The Silent Holocron

Last fall I began posting about a Great Commission Resurgence with the intention of looking at how such a movement would look in Deaf ministry. Unfortunately, that series also coincided with a cooling trend in the blogosphere — in which many bloggers began to post less, took a hiatus or simply quit altogether — that I was not immune to. I only made one post in the series. However, with the conclusion of the 2009 Southern Baptist Convention, and the passage of the Great Commission Resurgence by 95% of the messengers, the time has come to seriously pursue the writing of this long-delayed series.

Let me begin by reminding you of what I wrote in a previous post about Baptist Battles concerning the Gospel.

The Gospel
This is the next great “Baptist Battle.” We Baptists have lost or obscured the Gospel. We no longer seek to meet the real need of the lost nor of our own people, choosing instead to focus on “felt needs” so that everyone gets their spiritual warm and fuzzies. No wonder our churches struggled with all the previous battles! When the Gospel is lost or obscured, confusion and false teaching have inroads.

That’s why I believe the next great “Baptist Battle” will be for the recovery of the biblical Gospel. Southern Baptists must stop this theological tomfoolery we’ve been engaged in and start making real change in our denomination. And the only way to see real change is through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Only the Gospel can change a person, a church, a denomination. And until we believe that — truly believe that — we will continue to pass ill-considered resolutions, offer really silly and sometimes downright stupid programs and emphases, and generally continue to miss the point.

Towards that end, some in the SBC are taking practical and theological steps to correct our path. There is a call going out — not from Nashville — but from the seminaries and churches who are deeply, deeply concerned about the Gospel penetrating all aspects of the church and the believer. That call is for a Great Commission Resurgence. And the current SBC President, Johnny Hunt, has taken up that call.

We must ask ourselves: “What is the Gospel? How does the Gospel impact me, change me, shape me? How does it impact my life, my family, my friends, my work? How does it change the way I view and relate to the world?”

As I said in the conclusion of that post, over the next several weeks, I’m going to dedicate this blog to answering these questions. And I will be attempting to answer how a Great Commission Resurgence could impact Deaf ministry. Deaf people have not really been involved in many of these “Baptist Battles.” But the battle for the Gospel is one we cannot afford to miss.

Join us tomorrow as I repost my first offering in this series: “Great Commission Resurgence: The Gospel and Deaf Ministry.”

I am convinced we need men with a vision for what can be called “A Great Commission Resurgence.”

With these words, Danny Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, fired the first shot of what I believe to be the next and greatest of all “Baptist Battles.” Indeed, after the Conservative Resurgence which rescued the Southern Baptist Convention from liberalism, this battle may be the most important of all. Having won what has been called by some “the Battle for the Bible,” what do we do with that victory? Akin makes no bones about it: we must dedicate ourselves to the task the Great Commission.

What is a “Great Commission Resurgence?”
In his address Answering the Call to A Great Commission Resurgence, delivered at the Building Bridges conference last November, Akin lays the foundational principles for a Great Commission Resurgence, stating that “the time has come for us to focus on the great task the Lord Jesus left us as He ascended back into heaven.” For too long we have neglected this task. It is time for this task to “resurge” in our churches.

For something to surge it must have a strong, wavelike, forward movement. The very first “surge” of the Great Commission began, quite clearly, in Acts chapter 2 when the disciples, in obedience to Jesus’ command, waited in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit’s empowerment. Receiving this empowerment, they immediately went out and proclaimed the Gospel. The result was that very day 3000 people were saved. Since Apostolic times this surge has noticeably lessened. However, church history shows clearly that at certain points there has been a resurgence, a rising again or revival, of the Great Commission. In our history we can clearly point to the Protestant Reformation and the Great Awakening as examples of such a resurgence of the Gospel. As Baptists we can point to William Carey and the founding of the Southern Baptist Convention (which was formed on missions as its primary purpose) as prime examples of Baptist participation in Gospel resurgences. I am hard-pressed to name examples prior to the Conservative Resurgence beginning in 1979; perhaps those more knowledgeable than I can provide these examples.

In Deaf ministry, the founding of the Southern Baptist Conference of the Deaf in 1948, also centered around missions, is a prime example of Deaf participation in these resurgences. In fact, the mission statement of the SBCD is “to reach Deaf persons for Jesus Christ by serving as a cooperative network for Southern Baptist churches and agencies to fulfill the Great Commission by providing training, advocacy, worship, fellowship, missions awareness and mission involvement.” Other Deaf Christian conferences/conventions have a similar mission statement. We can see, therefore, the foundation for Deaf involvement in a Great Commission Resurgence has already been laid.

What Is The Gospel?
Before we can ask what such a resurgence would look like, we must first remind ourselves of the main idea of such a resurgence. We must first seek to answer the question, “what is the Gospel?”

A basic description of the Gospel appears in 1 Corinthians 15:1-8 -

Now, brothers and sisters, I want you to remember the Good News I brought to you. You received this Good News and continue strong in it. And you are being saved by it if you continue believing what I told you. If you do not, then you believed for nothing.

I passed on to you what I received, of which this was most important: that Christ died for our sins, as the Scriptures say; that he was buried and was raised to life on the third day as the Scriptures say; and that he was seen by Peter and then by the twelve apostles. After that, Jesus was seen by more than five hundred of the believers at the same time. Most of them are still living today, but some have died. Then he was seen by James and later by all the apostles. Last of all he was seen by me—as by a person not born at the normal time. (NCV)

To this we would add the commands of the Gospel; namely the command to repent of our sins (Acts 17:20) and to receive Christ and live for him and by him from now on (Colossians 2:6-7). As Baptists we would also add the command to be baptized once these things have been done (Acts 2:38) as a sign of what has taken place and of one’s commitment to live for and by Christ.

So we understand that the Gospel is the message of Christ’s saving work and the command to repent of our sins, believe in Christ, be baptized as a sign of our repentance and faith, and to commit one’s life to living in Christ.

We must believe that the message of Christ is more important than anything else, even our very lives. It must be more important than our jobs, friends, homes, families. It must be the one thing that makes our lives worth living. We must believe the commands of the Gospel must be lived out in every aspect of our lives. We must live our lives continually repenting of sins we find in ourselves, trusting in Christ to overcome those sins we find, and committing ourselves to Christlikeness in those areas of our lives from then on.

Before a Great Commission Resurgence can take place in Deaf ministry, we must first recover this clear, solid, and biblical understanding of the Gospel in our Deaf churches.

The Gospel and Deaf Ministry
I have become increasingly convinced the Gospel has been lost, not only in the hearing churches, but in Deaf churches as well. That is going to upset many Deaf readers of this blog. If the Gospel is truly our foundation, my only response must be this: I don’t care if it upsets you. Instead, I am going to praise God you are upset!

You see, in many Deaf churches we do not preach Jesus anymore. Instead we preach self-help and how you can feel better about your life problems. For example, I’ve heard (and have preached myself) way too many sermons on gossip and negativity in the Deaf community from Deaf preachers. I’m sick of it. My pastor must be as well, because this Sunday he asked our congregation which was more important to us: the Gospel or gossip. What a challenge! Instead of focusing on the unimportant and pitiful little problems we have in this life, our churches need to get back to the main thing: Jesus and his Gospel.

In many Deaf churches we don’t preach the Bible anymore. Instead we find a “Christian” book that is easy to understand and relates well with Deaf people and preach through that. We don’t stop to ask if the book is biblical, or if the Bible already teaches the principles in the book. Or we preach on topics, pulling different verses from around the Bible that may not really have anything to do with each other or the topic we choose. We don’t stop to wonder if a book of the Bible or a chapter of a Bible book would be deeper and more clear than 10 verses from 10 different places in the Bible. As a result, many Deaf people are being led astray by people such as Joyce Meyer, Joel Osteen, TD Jakes, and others. Even worse, many Deaf people are ignorant of what the Bible teaches because they have not been taught to go through their Bible verse by verse! And it is mainly the fault of Deaf pastors who will not open up their Bibles and teach from the Bible alone on Sundays. If we pastors do not make what the Bible has to say number one in our preaching, it will be no surprise if our people do not read their Bibles. We must get back to the main way we learn about Jesus and his Gospel: the Bible alone.

Deaf ministry needs a Great Commission Resurgence. When less than 2% of all Deaf people have even heard the Gospel, something is horribly wrong. But unless our Deaf churches make the Gospel the center of their lives, that percent will get smaller and smaller, until 0% of all Deaf people have heard the Gospel.

If the idea that your church has lost the Gospel really bothers you, I praise God for that! Getting mad sometimes is the only way to get a problem fixed. I invite you to pay careful attention to this series and to join the discussion. Leave comments on the posts. Talk with your pastor friends about the Gospel. Preach the Gospel to your people. Above all, make the Gospel and its commands the center of your ministry!

Join me next time as I look at how the Gospel impacts us individually and as a church.

As things have quite calmed down in the blogosphere over the last year, I reflected on some of the major “Baptist Battles” that have taken place in my 17 years as a believer. Below is a roughly chronological overview of those battles.

Inerrancy
This seemed to drag on and on since the beginning of the Conservative Resurgence in 1979 (that’s two years after I was born, by the way). When God saved me in Christ at the beginning of the 90s, this was what I heard about: “Do you really believe the Bible is God’s word?” This battle has largely ceased as inerrancy has been less and less seriously challenged.

Homosexuality
Another battle that, while still on-going, has also largely ceased. When science failed to find any such thing as a genetic basis for homosexuality, and then a majority of states passed amendments to their constitutions banning homosexual marriage, this issue ceased to become “hot button.” This battle is still being fought, and will never go away, but I’m convinced no serious Christian would knowingly compromise on this issue.

Open Theism
This issue dominated the 90s and the first couple of years of the 21st century. I was exposed to this errant theology in college. One of my seminary profs wrote three books that effectively buried the open-theist worldview. This battle may not go away until its originators do, but also no serious Christian really believes God doesn’t know everything, nor that God is not in control of everything.

The Emerging Church
Another “battle” that currently is sounding its death knell. With some of the major personalities in this movement wanting to do away with the terms “emerging/Emergent,” and its originator Mark Driscoll calling the movement nothing more than “toilet water” (appropriate since it seems they took his ideas and ran amuck with them), the days of this “church” are numbered. Many have finally, to paraphrase my preaching professor, “emerged and are called the church.” Many who initially resisted this movement are embracing the streams of the emerging church (not the Emergent movement/organization) that are consistent with biblical faith and reforming their own faith and practice as a result. Even though this battle began in the mid-90s, it has not really seriously challenged orthodoxy. What’s left of this movement is (spoken tongue firmly in cheek) for girlie men.

Calvinism
This is the most foolish of all the “battles.” It’s also the most short-lived. Spanning about the last 3 to 5 years in intensity and degree of publicity (whereas the others took at least a decade or more), this battle has been an exercise in stupidity, rudeness, and ignorance by a lot of people, usually anti-Calvinists (and I’m not going to name names). And those anti-Calvinists are a total embarrassment to non-Calvinists such as myself (I’m a 4-point Calvinist). As I’ve observed the issue, studied the theologies, and engaged the personalities, I’ve found myself losing a lot of respect for people I esteemed, and in some cases I have even written these individuals off completely. I’ve found myself gaining respect for some I never thought I would even like, even gaining what I believe will be lifelong friendships. My conclusion: this battle is effectively over, and the anti-Calvinists have been soundly defeated. The next battle will illustrate why.

The Gospel
This is the next great “Baptist Battle.” We Baptists have lost or obscured the Gospel. We no longer seek to meet the real need of the lost nor of our own people, choosing instead to focus on “felt needs” so that everyone gets their spiritual warm and fuzzies. No wonder our churches struggled with all the previous battles! When the Gospel is lost or obscured, confusion and false teaching have inroads.

That’s why I believe the next great “Baptist Battle” will be for the recovery of the biblical Gospel. Southern Baptists must stop this theological tomfoolery we’ve been engaged in and start making real change in our denomination. And the only way to see real change is through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Only the Gospel can change a person, a church, a denomination. And until we believe that — truly believe that — we will continue to pass ill-considered resolutions, offer really silly and sometimes downright stupid programs and emphases, and generally continue to miss the point.

Towards that end, some in the SBC are taking practical and theological steps to correct our path. There is a call going out — not from Nashville — but from the seminaries and churches who are deeply, deeply concerned about the Gospel penetrating all aspects of the church and the believer. That call is for a Great Commission Resurgence. And the current SBC President, Johnny Hunt, has taken up that call.

We must ask ourselves: “What is the Gospel? How does the Gospel impact me, change me, shape me? How does it impact my life, my family, my friends, my work? How does it change the way I view and relate to the world?”

Over the next several weeks, I’m going to dedicate this blog to answering these questions. And I will be attempting to answer how a Great Commission Resurgence could impact Deaf ministry. Deaf people have not really been involved in many of these “Baptist Battles.” But the battle for the Gospel is one we cannot afford to miss. Join us Monday for the first post, “Great Commission Resurgence: The Gospel and Deaf Ministry.”

Josh Buice writes about an evangelistic encounter he had with the “God Hates Fags” group while at this year’s Southern Baptist Convention. It is, every word of it, worth reading. You can read Why I Witnessed to Westboro “Baptist” here.

An excerpt:

As I spoke to the gentleman who was standing on the American Flag while holding two different signs high above his head, I noticed that he had a little boy (most likely his son) who was also standing there beneath this man. The young boy was also holding a sign with a very judgmental message. So, there I was in front of the infamous radical Westboro hate group. The first thing I said was, “I serve a Savior who forgives.” He responded by saying that I serve a false god and that I (along with all of the SBC) am a liar. When I asked him why he accused me of being a liar, he informed me that “You preach a message of love when God really does not love everyone – he hates most people.”

As I stood beside the busy intersection adjacent to the Convention Center, I asked him, “How many people have you seen saved through your preaching?” He responded, “We have seen several people come and join our church.” I said, “Joining your church is different than salvation. Have you seen anyone repent of their sins and turn to God through Jesus Christ as a result of your hate messages?” He responded, “The Bible says that it will be like the days of Noah in the last days, and how many were saved through Noah’s preaching?” I responded, “So, you think that only you and your small group from Westboro will be saved?” I continued, “You don’t believe that God saves people during the last days? What you should consider is that Christ has sent us out to preach the true gospel that saves rather than a hate message. We are not to make ourselves judges over people, but we are to preach the gospel. The true gospel is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins. If we will do that, people will be saved. Paul also informed us that it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save them that believe. Therefore, God did not intend for us to be judges over others, He called us to take His gospel message to the world.”

Again, go and read the whole thing here.

I’ve said little about the whole alcohol controversy in the SBC. Truth be told, I don’t care about alcohol. To me, alcohol is a) just something else to drink, b) something to use to clean Grace’s belly button before it falls off. I don’t think alcohol is: sinful, “dee-muhn likker,” harmful to one’s testimony, or any of the other objections brought to it by legalists and those who (like me) were taught these things traditionally. You can’t show any of these things from the Bible nor experience without making God a liar and Jesus a sinner.

What you can show — from both the Bible and experience — is that the abuse of alcohol (drunkenness and its results; i.e. drunk driving, binge drinking, physical and emotional abuse resulting from drunkenness, etc.) is a flat-out sin.

Furthermore, while I am decidedly not a teetotaler, nor am I a “drinker.” Ever since tasting my first alcoholic drink in college, I have rarely (if at all) partaken when it was available. If beer and wine disappeared from the earth, I wouldn’t miss it. Though we made beer and wine available at my wedding reception (for the in-laws, Catholics all), neither I nor my wife imbibed outside of the champagne toast. Give me a choice between a Coke and a Sam Adams, 9 times out of 10 (if not 10 out of 10) I’m going to pick the Coke. My wife is regularly teased by her brothers about her lack of drinking at family get-togethers, even more so now that she’s married to a Baptist. You can ask my in-laws, they’ll tell you the same thing. By the way, if the choice was between beer and sweet tea, the tea would win, every time.

That being said, Mr. Frank “Centuri0n” Turk does some research, and uncovers some interesting statistics about alcohol. He cites the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (a government agency) as reporting the following:

- 61% of American adults drank alcohol in the last year where stats are available (2004); that means roughly 183 million Americans drank alcohol that year.

- 32% of those had 5 or more drinks on at least one day; that means roughly 59 million Americans abused alcohol at least once in 2004.

- 21,081 alcohol-related deaths were reported in the same year, including all deaths from alcoholic liver disease. That equals 0.035% of all -abusers-, and 0.0115% of all -users-. Converted to deaths per 100,000, that’s 11.5 deaths per 100,000 users, and 35 deaths per 100,000 abusers. This, btw, is the worst-case scenario as I will openly admit that some alcohol-related deaths are to people who are victims of others’ abuse.

- CDC records also indicate that in the U.S. in 2005, the number of deaths by accident/unintentional causes in the general population was 37.7 per 100,000. Deaths by cancer in the general population in the same year were 185.8 per 100,000. Deaths by heart disease were 217 per 100,000 in the general population.

Mr. Turk concludes from this information:

- To spell that out as clearly as possible, someone who is abusing alcohol has the same likelihood of dying by accident as by alcohol-related circumstances; he is 5 times more likely to die by cancer than by alcohol-related circumstances; he is almost 6 times more likely to die from heart disease than by alcohol-related circumstances.

- The average alcohol user is 3 times more likely to die by accident than through alcohol-related circumstances, 16 times more likely to die from cancer than through alcohol-related circumstances, and almost 20 times more likely to die from heart disease than through alcohol-related circumstances.

- For the record, 59,664 people died from the flu in the same year — 2.8 times as many as died from alcohol-related circumstances.

Here’s what I’m not saying: I’m not saying that any of these deaths are not tragic: they are all tragic and take a toll on real families. What I am actually outlining here is that the moral argument against alcohol use has to take into account that more people die by accident than from alcohol-related circumstances annually; far more people die from the flu than from alcohol-related circumstances.

Let’s keep that in mind as we advance toward the discussion of the moral ills of all alcohol abuse.

I’m not the “average” alcohol user (since I almost never drink), yet I am more likely to die than the “average” user. That is, there is no chance someone who has 1 drink a day is more likely to die because of drinking than I, who does not drink. Interesting.

If we as a convention are going to tackle health-related issues and make resolutions against them, we need to get off the anti-alcohol bandwagon and tackle the REAL issue facing the convention: obesity.

Myself included, Christians these days are too fat to have any credibility. Until we tackle the real health problem our convention faces (the one that can cause all these diseases –cancer, heart disease, etc.– that kill more than alcohol), we have no business being dumb about beer. I call on all Southern Baptists — indeed, all believers — to join me and my wife by walking every day and working to eat healthy. Those of us who are interested might want to join me again by turning that walking into running after a month or so.

UPDATE: Mr. Turk elaborates:

The entire -point- of Baptist cooperation is -not- health and welfare: it’s the Gospel, and saving people from an eternity in hell.

Nobody gets saved if everyone is sober, skinny, tobacco-free and still in their actual sins rather than their man-made sins. What if we made a resolution at the convention that the Gospel is the power to save, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile, and that the SBC would only take action related to being the hands and feet of the Gospel?

It is an immense waste of time, effort and a harm to the Gospel to beat people up over things which are not even sins but are in fact merely a matter of culture and taste. The -vast- majority of people in the US drink responsibly and ever -temperately-, if we can use that term here without manning the portcullis. Why demand that all of them stop drinking because of the hadnful who, frankly, have a problem that needs a bigger solution than the hard scowls of people who don’t even know how to open a beer bottle?

Before you object, I didn’t know how to open the champagne bottle at my own wedding. We had to get my brother-in-law to do it! Those words from Mr. Turk apply directly to me just as they might to you.

WHEREAS, this is a function which the Deaf Jedi has never attended, and

WHEREAS, it is a stated ministry goal to foster cooperation between the Hearing and Deaf Southern Baptist entities, and

WHEREAS, the 2008 event will be located in Indianapolis, IN, which is within a two-hour drive from my home; be it

RESOLVED, that the Rev. J. Stephen Newell, Jr. will seek to gain messengership from Louisville Baptist Deaf Church, along with his Senior Pastor and other members of LBDC, and

RESOLVED, that this group will attend the Southern Baptist Convention 2008 Annual Meeting in Indianapolis, IN, and

RESOLVED, the purpose of this excursion will be a bridge-building expedition between our Deaf and Hearing ministry counterparts.

The story of the weekend has been the alleged sex-abuse “scandal” in the Southern Baptist Convention. While (so far) nowhere near the severity of the recent Catholic scandal, all of us in the SBTS blogosphere — and I hope in the churches — are in agreement that if there is even one sex offender filling the role of minister in our churches, that is one too many. For an excellent collection of articles, videos and blog posts, see Timmy Brister’s compilation Southern Baptist Sex Offenders.

In that post, Timmy asks the question, “How should a Convention of autonomous churches hold one another accountable and provide full disclosure of all prospective ministers so as to prevent sexual abuse from happening and promote justice when it has?”

In this post, I will not attempt to answer in full the second part of the question. The answer to that should be obvious. Promoting justice means any and all such offenders should be immediately reported to the authorities for investigation and/or prosecution. It is incumbent upon churches to receive an allegation, confront the accused, and report the allegation to the authorities.

The problem for many of us, however, is from the first part of Timmy’s question. How can we screen potential ministers and hold our sister churches accountable? As I am in the process of thinking about just that for our church plant, I’d like to suggest a few things our churches can do. We may not even need the SBC to do it for us.

Background Checks.
Anyone who applies for a staff position (pastor, associate pastor, music minister, etc.) is automatically subject to a thorough background check, whether he/she works with children/youth or adults. This background check should include the usual criminal check and cross-reference the national sex offender registry. The sex offender registry can be accessed online; criminal checks can be done for free by most local associations and state denominations, and as I understand it some local police agencies. The check should include a review of any academic degrees and professional credentials. The last formal stage of the check should include a credit check or financial review to assess the risk for financial mismanagement.

In addition, potential ministerial staff should be required to submit a list of all churches of which they have been a member. A church can then contact those churches and hopefully determine if they left that church in good standing, or if any problems occurred as a result of their membership. This does not include pastorates or other staff placements, it is simply their membership history outside of being “paid staff.”

Lastly, potential ministerial staff absolutely must list every staff position held at every church in which they have served, paid or volunteer. This would include in addition to paid staff positions such volunteer positions like Sunday School teacher, prayer leader, visitation leader, Royal Ambassador/AWANA/Girls in Action leader, Vacation Bible School, and so on. A church absolutely must review these placements and contact those churches as to the details of their service, effectiveness, and any problems that manifested during their service. This will go a much longer way towards protecting our churches than anything else.

Letters of Recommendation.
Furthermore, for a ministerial staff position, no fewer than two letters of recommendation should be required, and the writers of those letters should be, at best, senior pastors. At worst letters should come from ordained associational leaders or state/national denominational leaders. These letters should testify as to the candidate’s character, education, and ability at the very minimum. Churches must be able to verify the pastorates or offices of the letter writers and speak at length with them about the candidate.

Thorough Interviewing.
I think that not only the pulpit committee or staff committee responsible for hiring staff should interview a candidate, but that (especially in smaller churches) the entire church should have an opportunity to interview a candidate. Perhaps after a candidate has been invited to preach as part of the selection process, there can be a Q & A session immediately following so that the congregation can get to know the candidate and ask questions about the candidate. This session would be followed by a second interview with the pulpit committee to review any questions that may come up as a result.

Discipleship and Interviewing of Volunteers.
For a volunteer staff position (like those listed above), I think the above background checks should be sufficient. In addition, I would like to suggest that such volunteers be personally discipled by the staff person in charge of the position so as to determine the volunteer’s fitness for ministry. This discipling would be rigorous and transparent for the volunteer, and also confidential unless serious moral/criminal lapses are uncovered. At the conclusion of this period of discipleship, the volunteer should be interviewed by the ministerial staff, and possibly the ministry being served. For example, we should allow our youth to participate in the interviewing of candidates for youth minister or youth ministry volunteer. I have applied for both a youth minister and youth ministry volunteer position in the past and this very thing was done as part of the process. My respect for the churches and their youth increased greatly on this point alone. Only at the completion of this process should a volunteer be permitted to assume his/her duties.

Accountability.
In order to hold our ministers and volunteers accountable, I would first suggest that every Southern Baptist church follow the steps suggested above. If every church had something like this in place, we could then make it a policy that all information uncovered during the investigation will be shared with any future potential ministry placements upon their request. This means that if a minister applies for a position elsewhere, our church will make available the records we have to the entity applied to, upon their request. The minister does not have a say in this. If our ministers are truly people of integrity, they would invite inquiry to their character when seeking a position.

This applies to volunteers as well. If a member leaves our church and seeks to volunteer at their new church, and that church has the same policies described above, then we are going to be contacted about said member. We will also share the results of our investigation and discipleship with the church, under the same confidentiality agreement.

Any church hiring or allowing to volunteer someone who has failed any step of this process quite simply would have no excuse. I would almost argue that to hire such a person or allow such a person to volunteer is tantamount to inviting such a person to take advantage of the church.

I think there is more that we can do, but I think this is a good start. I welcome any further suggestions to this basic foundation I have laid out.

There have been some loud squealings going around lately about something called “evangelical Calvinism.” I haven’t the first idea what this term means. Did someone invent it in order to look cool? To throw a big red “S” on their chest? To further separate themselves from those who are merely “evangelical?”

If so, I have a big wooden fraternity paddle that needs to smack some behinds.

But to get to the point, the “loud squealings” I referred to in the first paragraph are coming from those who are non-Calvinists. What a curious thing, said the Deaf Jedi sarcastically. Upon the reading of several articles by some rather obscure Southern Baptists that seem to have found their way into the general Southern Baptist grapevines, I only had to put my head in my hands and say, “Here we go again.” When are we going to start disagreeing with a theological position on the basis of what that position actually teaches? I wanted to smack these people upside the head a few times.

In the interest of heading off any questions and commentary that may reach me in the next few days, I’m going to briefly list several implications that Calvinism has in evangelism. These can be found in my various posts on each point (see The Doctrines of Grace in the sidebar), and I will be adding a couple of implications in this list.

But please remember, these are coming from a guy who is not a Calvinist. In the footsteps of Apostle Paul, I implore my non-Calvinist brethren: in disagreeing with Reformed perspectives, imitate me. Actually learn the stuff first. And now, with no further ado….

Total Depravity.
Total depravity gives us the sure conviction that all of us are going to perish in hell without Christ. This alone ought to convince us that evangelism, hey, might be a really good idea. But it goes a step further by thoroughly grounding us in Christ’s words that no one can come to the Father unless it is through Him. Note that, through Him, not by works. I’m reminded of another verse that says something like, “Not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord.” So I can’t just up and decide some day that I’m gonna follow Jesus. I need the Gospel preached to me before I would ever get the inkling to do so.

Unconditional Election.
Election gives us an incentive to witness. Think about it: only a certain number are going to be saved. This is a surety even if we believe in conditional election. There is no way around this. Not everyone is going to heaven. First of all, this should spur us to get off our lazy behinds and evangelize. Second of all, this should give us an incredible sense of purpose to understand that God is going to use us to bring in those who will be saved. What this adds up to is this: Git-R-Done!

Limited Atonement.
This point, more than any other, is the clincher for me where evangelism is concerned. And I don’t even subscribe to this point! Limited atonement gives us a heart for lost people. If people are going to hell, we ought to be broken and weeping over them! If limited atonement is true, then we know without a shadow of a doubt that there are people DOOMED to hell. We should be brokenhearted over this. And brokenhearted, we witness passionately, hoping to heaven that this person is not doomed.

Irresistible Grace.
Irresistible grace gives us confidence that our efforts will be successful. Why? Because we’re not the ones getting people saved. God is. His Spirit is working to bring those who will believe to Him, and He is working through us. Thus we can witness with full confidence in the ability of the God who has commanded us to the Great Commission.

Perseverance of the Saints.
I know, I’ve not yet finished this one. But this further strengthens our confidence in evangelism. We will not worry about the possibility of those who come to Christ through our efforts falling away. God will preserve them. He may even use us to effect this perseverance and preservation. We can witness in the full assurance that those who believe will truly be transformed into the image of Christ. Our efforts will not be in vain. I think there are more implications to come here, but I will save them for the post.

Now, that is all I have to say about that.

*Waves a hand in front of your face and calls on the Force*
You want to print this out or copy/paste it into an email. You will send this to those of “loud squealings” or those with potential to squeal. You don’t want to sell me death sticks. You want to go home and reevaluate your life.

Oops, that last one was for the creepy guy with bug antennae over my shoulder.

For background on this post, see Timmy Brister‘s post on the next SBC Executive Committee chairman here.

Anyhow, Timmy said he would grow his beard back out if I came up with a “scarlet C” t-shirt. I played around with CafePress and came up with a nice one. No, they are not for sale, but if anyone wants to order a few I could be persuaded. Here’s the t-shirt concept:

Note the “bloody C” design I found. If anyone wants one, you may line up for orders at SNewell77[AT]gmail.com.

UPDATE: I decided to go ahead and start a CafePress shop. It is “not-for-profit.” There are men’s, women’s, kids’, babies’, and even doggy stuff as well as a few knick knacks. If you’d like to order a shirt or something, go here.