A Blessing of God's Providence

I was stunned, delighted, and humbled recently when new NAMB president Geoff Hammond asked me to preach at his commissioning service October 8 at the Eagle's Landing First Baptist Church in McDonough, GA. Signaling an appropriate change in culture at NAMB, the new president is eschewing an "inauguration" in favor of a "commissioning." Furthermore, the president's commissioning will not be a separate service, as though it focused on him, but will be a second part of a commissioning service in which missionaries and chaplains serving around North America will be formally sent into their places of ministry.

I confess that I feared the NAMB Presidential Search Committee might go the usual route of choosing a megachurch pastor, regardless of his knowledge of missiology, to lead our domestic mission efforts. When I heard that the committee had chosen Geoff Hammond of the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia as our new President, I was elated.

I can't say that I know Geoff well, but I can say that all I know I like. I preached twice at the SBCV annual convention while he was there and had some wonderful interaction with him. I was especially thrilled by the SBCV church planting strategy. Once when I was at their convention, just before I preached they honored a Hispanic church planter who had been shot in the head by someone in the housing complex where he ministered. Through a translator he told his anglo brothers why he returned to his place of ministry as soon as he got out of the hospital. That was the most electric missionary report I have ever heard. Geoff Hammond had a large role in creating that atmosphere and direction.

So with a great deal of excitement at his election to the office, I was elated when he asked me to preach the Word of challenge and encouragement that will mark the commencement of his leadership.

In addition to telling my wife and sons the good news, I had one other special family that I knew would feel my joy. Steve and Sheena Grissom were students at Southern and attended Highview Baptist Church during the three years that I shared preaching duties with Kevin Ezell, my close friend. Kevin would preach the first two services at the Fegenbush campus, then while he would go preach at the East Campus, I would preach the 11AM service at Fegenbush. Once a month we would switch. No church family could have received a substitute for its pastor more warmly than did those wonderful folks at Highview.

I got a lot of encouraging words of affirmation from the congregation, but none were more significant than the one I got that introduced me to Steve and Sheena. The first time I ever heard from them, they wrote to tell me that they were about to name their firstborn son after me. A close friend who pastors in Trinidad has named his son (now 15) after me. My oldest friend, Mike Cooper, for whom my son is named, gave his third son my name as his middle name. That is a great honor when parents give the name of a friend to their child--especially if that name is as wierd as Hershael--but it is doubly so when they do it for the reasons that Steve gave in that email. He told me that he and Sheena attended the third service at Highview and, though he had never had me in class, he was a student at Southern. He explained that God had used my preaching in their lives and in their marriage and, oddly enough, they actually LIKED my name. They knew that Sheena was going to give birth to a son and they were going to call his name Hershael.

Sure enough, when Hershael was born his grandfather made his own wrappers for Hershey chocolate bars and turned them into "Hershael" bars, distributing them among friends the way some share cigars. I even still have one of those. A couple of years later Steve finally registered for one of my preaching classes, and in the interest of full disclosure but with tongue firmly in cheek I told the class that it didn't matter what Steve Grissom did, he was going to get an A from me! After all, I explained, I can be bought--I'm just not cheap. One's firstborn son should be a sufficient price for a grade, right?

Steve and Sheena became NAMB missionaries and were assigned to the maritime provinces in Canada. They are currently serving in St. John's, Newfoundland and doing a great job. Their website tells a bit more about them and features pictures of their (now) three beautiful children, including the brilliant child who bears my name.

So when I got their monthly email newsletter last week, I wanted to write them back as I often do and remind them that I am praying for them and proud of them. I was delighted to read the great report of the mission teams that helped them this summer and of the souls that have been saved. I also included the news that I knew they would appreciate, that Dr. Hammond had invited me to preach at his commissioning service.

Within hours Steve wrote back:

I am not sure if you knew this but we are going to be in Atlanta for the commissioning of Geoff Hammond, the new NAMB president, because we are being commissioned that night as well. We were supposed to have been commissioned a couple of times but the dates never worked out so that is why we will be in October.

Is not my Father wonderful to drop purposeful handfuls of delightful blessings in my life?

A Civil Tone, A Sanctified Tongue

(In light of recent comments on SBCOutpost, I am republishing the entry that I wrote in October of 2006)

I confess an ambivalence about the value of blogs. While a blog allows creativity, an exchange of ideas, and an opportunity to encourage and to teach, it also hides inherent temptations. Most obviously, blogging is inherently ego-centric. It's MY opinion about what matters to ME and what I want others to think. It provides that little voice inside my head that constantly lies to me that I am so much more than a servant to infect others, too.

I am often dismayed by the carelessness with which words are used in some blogs. People are labelled, motives implied, accusations hurled, faults exposed, and questions raised, often with a smugness and a self-righteousness that forgets we are only servants, unprofitable servants at that. Who am I to judge another man's servant?

I don't mind disagreement. My former students Joel Rainey and Paul Cooper publicly disagreed with my defense of the IMB policy on baptism, but they did it kindly, graciously, mindful to distinguish between their love of me and their rejection of my arguments. Our disagreements pale in comparison to our love and respect for one another. Unfortunately, that kind of brotherly love and kindness often disappears in the blogosphere.

Jesus was straightforward in Matthew 18. If you have something against your brother, go to him. Don't write him a letter, and certainly don't take your concerns to others first. Go to him. Love him. Paul reiterated this teaching in Galatians 6. If a brother is overtaken in a fault, you spiritual ones restore him.

Many blogs fail to exhibit that attitude at all; others may not be so bold, but they are quick to link to the outrageous claims of another, saying something like, "Bart Clueless has an interesting post on latest controversy at Outback Seminary. Check it out here."

Blogs are unmoderated, unchallenged when one is writing. Though readers can respond later, they can't really temper what was originally written.

I have always believed in the power of meeting with people face to face, looking them in the eye, and lovingly telling them the truth. Blogs make us believe we have done that, when in fact we have not. When we post a disagreement with someone, we aren't going to them in love, we are telling an invisible audience what we think. Blogs encourage cowardice. Like an intellectual pornography, venting my concerns to a blank screen that is available anytime I want it is easier than finding the courage to relate to someone personally.

Furthermore, when I go to someone with an issue, I sometimes discover that my information or my impression was completely wrong. I got mad at a certain seminary president once over something trivial. After I went to him and vented I was embarrassed to discover he didn't even know about the thing that had bothered me so terribly. My anger was completely misdirected. What if I had taken my concerns to the internet? I would have wronged him greatly.

Words can't be taken back. They have an incredible power to uplift, encourage, guide, and motivate. On the other hand they can wound, stab, mislead, and defeat. Once they are out there, you can't take them back even if you take them down.

Blogs can be a distraction. They make us think we are doing ministry when in fact we are only talking about it. They deceive us into believing that we are participating in the process when all we have done is criticize the process. Reading them for hours at a time might widen our rears but never deepen our souls. If I can write about how little the SBC is doing to help the poor, I don't have to go work at a soup kitchen, right? I can share my views on pastoring even if I have never grown a church. I can criticize the preaching of others though no one is really listening to my own sermons.

This is a dangerous dance with ego.

Every Christian blogger needs to read 1 Corinthians 13 and then take an honest look at every word he or she writes. Do my words fulfill 1 Corinthians 13? Am I doing it in love? We need to disavow personal attacks, the judgment of motives, bitterness, ungodly anger, even an unchristian tone. Our words must have the effect of edification, not merely pontification.

Micah Fries No Longer Editing SBCOutpost

Micah Fries announced today that he will no longer edit SBCOutpost.

Here is my response to his article explaining his decision:

Micah:

I don’t think I have had the privilege of meeting you, but I wish you the best. When the site was launched, one of your regular contributors asked me if I would write some pieces, which I fully intended to do. My initial tardiness in actually doing it was due to my own busyness–mission trips, church life, preaching, etc. But when I got around to actually doing it, I checked out the site to see how it was doing. Believe it or not, I am very sporadic in my blogspotting. Like much of my life, it tends to come in “fits” to use the southern vernacular.

When I finally got around to reading it, I was stunned to see that the tenor and tone of the discussion had not changed at all. For all the hype about taking down individual sites and metamorphosis into something else, I saw much of the same vitriol and sarcasm that I had read previously. Contrary to the headline on your farewell piece, change was NOT the only constant.

I can only say I grieve over this. We need a way to have intelligent, gracious, and Christ-honoring disagreements without it devolving into personal attacks and character assassination. I was hopeful that SBCOutpost was going to be that place. Where can well-intentioned Southern Baptists engage each other on ecclesiological or missiological matters?

Dwight McKissic and I recently had a three-hour lunch. When it had ended, he still believed in a private prayer language and I still believed that what he does is a learned behavior of human will, but what changed is that we grew to value and love one another more. We know and trust the other’s heart. We spoke as fathers, pastors, observers of culture and not merely as two guys with a disagreement about tongues.

I had hoped that SBCOutpost might actually help and encourage that kind of encounter, that it might be the online place where Baptists come together in honest disagreement or discussion of secondary and tertiary issues without ad hominem attacks and questions of motive. I am convinced that those agency heads who initially gave their endorsement were actually endorsing that ideal. Unfortunately, it became apparent to many people that this was not how it turned out.

I applaud your decision. Church and family are the two institutions that God established, and you are right to invest your time in them. May God bless you as you change emphases and may He enable us to reflect His character and Spirit in all we do.

Hershael W York

Buck Run Baptist Church and Missions

A church will never be mission minded unless they truly believe in the lostness of humanity. They might be ministry minded, but they will never have a passion for souls unless they are convinced that everyone who has not trusted in Christ is condemned already. Preaching on humanity's depravity and alienation from God is a central task for a pastor because so much else depends on it.

This summer the moderate-sized church I serve (we run about 600 in worship attendance) had mission teams in Romania, South Africa, Brazil, Puerto Rico, and Bowling Green, KY (which is not a foreign country, no matter what anyone says). I am honored to serve a church with such a great zeal to reach the lost.

Kevin Hash, pastor of Burton Memorial Baptist Church in BG has a great slide show of our team's work with his congregation. With thanks to the Lord for their impact, I share it here, too.