Racism and the Great Commission Resurgence

That’s the title of Russell Moore’s post today. He points to an article from the Baptist Standard that says some missionaries who adopted children of different ethnicities cannot speak in some churches.

The newspaper says that a missionary couple were forbidden, by official church action, to speak in some churches because of the fact that their Tanzanian-born children are of a different ethnicity than the people church.

Utterly astounding if true and knowing people, I’m sure it is.

He’s got some good thoughts on the matter like this:

When Joel Rainey, a church planting strategist from Maryland, read the article, he posted the following on my Facebook wall: “The church that refused to let this couple speak because of their racist ideology should be disfellowshipped at the associational, state, and national level.”

He went on to say that white supremacist churches (or, I’m sure he’d agree, black supremacist churches, for that matter) are no different than congregations disfellowshipped for supporting sexual liberationist ideologies, “disobedient to Scripture in order to appeal to the darker elements of culture.”

I could not agree more.

Why I am Southern Baptist

Ed Stetzer has a very good post for us SBC types on the topic.

He lists five reasons:

1. Theology
2. Conservative
3. Cooperation
4. Cooperative Program
5. Fellowship

Usually when people ask me, I give three of those. Conservative, Theology and the Cooperative Program.

A church plant

My cyber-friend Ann and her husband Bob will be planting a church! She talks about it on her blog.

DH and I will be planting a church. Technically, it will be another campus of our church but the style and staff will be a little different, although we’ll have the infrastructure of our current church to back us up.

snip

So we’re at the starting gate. We’re ready to go and begin the planning and vision casting for this new chapter in our lives. God is so good and I so thank Him for leading us and giving us a great church home to be launched from. It’s going to be an interesting next year as we pull this off with God’s help and I pray that this church would lift high the name of Jesus on Long Island. How humbling to be able to be a part of it!

I’m so excited for them! What a marvelous opportunity to serve, meet new people, share the gospel, to be challenged and grow.

A bit more on men and women and blogging

A few days ago, I mentioned that Ed Stetzer had posted the top 100 church blogs. I didn’t say that he mentioned it because he was on the list, but he is. I did say that I thought the title of the list was misleading because the blogs are not specifically church related.

I went back today to the blog today to read comments and I reread the post itself and guess what came up? Women bloggers. Amazing. AND then not only is blogging a man’s world, but it’s a WHITE man’s world. Even more amazing. These comments aren’t as volitile (or even as insightful) as those we’ve seen around Biblioblogs, but still . . .

Third, blogging is a man’s world. There are very few women on the list (unless they are contributors like in Out of Ur and GetReligion). I wonder why. Even in my own limited experience, I have noticed that those who leave comments on my blog are mostly men and those who comment on Facebook are much more likely to be women.

From the comments:

Maybe the comments on this post prove your point, Ed. It looks like me and Tiffany are representing the women.

I’m an editor and writer for a major Christian media company. I actually have found most of our writers (for one of our newly launched sites) through blogs and most of the writers happened to be men.

Maybe the comments on this post prove your point, Ed. It looks like me and Tiffany are representing the women.

I’m an editor and writer for a major Christian media company. I actually have found most of our writers (for one of our newly launched sites) through blogs and most of the writers happened to be men.

I started blogging seriously as one of my New Year’s resolutions. My blog is exported to facebook and I get more comments and messages from my posts on there than I do my actual blog but I would say I’ve had both men and women comment.

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It’s not only a white mans world, it’s a white Anglo-American world. I seem to be the only Aussie on the list and from my initial screening it seems the rest of the world is likewise poorly represented. How world wide is the Christian world wide web?

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I’d love to know if there are other women bloggers writing about their faith in that way?

I like blogging better than facebook btw.

All this discussion about blogs and bloggers

Means that I have come across some new and interesting blogs, AND makes me wish that there was more reading time allotted to each day.

Elm Towers residents still waiting on services

Elm Towers Residents Still Waiting On Religious Services

I wrote about this a while back. Elm Towers was having religious services at least weekly until someone complained and they were told that Federal Housing could NOT have religious services in common areas. Still no policy and still no services.

Top 100 Church Blogs

Listed on Ed Stetzer’s blog.

I wouldn’t call these church blogs but rather religious ones. Some of them I check out of a fairly regular basis.

Wonder if they’ve heard of the Biblioblogger’s Top 50?

On being a woman blogger (biblio or not)

I love to blog. I love to write. I thoroughly enjoy the interaction with people from other places that I would never otherwise meet.

I love to read the Bible and books about the Bible. I enjoy reading what others have to say about God’s Word. I like knowing the history of how the Bible came to us. And I have naturally discussed those things on the blog. But, quite frankly, I love books. Period. I read a variety of genres on multiple topics. I’d read all day long if I could.

I love learning. I’m almost always taking a class for some topic (frequently education related, sometimes Bible related).

I love teaching and writing lesson plans and reflecting on what worked and what didn’t. I like studying my field and how to be more efficient and how kids tick and learn themselves.

I like to take things apart and put them together. I like to create, paint, sew, garden.

Well, I could go on. The list is long. Life is full of too many things, and I can’t focus on one or two or three. I don’t have the time to post multiple times in a day and work and read and study and create. I want to enjoy the things I do, and when the notion strikes me, I’ll write to share the experience.

Churches

just thinking about the buildings themselves . . .

No church in public housing commons

This is in a neighboring town. They’ve been having a church service on Sundays and sometimes Wednesdays for years, but a complaint was made and there is indeed a HUD regulation saying that religious activities are forbidden in any common area.

They are welcome to move into one of the apartments. Wondering if one is large enough . . .

Housing Residents Must Stop Worship Services

“To me, it’s stepping on our constitutional rights. You’re supposed to be able to worship like you want,” said Howard Embler, an Elm Towers resident who sometimes attended the services. “We’ve got a lot of elderly people here who can’t get out on their own to church.”

HUD subsidizes the apartments, which are primarily for senior citizens, and forbids religious activities in places like the common area and lobbies of the facility but not inside residents’ apartments, according to the housing authority.

Officials explained to residents why they took the action they did and gave them copies of the regulations.”We’re not telling residents they cannot have religious activities in their homes, but they cannot hold things in common areas. We understand they would like to do this, but we have to go by regulations,” said Rachael Matthews, a spokeswoman for the authority. “We’re not saying churches can’t come and pick them up and take them to worship or religious services. We don’t want to restrict them.”

Online sermons

I was looking for a sermon on a specific topic and came across this site: http://www.oneplace.com/.

Some good people are included. Others I haven’t heard of, but now I can check them out.

On Jimmy Carter and the SBC

Great discussion on TC’s post: Former President Jimmy Carter takes a Shot at Complementarians

Dr. Mohler chimed in this morning on his blog.  Sorry, President Carter . . . This Argument Falls Flat

Edited to add Cal Thomas’s editorial from World Magazine: Theological Makeovers.

Which Modern Evangelist/Theologian are You?

Following the lead of Polycarp, I’ll post my Facebook theologian quiz results.

Bitsy took the Which Modern Evangelist/Theologian are You? quiz and the result is Rick Warren

You are the Pastor of Saddleback mega-church in California, and the best selling author of “The Purpose Driven Life.” You hold to traditional conservative orthodoxy, but have a gentler approach than those on the Religious Right. You have broadened your ministry to include environmental issues & AIDs prevention in Africa. You even allow non-believers to work with your organization so that you can be a witness to them. You are controversial as a result, and called a Heretic by some on the far Right. So you must be doing something right.

So there ya go.

Edited to add others who took the quiz (Polycarp is at the top of the post):

Peter Lopez

TC Robinson

ElShaddai Edwards

I feel like there should be more, but I’m not finding them . . .

Gay minister formally inducted in the Church of Scotland

Gay row minister to be inducted
Snippets:

Hundreds of ministers and thousands of Church of Scotland members signed an online petition opposing the move.

Some sections of the Church of Scotland feared Mr Rennie’s appointment could cause the greatest divide since the Disruption of 1843, when part of the Kirk broke away to form the Free Kirk.

As the assembly met to debate the issue, Mr Rennie said other instructions in the Bible – such as those about stoning adulterers – were no longer followed, adding “we’ve moved on from that”.

The Church of Scotland is allowing this because . . .? It was good to see that 400 clergy and 5000 members openly opposed this move, but apparently enough believe with Mr. Rennie that we’ve moved on from biblical concepts.

SBC Quotes

SBC Impact has quotes from all three of the gentlemen pictured (Mohler, Aken and Stetzer), but it’s Stetzer’s that is best IMO.

Ed Stetzer, director of LifeWay Research: “I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly. I’m not impressed with the Southern Baptist Convention. I’m not seeking to get my identity from it.”

We would do well to remember that we are not SBC (or anything else) first. It is not the hill on which to die. We are first and foremost subjects of The Kingdom, submissive to Christ our Savior – bound by the words of the Bible, not the SBC.