12 Witnesses

After more than two years of what has become frustrating and painful opposition, Wade Burleson has announced that he will willingly do what the powers that be inside the International Mission Board of Trustees have wanted, called for, attempted and thus far failed: the removal of Burleson from the trusteeship of the IMB.

Several observations.

First, Wade is probably past due for this. He kept trying to work with people who didn’t want to work with him. In the end, if people in authority want to shut you out, they can. The IMBOT can and did. It amazes me that he still desires to INCREASE his church’s cooperative efforts and continues to encourage others to do the same. The more they shut him out, the more he wants to cooperate.

Secondly, I would not expect the IMB to be less under the scrutiny of the SBC, but more. Wade offered to shut down his blog. I suppose they stood on principle in asking that he apologize for intentionally breaking the anti-dissent policy passed last year, and in so doing repeatedly rejected his offer, though it was their cheif complaint. Nevertheless, Wade has exposed that he has gone a long way toward them and they seemed unwilling to move toward him at all. Thus, they’ve finally “martyred” him to the ultimate level and now he is free to discuss the IMB without any restrictions.

Thirdly, as a result of Wade’s freedom from restriction, you might expect the infamous notebooks containing evidence of wrongdoing to surface. I know of just a few tidbits of information contained therein, and they are pretty explosive. Wade, treasuring the SBC as he does, may withhold them. I think this is, and always has been, a mistake. However, contrary to the constant assertion that there was a tight coalition of “reformation” minded bloggers that were structured and in lock step, we never were anything but independent thinkers going in a similar direction - which explains why Wade never listened to me or anyone else (Marty) when we encouraged him (and Ben and CB) to let the people know the truth about what is going on and release his (their) evidence.

Fourthly, there will be a slew of people begging Wade to run for President of the SBC. I think this would likely be a mistake as it would create a race between two galvanizing forces: Wade and Al.(1) It would not be helpful to the convention, and I don’t think he can win. Name recognition alone would carry Dr. Mohler. If another, more palatable option arises(2), Wade will be H. Ross Perot and suck away enough votes to guarantee a win for Dr. Mohler.

Fifthly, I think, despite Wade’s encouragement to cooperate MORE with the SBC, many will choose to cooperate less. That is not to say everyone will leave altogether. Those not happy with the status quo will most likely begin to diversify their cooperative dollars among other networks as well as the SBC and will no longer be satisfied with only sending CP dollars and taking up Special Offerings for SBC mission efforts. As a result, CP giving and the Special Offerings will decline, per capita, though they may continue to slowly rise overall, for a time.

I said it many times over the last several years, but it is still unheeded. In this battle, if “they”(3) win, they lose. To quote Bowden McElroy, “The SBC will survive. What it will look like is not yet determined.”

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1 - While I think Al Mohler is a scholar of the first rate and is highly qualified to be the President of one of our Seminaries, I object to his becoming the President of the SBC in that there is a conflict of interest in his appointing those who appoint those supposed to provide him oversight: the SBTS BOT; he has repeatedly focused on, and spoken out for, things not central to the mind of the SBC: Public School Exit Strategy (frequently dismissed in the form of a resolution at the annual meeting), the idea that a Christian couple’s decision not to have children is “sin,” and the recently revealed piece of information that, although the Southern Baptist Convention was founded and thrives on missions, Dr. Mohler has never taken the Gospel beyond his local context. No, I don’t count appearances on news shows, even nationally televised ones, as mission work. “Speaking prophetically” to our culture is not missions.

2- I do not consider Bill Wagner a viable alternative. He is a Seminary employee, thus raising the Conflict of Interest objection,[edit: Wagner has moved on, as noted in the comment section. My apologies.] He is not well known and I don’t think he stands a chance against almost anyone else. No one from “the other side” is taking him seriously, or they would be trying to discredit him. That should say something in itself.

3 - The “Powers That Be,” the “Inner Circle,” or those who still seek to narrow the parameters of our cooperation to a standard that is comfortable for them, but intolerable to the rest of us.

Pictured above is the market at Sa Pa, a small town near Hanoi in the north of Vietnam. It is one of the things for which the region is most known. In the bottom, left of the picture is a woman selling the fruits of her family’s labors.

One of the reasons that we have been invited into Vietnam by the Communist Government is that Glocal Ventures and Northwood Church are firm believers in bettering the lives of the people to whom they are ministering. The Government really wants to help the people and we can be of assistance to them.

As a result, they are allowing outsiders who are willing to invest and make a real difference in the lives of the poor and the needy. Funny, that. It so happens that this is what Jesus often did and what we ought also to do. It convinced the masses to follow him and, I believe that it is still convincing the masses when done in His name.

One of the ways that we can do that is called Microfinance. In short, it is loaning what we would consider a small amount of money to people who are too poor to qualify for conventional loans. For a loan of $100, a family can begin to establish their own business, creating a product and selling it for a profit. We get paid back the money with a reasonable interest and they are able to lift their lives to something more stable and healthy.

I know that downloading and watching video is a time consuming task, so I won’t give you hours of video, but I do want to show you what I see when I go overseas in just over 5 weeks.

As a result, I have set up to video blog. Below is the opening video, which you can dowload or stream, whichever you choose. I have also loaded it to youtube.com/12witnesses, but the quality bottoms out significantly. Of course, Wordpress and YouTube don’t always play nicely together, so I won’t depend on them to get you the videos.

I intend them to be short and worthwhile. Here’s the index for this one:

• Why I’m doing it
• Future pre-trip posts - tech and travel
• Run Time: appx. 2:31

 

 Vietnam Video Blog Opening [2:31m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

BTW, if you are picking this up in a feed and want to stream the video, click the “enclosure” link at the bottom of the feed. If you want to download it, right click the link and then select the “save as” option in IE and the “save link as” option in Firefox. It is a .mov file which you can import to your iPod, should you care to take me with you. All you have to do is import it in iTunes, right click on it to pop up a menu and then select convert for iPod.

[edit] Future videos will, I hope, be in mp4 format, which is what iPods use, so you can skip the conversion proces as I’ll do it myself. Your Quicktime player (which plays .mov) will play mp4 as well, so you should notice no difference on your computer.

This is different than the Link Load I offered you earlier in the week in that here, you get commentary on “news articles” and not just links to blog articles and interesting sites. Just so you know.

San Jose Mercury News - Sunnyvale homeowners told to cut redwoods that block solar panels

…or… Environmental Activism goes schizophrenic in California, are you surprised?

The Mercury News reports that active environmentalists are in a spat about which one is doing the best for the environment to the detriment of the other.

Make no mistake, there is something in it for everyone. The tree owners want their redwoods and their privacy, while the solar energy proponent wants the savings his arrays provide.

In case you’re wondering if it is worth it to click the article link, here is the silliest sentence in the article:

Kurt Newick, who sells solar systems for a San Jose company, says he loves trees as much as anyone, but he falls on the side of solar energy.

Couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that he makes a living off of solar energy, could it?

By the by… If the San Jose Mercury News wants you to input your info to see the article, try inputting this:

email: dont@bugme.com password: bugmenot1

You’re welcome.

Bug Foggers cause house explosion

Hey, you just can’t make that kind of thing up. It turns out that reading the label on the can would have pointed out that pilot lights would need to be out. That and not setting off SIX cans of the stuff simultaneously. Just how bad could the bugs have been? If they were that bad, wouldn’t you just be better off setting fire to the joint and then starting over? Hey…

Is Dobson’s political clout fading?

Time magazine asks the question as Focus on the Family gets close to endorsing a cadidate - once a necessity for a Republican in America. The article delves into the mix of Mormonism and Evangelicalism as Romney and Huckabee vie for evangelical favor.

Dobson seems to hold Romney out as a possibility and to hold off on Ordained Baptist Minister Mike Huckabee, who once would have been the “no brainer” candidate for Focus on the Family. The difficulty, it would appear, is that Dobson doesn’t want to back a loser:

Huckabee, Dobson cautioned after his Iowa victory, “may not become the Republican nominee.”

Well, Dr. D needs to figure out what Rush Limbaugh tauted years ago. It is not that he sways the masses, but speaks what is on the mind of the masses. If Dobson thinks he can endorse Mitt Romney and expect that Evangelicals in America will vote for him, he is in for the shock of his life. Instead, he will find himself drifting on a sinking dingy, looking back at the masses on the shoreline shaking their heads and wondering what happened to that guy of which they once thought so much.

Reminds me of the Southern Baptist Convention. But that’s a story 1 year, 2 years and 20 years old.

Kite to pull ship across Atlantic

This seems vaguely familiar. Didn’t we replace sailing ships with motorized ships for cargo use? Are we saying that might have been a mistake?

Not dead yet, Chilean man wakes up at his own wake

Is this good or bad?� I might rather be in Heaven, if I were him.� Nevertheless…� I suppose this means they don’t embalm in Chile.� Again, a positive if you are just cold and sleeping.� And thirsty.

These and more pics at my photoblog.

Legendary Cain’s Ballroom.

Hard to find parking downtown.

Several people have expressed some curiosity about us doing missions in Vietnam, because it is still a Communist Country. Some have even asked what our “cover” will be, assuming that Communists wouldn’t let us into the country unless we lied to them.

Those who know me know that I have a problem with deceiving people and I particularly have a problem doing so “for the greater good” - the ends justifies the means, kind of stuff. I was delighted, then, to find that Glocal Ventures & Northwood Church also believe in going through the “front door” by telling the government exactly who we are and what we are doing.

There is a difference in going through the front door. You cannot be given over to the process of evangelism that culminates with someone saying the “sinner’s prayer” and your departure. That process gets you to doing all the things we do in America that we are now finding create a backlash among those we seek to save. We want to do large scale evangelistic meetings and street encounters with people we don’t know.

The government is not likely to let anything like that happen and I think that is probably for the best. It forces those who would take the Gospel to the people to invest in the lives of those people. The government lets missionaries in who make a difference in the every day lives of the people in their country. Making a difference in their lives opens the front door.

In the next few weeks I look forward to sharing with you some of the possibilities that we look forward to pursuing in the lives of the people of Vietnam.

In conclusion, though, let me say that growing up in the 70’s and 80’s in America, during the culmination of the Cold War, had left me with several predispositions about Communism that I have had to deal with in preparing to go to Vietnam. While I think a free trade economy and the American democratic republic government in which I live is far preferable to me, I have also come to the conclusion that despite Ronald Reagan calling the Soviet Union the “Evil Empire,” communists are not evil. At least they are not evil because they are communists. The government of Vietnam wants the lives of the people in their country to improve.

I hope to help and be a witness to the love of God in so doing.

Introducing a not so subtle rip off of Steve McCoy’s Lots-o-Links periodical post. Subtle difference (besides the name): two catagories - Posts and Sites.

Posts

Women in the Beginning - Emily Hunter McGowin kicks off her series which will discuss Women in the Bible and their place among the church. Sure to be a hot topic, as were her posts along similar lines at SBCOutpost, bring your thinking cap. Whatever your position, you will have to defend it with depth, not volume.

Ed Stetzer quotes from the weekend - Rick Thompson gives a litany of powerful quotes from our buddy Ed. This came out a little while ago, but really good stuff.

For the Sake of the Kids - Bowden McElroy comments on Snoop Dogg’s return to his family, eschewing the Hollywood lifestyle.

WSJ on Church Discipline & Wall Street Journal Hatchet Job - Drs. Tom Ascol and Hershael York, respectively, respond to an article in the Wall Street Journal called Banned from Church. One of the responses is more gracious than the other, but I’ll let you determine which is closest to the appropriate tone.

Sites

CampusTech - Especially helpful for those of you still in College or Seminary (or if you are or have a family member who is an educator), CampusTech has phenominal education discounts on tons of software.

Who’s Hosting This? - This site will let you type in a domain name and find out who they are using as a hosting service. If you’re like me, you are curious about who everyone is using. I’ll save you the trouble: I use Bluehost.

Purgatorio is back up and running.

The Linked Word Project is from Bob Jones University and is in the KJV, but is a unique online repository by which you can click on any word in the Bible and get a pop up reference to information from the original language, cross referenced with OT and NT definitions as well as the information from Strong’s Concordance. Under Word Origin, click the number to get detailed info on the root word.

Line Rider online addictive game that some people get way too carried away and produce things like this: Line Rider - Jagged Peak Adventure.

My friend and colleague, Joe Ball - Youth guru for the Kentucky Baptist Convention - has posted some more interesting data about church health. This is not necessarily about “leaving the church” so it doesn’t get that designation. In fact, it is moderately upbeat in terms of solutions rather than simply diagnosing the problems.

These are 7 megatrends in church health given by Thom Rainer, President of Lifeway, to the State Executive Directors last month (Dec. ‘07).

1. The disappearance of 18-24 year olds in church. Rainer said LifeWay Research has well documented the dropout trends of this age group, and while the church has always seen a drop as young people transition from school to the workforce, “there are solutions emerging.”
2. The growth in the multi-venue and multi-campus church. This trend is accelerating, Rainer noted.
3. The desire for deeper biblical doctrinal studies. “Those in our churches are asking for preaching with biblical depth in addition to life application,” Rainer said. In an attempt to grow their numbers, “churches are trying to get by with shallow teaching,” resulting in “shallow churches with shallow members.”
4. The slowdown in the growth rate of mega churches. “Not a decrease in the number of mega churches,” Rainer clarified, “but a slowing in the rate of growth.”
5. The shortage of pastors. Some seminary graduates “don’t see themselves in rural, white collar, or traditional churches,” Rainer noted. “Some states are already seeing a crisis” among traditional churches.
6. The increasing demand for processes. “Churches are asking for help to put resources together,” Rainer noted. “Churches are saying: ‘Don’t just give us products, show how I disciple this young believer.’”
7. The resurgence of the “open group” in church. “Traditionally we’ve called it Sunday school,” Rainer said, but it may not always be called Sunday school today. Regardless of what you call it, there is a resurgence of the open group in church

For these and more pictures, be sure to check out my photoblog.

In the hallway at St. John’s Hospital.

The hidden Chapel you could almost miss.