things is for sure, it’s certainly better than this.

**UPDATE** USA Today has also written an article about the study. It can be found here.

The statistics are in and prove the point that many of us have tried to make for sometime and that is that the SBC is becoming increasingly irrelevant to younger leaders. In fact, according to these stats, they appear to be leaving our convention as fast as they can get their feet under them. It is far beyond time that we simply look around and write off those leaving as if they are doing so because of their immaturity or unorthodox doctrinal positions. Too many are leaving for that to be true. Those, and other excuses like them, are merely convenient opportunities to avoid the real issues. The question we must ask now is why they are these younger pastors &/or staff people leaving and can we adjust our convention to retain them? If we do not, our convention, and worse than that the Cooperative Program, will be reduced to denominational rubble in a matter of two to three decades.

In his “Presedential Perspective” article, LifeWay President Thom Rainer asks some good questions that I think are worth considering. He writes three paragraphs in particular that I am convinced are right on target. Consider these words:

Younger leaders see a decreasing relevance in the denomination and older leaders are not adequately casting a dynamic vision. Whereas older leaders connect tradition with loyalty, younger leaders connect loyalty with purpose. They want to see tangible reasons for engaging in the denomination’s effort. The denomination desperately needs an infusion of their creativity and passion.

There is cause for concern. The lack of involvement does not bode well for the legacy of the SBC. Our denomination is more than 150 years old and the Cooperative Program is 75. A significant amount of gospel-proclaiming work has been done throughout the world in that time. God has been so gracious to bless us with each precious soul won to His glory. We really can do more together than we can do apart. How I pray younger generations can get that. How I pray older generations will teach that in edifying and encouraging ways while incorporating the best of what younger generations have to offer.

How I pray we will rise above the things that distract us for the sake of the gospel.

Rainer is absolutely right. The younger generations, of which I am a part, are not satisfied to remain loyal for the sake of remaining loyal. There must be purpose infused into our activity if we are to be seen as relevant, and even more importantly, if we are to actually be relevant.

This is not a denominational issue, however, in my opinion. No, this is a local church issue. Our denomination does nothing more than reflect the norms of our churches. If we are to fix this problem all the Executive Board decisions in the world will not advance our cause if they are cut off from local church application. We must, at the local level, say that “enough is enough”. We must ask the hard questions and be ready to absorb the hard answers if we are to change and become effective again.

Thank goodness there are still men like Rainer and Ed Stetzer in the SBC, who find the gospel important enough that they are committed to pursuing its advance, regardless of the cost that may come their way. Surprisingly enough, they even like to hang out with Acts 29 churches. Hmm, I wonder if they’re on to something?

When it comes down to it, the ultimate question that must be asked is how important the gospel is to us? Is it important enough that we can allow each other to disagree on nominal issues and work together, unified by our common agreement on the essentials of the faith or are we so concerned with “doctrinal unanimity” that we stand by arguing points of eschatological or sociological differences while our neighbors die and spend eternity separated from God?

Evidently micahfries.com is a blog of choice. My friends Chris Forbes and Cory Miller recently taught a seminar at LifeWay on “Using Social Media to Reach People” and featured my blog as one of 6 “Blogs to Check Out” (see attached picture). This is a sure sign that Cory and Chris don’t really know what they’re doing, but I appreciate it none-the-less.

One of the brightest young minds in SBC life today, in my opinion, is that of Dr. Nathan Finn. Nathan is someone whom I have come to greatly respect and appreciate over the past couple of years. He is his own man, intellectually, and he is much more cautious and thoughtful than many who are engaging the masses in the blog world today. Although I think he may even be a bit younger than I am, he has recently completed and successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation. Nathan teaches in the undergraduate program at Southeastern Seminary. Nathan is one of the featured speakers in the upcoming “Building Bridges” conference being hosted at Ridgecrest by Southeastern and Founders Ministries. The conference is an attempt to reconcile relationships that are often strained in SBC life between those who hold to a reformed soteriology, and those who do not. This has sadly become a major point of contention within convention life although historical precedent from the lives of men such as George Whitfield and John Wesley teaches us that this acrimony is simply unnecessary.

Nathan is speaking in a parellel session with Dr. Chuck Lawless and will be teaching on the topic “Theological Stereotypes: Let’s Be Fair and Honest with Each Other.” In order to prepare for the conference Nathan is asking for our help. He is hopeful to get as many people as possible to consider theological stereotypes for those who hold to either branches of soteriological thought. In fact, he claims to want any stereotypes listed and the more outrageous the better. I would encourage you to take a look at his article he published here and to interact if you are interested.

PS: Let it be known that I’m a fan of building bridges. The fact that I’m encouraging you to visit the site of a known Georgia fan is a testament to the fact that God’s grace can unite even the most unfortunate of all sinners. (Sorry Nathan, I had to get that in.)