12 Witnesses

Tim’s question:

CB,

What practical steps do you take to 1) teach it in your church, 2) implement it in your church and 3) implement it in your own life?

Ok, I’m not sure if that is exactly what I want to ask, but it is the best I can do at the moment. Please, pray about it, and answer the “spirit” of the request.

Today, I’m kind of down. I’m stuck in the office, waiting until the UPS guy comes and drops off some stuff needed for Sunday. God would have to send a “person of peace” to my office right now, if I was to reach anyone for the Lord. That happens, but not often.

Tim

Tim,

First it takes time to break away from the mind-set that evangelism is only the job of the pastor or the job of the pastor and a group of “Super Christians.”

One reason that so many churches are not biblical in their evangelism is because so many pastors are unwilling to stay with them and plant their lives in a community long enough to develop a community of faith that resembles a New Testament church.

Pastors walk around with their resumes in their back pocket like a switch-blade knife so they can “whip it out” and use it at a moments notice if they see a better opportunity come along.

That opportunity usually means more people already coming and a bigger check every month.

You must stay with the “stuff” if you are going to develop a community of faith. Teach the gospel. Of course you are going to “preach” the gospel, but you must teach it also. This is the everyday job of the pastor. Teach the Spirit-filled life. Live out the gospel and the Spirit-filled life before your people.

Lead your people to venture out into some type of “cup of cold water” ministry. Train men to be missional. The American church has become too female oriented. Men need the challenge that only a complete missional perspective can produce.

Spend as much time, as you can, modeling a New Testament life-style before men in your congregation and the community you have been placed in by the Spirit.

Introduce people to Jesus as the Spirit brings them into your life.

(A secret here is to be constantly among the lost and unchurched so the Spirit does not have to send a “search party” to get us when he needs us.)

Others will catch onto the “life” as the Spirit of God moves them to pick up the cross and follow Jesus.

Pray constantly. Let me make that clear. Pray constantly.

In your life you must continue to walk in the Spirit. Be sensitive and lay down any and all things that hinder you.

You must live and breathe Jesus and His mastership over your whole being. Be quick to repent of sin and restore fellowship with the Spirit when you fail Him in your daily walk.

When your feet hit the floor every morning ask the Spirit to fill you with His power for the day. Ask Him to use you as His tool to advance the Kingdom.

Tim, sometimes you will get stuck in the office. That happens and when it does it is OK. You are a pastor and pastors do a lot of things that you were not told about in seminary.

Just remember to keep first things first. Pray for opportunities and be ready to walk up to the “gates of Hell” at the Spirit’s call and give them a good shake. It will amaze you as to how many people the Lord will use you to disciple and the peace in your life will be indescribable.

If anyone else has help for us, please feel free to chime in.

There is so much to say about the concept of being missional that I could take a month. I know our friend and great SBC analyst is coming back from camp soon so I will speak to the topic of evangelism and being missional It is at this point I will become radical, maybe even rabid, about some things.

First let me push the kayak into the stream by saying that I do not think that just because a church has a scheduled visitation it is an evangelistic church. I do not think that a church that has a very successful visitation program is necessarily an evangelistic church. Now for the big statement. I do not believe that a church that has large baptismal numbers is necessarily evangelistic. A church that is evangelistic must by nature incorporate the wholeness of the Great Commission. To just go out and visit on a planned night each week is not biblical evangelism.

Now before some “wag” says that I make this statement because my church does not have a visitation, let me say my church has 18 scheduled hours of visitation each week plus I have no idea how many contacts are made beyond that. I personally go out with different people 18 hours weekly making an effort to do what I call cultivating relationships with lost and unchurched people. I will get back to the contacts that I know nothing about later because that is where the “gold is buried.”

I believe that for a church to be missional it must practice evangelism based on the biblical model that Jesus put forth in Matthew 28:19-20. To be missional a church and an individual must see the fact that disciples are to be made in the normal course of one’s life.

Let me illustrate what I mean by translating Matthew 28:19-20 as if it were written in deep Southern Greek and being translated by a deep Southern boy from Alabama.

19 Bein’ as you a goin’ anyhow make disciples among all peoples “everwhere” baptizin’ em in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, 20 and teachin’ em everthang I commanded you. It is a fact that I will be everwhere you can possibly go even to the end of the whole age.

The idea that I want to present here is that a missional person knows his or her purpose in life is to glorify the Father. Therefore, the missional person will be aware of the mandate that has been given him to make disciples as he goes through the journey of his life rather than to “sanction” a few hours a week to visit lost people with a single “showdown” so to speak for the “winning” of their souls.

I have known Bobby Welch for around 20 years. We served as trustees together during the Resurgence. I have great respect for him and I know he has a great burden for lost people. I say that so no one will think I am trying to bash him or his ministry in any way in what I am about to say.

Long before Bobby Welch and LifeWay produced FAITH EVANGELISM, T.W. Washburn along with other Sunday School Board personnel developed the four task of the Sunday School. I think it captures the essence of the missional mind relating to evangelism better than Faith, EE or any of the other plans. The four task of the Sunday School were: reach, teach, win and develop.
Let’s examine each task independently and judge them to determine if they could be incoporated into a missional statement about evangelism.

1 Reach By reaching we mean more than to do a community survey and find out who would make a good candidate for our church membership. To reach is to engage one’s community as it is and become known as a follower of Jesus that has compassion for people. To reach is to cultivate relationships with the lost and unchurched by relating to their life in any way possible within the boundaries of biblical character and conduct.

To reach one must be willing to extend a “cup of cold water” knowing that there is always the risk of rejection. It takes time to reach people in an authentic way. One must be willing to forego the glory of the Monday morning brag session at the pastor’s meeting about how many you “won” last Thursday night. To reach is hard work that takes sacrifice, humility, and prayer and the exercise of the fruit and gifts of the Spirit. To engage your community, society, and world with the story of your life with Christ in a way that makes people see you as real is reaching.

2 Teaching By teaching we mean to share the gospel story from a personal prespective, yet totally biblical in its content. As reaching is living it out, teaching is telling it out in a way that is natural and real rather than as plastic.

When I was a little boy I stayed with my Granny and Granpaw (no D in my Granpaw) for a time. My Granny made biscuits from “scratch”. No other person made them like her. They were good. They were hers and when you ate them you knew two things. You were eating biscuits and it was no one but Granny that made them.

Once Granny was sick so Granpaw bought some canned biscuits for us to eat. He opened the can as instructed. All the biscuits were the same size and thickness. When he cooked them they all looked the same. When we ate them they all tasted like mud. They were not authentic. They were not handmade and there was no love in them.

In teaching my community the gospel I must be personal, authentic, and biblical. The story must be the biblical gospel, but it must be from the love of my heart toward the person I am teaching or it will be “canned biscuits” and taste to them as mud. As I cultivate individuals to share the gospel with the story must spill from the pages of my heart and soul and not be read from a 3×5 card.

3 Win The word “win” is actually a weak word but I will use it here. To win is to introduce a person to Christ. In the process of cultivation I believe that the Holy Spirit opens the door for us to make a proper introduction of our Lord to an individual. The Spirit, Himself, has given the individual the desire to trust us to make the proper introduction.

When we share with a person the claims of Jesus on their lives the Holy Spirit moves upon them with conviction about their need for Jesus as their savior. It is the Holy Spirit that “wins” a person. We make introductions.

The Spirit-filled, missional person makes introductions as the Spirit gives him liberty to do so not as a plan and program demands. He does it willingly and naturally, with love and compassion. He is not looking for “scalps” for his lodge pole. He is a harvester of souls. He is a tool in the hands of the Holy Spirit. He may have a “plan” he has learned, but he will only use it as the Spirit gives him liberty. The missional person is a cultivator of souls and he uses his tools properly and at the right time.

4 Develop. To develop means to disciple. It means to mentor a new believer in his or her new found life in Christ. It is at this point that the truly missional shine and the missional “play like boys” become dull. To develop a believer is hard work. It takes time, love, patience and a willingness to teach and to forgive. There is a need for a tender,yet firm hand. To develop (disciple) some new belivers (my case being one) is like house breaking a bulldog puppy. They can be hard to handle sometime.

It take vision and love ot help a person see that his whole purpose for living is to glorify God. It takes much to disciple a person to the place wherein he or she will die to self and pick up the cross and follow Jesus and alow the Spirit to repeat with them what He has done in them by using another.

True evangelism is that which begins in reaching by engaging and teaching with a presonal element, introducing under the direction of the Spirit, and for no other reason, and the staying to develop the new believer. I believe this is evangelism of the missional type. I also believe this is New Testament evangelism. I also believe there is no other true evangelism. I know we will share in airports and that is good as long as it is the Spirit leading. I also believe that a Spirit -filled person will be called upon often by the Spirit to introduce others to Christ. The missional person is sensitive to the Spirit in this area.

Ther is much more to say here, but I had better rest it for now. Give your imput. Evangelism is worthy of our discusion.

Thus far no one has refuted the statement that a missional person must be converted. Yet, I am sure there are people that traffic in the language of the “missional landscape” that are not converted. Also, a church that would claim to be missional must seek to establish and maintain a community of converted members. There is a great problem with church bodies that have great numbers of Christ “knowledgeable” members that are not Christ “knowing” whatsoever. This is a great weakness in the contemporary church scene. Missional as a process begins with a converted life.

2 Another element in the missional process is one that many established Baptist people and churches refuse to deal with. The presence of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer is often neglected as a teaching in the average Baptist church.

I believe a truly missional person is a person that seeks to live with a daily infilling of the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit that grants to us our spiritual gifts which in turn we exercise to glorify God in our community and society as a whole. Many missional people do not like to use what they call “tribal” words, but I will use whatever word I think best describes my thoughts. Also, I will use biblical words without concern as to the opinions of others. One word I think missional people should use is the word holy.

The Spirit makes us holy. He sets us apart from sin and toward the glorifying of the Father. I am not talking about the establishment of rules and regulations. I am talking about biblical holiness. The holiness that makes us think with the mind of Christ. True holiness is a Christocentric life-style that goes beyond keeping a “score card” of ups and downs on some humanly determined scale of spirituality.

A Christocentric life is one wherein one surrenders his or her life to having the mind of Christ and seeks to obey the indwelling presence of the Spirit as revealed in the Word of God. This is not something mystical. God’s direction for a holy life is revealed in the Word and the Spirit will empower a surrendered person to live holy before God and community.

Therefore a missional person will be a converted person living a Spirit filled life. The missional person lives a Christocentric life that is recognizable to believers and unbelievers alike. The missional person should never have to change “hats” to be identified. The infilling of the Spirit should be so definite in his or her life that the “chameleon persona” of the merely Christianized person is never necessary to establish identity in the daily life of the missional person.

Your thoughts?

cb

First of all I do not like to use many of the “labels” that we so often use as believers. Also I must confess that the term “missional” is not a term of my generation so I handle it with respect to the generation to which it belongs. I have read much about the term and have found that there are many definitions just as there are for many other words in American society.

To illustrate this point I will go completely away from the subject for a moment. I belong to several sub-cultures in this country. (some say I am a sub-species) Most people are very much the same in some relation. I am a knife collector. Among knife collectors most own at least one knife known as a Bowie Knife. You would think that the knives would all look alike. That is far from true. The “looks” of a collector’s Bowie Knife so often depends upon the definitive history of which he or she believes is the correct one for Mr. Bowie’s famous head splitter that went with him to the Alamo. The bottom line is that Mr. Bowie did carry a large knife of some sort and he did use it so very well that both he and the knife became forever part of American history. I thought I would use that illustration due to the fact that we will be in San Antonio for the SBC next June. Hopefully no one will feel the need for a Bowie Knife:-)

Now back to the term missional. I am going to approach this in parts for two reasons. I would like to read the thoughts of others and I cannot write my whole concept of being missional at once due to the fact that I must spend time being just that in my community. I have got to go out and be missional if I am going to define missional. There is the first clue to my definition.

1 I believe that missional is a process much more than a state of being or theological position. The missional process has a most definite beginning. A person must have a regenerated life in order to be missional. I am not talking about a Christianized mentality and socialization. I mean a person must have had a supernatural experience with Jesus Christ wherein he or she experiences the grace of God in a salvation experience. Salvation is a transaction of God in the life of a person. It is a work wrought on a person by the Holy Spirit wherein a person receives the gift of saving faith and his or her life is changed forever. The total being of a person is changed. The heart, mind, body, and soul are directed, for the first time, toward glorifying the Father, by honoring the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit. A missional person must be a convert to Christ. You may think to say that is silly, but it is not. Too many people are simply followers of a Christianized culture and have never been converted to Christ. They use terms like “born-again” without the slightest idea of what that truly means. They think that “taking up the cross” means giving a granny woman a bowl of soup. Missional people give granny women bowls of soup but the soup giving is not what makes the person missional.

We are missional because we have died to self and taken up the cross of Christ and in following Him the taking care of “granny women” comes natural to the supernaturally converted for it glorifies the Father to do so. The beginning of the process of being missional is to be converted to faith in Christ. What do you think? Is it a: Process? Theological Position? State of being? Other?

cb

After 19 years, I am in my last week in Youth Ministry - at camp. It’s also my son’s first week in Youth Ministry.

As always, I am able to blog due to the presence of my handy dandy Treo. However, I do have trouble moderating comments as the Treo does not like frames. This is not to mention that I am a little busy.

Therefore, CB Scott has agreed to patrol my comment section for rules violators. I have just had a spate of anonymous bombers in the last week, and somebody needs to do it.

I have also invited CB to guest post on the subject of evangelism. CB is an intentional evangelist.

We have laughed at the word “missional” misused and abused over the last few weeks. CB is missional but doesn’t use the word. When I spoke to him by phone to ask him to patrol the comment section, he told me he had been cutting up a fallen tree all day. Seems that his church has been ministering to a family who had a tree fall in a storm. Using the expertise God had given him, CB invested a day of hard work into their lives.

I think he has something to share with us on the subject.

More later.

Barry McCarty has been the chief parliamentarian for the last twenty years and has seen a lot.

When I was doing the SBC Primer series, I had some people decry him and say some things that indicated he was possibly unregenerate, at worst, and unfair, at best. Of course others defended Barry as fair and qualified.

Heading into the convention, I was under the impression that the leadership of the SBC was ready to “bend over backwards” in order to be fair. What I saw in the disposition of controversial issues was just that.

Let me give you a couple of examples. During one business session, a young lady (I believe she was in a wheelchair) made two motions concerning the accessibility of the SBC to handicapped persons. She made those motions back to back, without giving the chair the opportunity to deal with them separately. Technically, she was out of order.

The chair and the platform, rather than insist on a technicality - even though they could have done so graciously and still allowed her to make both motions - allowed her to present her motions in the way she wanted. They then dealt with them accordingly.

In the disposition of Wade’s motion, it was complex enough to rule it out of order had they wanted to do so. They also wanted to be fair to the trustee system. In the end, they offered a compromise. They could have stopped there and simply referred it. It would then have taken a vote of 2/3 of the house to force a discussion of the referral. We all know that such a thing rarely happens.

Instead of that, the Committee on Order of Business, in conjunction with the parlimentarians and the President, scheduled a debate on the motion in order to give the convention ample opportunity to express its mind and decide what to do.

When this occured, I contacted Barry McCarty to ask him if he could explain what was going on and the ramifications of potential actions or motions concerning the impending discussion and decision. Barry was very generous with his tightly budgeted time and answered my questions for about thirty minutes - making clear that he was answering procedural questions and not advising me one way or another.

When I thanked him for the time, he said that he hoped I would make clear to all messengers that the parlimentarians would seek to help any messenger as best they could.

I do want to affirm that I felt just that way.

You can read a BP article on Barry’s twenty years with the SBC:

SBC Parliamentarian McCarty reflects on 2 decades of service

Dr. Ronnie Floyd has reversed course in the issue of a minor league baseball stadium. Cox Cable network has been running spots of Dr. Floyd endorsing the stadium twice a day for a couple of weeks. Floyd has now pulled his support of the stadium, citing the stadium plans to sell beer during games.

Now, I don’t want to ascribe any motives, so let me here and now disclaim any knowledge of Dr. Floyd’s thoughts on the subject. It does, however, strike me as odd that anyone anywhere would assume that beer would not be sold at a ballpark. Once again, I state plainly that I don’t drink and do not enjoy being around those who drink too much - people often found at a ballpark.

My curiosity is further peaked by the recent resolution on Alcohol where Southern Baptists “resolved” the following:

Resolved, That the messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Greensboro, North Carolina, June 13-24, 2006, express our total opposition to the manufacturing, advertising, distributing, and consuming of alcoholic beverages;

With the amendment to this resolution concerning leadership within the convention that also passing, it would seem Ronnie had no choice if he were desirous of representing Southern Baptists in accordance with our recent resolution on alcohol.

He certainly had no choice but to pull his endorsement if he ever hoped to serve in elected office seeing as how his CP giving record hurt him so badly last time. Directly disobeying an overwhelming resolution would certainly disqualify him.

You can read the Democrat Gazette news story:

Springdale : Pastor retracts stadium OK over beer sales

[HT: ARB]

[update]

Dr. Floyd clarifies his position concerning the ballpark and alcohol

[/update]

When I preached in view of a call at my new church a few weeks ago, I was asked what kind of visitation program I could possibly bring to enliven outreach. Good question. Outreach programs are hurting in most every church in America.

I think my answer was definitely unexpected. I told them that there were a few that had been modified to some degree, but for the most part, programs were going the way of the dinosaur, so to speak. The fact is, the reason the visitation programs weren’t working wasn’t because the church was sick. It is because programs don’t work in our changing culture.

I told them that we were going to have to quit thinking of sharing Christ as something we do at a particular day and time, and in a particular fashion. In fact, we can do a program, but success in reaching our lost culture when we start oozing our relationship with God out on everyone we know.

Not in an “In your face,” confrontational way. Just being Godly in the lives of others and referencing what you know about God in the flow of conversation - not manipulating that conversation to a Gospel presentation, either.

The easiest way to do it is to simply tell whomever whatever you know about God that you think is relevant. As the Holy Spirit leads, you will say what needs to be said, and those words will fall on fertile ground, which will, in time, produce fruit.

Simply put, we have got to quit programming evangelism and start living as salt and light in our culture.

There, now. A non-political, theological moment here at 12 Witnesses. Who would have believed such a thing?

The ABP has an article about Bill Sanderson’s amendment to the Executive Committee’s motion to rephrase by-law 15 (f) concerning Trustee Qualifications.

The article is right about most things, but wrong in its title and in the declaration that the heart of the Executive Committee recommendation had been stripped from the proposal. In fact, only one item was lost - that affecting IMB BOT Chairman John Floyd. The nepotism clause remained intact and in force for all new nominations.

You can read the full story here:

SBC messengers strip much of anti-nepotism motion

A lot of our (bloggers) motivations have been called into question concerning our actions lately. I gave you more than you probably care to read in my series, “My Journey Through The Resurgence To Memphis.” If you can’t figure me out by now, then I don’t know how much I can help you.

Ben Cole and, to a lesser degree, CB Scott have been accused of attempting to “hurt” Paige Patterson and/or Danny Akin. CB answers these charges in detail:

The Big Lie

Must read. (Please excuse the gracious things he says about me personally. I know it sounds like I am promoting him patting me on the back, but you will have to trust my assurances that I am linking to him IN SPITE of what he says about me.)