Thursday, February 28, 2008
Beer and The Bible...
...or I HATE CHURCH POLITICS
MMI reports on a controversy inside the Missouri Baptist Convention concerning teaching regarding alcohol.
Maybe I should not talk, I am not Baptist, but it is the biggest Protestant denomination in the country and every time someone hears I am a Christian they assume I am like this bunch of legalistic, butt-covering yahoos. OK, the usual disclaimer. I know many wonderful Baptists, good people whose hearts, minds, and lives are in the right place.
A less usual disclaimer. My church has it's fair share of bad stuff too, but right now, my church is shrinking so fast it cannot make a headline if it tries. Like it or not the Baptists and Catholics are largely the public face of Christianity in this nation. The Catholics understand that and are working to be true to it....
The independent nature of Baptist congregations and therefore the lack of serious hierarchical polity seems to be a very central issue in all this. Accountability structures matter and they are the reasons it is going to take a direct command from the Holy Spirit to move me into an independent congregational church setting.
I always come back to the same place - it is time to get serious and start building disciples. let me make this as simple as possible. In church government settings like the Baptists it is up to the congregations to provide accountability to the staffs. As long as we approach church as a provide services to the masses business instead of a build up disciples of Christ effort, the staff is going to hold sway, and this kind of crap is going to prevail.
If we build up people as disciples, people that will truly exercise the accountability, then and only then will things get better. So to all those good-hearted, well-being Baptist friends I disclaimed a few paragraphs ago - GET BUSY!!!
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MMI reports on a controversy inside the Missouri Baptist Convention concerning teaching regarding alcohol.
Pastor Kevin Larson of Karis Community Church in downtown Columbia just lost $6,000 in funding from the Missouri Baptist Convention because he won’t forbid his church’s members from drinking an occasional beer. At its December meeting, the executive board of the Missouri Baptist Convention voted 28-10, according to the Baptist Press, to cut funding for all Acts 29-affiliated churches in Missouri. Acts 29 is a church planting, or starting, network based in Seattle. The motion came from Denny Marr, minister of education at Calvary Baptist Church in Republic, in response to what Marr thought was an abuse of "Christian liberty" by some Acts 29-affiliated churches, one of which is Karis Community Church.Now, bear in mind that just yesterday we looked at sex scandal inside the SBC. So we have a really interesting picture emerging here. The Baptists apparently are willing to tackle the evil of an occasional beer, but there is "little they can do" about sexual abuse committed by their clergy. And we wonder why the world wants to call us liars and hypocrites.
Maybe I should not talk, I am not Baptist, but it is the biggest Protestant denomination in the country and every time someone hears I am a Christian they assume I am like this bunch of legalistic, butt-covering yahoos. OK, the usual disclaimer. I know many wonderful Baptists, good people whose hearts, minds, and lives are in the right place.
A less usual disclaimer. My church has it's fair share of bad stuff too, but right now, my church is shrinking so fast it cannot make a headline if it tries. Like it or not the Baptists and Catholics are largely the public face of Christianity in this nation. The Catholics understand that and are working to be true to it....
The independent nature of Baptist congregations and therefore the lack of serious hierarchical polity seems to be a very central issue in all this. Accountability structures matter and they are the reasons it is going to take a direct command from the Holy Spirit to move me into an independent congregational church setting.
I always come back to the same place - it is time to get serious and start building disciples. let me make this as simple as possible. In church government settings like the Baptists it is up to the congregations to provide accountability to the staffs. As long as we approach church as a provide services to the masses business instead of a build up disciples of Christ effort, the staff is going to hold sway, and this kind of crap is going to prevail.
If we build up people as disciples, people that will truly exercise the accountability, then and only then will things get better. So to all those good-hearted, well-being Baptist friends I disclaimed a few paragraphs ago - GET BUSY!!!
Technorati Tags:baptists, accountability, church polity, church government
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