The Real Problem in the SBC is Formulaic Evangelism that is Cultish and Not Christian

When the woman with the issue of blood reached out and touched the garment of Jesus, "power" (KJV: 'virtue') flowed from the Christ to the woman and she was instantly healed. When the blind man needed sight, Jesus put spittle in His eyes and the man saw "men as trees walking." Jesus then put additional spit in his eyes, and the blind man was progressive healing was completed. When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead he shouted an imperative and the dead man's name -- "Lazarus come forth." But when Jesus raised the little girl from death He gently took her by the hand and quietly commanded, "Little girl, arise." When Christ fed the five thousand His disciples reached into the baskets and perpetually pulled out the meat and bread. However, when Jesus turned the water into wine, unknown and unnamed servants drew the newly fashioned wine from ceremonial water barrels. When the lame man was lowered through the roof, Jesus forgave the man his sins, and only then healed the man of his lameness to correct the misconceptions of the Pharisees and to prove the lame man's sins were actually forgiven. On the other hand, when the crippled man at the Pool of Siloam found himself laboring under the mistaken belief that angels stirred the waters of the pool and the first person into the pool after the stirring would be miraculously healed, Jesus neither corrected the misconceptions nor used the healing to proclaim His power to forgive sins. When Jesus Christ transformed the lives of sinners during His earthly ministry He sometimes spoke during the healings. At other times Jesus healed silently.  Jesus would sometimes bring healing immediately and instantaneously, but at other times He would heal progressively. Jesus sometimes allowed people to publicly rejoice over His power, but at other times Jesus demanded that those He healed remain silent about Him. 

The power of Jesus Christ to transform broken lives cannot be boxed and bowed in any religious ritual that looks the same every single time.

There are some independent, fundamental Southern Baptists who have left the gospel. They have, for some reason, concluded that the only way Jesus can transform a life is through 'raising a hand' to express a willingness to be saved, to pray a 'sinner's prayer' as a testimony of that willingness, and then 'walking an aisle' during a worship service to 'publicly declare your private prayer.'  The notion that people who struggle with sin in their lives and are in need of a Savior are somehow cured by following this peculiar ritual borders on cultic. There is a 'common language,' a 'common experience,' a 'common ritual,' etc... Check out the definition of the word 'cult' and you will see that it is the root word of 'culture.' Southern Baptists have developed a 'culture' of ritual that is ultimately anti-Scriptural and anti-Christ. It makes no difference that there are good motives in the leaders who continue to enforce the ritual upon unsuspecting men and women. Good intentions don't count. When you replace the Person of Jesus Christ with a process, you have lost the gospel. When you cause a sinner to trust in a ritualistic service and not the Risen Savior, you have made the religious convert twice the citizen of hell.

Massive damage has been done in the Southern Baptist Convention through both children and adults being led to believe that their salvations are tied up in something they do rather than in Person and performance of Jesus Christ on their behalf. It is the righteous life of Christ, the substitutionary death of Christ at Calvary, and the resurrection of Christ from the grave that is to be believed. There is power in the cross. "Asking Jesus into your heart" in a formulatic prayer emphasises a prayer ritual. Believing in what Jesus Christ has done for you as your Savior is transforming faith. Faith in Christ saves, not faith in a ritual. Ritualism in Southern Baptist circles is more damaging than ritualists can ever perceive. Dishonor is given to the name of Christ when our evangelism short cuts the work of the Holy Spirit in conviction, illumination and conversion. Southern Baptist ritualistic evangelism is more damning than an open denial of the gospel. To seek to convince any sinner that a religious ritual magically conveys salvation,  instead of patiently and lovingly explaining the message of the good news in Jesus Christ and urging the hearer to simply believe on Christ, is turning the gospel of Christ's kingdom into a carnival sideshow at best or a spiritualized death chamber at worst.

We have more than a few independent, fundamentalists within the Southern Baptist Convention who are attempting to identify problems we have in the SBC in terms of evangelism.  Until these highly formulaic evangelists turn from their destructive ritualistic methods, their words are empty and powerless.

A Fascinating Conversation on Sharing Christ with Woody Allen While on an Airplane

Last year World Magazine published an article that contains a conversation between Christian intellectual and historian extraordinaire Eric Metaxas and Richard Land. Both men are fans of Woody Allen movies.

I have long had this gnawing sense in me that evangelism among Fundamentalists has something inherently wrong in terms of methodology. Many "evangelicals,", some even in the Southern Baptist Convention, will yell and scream the Word of God to lost people -- acting as if the quoting the Bible will bring about a change in the hearer. There are even some commentors on this blog who are in the habit of telling others they are "going to hell" or have "never been saved" or are "in need of Jesus" and glibly quote a Bible verse as if making some kind of shocking statement and backing it up with words from Scripture will lead someone to be converted. It reminds me of street preachers who yell "REPENT" to passerbys and then shout "JESUS IS THE WAY THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE" as if somehow, almost magically, those words will bring salvation.

In the interview between Richard Land and Eric Metaxas (who by the way, is the author of the new fantastic biography on Dietrich Bonhoeffer), Land asks Metaxas how he would share Christ with Woody Allen were he to sit beside him on a plane. The first paragraph of Metaxas' answer is worthy of your close examination.

I have to somehow figure out how to connect with him. . . . If you come across as morally superior, that’s unbiblical, that’s wrong, it’s a lie, so you’re confused. But also you’ll push the person away. You’ve got to find a point of connection, otherwise they won’t hear you. If you walk around New York you might see someone, semi-homeless, almost always from out of town, with a hat and a Bible “preaching the word” on the street. Nine times out of 10 they are not preaching the Word any more than Satan was when he was quoting the Bible to Jesus in the wilderness. The words are not magic. Some people will respond, “The word of God will not return void,” and yes, the capital-w Word of God, the Logos, will not return void—but the words of the Bible can certainly return void unless they’re anointed by the Holy Spirit. Many people think that if they just spew out Scripture or something that people are hearing them, but it’s not true. Jesus never did that. He always connected with everyone around him.

Well stated, Eric. Would to God we worked on our connections with people instead of coming across as morally superior.

In His Grace,

Wade

Why It Is Absolutely Unnecessary to Make a Person Feel Conviction of Sin

Many conservative evangelicals, including Southern Baptists, want to ensure that the world knows it is guilty and going to hell. The philosophy that drives our evangelism is "make sure all people know they are guilty sinners before we ever give to them the good news of Jesus Christ." For this reason, the starting point and greatest emphasis in evangelism for many conservative Christians  is the universality of sinfulness. Or, to put it more precisely, the conservative Christian seems more concerned that the sinner knows he's a sinner than he is that the sinner sees the glory and goodness of God in the person and work of Jesus Christ. The idea clung to by conservative evangelicals is that "the law" must condemn before the Lawgiver can save. This leads the soul winner to bypass proclaiming the goodness of God in the risen Christ  until the sinner has been worked over really good with the law and to produce the feeling of  condemnation. Sounds legitimate, right?

Well, not so fast. One of the reasons I absolutely love the heritage given us by 18th century Baptists is because they held to a radical emphasis on simply preaching and proclaiming Christ--leaving the work of conviction and conversion to the Spirit. You can't read the old works of our forefathers without being saturated with the goodness and grace of God in Christ Jesus. We Baptists have historically been supremely Christocentric. Our ancients were not as concerned that the sinner knew and felt his sin as they were the sinner realized experientially the goodness of God in the person of Jesus Christ. This is how they put it in the First London Confession of Faith (1644):

Article 25 in the The 1646 London Confession of Faith

The preaching of the gospel to the conversion of sinners, is absolutely free; no way requiring as absolutely necessary, any qualifications, preparations, or terrors of the law, or preceding ministry of the law, but only and alone the naked soul, a sinner and ungodly, to receive Christ crucified, dead and buried, and risen again; who is made a prince and a Savior for such sinners as through the gospel shall be brought to believe on Him. John 3:14,15, 1:12; Isa. 55:1; John 7:37; 1 Tim. 1:15; Rom. 4:5, 5:8; Acts 5:30,31, 2:36, 1 Cor. 1:22,24.

The starting point for these 18th Century Baptists was the goodness of God in Christ, not the sinfulness of man. Christ fulfilled the law of God. The law and the prophets in the Old Testament all pointed to Christ. The law was never given to drive a man to be righteous in himself, but rather to drive the sinner to faith in the Lawgiver to provide a righteousness that comes from outside the sinner's own obedience. The feasts, the Sabbaths, the festivals, the sacrifices, the laws of Israel, the Temple, the priesthood, and all the other important features of the Old Covenant were realized in Christ. With the establishment of the New Covenant, signed and sealed by the blood of Christ, the Old Covenant faded into oblivion because it possessed a fading glory, but the goodness and grace of God in the person and work of Jesus Christ has an eternal glory (I Corinthians 3:7-18).

So the next time you hear a Southern Baptist yell and scream and berate the sinner with words of judgment and condemnation, please know that the he/she is neither speaking in a manner that focuses the listener on the centrality of Christ and His goodness which leads sinners to repentance, nor is he/she being true to his/her heritage as a Baptist.

If one objects, "But Christ spoke harsh words of condemnation to the Pharisees in Matthew 23!" I respond: Christ reserved His words of condemnation to the religious who deemed themselves righteous and far superior to sinners. Were we conservative Christians to be biblical in our evangelism we would do two things:

(1). We would always proclaim the finished work of Christ to sinners while showing them grace, kindness and love while they are sinners--for it is the goodness of God and the Spirit alone (not the law) that leads sinners to repentance, and
(2). We would never complain when the media, the world or cultural liberals ridicule and condemn Southern Baptists for what they perceive as our self-righteousness because self-righteousness is the very thing Christ Himself condemned the Pharisess for having.

Isn't it odd how we get things reversed? We want to yell and scream at the world for its sin, and yet we also get angry and feel the victim when the world yells and screams at us for our self-righteousness. Maybe if we simply loved sinners and proclaimed Christ all the shouting would stop.

In His Grace,

Wade

Every Believer a Witness - A Personal Testimony

This past Sunday morning through Wednesday night our church hosted Dennis Nunn and Every Believer a Witness. Hands down, in twenty-five years of ministry, this past week did more to encourage our church family to be faithful in witnessing to others than anything I have ever before experienced. From 1500 people on Sunday morning, to the several hundred people who came back for each evening 6:30 session, there has developed within our church family this past week a culture of excitement about sharing Jesus. Dennis was funny and engaging, our people were captivated, and by Wednesday night they had learned how to naturally and easily share Christ with others - by simply relating their own story of being touched by Christ Himself. The blind man in the gospels declared, "This one thing I know, I once was blind but now I see." The believers that make up our church family are acting like that blind man.

Rather than give details of what we learned through Every Believer a Witness, allow me to tell you of three spiritually blind people who came to see their need of Christ and publicly shared with our church this past week their own stories.

The San Diego Police Officer

On Sunday night after we learned how to tell others our personal story of our life before Christ, how we came to meet Christ, and our life after Christ, Dennis asked for someone who had never spoken publicly in a church setting to share his or her story.

A fifty year old woman about midway back stood and told us her story. It is impossible for me to write down all she said and to do justice to what we heard that night. We all sat transfixed as this woman named Cheryl, who had just recently begun attending Emmanuel Baptist Church, explained to us how she had met Christ in February of this year. For years she had worked as a San Diego "cop" and had grown hard, cynical and bitter. She saw so much evil, so many wicked things, that she had closed her heart and mind to any concept of God. How could there be a God? - there was just too much evil in the world. Yet, after a medical retirement from the SDPD, she had moved to Oklahoma with her husband to work in the oil fields and God had pursued her. After hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ through the testimony of other believers she had come under conviction herself. She surrendered her life to Jesus Christ and her placed her faith in His death and resurrection. There were many tears as she shared the specifics of her story and how her life had changed since meeting Christ, and at one time she apologized for being so emotional. It was then that Dennis said something I'll never forget - "When God squeezes the heart, the juice comes out the eyes." God was squeezing a ton of hearts that night.

The Wealthy Businessman

On Tuesday night a man who owns his own business that employs three hundred people, and who himself had attended Sunday morning's service, stood and told us his story. He shared how he had allowed money to become his god, how he had been unfaithful to his wife, was going through a divorce, but his own 14 year old son had been talking to his father about repenting of his lifestyle and trusting Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. Through many tears, the businessman father shared with our church that just a few hours earlier he had given his life to Jesus Christ. He asked his 14 year old son to stand and publicly thanked him for being a faithful witness of what Christ could do for his father. The businessman will be baptized at our baptismal service at Ski Lake next month.

The Single Young Lady

On the very back row of one of our evening services, a young lady stood and described how she had longed for somebody to love her, and absent the kind of love that satisfies the soul, she had turned to alcohol and sexual promiscuity. Through the faithful testimony of a believer, the young lady had come to discover that her needs could only be met through a personal faith relationship with Jesus Christ. She described how she had placed her faith in His death and resurrection and how her life had changed since believing in Christ. Again, I cannot give her story justice in this blog, but what I want you to understand is that people like this stood before hundreds of people during worship services and shared their faith in Christ because they had been taught how to share their stories - "This one thing I know, I once was blind but now I see."

Throughout the week we learned practical ways of sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with servers at restaurants, neighbors on the block, co-workers, friends and complete strangers. During the evening services we had testimonies of how God was moving through witnessing to others. Every Believer a Witness is not a new program. It's not a new "method." It is simply getting God's people excited about bragging on Jesus.

And it works.

Two things I wish to encourage those who read this blog to consider:

(1). First, if you are in a position to invite Dennis Nunn to come to your church to lead out in Every Believer a Witness - do it. Contact him at 1.866.888.8589. Your church will never be as excited about witnessing as they will be by the end of the week - and it's not something they have to do - it is something they are EXCITED and WANT to do. Dennis is a staff evangelist for FBC, Woodstock, the church that is pastored by the President of the Southern Baptist Convention President - Johnny Hunt. He will help your church whether it is big or small, metro or rural, traditional or contemporary. Sharing Jesus transcends all those things.

(2). Second, a few have remarked on other blogs that I am moving "leftward" theologically - at least in one case it was because they learned I am the Friday night keynote speaker at the New Baptist Covenant Conference in Norman, Oklahoma on Friday, August 7th, following Jimmy Carter's keynote address on Thursday night. Rather than defend myself against the "leftward leaning" accusations, just let me simply say that after I have spent one week observing the Spirit of God producing some incredible conversions to faith in Jesus Christ through the faithful sharing of the gospel by my church members at Emmanuel - I no longer care that others may accuse me of leaning "leftward."

I know my heart, and if the excitement I feel in seeing so many conversions to Christ- and knowing that we will be baptizing between 50 and 100 people at our baptismal service on August 9th - if that is what it means for my heart to "lean leftward," then give me more leftward leanings! :)

In His Grace,

Wade Burleson

Where Do We Go From Here? by John Blanchard

Those of us interested in the conversion of souls through faith in Christ are always looking for well written tracts that succinctly articulate the gospel to the lost. For years our church has exclusively used Ultimate Questions, a tract written by Christian apologist and author John Blanchard. Over fifteen million copies of Ultimate Questions have been sold.

Next week Evangelical Press will release in the United States the tract Where Do We Go From Here?, written by the bestselling Christian author John Blanchard. The tract is 40 pages long, very well written, and is the absolute best gospel tract I have read in terms of articulating the gospel for a person facing impending death.

Let me encourage you to read the information about the tract and order at least 100 copies for your evangelistic efforts at your church. Our church will be ordering them by the thousands and will leave them in hospital rooms, jail cells, and in the brochure packets that tell people about our church. In a day when the gospel is often presented in a cartoon or puerile manner, we should be grateful for an indepth, scholarly, but readable presentation of the good news by John Blanchard.

I Would Not Have Sinned, Except for the Law

Some Southern Baptist leaders believe that the way to stop believers from straying into sin, or to keep church members living lives consistent with personal holiness, or to establish churches with a worthy 'Baptist Identity,' is to lay out for Christians 'the law' of proper behavior. Following the articulation of 'the law' (whatever it may be from church to church), comes the use of threats (see picture below) to keep Christians from violating the laws of the church. In this manner, some Southern Baptist leaders seem to feel comfortable that they have done all they can to perserve the purity of God's kingdom. However, in my experience, such behavior exhibited by church leadership contradicts the beauty of the gospel as an internal change of heart. To demand conformity through outward pressure is a tactic of religious cults, not Christian grace.
Years ago a young man named Eric was driving by the church I pastored in Tulsa. He had a pistol underneath the front seat, an open container of beer in the cup holder, and was on his way to an open field where he would drink himself to drunkenness in order to have the courage to commit suicide by shooting himself in the head. As he drove south on Sheridan Road he saw our church sign that said, "Prepare to Meet Thy God." The words so rattled him he turned into our parking lot and prayed, "God, if you are sending me a sign, let someone be inside this church to help me." The Lord answered his prayer.

Eric came into our offices and our Worship Pastor began to talk with him about knowing Christ. I was soon called and within an hour we had the privilege of seeing the Holy Spirit regenerate Eric's soul, with the end result of Eric trusting Jesus Christ as His Savior and Lord. The transformation was enormous. Eric was excited about his new life in Christ and when we explained the purpose of baptism, Eric committed to be in church Sunday to make known his faith in Christ through believer's baptism. We explained that at the conclusion of my sermon, he would need to come down the aisle to be introduced to our church and he would be baptized later that night.

Sunday morning came and I closed the message with an invitation to make public the work God had done, or was doing, in the listeners' lives. No sooner did our Worship Pastor begin singing when Eric came running down the aisle, and in King James language, he came walking and leaping and praising God. When the appropriate time came I introduced him to our church. "Ladies and gentlemen, I want to introduce you to a young man who this week was intent on killing himself, but God has intervened. This is Eric . . ." As I was speaking to the crowd I turned to look at Eric and to my horror, I saw Eric was wearing a Budweiser Beer T-Shirt that said, "Budweiser, King of Beers."

I knew some of the deacons would be upset. Sure enough, after church one of the older deacons came up to me and said, "Pastor, did you talk to Eric?" Acting ignorant, though knowing full well what he meant, I said, "About what?" "Did you tell him he ought not be wearing that beer t-shirt in church? It ain't appropriate."

I took a deep breath and said, "No, I didn't. He has just come to faith in Christ. If we begin to tell him what he can't do, shouldn't do, ought not do, etc . . . we quench the work of the Spirit by imposing a law. If we were to speak to him about the t-shirt, and he were to stop wearing it, he will confuse regulations of a religion with the reality of a relationship. Let's love him, get to know him, and encourage him - but let's stay away from the 'should nots' of religion and give time for his relationship with Christ to develop."

I can't say my deacon fully understood what I was saying, but to his credit, he listened quietly - and walked away without a response. We baptized Eric that night and the next Sunday Eric came to Sunday school wearing a 'Coors' t-shirt. The next week he came with a Michelob Light t-shirt. The following week he came to church wearing another beer t-shirt.

Eric was a beer t-shirt collector.

It was not easy staying quiet. Many were tempted to say something. I might have said something if the Bible addressed the subject, but nowhere in the sacred text does it say, "Thou shalt not wear a beer t-shirt to church." Eric himself had no idea that some people might be 'offended' at his clothing, and when a handful of church members came to me to talk about Eric's Sunday dress, I asked them if they were personally offended with this new Christian wearing beer t-shirts. Those who spoke to me about it, to a person, never said they were personally offended, but there was some, nebulous person 'out there' who might be. I told them when they could introduce me to this mysterious, offended person, whom I had not yet met, I would talk to Eric. Until then, our love for Eric would cause us to love him where he was in his walk with Christ.

About the fifth Sunday Eric came to church wearing a new t-shirt. It was a t-shirt with a Christian logo. He had found a Christian t-shirt store and, prompted by the Spirit, Eric purchased several t-shirts with a Christian message. That Sunday he had traded in his "Budweiser: King of Beers" t-shirt for one that said, "Jesus Christ: King of Kings." Christ had Eric's heart. The change that occurred happened within. There was not the demand for conformity imposed upon this young Christian by a Southern Baptist congregation, but rather, there was the powerful, internal work of the Spirit within the heart of a man that experienced the love, acceptance and patience of a people who themselves had tasted of the grace of God.

Because many Southern Baptist churches, contrary to historic Baptist principles, are often filled with unregenerate, lost people, Southern Baptist pastors are often tempted to impose LAW on the congregation to keep them in line. However, when churches recognize the beauty and power of the Holy Spirit to tranform lives, and receive people into membership whom the Spirit has already given new life in Christ (and not those convinced to 'join the church' through manipulation), then we pastors can simply trust in "He who began a good work". May God give us the necessary grace to resist the temptation to precede the internal work of the Spirit in His people. Patience allows us to feel the excitement of seeing the beautiful, internal work of the Spirit which trumps any work of the law.

In His Grace,

Wade

The Evangelist Who Led President Bush to Christ: Revelation of Character Through Personal Attack

Last Monday night evangelist Arthur Blessitt appeared on the PTL national program with host Richard Hogue of City Church, Oklahoma City. Also appearing on the show was Scott Camp, who used to be a Southern Baptist pastor and the former dean of Criswell Bible College,and Dwight McKissic, who is the pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church (SBC) in Arlington, Texas. I will write later about the show itself, but the point of this post is to request that my fellow Southern Baptists refrain from attacking the character of men because they do not agree with them.

Arthur Blessitt has spoken at several Southern Baptist Conventions and Pastors' Conferences in the 1980's. He is a Baptist and for many years considered himself Southern Baptist. When Arthur Blessitt faced struggles in his family life, my father was called upon to provide some counseling to the Blessitt family. The details of that time in Arthur's life are not important, but I mention it because of what took place in the blogosphere this week after Arthur and other Southern Baptists appeared on PTL. On a Southern Baptist blog - in the comment section - two statements made by two separate Southern Baptist pastors caught my eye:

Isn't Arthur Blessitt the Evangelist that carried his cross into the hotel room with his secretary?

By the way, was it in tongues when the Holy Spirit told Arthur Blessitt to divorce his wife and marry a woman thirty years younger than him?

This post is not written to defend Arthur Blessitt. It is also not written to challenge the two pastors about whether or not they have spoken to personally spoken Arthur about their concerns prior to writing them on an a public blog site. This post is written to make a simple point:

There is a human tendency to attack the character of those with whom you disagree. But the Holy Spirit, civility, and Christian grace should lead Christians to say something kind about those with whom we disagree.

For instance, how would readers of the blog feel about Arthur after reading a statement from these Southern Baptist pastors that went something like this:

Isn't Arthur Blessitt the same Evangelist that led President Bush to faith in Jesus Christ? Though he advocates speaking in tongues, and I disagree, the Lord has used him mightily around the world.

It is always preferable to express disagreement with a Christian brother apart from character attacks on him. Though it may initially seem effortless to fire an arrow of assault at the character of a brother in Christ, in the end, the ultimate piercing of the heart occurs in the Christian archer. I tell this to any Christian brother I know. Whether they listen is between them and the Lord.

In His Grace,


Wade

A.W. Tozer on Leadership Within Evangelicalism

"We might well pray for God to invade and conquer us, for until He does, we remain in peril from a thousand foes. We bear within us the seeds of our own disintegration. Our moral imprudence puts us always in danger of accidental or reckless self-destruction. The strength of our flesh is an ever present danger to our souls. Deliverance can come to us only by the defeat of our old life...God rescues us by breaking us, by shattering our strength and wiping out our resistance. Then He invades our natures with that ancient and eternal life which is from the beginning. So He conquers us and by that benign conquest saves us for Himself.

With this open secret awaiting easy discovery, why do we in almost all our busy activities work in another direction from this? Why do we build our churches upon human flesh? Why do we set such store by that which the Lord has long ago repudiated, and despise those things which God holds in such high esteem? For we teach men not to die with Christ but to live in the strength of their dying manhood. We boast not in our weakness but in our strength. Values which Christ has declared to be false are brought back into evangelical favor and promoted as the very life and substance of the Christian way. How eagerly do we seek the approval of this or that man of worldly reputation. How shamefully do we exploit the converted celebrity. Anyone will do to take away the reproach of obscurity from our publicity-hungry leaders: famous athletes, congressmen, world travelers, rich industrialists; before such we bow with obsequious smiles and honor them in our public meetings and in the religious press. Thus we glorify men to enhance the standing of the Church of God, and the glory of the Prince of Life is made to hang upon the transient fame of a man who shall die."

A.W. Tozer