The Denomination Formerly Known as the Southern Baptist Convention

Last week, Bryant Wright, President of the Southern Baptist Convention announced the formation of a task force to study the possibility of a name change to the largest Protestant denomination with an estimated 16 million members. The reaction by many has been less than favorable, while key leaders within the denomination have noted the negative associations with the word "southern" as evidence of the need for a change in name.

I would readily agree with the negative connotations but I also feel like there are other things more pressing for the sake of the Kingdom than the name of our denomination. I will borrow from a colleague who said it will be like how we try to tell people that an event is in our Multi-purpose room, which works fine for new comers, but it is also the old fellowship hall. The dilemma is that we have to double announce that an event is going to be Tuesday at 6pm in the multi-purpose room, the old fellowship hall, in order to get people to realize where the event will be.

Or perhaps it will be like the pop music star of the 80s and 90s...you know the one who sang Purple Rain, When Doves Cry, and others...he used to go by Prince but then he changed his name to The Artist formerly known as Prince. Unfortunately, I think that this may happen with our denomination. Whatever we change the name to, as well intentioned as it may be, we will become the denomination formerly known as the SBC.

History Matters

Why history matters and should be a topic of interest to anyone in ministry.
http://www.churchandculture.com/Blog.asp?ID=869

Evil pt. 2

Most of the quotes in this post from N.T. Wright's book on evil center around what Wright argues is God's ultimate solution to evil, the crucified savior. Wright's own view of understanding the atonement, is the Christus Victor view, that has strong historical roots in such people as Martin Luther and into the modern era of biblical scholarship as Gustaf Aulen.

But when we ask the question, Why did Jesus die? with an eye to the deeper issue of why, in the purposes of God, Jesus might have had to die, we move from historical analysis of events and motivations to a theological account of what God decided to do about evil. That, ultimately, is what theories of "the atonement" are all about. p. 75

The Gospels tell the story of how the evil in the world--political, social, personal, moral, emotional--reached its height, and how God's long-term plan for Israel (and for himself!) finally came to its climax. They tell both of these stories in--and as--the story of how Jesus of Nazareth announced God's kingdom and went to his violent death.  p. 79

We realize with a start that he has been obedient to the Israel-vocation which he had himself announced in the bracing and so often misunderstood Sermon on the Mount. He had turned the other cheek. He had picked up the Roman cross and gone the second mile. He was set up on the hill, unable to be hidden. He was acting as Israel, the light of the world, on behalf of the Israel that had embraced the pagan darkness. p. 85-86

This (the last supper with his disciples) was Jesus' own chosen way of expressing and explaining to his followers, then and ever since, what his death was all about. It wasn't a theory, we note, but an action (a warning to all atonement theorists ever since, and perhaps and indication of why the church has never incorporated a specific defining clause about the atonement in its great creeds). Perhaps, after all, atonement is at its deepest level something that happens, so that to reduce it to a proposition to which one can give mental assent is a mistake at a deep level. p.91

This, the Evangelists are saying to us, is what "the kingdom of God" means: neither "going to heaven when you die" nor "a new way of ordering earthly political reality" but something which includes both but goes way beyond them. p.93

No, all theories of atonement adequate to the task must include both a backward look (seeing the guilt, sin and shame of all previous generations heaped up on the cross) and a forward dimension, the promise that what God accomplished on Calvary will be fully and finally implemented. p. 96

Great Quotes from Great Saints of God

It is not your hold of Christ that saves you--it's Christ. Charles Spurgeon

I remember two things: that I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great savior. John Newton

The Pope, Martin Luther, and an Evangelical Walk into a Pub

Very interesting post at iMonk about the dialogue going on between Pope Benedict and German Lutherans. What Pope Benedict says is extremely powerful and insightful. http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/the-burning-question-of-martin-luther

R.E.M.

Some of my favorite R.E.M. tunes



http://youtu.be/ijZRCIrTgQc

http://youtu.be/if-UzXIQ5vw

Feeling Gravity's Pull :: A Personal Tribute to R.E.M. :: Paste mPlayer

R.E.M. embodied so many things that this article acurrately points out. They were the soundtrack to many people's lives of my generation. They were the door you walked through to discover other bands who reinvented Southern Rock such as Drivin' and Cryin', Widespread Panic, Vigilantes of Love, The Indigo Girls, and others. The lyrics were provocative and mysterious at the same time, if you could understand just exactly what Stipe was singing at different times. (Look no further than Tommy Boy where Chris Farley and David Spade mumble a verse of the song along with the band.) The brought so many incredible new sounds to modern rock. I still remember playing my first cassette tape of theirs (Green) in my grandparents hallway and dancing while I sang...good thing there wasn't a video camera around!
Feeling Gravity's Pull :: A Personal Tribute to R.E.M. :: Paste mPlayer