Thursday, December 13, 2007

how to not advance the kingdom

Let's take missionaries off the field and remove their financial support because they admit that they have a private prayer language. They speak in tongues.

Or wait, here's another good idea. Let's cut ties from people who have grown up in our church family, are serving Jesus thousands of miles away, and decided to have an alcoholic beverage because of the specific cultural context in which God has put them.

Some of our brothers in the ol' Southern Baptist Convention haven't been up to par lately on contextualization, understanding that wine is often a good thing in the Bible, realizing that Jesus was known for drinking in Matthew 11, and above all - that those issues are peripheral and what we believe about them should serve the Gospel, not define it.

But today, I've been pushed over the edge. The church plant my brother attends in St Louis is conservative, Jesus-centered, Spirit-led, Bible-based, and now without support that was promised by the Missouri Baptist Convention [I feel ok to say this because I grew up in it and still love what the Spirit is doing in the SBC]. You can read more here and here. This is saddening to me. Let us be prayerful and hopeful because the kingdom is about the King and not about sin management and man-made moral litmus tests.

I'm going to finish my glass of wine with my wife. Really.

1 comment:

LOUDENISE said...

WOW! Ive been out of the loop! I most certainly disagree with this decision by the convention.