The Gospel of Christmas

Christmas is not about presents. It isn’t about family gatherings, trees, human love, happiness, or world peace.

Christmas is about the incarnation of God himself. It is, therefore, about the renewal of all of creation.

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There is nothing wrong with celebrating with family, having a tree, showing love, being happy, or striving toward peace. In many ways these things point toward the renewal of all creation.

However, Christmas is not merely about these things, but about the rich abundance that lies behind these things.

Christmas is about the gospel. The gospel made real, physical, tangible, and complete.

The Christmas Gospel

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth through his spoken word. He made everything from nothing and at the end of his flurry of creative acts, he declared it all very good.

He even made two humans to be like him, and to represent him in miniature on the earth. They were made in his very image.

However, that didn’t last very long because the first humans, Adam and Eve, messed it up by disobeying the one rule that God had given them. They didn’t take God at his word; instead they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

As a result, God sent death into the world. Adam and Eve would surely die. So would all of their children and their children’s children.

God also cursed the ground to remind all humans that things aren’t the way they were supposed to be. Thorns, thistles, and other weeds make the process of making a living from the earth harder. They remind us of what is wrong with the world. They keep us hoping for something better that is to come.

The world got a glimpse of that better something a few thousand years ago in the form of a human child born in unlikely circumstances. That child was Jesus, God’s anointed one, and the Word of God himself.

The one who had created all things and who holds all things together stepped down into creation to become part of it and bear the curse of the whole creation to set it free from the penalty of sin.

According to Athanasius,

He, the Mighty One, the Artificer of all, Himself prepared this body in the virgin as a temple for Himself, and took it for His very own, as the instrument through which He was known and in which He dwelt. Thus, taking a body like our own, because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death, He surrendered His body to death in place of all, and offered it to the Father. This He did out of sheer love for us, so that in His death all might die, and the law of death thereby be abolished because, when He had fulfilled in His body that for which it was appointed, it was thereafter voided of its power for men. This He did that He might turn again to incorruption men who had turned back to corruption, and make them alive through death by the appropriation of His body and by the grace of His resurrection. Thus He would make death to disappear from them as utterly as straw from fire.

And in wiping away the effects of the curse from humans, Jesus also loosed the creation from the effects of sin.

Thus, “the renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the beginning.”

This hasn’t yet taken effect in full.

Romans 8:19-23 tells us:

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

The Christmas story is a historical account of how God made possible the redemption of all things from the effects of human sin. Both Luke and Matthew tell us what happened in a dusty Middle Eastern town two millennia ago, but their accounts also point beyond the details of the story to the hope that should invigorate our celebration.

Conclusion

Enjoy this Christmas. Enjoy the cookies, candy canes, ugly sweaters, and weird relatives. Enjoy the toys, the tinsel, and the many cultural accretions that have accumulated around the day.

Enjoy these things all the more because they point toward the greater hope we have in the coming renewal of all creation because Christ’s incarnation made possible the redemption of all things from the effects of sin.

The Importance of Amateur Theologians

There are two very important aspects of the Christian theological enterprise that need to maintained in order for the church to be (or become) healthy. First, there need to be professional theologians. Second, the discipline of theology needs to be accessible to amateur theologians.

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The terms “professional” and “amateur” are intended to refer to more than the status of being paid for thinking and writing. It is certainly true that someone who is paid to think theologically and express those thoughts cogently (we hope) for others to read should be able to be more productive theologically and, perhaps, research and think more deeply. However, the bigger concern here is the training for becoming a theologian. The discipline of theology needs to be accessible to those that have the professional credentials (read advanced degrees) in the discipline and those that don’t.

Recently, a group of professional Catholic theologians got together to call on the New York Times to silence columnist Ross Douthat. It wasn’t just any Catholic theologians, it was a group of leading Catholic thinkers from Georgetown, Loyola, St. Thomas University, Yale, Harvard, Lasalle, and more. In other words, a pretty big group of well-credentialed theologians got together to call for the muzzling of one journalist.

What did Douthat do to incur their wrath? He argued that there is a movement that is pressuring a change in Roman Catholic doctrine to permit individuals who have been divorced and remarried to participate in Communion. This, he argued, is a bad thing for the Church. He also made the assertion that the Pope himself is involved in pressuring the church to change. This is a bold accusation for a Roman Catholic to make.

The Issue Under Debate

For those of us in Protestant circles, particularly we low-church Baptists, it may not be clear exactly how monumental this shift is. In brief, I will attempt an explanation of the problem without much nuance.

In the Roman Catholic tradition, marriage is one of the seven sacraments as is the Lord’s supper. Marriage, by their definition, is essentially (and not merely incidentally) the spiritual union of one man and one woman before God. There is, then, an actual event that happens when a couple is wed; it isn’t merely the case of two people being legally associated to keep society in check. The only way out of marriage, then, is for one spouse to die or for the Church to annul the marriage. The annulment process basically says that the marriage never really was a marriage, which frees the individuals up to pursue other ventures. If the marriage is not annulled by the Church, then whatever occurs in the legal system is irrelevant because the two individuals are still married according to God and the Church. If a couple divorces without an annulment and remains celibate, this is unhealthy but acceptable. However, if one of the divorcees remarries without the annulment, this second marriage puts the individual in a state of unrepentant sin and thus the individual is barred from receiving the sacrament of Communion.

According to Douthat, there is a move afoot within the Roman Catholic church to change the Church’s practice by a) removing the requirement for annulment for remarried divorcees to take Communion and also b) expediting the annulment process including creating a “no-fault” annulment category. Douthat correctly argues that this reflects a significant change to the Roman Catholic doctrine of marriage; if this change is made in the practice of the Church is tacitly admitting that marriage is dissoluble, which is something they have denied for centuries. The change would be huge.

The issue of the doctrinal change is, in itself, interesting from a historical-theological perspective. However, the response that it engendered is more significant for the way that theology is done.

The Response to Douthat

Douthat’s critics, which include a host of heavyweight Catholic theologians, have called for the editors of the New York Times to shut him up. They write:

Aside from the fact that Mr. Douthat has no professional qualifications for writing on the subject, the problem with his article and other recent statements is his view of Catholicism as unapologetically subject to a politically partisan narrative that has very little to do with what Catholicism really is. Moreover, accusing other members of the Catholic church of heresy, sometimes subtly, sometimes openly, is serious business that can have serious consequences for those so accused. This is not what we expect of the New York Times.

Of course it isn’t what anyone expects of the New York Times. The so-called “newspaper of record” is so far left of center politically that it always amazes me that Douthat is able to survive from week to week. Sometimes I click through to his columns even when I’m not interested in the topic just to increase his web-traffic so that maybe, for a little while longer, the New York Times will continue to allow a more or less conservative columnist to continue writing. Douthat isn’t what we expect of the New York Times because his voice is a reasoned dissent from the liberalized mainstream.

However, the more significant question is why someone has to have “professional qualifications for writing on the subject.” It seems odd that theology is such a difficult topic that only those who have special training should be able to have any opinion on the subject.

I’m a Southern Baptist working on a PhD in Theological Studies. I regularly deal with “bubba theology,” which is generally a painful and draining experience. However, for every blog post, newspaper article, or sermon I encounter that has poorly done theology, I encounter another where someone without the guild certification—an amateur theologian—is doing quite as well as many professional theologians.

In fact, as a Southern Baptist, I am thankful for the many “amateur theologians” that managed to reclaim the denomination’s theology from the so-called professionals during the Conservative Resurgence. It seems, though, that the concern is not as much for Douthat’s qualifications, as for his conservative opinion.

Liberalism and Elitism

There is an assumption by some academics that good theology is liberal theology. Being a conservative myself, I obviously question this truth. However, the feeling is so entrenched that a a pair of California sociologists (they are professionals so we can trust them) argued that it is the liberal theologians and church leaders that will save the planet if only their silly conservative parishioners will cooperate. In their article, “Why Conservative Christians Don’t Believe in Climate Change,” Bernard Zaleha and Andrew Szasz write:

“There is also a longstanding recognition that liberal policy statements from national denominational bodies frequently do not filter down to the individual congregations, which often will not tolerate too much liberalism from their pastors, ministers, and priests. Church conventions and liberal seminaries may be doing an excellent job promulgating the urgency for increased environmental concern; getting congregants to internalize and act on these ideas has so far proved to be a much harder life.”

Liberal theologians would likely never have written this so clearly. However, sociologists writing in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists are apt to be more frank, and more hopeful that conservative Christians won’t find their article.

There is an assumption native to much of academia that pushing boundaries and formulating innovative doctrines is good theology. Confessing traditional orthodoxy is repressive, repetitive, and thus bad theology. There is a condescension native to the way much liberal theology is done; only the backward are concerned with reconciling the way things have been understood. The amateur, unencumbered by a commitment to such chronological snobbery, is more likely to find resonance with tradition than to seek new territory to make a name for himself.

Rather than admitting their bias against tradition, which is nearly sacrosanct among some Roman Catholics, these professional theologians just called on the amateur to shut up because he isn’t an expert.

It may well be that he is not an expert, but their letter to the editor failed to show why Douthat’s comments were inadequate. They simply assert that he is unsuited for the field and should keep his comments to things about which he has been properly trained. To my conservative mind, that seems a bit pretentious.

The Importance of Amateur Theology

In reality, the amateur is not entirely unsuited to discuss the merits of changing Roman Catholic doctrine or practice. He likely has not read as much on the topic. He also probably has less professional capital involved in his pet theory or theological innovation being the newly approved version. However, as an amateur theologian or, as some might call him, a layman, Douthat is well positioned to know what has been taught and recognize that this new thing is something quite different. It doesn’t matter how many supporting sources can be cited, he recognizes the thing for what it is.

Laypeople doing theology is not a problem to be confronted in the church, but an indication of the strength of the church. When theology is driven from above, by an elite class of scholars, it has a tendency to miss the most significant practical needs of the world around. When theology is done within the pew in addition to in the ivory tower, it an indication of vitality and intellectual activity.

The church needs to have professional theologians who are doing work, engaging important critical issues, and debating fine points of theological nuance. This is essential if the integrity of confessions of faith is to be maintained against the tide of change or, perhaps, revised in expression (not content) in response to cultural change.

At the same time, the church needs to have intelligent people, who may lack the credentials or full training, to stand and shout “stop” when the scholarly guild gets out of hand. Douthat provides that for the Roman Catholic church, just as others provide it for other denominations.

Douthat may be right or wrong, I’ll leave that for the reader to decide. However, his position as a layperson critiquing the professional theologians is essential to keep them honest.

Why Academic Conferences are Important: Observations from ETS 2015

For the introvert, conferences of any sort tend to be an exhausting affair. The attendees are never alone. There are a million hands to shake, people to talk to, questions to answer. The germophobe, too, will find himself in a veritable purgatory of horrors.

Image from Ben Rogers, used by Creative Commons License. http://ow.ly/UOFOS 

Despite my own preference for small groups or solitary scholarship, I find this sort of theological nerd-fest to be important. This importance is often despite our best efforts to make it intolerably unimportant.

Many of the papers are, indeed, boring. Sometimes it seems that scholars are attempting to demonstrate a sure-fire cure for insomnia, or run a clinic trial on such a cure through their papers. Often this is a result of the desire to appear sufficiently scholarly, as if only in bland statements with a torrent of references can one demonstrate their expertise.

Other papers are, to be honest, quite bad. They were proposed at a point in life when the months until presentation seemed inexhaustible. The summer break from classes offered seemingly infinite hours to mull deep academic thoughts and write a paper reflective of sheer genius. In reality, those hours were consumed with other, often more important activities. Stellar scholarship is thus lost in a melee of mediocrity slapped together in the waning weeks before the conference event.

Still, these events are important.

Reasons for Importance

Academic conferences are important because for every mediocre paper, there is usually another—often from a surprising source—that is quite good. Often, despite self-doubt over the potential failures by student presenters, the fledgling scholars produce the most provocative and most helpful papers.

In some of these papers, there are a wealth of new ideas, freshly mined sources, and voices brought into harmonious conversation in a way only possible when students are trying to make sense of the readings of diverse PhD seminars and finding history, philosophy, and hermeneutics at the same time.

In other papers, there are nuggets of information at the very edge of the argument that stir the coals of the imagination and inspire the hearer (or reader) to further investigation on a topic only tangentially related to the paper itself. These are the gems that can be mined from the academic conference—not necessarily new information, but new ideas and new promises of horizons yet to be explored.

Another reason that academic conferences are absolutely essential is that in those hundreds of handshakes—each of which costs the introvert so very much—there are new opportunities for alliances, research partnerships, and synergistic relationships.

Scholarship is best done in community. In our age, that community often occurs over the internet via e-mail, blogs, and Skype. However, the personal contact at these melting pots of weird people are often the necessary foundation for later community.

These events are also, in one sense, like a meeting of a support group, but without the anonymity. Academics tend to be well off the center of the bell curve socially. We are, often, what most people consider weird. In fact, the cast of characters at a Comic Con and an academic conference are not that much different—except the academics tend to dress up in costumes that are more uncomfortable.

Academic conferences are important times for those of us who feel more comfortable with footnotes and formatting than new people. They provide both an opportunity to get the weirdness out and to experience true sympathy for our shared malady. The gathering allows us to feel a little more normal, if only because it concentrates the slightly abnormal segment of society in one place. This can strengthen the scholar’s heart for solitary legs of the journey to come.

Another significant benefit of academic conferences are the opportunities to walk through the hall of books. Of course, for some academics this results in marital stress. However, even without making forbidden purchases from publishers, there is value in seeing the scope of fresh publication from a variety of publishing houses and getting the opportunity to peruse volumes recently released.

Thankfully, these conferences typically require travel, so the purchasing opportunities are naturally limited. Still, the temptation is fierce and sometimes volumes just follow the lonely scholar home—or so the story goes.

Finally, in addition to meeting fresh faces and new acquaintances, there is great community built over years of bumping into the same people. A casual conversation in an elevator, over a period of years, can develop into a friendship with correspondence and real bonds of mutual interest. This is a fascinating experiment in human psychology that bears more study, but it is a real phenomenon.

The moral of the story, if there is one, is that conferences are worth going to for a number of reasons. They are also, for those spouses left at home with young children, worth sending your spouse to because they fuel the fire in so many ways and are more important than our esoteric paper topics might make it seem.

The Ignorance is Astounding

Recently multiple news outlets have reported on Dr. Ben Carson's theory that the Egyptian Pyramids were used for grain silos. 

There is little reason to give credence to Carson's theory, which is an extreme minority position. All the archaeological evidence seems to point toward the pyramids being built as monuments to rulers. In a presidential election, it's fine to point out the weird ideas of people that have put themselves on display.

What is inexcusable, however, is the fact that multiple news outlets are reporting that Carson's theory is drawn directly from the book of Genesis. 

In their original report (which may be updated any time now) Forbes wrote:

When I found this, I wondered if the ignorance was isolated. However, when I looked at the illustrious reporting of CNN, I found that while their article was correct, the original report required a correction:

“Correction: An earlier version of this story stated the Book of Genesis refers to Joseph building pyramids to store grain. It refers only to Joseph storing large amounts of grain.”

I stopped looking at two sources. Most likely the error was in the original news service story that the other outlets subscribe to.

I'm glad that CNN caught the mistake. However, it is telling that the original authors of the article was so ignorant of Scripture that he or she believed that Genesis talks about using the pyramids for grain storage. This also made it through the editorial process.

It isn't like this is information buried in someone's diary from the 17th century in an obscure monastery library in the Alps. No, this is information that is readily available online in multiple languages and versions. The team of individuals responsible for these reports lacks a basic literacy in Scripture, and yet was too lazy to take a few minutes to proof their information.

Remember this artifact as you read news article reporting on what people are supposed to believe and have said. While one example does not prove that all such reporting is bad, it does give an indication that the authors and editors may be well out of their depth.

Application for Christians

Christians should also recognize the significance of this error. We assume an awful lot of baseline knowledge when we talk to each other and to others. If I asked a group of school age kids at most local churches if Joseph had stored grain in the pyramids they would have given me an incredulous look. Yet, here is a group of adults so unfamiliar with Scripture that they could make such a blatant gaffe in published work.

Think about that when you present the gospel to someone. You can't assume they know the background. And, really, the notion of the substitutionary atonement is pretty crazy apart from the background of Scripture and an understanding of the Ancient Near Eastern culture of the Hebrews. It probably takes more explaining than what has been expected in previous decades.

We are no longer in a culture where we can assume the basics of the gospel. The ignorance is astounding. However, ignorance is not a sin. 

The solution to ignorance is information. This means that we need to get the gospel message out in a way that is comprehensive and intelligible. We can't afford to assume that anyone knows the rest of the story. Likely they have never actually heard it told well at all.

The Prosperity Gospel: A Constant Danger

Last weekend I heard the prosperity gospel, in a soft version, preached from the pulpit. We were visiting a church and the pastor declared (I paraphrase), "If you follow God's plan, you will prosper." It was toward the end of the sermon, when he was tacking on some duties that the congregation should perform (pray more, witness more, etc.). He certainly wasn't going full prosperity gospel, but it reflected the notion that if you do the right things, then God's got your back and will make everything work out.

That formula is an easy one to slip into, but it is so very dangerous. 

God doesn't usually make it easy for his most faithful servants, at least not according to what Scripture tells us. In fact, there is a regular pattern in Scripture that those whom God uses most suffer the most deeply.

Our hearts long for ease, but our usefulness to God requires a constant striving, which inevitably entails struggle. There is danger of a soft prosperity gospel in our lives each day because, in reality, we all want it to be true.

The problem with the prosperity gospel is that it teaches us that only when we are comfortable are we being blessed by God. That teaching can lead to despair when things aren't going our way.

The Hardcore Prosperity Gospel

The soft prosperity gospel is a constant danger to most believers, particularly American Christians, but there is a bigger, darker problem that has arisen in the heart of the wealth of America. That problem is the full-fledged, all-out prosperity gospel.

Most proponents of the prosperity gospel have learned to mask their message carefully, at least in public forums, since there has been a tendency among orthodox theologians and pastors to call them out. However, recently Creflo Dollar made the mistake of being open about his understanding of Christianity on Twitter.

He, or someone who has the keys to his account, posted a Tweet that read, "Jesus bled and died for us so that we can lay claim to the promise of financial prosperity. #ProsperityInChrist #WealthyLiving"

Dollar deleted the Tweet after being bombarded by negative comments. This screen capture was taken in anticipation of that on 8 Oct 2015.

The tweet was retweeted by many, responded to by numerous critics, and generally drew a negative reaction from orthodox Christians on Twitter. As a result, Dollar deleted the tweet. Thankfully screen captures last forever. (Which is a warning for those who use social media to vent.)

Sometimes people delete tweets because they are ambiguous and can be misinterpreted. Sometimes they are deleted because of typos or because they have a dead link in them.

Dollar, or someone on his team, deleted this tweet because it was not sufficiently ambiguous. The veil was drawn back on the prosperity gospel. The message was made more clear than simply a promise of living "your best life now" and the true belief system was brought to the surface.

Deleting this tweet was an admission of guilt on the part of Creflo Dollar.

The purpose of this post is to point out the potential error and to point toward some resources for understanding and dealing with the theology of the prosperity gospel. The prosperity gospel, in many forms, is alive and well; we need to kill it in our hearts and help others to see what it really is.

Resources for combatting the prosperity gospel

Here are some helpful resources for understanding and confronting the prosperity gospel in your own heart and in the world around you.

What is the Prosperity Gospel, by Andrew Spencer.

Is the Prosperity Gospel Biblically Sound, by Andrew Spencer.

The Importance of Rejecting the Prosperity Gospel, by Andrew Spencer.

Errors of the Prosperity Gospel, by David W. Jones.

The Prosperity Gospel in My Own Heart, by David W. Jones.

The Poverty of the Prosperity Gospel, by Vaneetha Rendall.

Six Keys to Detecting the Prosperity Gospel, by John Piper.

The Prosperity Gospel: Decietful and Deadly, by John Piper.

Why I Abominate the Prosperity Gospel, by John Piper. (Video)

How to Help Friends Escape the Prosperity Gospel, by John Piper.

Confronting the Prosperity Gospel

Whenever someone writes a blog in opposition to the prosperity gospel (assuming anyone reads it), a backlash always comes from supporters of the individual criticized or the movement as a whole. Accusations are launched something to the effect that "Christians shouldn't attack other Christians," or "Have you followed Matthew 18?" The irony of commenters on blogs posting questions about Matthew 18 is often overlooked.

True enough, I haven't approached Creflo Dollar in person to confront him with his sin. However, he posted it on Twitter, which means that he put his thoughts out there for public critique.

For the first point, Christians should critique other people who claim to be Christians when they preach false doctrines. And when they do so publicly, that critique needs to be public. Paul (who was way more sanctified than I am) seems to have done just that to Peter when he was in error (Gal 2:11-13) with the hope of helping Peter and the believers that were caught in the theological error.

Frankly, this latest tweet by Dollar is only a recent proclamation of what he has previously clearly stated in his sermons and books. In other words, this tweet isn't the issue; it's the broader theological movement. (A more sustained critique of Dollar and the prosperity gospel movement can be found in David W. Jones' book, Health, Wealth, and Happiness.).

shai linne's song "Fal$e Teacher$" from his newest album, "Lyrical Theology Part 1: Theology".

The move toward defensiveness of a person or a movement is natural for those deceived by the prosperity gospel (or any other false teaching). Dollar is a charismatic preacher and he offers hope of wealth to many that strongly desire it. But it is a hope built on false doctrine, so it isn't a true hope.

However, maintaining doctrinal orthodoxy is vital to the health of the church. There is a reason that liberal denominations a dying. It's because their theology lacks the nutrients necessary to sustain them. Unfortunately, the prosperity gospel continues to flourish because of continued spiritual blindness by its adherents and much more careful (except with this tweet) presentation of the true nature of their message.  However, it remains a mushroom religion--kept in the dark and fed on manure--that can't survive when trials come.

Ultimately, the reason we should confront the prosperity gospel movement is not to win points on the internet, but because it is a false gospel. It presents the idea that Jesus came to make us wealthy. In reality, he came so that we could become holy. To lose that message is to lose the essence of God's gracious hope for the world.

This is all the reason we should need to publicly and openly oppose this movement of false teaching. It reflects true neighbor love to those trapped in the movement or susceptible to its clutches.

The First Moon Landing 142 Years Ago

Today marks the 142nd anniversary of Lottie Moon's landing in China to take the gospel to that nation and to those millions of people.

She's been a hero to many for her willingness to leave relative comfort, social position, and a loving family behind in the United States to go to a life of discomfort and perpetual struggle.

She was fiercely orthodox, even forgoing her marriage to Crawford Toy over his abandonment of the veracity of Scripture. Lottie Moon was a woman of conviction who lived much of her life so that others might find new life in Christ.

Her faithful letter writing to raise funds for all Baptist missionaries led to her becoming the namesake of the Southern Baptist Convention's annual Christmas Offering. Because of her faithfulness, her name has become a rallying point for Southern Baptist Missions.

Lottie Moon's story is one that is compelling and should increase our faith in God's providence and renew our desire to go to tell of him to the nations.

Consider praying a prayer of thanksgiving for faithful saints like Lottie Moon.

Facts about Lottie Moon

1. She was born on December 12, 1840 into a wealthy plantation owning family in Virginia.

2. As an adult she was only about 4'3" tall. This is about the height of an average American 8 or 9 year old girl.

3. Lottie Moon was one of the earliest pioneers in women's education as a graduate of Albemarle Female Institute at Charlottesville in Virginia. She was academically gifted, particularly in languages, which would help her master Chinese. She earned an M.A. in Classics in 1861.

4. She was converted from a vehement opponent to Christianity to a faithful Christian in 1859 under the teaching of John Albert Broadus, in Charlottesville.

5. On July 7, 1873, the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention appointed Lottie Moon as a missionary to China. She actually followed her sister, Edmonia, who had been appointed as a missionary before her.

6. She helped institute the contemporary missions policy of allowing furloughs for missionaries. Moon spent 14 years on the field before returning to the United States for a break. Prior to that innovation, missionaries who left their home country were presumed to be leaving forever.

7. Lottie Moon was a vocal advocate for ending the practice of foot binding in Chinese culture. She helped to turn the tide on that barbaric practice.

8. Her letter writing was a means of encouraging missionaries to leave home for the sake of the gospel during her day. They have continued to inspire missionaries to be faithful to God's calling to the present.

9. On December 24, 1912, Lottie Moon died on a ship off the coast of China. She weighed only 50 pounds and died of starvation because she was foregoing food to try to save her Chinese friends and neighbors during a famine.

10. In 1918, the Women's Missionary Union (WMU) named their annual Christmas offering after Lottie Moon, the woman who had strongly encouraged them to start the practice.

Some Resources

Danny Akin's 2007 sermon on the life of Lottie Moon with an exegesis of Romans 12:1: Manuscript and Audio

Christian History feature article on Lottie Moon.

A helpful book, edited by my friend, Keith Harper:

SEND THE LIGHT: LOTTIE MOON (Baptists: History, Literature, Theology, Hymns)

By Keith Harper

Buy on Amazon

Why Churches Should Have Websites

Used in original by creative commons license: http://ow.ly/SxKG4 

My recent relocation to a new city has driven me to a fundamental belief that a church that does not have a digital footprint is failing the community. In other words, in the American context, a church without a website is in error.

To some a website seems superfluous. What does it matter if we are preaching the Word and doing ordinances correctly? A few years ago I might have argued the same thing. However, from the perspective of someone looking for a church home, the lack of a website is a significant failure on the part of a church.

Three reasons to have a website

The first reason it is important for churches in the digital age to have a website is because without a digital footprint it is nearly impossible to find a church. As a newcomer to town I have no idea where some of these small churches are located. I don’t have a phone book and a phone book is insufficient for getting information out in this day and age anyway.

If churches want to be found by anyone who doesn’t live right next door, they need to communicate their presence. The most efficient way to do that is with a simple website.

The second reason for a church to have a website is to provide helpful information. For example, what time does the church meet? Unless the congregation takes out an ad in the phone book (which will likely cost more than a simple website), then having the only marker of the church’s existence be the name and seven digits of phone number in the yellow pages is not very helpful.

Additionally, a website can simply convey what the church believes. Are you a moderate SBC church that refuses to affirm the Baptist Faith and Message 2000? This is good to know so that people can skip over to a biblically-faithful congregation. Also, how does your pastor preach? A visitor shouldn’t have to spend several hours to visit just to find that the pastor uses a text as a springboard for a ramble through a self-help lecture. That time could be better invested looking for a congregation where Scripture is valued and there is opportunity to serve.

It doesn’t take much time or money these days to create a simple website that presents the basic facts and links in some sermon samples (even if they are the best ones). The result is that people know what to expect, where to be there, and you are more likely to get visitors that are more likely to join the fellowship.

A third reason for a church to have a website is to meet the needs of the community. How will the person in the midst of a divorce find out you have a care group to minister to that situation unless you put it online? Maybe through word of mouth, but most people depend on a web search.

How about the ways that your congregation provides emergency aid to the community? Or, if the church does job training or a clothing closet, it is insufficient to expect work conversations to really communicate the resources to those in need. When technology is so inexpensive and ubiquitous, the failure to use it should lead others to question whether the aid programs are intended to be effective.

Stewardship

Although recently someone attempted to tie the existence of church websites to the decline in SBC missions, that tie is tenuous. Perhaps it applies to churches that spend large amounts of money on top of the line sites. That isn’t the point of this discussion.

A failure to have a website is a marker that you really don’t want to have people visit. Whatever your rhetoric is, you don’t want visitors if you won’t provide information about your congregation. This is not just new move-ins to the community, this applies to those in your community that suddenly have a need that drives them to seek out a church.

When a church fails to provide a digital footprint with basic information, it puts the onus on the visitor to figure everything out. As a believer who is required by my contract to join a church, I am forced to do the legwork to find a church. However, if I did not have that driving force, it would be much easier to stay in bed on a Sunday morning than to make phone calls, visit around, and potentially miss the beginning of your service because the church didn’t publish a schedule.

A church without a website is still a church. This isn’t a question of orthodoxy. However, a church without at least a simple website is not stewarding the available technology and resources well. While this isn’t essential to the gospel, it is a gospel issue because it undermines the effectiveness of a congregation in serving the community.

What Value in Assessment in Higher Education?

Used by Creative Commons License with no modifications. https://www.flickr.com/photos/plugusin/8613786252/in/photolist-e8aUy5-oXSyyw-pfnp8i-dtnPX7-dtnNFw-dtnMQU-dtnM4J-dtnLw3-dtnK37-dtnJ57-dtnGvN-dtnFbU-dtnDWw-dtnDeS-dtnCgq-dtnB6G-dtnA5s-9J6bVA-abYZRa-jdgd9P-pVwGX5-9YZ27d-76LBGu-71RCLT-poojZo-c1eNDq-nWxEoV-9Ck4Yb-pExWPX-sDtNRG-8MUYPW-byNmA4-byNmtt-byNmfe-bkTtMs-byNm1r-3kXnX4-cKqoGE-cKqmVj-cKqk57-cKqi99-cKqgmN-9waA97-9YZ2g3-uXtLz3-aneAoj-cgvFZb-bVMM4L-eaxSo4-ancGAt

Higher education is filled with opinions. Some of them are informed. Some of them are well considered. Every issue is debated with rigor, sometimes with adequate research, too. Since there is benefit to novelty among academics, there should be little surprise that there is little consensus on many issues.

Assessment is a popular topic for debate in Higher Ed right now. There is an increasingly analytical bent and demand for evidence by accreditors. This requires additional emphasis on academic assessment. Often increased budgetary expenditures are a natural result of this. As tuitions rise and some universities look for places to cut costs, this leads some to question whether assessment is worth the time and money. One professor has even wondered whether it does more harm than good.

My professional title is Director of Assessment and Institutional Research, so there is little surprise that I am in favor of academic assessment. However, I do assessment because I believe in it; there are other things I could do to make a living.

The Trouble with Academic Assessment

Most of the time when people are frustrated with assessment it is because they are either doing it poorly or over-doing it.

Academic assessment as it is done does not necessarily align with the way many faculty are trained to think. Good academic assessment is a largely pragmatic exercise, which rubs many idealistic, theoretical thinking professors the wrong way. We are trying to look at somewhat subjective qualities in objective terms. How does one measure critical thinking, exactly?

And yet, though assigning a number to a student’s critical thinking (For example: 3 = satisfactory) seems blasphemous to some, this sort of cataloguing is necessary if we are to consider how the curriculum works for the larger body of students. It does not present a perfect method, but it is a useful one if it is not trusted too ultimately or pressed for too great an exactness.

But the main purpose of academic assessment is not to merely get a bunch of numbers so we can declare success or make unnecessary changes. Rather, the purpose is to provide a metric that encourages a feedback loop in the curriculum design process.

THE PLACE OF CURRICULUM DESIGN

To those experienced in curriculum design as a formal process or business planning in the market, an introduction to academic assessment seems altogether too simplistic. Of course you base your curriculum on your desired outcome! However, what is obvious to some people (particularly in the practical disciplines) is much less intuitive for many in more theoretical disciplines.

I will pick on theologians because I am one. It is altogether too easy to sit down when planning a course the first time, particularly as a new professor wet behind the ears, and decide on the order of instruction in a course and the topics covered based on the texts available. (Or, it may simply be because the professor is borrowing his mentor’s notes.) In the case of Systematic Theology, this may be the order in which an author constructed his or her tome, which provides the basic structure for the course. This is a simple way to plan the course, but it assumes that the main purpose of a course is to impart knowledge rather than to change the students’ way of thinking. Often this initial structure is never significantly redesigned from the ground up.

If you ask this theologian what he intends for his students to learn, he will often reply that he hopes they will learn to theologize and think through the data clearly. However, the course is often not structured to impart that skill. This is not due to  ill intention, but due to a lack of planning in the proper manner.

Content is important and should be included. However, when designing a course (and a curriculum), the first question to be asked should be: What are the overarching goals of this unit of instruction? If it merely to learn facts about theology, then following the path laid out in a recent Systematics will be sufficient. If it is to learn to theologize, then different assignments may be necessary and a different approach taken that takes the student through the process of theologizing.

This approach cannot be designed by looking at the list of class dates and dividing the text by week. Rather, the professor must look at those greater goals and build those into the course of instruction along side the content that must be learned.

Some disciplines tend to do this curriculum design process at the course and degree level exceptionally well already. Others fall prey to a “Great Texts” mentality which accomplishes these learning outcomes only incidentally, though sometimes very effectively.

Academic Assessment is a process that helps ensure faculty and departments are asking those big questions and building explicit instruction into their courses for those big ideas they are seeking in students. After all, particularly in a liberal arts context, it is much less important that a student has laid eyes on the right texts and much more vital that they have the skills to handle those texts and the great ideas of life in the future. Academic Assessment can help that.

Dangers of Academic Assessment

One danger is that the formal Academic Assessment process is often run by people like me who are expert in one discipline or none. We can get carried away with the bells and whistles of our processes and begin to look for the right formal steps to be taken and reports to be formatted properly without regard to the true quality of the outcome. Often this is because we (the assessment gurus) don’t know enough about the subject to evaluate the quality of the assessment. (Let’s be brutally honest here.)

This danger can lead to assessment that is time consuming and produces insufficient positive results to justify the professors’ efforts. For sanity, we must have standard formats and processes, but they should be kept simple. The assessment process is a tool. The simpler the tool the more likely it is to catch on and have a positive return on investment.

When an academic gets embroiled into the depths of an assessment process that seems more about form than substance, it provides fertile ground for discontentment and suspicion of the process.

 Once an assessor (i.e., the conscripted professor) is doubtful of the assessment process, he or she is less likely to invest the mental energy to do it well. Assessment becomes something to be gotten through and checked off as quickly as possible. Just say whatever must be said to get the assessment folks off my back!

Doing assessment in this manner leads to mediocre results every time. There is a certain faith in the process of assessment, even with its limitations, that is necessary to make it work. To compare this to physical exercise: if one only half-heartedly does the exercises assigned by a trainer with little attention to vigor or proper form, one is unlikely to gain the desired weight loss or increased strength. However, even imperfect exercises done with a good will tend to lead toward fitness. The same is true of assessment.

Conclusion

My argument, therefore, is that assessment is a valuable tool for sharpening instruction in Higher Education when it is done simply and with good intent.

Assessment certainly will not solve everything that is awry in Higher Ed. It won’t dramatically reduce tuition, increase budgets, or get students to do their work. However, assessment is part of showing good stewardship and demonstrating a good faith effort to shape the curriculum around the desired goals and the needs of the students. It is not a panacea, but a part of the process.

What Does it Mean When the SBC is Cutting Back Missions?

Recently the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention made a huge announcement that should cause a mighty response in the denomination.

David Platt preaching at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fall 2013. Photo from SEBTS archives. See: https://www.flickr.com/photos/southeastern/9606045395/in/album-72157635183464333/

David Platt, current President of the IMB, and author of Radical, had to announce a plan to cut at least 600 employees from one of the largest Christian mission organizations in the world. This must have been an incredibly painful announcement for a man whose life purpose is to see the nations reached with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

As a history lesson, one of the major reasons that the SBC exists is to fund missions. In fact, the Cooperative Program was created in the early 20th Century largely to fund the missions activities of the SBC. Reducing the mission force without some major economic crisis indicates there is something terribly wrong, and that there must have been a loss of focus.

These things should make Southern Baptists begin to question where our priorities lie. 

Some Questions for Consideration

Whenever a crisis like this occurs, it should lead to some introspective questioning. Here are a few that have come to my mind:

• Is the Cooperative Program still viable?
  • I think it is. The Cooperative Program certainly needs to be reshaped somewhat to reduce the amount of money that gets spent for regional organizations that duplicate other parachurch and national denominational organizations. However, the basic method of large association of churches contributing to fund the global missions endeavors is irreplaceable. Having grown up in an Independent Baptist church, the collective sending power of the IMB is a huge improvement to the never-ending circuit of missionaries candidating individually. The CP is a good program and we need to make sure it works in a new era.
• What are the SBC churches funding instead of missions?
  • This is the $100 question. Part of reality is that since the Great Recession, the cost of living has risen while wages for the middle and lower class have largely stagnated. In many ways this economic pressure is due to bad fiscal policies at local, state, and federal levels in the United States. At the same time, I wonder if SBC churches have increased funding for global missions as much as they have funding for local priorities. Or, have they made across the board cuts that have kept more money than absolutely necessary at the local level? Local ministry is important for discipleship and growing healthy churches. However, without funding for international missions, vital ministries that take the gospel where it is currently unavailable will not happen. Local churches need to question their funding priorities.
• Are the funding problems a result of the tragedy of the commons?
  • The tragedy of the commons is the phenomena where things held in group ownership are treated less well than things held for private gain. I believe the current IMB struggles are in part a result of the tragedy of the commons. This is a natural danger of the Cooperative Program; all Southern Baptists don't know missionaries intimately, and our money doesn't fund them directly, so we don't necessarily feel obligated to fund them vigorously (or pray for them diligently). This is a circumstance that local churches as organizations, pastors, and missions-minded individuals in the church will need remedy. They need to raise the alarm, continue to tell the story of missions work, and build the missional momentum to help people engage and feel ownership for international missions conducted at the national level. We need to overcome this is we are to sustain the CP.
• What level of problem is this?
  • If this isn't five alarm fire, it is very close. They aren't shutting down the IMB, but there have been years of underfunding the IMB. If we can't fund international missions--if we can't send the gospel to places it hasn't been heard yet--then we are failing to use the gifts God has given us. We have prioritized our comfort over missional living and sacrificial giving. The man who wrote the book on living a missional lifestyle, cutting back on extras, and getting the gospel to the ends of the earth has announced cuts at a huge missions organizations. This is real and we need to be ready to respond in a big way.

What do we do now?

All is not lost. However, we need to have a gut check at the individual level and as local churches.

What are we spending our money on? What are we living for? Are we aggressive in our funding of gospel ministry? Are we critical in evaluating our personal expenditures? How about our local church expenditures? Are we asking what the gospel purpose in our giving, spending, and living is?

We need to get engaged as a people in giving from the abundance God as provided. We need to keep praying for our missionaries and our denominational leaders. We need to lay foundations of radical living and white-hot gospel focus in our daily lives that spreads the interest to our children and our neighbors.

Individual effort and sacrifice will be necessary if we are to turn the ship. It won't happen in a a few days, but the long term viability of the IMB and the need to spread the gospel demands it. Our faithfulness to God demands it.

An Open Letter from David Platt

David Platt has written an open letter to the SBC to explain the nature and reason for the forthcoming cuts. I have reposted it below:

“Dear SBC Family,

By now many of you may have heard that last week, IMB announced a plan to reduce the total number of our personnel (both here and overseas) by 600-800 people over the next six months. Since the moment this announcement was made, we have sought to communicate the details of this decision as clearly as possible to churches, state conventions, and national entities across the SBC (see this article and this FAQ document, in particular). In the middle of it all, though, I simply want to take a moment to share my heart with you.

This is certainly not an announcement that I, in any way, wanted to make. At the most recent meeting of the SBC in Columbus, I shared with messengers how IMB spent tens of millions more dollars than we received last year. In our budgeting process over the last couple of months, other leaders and I have recognized that we will have a similar shortfall this year, and we are projecting another shortfall of like magnitude next year. In fact, when we stepped back and looked at IMB finances since 2010, we realized that IMB has spent a combined $210 million more than people have given to us. By God’s grace, we have been able to cover these costs through reserves and global property sales. But we don’t have an endless supply of global property to sell, and our cash reserves are no longer at a desirable level for good stewardship going forward.

When staff leadership realized the severity of our financial situation, we knew that we needed to take significant action. We spent hours on our knees praying and at tables discussing potential options for balancing our budget, ranging from sending fewer missionaries to cutting various costs. We poured over financial models and looked at the long-term impact of each of our options. However, with 80% of our budget being devoted to personnel salary, benefits, and support expenses, we inevitably realized that any effort to balance our budget would require major adjustments in the number of our personnel. When we gathered with our trustees at our most recent meeting, the same conclusion was clear. Though board policy did not require an official trustee vote, and though these brothers and sisters agonized over the thought of many missionaries stepping off of the field, there was resolute and resounding recognition across the room that our financial situation required such action.

Some pastors have asked me over this last week, “Why doesn’t the IMB just ask the churches to give more money?” This sounds like a simple solution, but the IMB has been asking churches to give more money for many years. In many ways, we have told the church about our need and called the church to give to meet that need. Here’s just a small sampling of headlines and articles we have published:

· 2008 – “IMB reports cautionary finance news that could have a significant impact on the Board’s work around the world next year.” Later that year, our trustee chair said to churches, “I am sounding the alarm. The IMB budget is under strain to support growth in our missionary force.”
· 2009 – “Economic challenges…IMB anticipating another tough financial year…IMB in budget shortfall crisis [that] could affect 600 positions.”
· 2010 – “IMB lamenting financial declines, trying to balance budget…IMB sending 30 percent fewer long-term personnel than would be sent if there were no financial constraints.”
· 2011 – “IMB having difficulty balancing budget…IMB lowering the missionary force.”
· 2012 – “IMB preparing for another sobering financial report…IMB working through a painfully difficult process of trying to balance the budget.”
· 2013 – “IMB urging for greater support from churches…IMB laments Christian callousness…IMB trustees vote for substantive proposal changes across the SBC.”
· 2014 – Just two months before I stepped into my role, one article read: “IMB must soon come to grips with the demands placed on us by years of declining Cooperative Program receipts and Lottie Moon giving. We will be hard-pressed to continue supporting a mission force of our current number, much less see a greatly needed increase in the number of fully supported career missionaries on the field.”

I share all of this simply to say that we haven’t kept our financial position a secret. By God’s grace, the church has responded in many ways, including various special offerings like “Christmas in August” in 2009 and increased giving to the IMB through both the Cooperative Program and the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering over the last four years. Yet while IMB has been asking churches to give and setting aggressive goals accordingly, the reality remains unchanged: IMB has spent $210 million more than we have been given. Simply put, we cannot keep operating like this.

Do I hope that churches give more to the IMB through the Cooperative Program and the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering this year? Absolutely, and we are working zealously with churches, state conventions, and national entities toward this end. But I want to be crystal clear: I don’t blame the church for putting IMB in our current position. I love the church, we as IMB want to serve the church, and we believe the best way for us to do that right now is by operating within the means provided to us by the church.

Similarly, no blame should be assigned to previous IMB leadership. Previous leaders knew these financial realities, and they put in place a plan to slowly reduce our mission force (through normal attrition and reduced appointments) while using reserves and global property sales to keep as many missionaries on the field as possible. I praise God for the resources He provided to make that plan possible, and I praise God for leaders who chose not to sit on those resources, but to spend them for the spread of the gospel among the unreached. Ultimately, I praise God for the people who came to Christ over these last years because missionaries stayed on the field, and because we used our resources to keep them there.

Yet when staff and trustee leaders alike looked at the realities before us, we realized that plan is no longer viable, for we cannot continue to overspend as we have. For the sake of short-term financial responsibility and long-term organizational stability, we must put ourselves in a position in which we can operate within our budget, which necessarily means reducing the number of our personnel.

Words really can’t describe how much a sentence like that pains me to write, and pained me to communicate last week. For “600” and “800” are not just figures on a page; they are people around the world. For many of you, they are your family, friends, and fellow church members. They are brothers and sisters whom I love, and brothers and sisters whom I want to serve and support. I not only want as many of them as possible to stay on the field; I want multitudes more to join them on the field. But in order to even have a conversation about how to mobilize more people in the future, IMB must get to a healthy financial place in the present.

I hope that all of this information helps give you a small glimpse into why IMB is taking these steps at this time. You can go to the links I referenced above to learn more about the two-phase process we are walking through over the next six months to reduce the number of our personnel. Our aim is to make this process as voluntary as possible, starting with a Voluntary Retirement Incentive, and then moving to an opportunity for other personnel to say voluntarily, “I believe the Lord may be leading me to a new assignment.” As the Lord leads 600-800 brothers and sisters into new places and positions over these days, we want to honor every single one of them with generous support, realizing that the longer we wait to take this action, the less generous we can be.

The comment I have appreciated most from pastors and church members during these days has been, “How can we help?” One way is obviously to give. To be sure, IMB is committed to operating within our means in the days ahead, yet we are praying that those means might increase so that we can stop pulling missionaries off of the field and start sending multitudes onto the field. Indeed, the field is ripe for harvest, and the time is now to take the gospel to those who have never heard it. Further, in light of all that I have shared, I would also encourage your church to consider how you might care for one of these missionaries who will soon be moving back to the United States. I am trusting that our Southern Baptist family will welcome these brothers and sisters with open arms as they integrate into our churches here, making disciples of the nations God has brought to our own backyard.

Finally, and most importantly, I would ask you to pray for the IMB during these days. Please pray that God will provide grace, wisdom, strength, and unity across the IMB family as we navigate the various challenges that we are walking through together over the next six months. Ultimately, please pray that God will use these days to set the stage for this 170-year-old missions organization to thrive for decades to come or until Jesus returns. In this historic coalition of churches called the Southern Baptist Convention, may we strive together toward that end.

For His Glory,

David Platt”

Here are the article and FAQ document that Platt points to.

An Announcement from the Spencer Family

For those of you who haven’t already found out by one means or another, I recently accepted a position as Director of Assessment and Institutional Research at Oklahoma Baptist University. I have resigned my position as Coordinator for Institutional Research and Faculty Support at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and we are moving to Shawnee, Oklahoma in the near future.

I am very grateful for the opportunity I have had to serve at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. It boasts the best campus of the six SBC seminaries and has the most thoroughly embedded fervor for carrying out the Great Commission. Even little things, like hangers on our lamp posts are a reminder that we should be people on the move, taking the gospel to all corners of the earth.

Additionally, there are a number of friends we will leave behind. Of course, since this is a community of transients, many of our friends have already left us behind or were leaving in the near future. That is one of the struggles in living and working in a community like this: we are all on the go.

Of course, leaving First Baptist Church of Durham is heartbreaking. If you ever make it to Durham, NC on a Sunday, you should visit. The preaching is phenomenal, the discipleship model strong, and the concern for reaching the nations is topnotch. We’ve only been there for two years, but I know at least one sermon podcast I’ll be listening to every week in Oklahoma.

This was a difficult decision to make. The opportunity at OBU is great, but we’ve invested the past seven years of our lives in Wake Forest. I will have to finish my dissertation remotely, without the comfort of the Duke, UNC, and NC State libraries nearby for emergency access to resources in environmental ethics. I enjoy working with the faculty and many of my friends at SEBTS. It would have been great to stay on.

However, positions at high quality institutions like OBU open rarely. This was an opportunity that we needed to take. There is a chance for me to use many of my administrative skills to assist OBU through their accreditation reaffirmation. When that is done, I should have the opportunity to teach some. So, off we go.

Because of this rapid transition, I hope that you’ll bear with the Spencer family as we pack up our accumulated possessions and trek off to a new city. Communication may be slow, but we haven’t forgotten.

We will appreciate prayer for endurance as we get through the marathon of moving. Also, for the house to sell quickly and for a good price. In addition, the kids are watching a whirlwind of packing, sorting, throwing out, and home repairs. It’s turbulent enough to move as a child, but we’re doing it in short order, which doesn’t make it any easier. We also want to find a church in Shawnee quickly where we can get involved in ministry, make new friends, and get into a groove as seamlessly as possible. Prayer for wisdom and opportunity there would also be appreciated.

Regarding the blog. Well, it will be intermittent. Something has to give, and the simplest thing to give up right now is blogging and posting links. I hope to pick it up once I get settled.

Thanks for reading and for your prayer.