Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Learn from David Rogers
If you are really interested in the issues we face as Southern Baptists, if you will resist the temptation to allow your judgment to be clouded by personality or hero worship, and if you will actually TAKE THE TIME TO READ, you will learn tons by reading IMB Missionary David Roger's posts on Historical Documents: Baptist-Evangelical Cooperation in World Missions.
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6 comments:
Wade,
Thanks for the plug!
In a few short hours, I've already had a record day for site hits.
David
Wade,
I went, I read, and I agree! David did a real service with a Great Post!
Thanks for the direction, it was worth the sojourn!
Wade or anyone else,
I could have spent a week studying David Rogers’s posts with all its history. He writes the definition of the church as the BFM2000 states it, and then the guidelines.
Question: If something is unclear or controversial with the definition of the church, then do the guidelines have authority to explain what the definition means? In other words, do the guidelines have more authority than the original definition?
I know a politician could write pages on this question, but I would like a simple yes or no.
In Acts 15, did the letter to the Gentiles have the authority of God? If so, and God does not change, why do we not have those rules in the BFM?
Last but not least, the SBC says the BFM2000 is our doctrinal guideline. And as the question above, does the guideline have more authority than the Bible? If the answer is no, than why not state the Bible is our doctrinal guideline? I will answer my own question: LOOK HOW MANY EGOS WOULD BE DEFLATED.
Rex Ray
Wade,
I find this whole thing about it being wrong to work with non-SBC folks on the mission field very confusing to what I was taught in my younger years. Seems to me that our missionaries used to come home and proudly report that one of our great strengths on the foreign fields was in fact our ability to work with other mission groups and to cooporate with them? My memory serves me in recalling that it was a sign of our resolve instead of a threat to our goal of reaching the world for Christ.
XtnYoda
THE 1689 The London Confession of Baptist Faith should never have been watered down because it was all about GOD’S WORD. Man has so MUCH “PRIDE” “PRIDE” “PRIDE” that they have to water down GOD’S WORD to make themselves COMFORTABLE.
A brother in CHRIST
I think the new Venn diagram is easier to deal with than the former one. I don't know how anyone could really assign any given "cooperative work" to one of five "areas" unambiguously. So I guess merging some of the areas and only separating them with dotted lines is a step in the right direction.
I don't know if we are entering into a "post demonimational" period or not. However, the apparent increase in cooperation (or potential cooperation) between SBC mission activities and other "Great Commission" ministries could be one aspect of this.
My wife and I were members of First Baptist Church for 35 years. But now the same congregation is known as "Church on the Hill". Here is one example of a perception that the name Baptist is no longer relevant in terms of how to position your church in the community.
Personally, I think the fact that the SBC is a union of thousands of Bible Believing which band together to operate seminaries and mission agencies is a relevant now as ever before. Wouldn't it be ironic if "cooperation" led to the demise of "denominationalism"? If so, who would end up footing the bill for theological education and whatever replaces the IMB and NAMB?
I guess the trick is to figure how "cooperation" can take place without significantly breaking down the denominational glue that holds us in the SBC in a common enterprise.
Wade, I agree with you that it is pretty far out to not cooperate because of some so-called "private prayer language". I don't see anything in the Bible condemning this. Also, last time I looked there is nothing in the BFM 2000 concerning this.
Roger Simpson
Oklahoma City OK
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