No, I don't actually think James White lacks balance or has monovision.
However, his most recent Dividing Line focused solely on responding to a British charismatic Christian about same-sex marriage.
If someone were to listen to only one single Dividing Line broadcast like that one, which focused on narrowly-focused subject matter,
AND
if someone were to refuse to listen to any rebuttals on his part or search out whether he has written or spoken on any material that's not related to conservative Christians talking about same-sex marriage,
THEN
one could say that James White is an "unhinged little micro-group" (after all, there are two men that run AOMin, which is a very, very small group, but still a group) that lacks balance vis-à-vis his churchmanship. After all, I didn't hear him say anything about his church membership or anything during the entire Dividing Line broadcast. Not even once! He had a whole hour to talk! He could've even done a jumbo or mega DL, thus taking longer than an hour.
Could not one say that he is a "one-string banjo, zealous for the one note he has learned to play on what is supposed to be the orchestral symphony of God's truth"? Couldn't one conclude that his narrow focus is "just sad"?
Again, don't bother me with evidence of the other things he has said or written about. I'm only going to pay attention to a small slice of life and intentionally and willfully ignore the rest. I'm going to insist that White is a caricature so that I can dismiss all the other things he says and pretend he has monovision on this topic of what British charismatic Christians think about same-sex marriage. Then I'll berate him for being a one-string banjo; that way I can be safely pre-insulated from anything else he might say that might ever convict me or persuade me to change my ways.
And if you still cry foul, I'll just say that I learned my method from White himself.
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Monday, May 18, 2015
A/the church/Church
Here's a chart I created to help people understand how to use the phrases "a church", "the church", "the Church" (and its close cousin "The Church").
It's not exhaustive, but it offers some clear thinking on the topic. It's hard to find people who use these words correctly on a consistent basis.
It's not exhaustive, but it offers some clear thinking on the topic. It's hard to find people who use these words correctly on a consistent basis.
Thursday, May 14, 2015
I Allowed the IMB to Make a Mockery of Baptism
*Editorial Note: Pulpit & Pen continues in unrepentant sin and
enabling of the ongoing sin of Jordan Hall. While it is my understanding
that P&P does not plan to take down the content I contributed, any
role I can play in reducing their traffic until they repent, I will.
Thus I migrate this article here.
…the International Mission Board
(IMB) Board of Trustees voted to open new pathways of service by, among
other things, removing previous restrictions that had been developed a
decade ago. In 2005, the IMB BoT created restrictions to missionary
service that included barring anyone from service who …had been baptized
by immersion in a church that did not teach eternal security or that
was not in line with the Baptist perspective on perseverance even if
they were members in good standing of SBC churches today… Today, those
policies have been changed…
(Source)
In 2006, I was freshly returned from a
year as a tent-maker missionary in southern Japan and very zealous to
get back on the foreign mission field once again. Having been a member
of a Southern Baptist church for six years that was always in the very
upper echelons of per capita giving to the Lottie Moon Christmas
Offering (the big funding drive that provides a very significant
portion, if not the majority, of IMB’s annual budget), the logical,
obvious, and highly encouraged choice was to apply to IMB. The
perquisites were equally obvious – official SBC pedigree, seminary
discounts, well-established support structure. And, I can confidently
say as someone who has by 2015 attempted (and failed) to raise his own
missions budget, the salary, which means there’s no need to raise one’s
own support, was the main attraction.
The salary means the missionary doesn’t
have to “waste” his time networking and getting to know lots of people
and churches and can instead focus on the actual mission work, the
actual project at hand. It’s pretty compelling, to be honest, even
though IMB missionaries still take the same kind of home furloughs as
those do who have had to raise their own support. More could be said
about that, but I’ll move on for now.
So my wife and I applied. We wrote down
all the testimonies of our salvations. We got all the references and
church information in place. We recounted our life histories, education,
whether we were Calvinists, whether we had debt, whether we’d been
divorced, etc. (Just kidding about the Calvinist thing.)
Then, the question to the effect of: In what church were you baptized?
Let’s step back in my personal history
for a moment. The Lord saved me out of a fairly liberal Methodist
family; one day, just before I turned 16, I just realized I was going to
serve Jesus and be hated for His name, and that was that. A year later
the Lord arranged that I meet some very charismatic high school seniors
when I was a sophomore, and (despite my retrospective dismay at some of
their sometimes very weird charismatic distinctives) their lack of the
fear of man and of regard for others’ negative opinions became a
powerful and mostly positive influence on me. I am thankful for them,
even though hanging with them made me into a charismatic for around six
years.
When in university some years later, I
regularly attended Sunday morning service at a charismatic
non-denominational church, and one day in 1998 I became convicted that
my head-sprinkling as a baby at the hands of the Methodist pastor was
not actual baptism. Wanting to obey Jesus, I asked that church to
baptize (immerse) me (same thing), which after examination they did, at a
Sunday evening service in the presence of friends and witnesses. These
were people who give a credible profession of faith in Jesus and just as
much evidence in my view of loving Jesus as anyone in most any SBC
church.
Fast forward eight years, I am applying
to IMB, and I discover the policy that IMB only accepts applicants who
have been baptized in a church that at least affirms eternal security
(or, in a pinch, the perseverance of the saints). Quite unhappy with
that, I decided to try to avoid it by contacting my old charismatic
church. On the phone with a staff member, I asked if by chance they
affirm eternal security. They laughed “Of course not”, which turned into
a brief but interesting conversation.
Thus thwarted, I reported the bad news
to my pastor, who fully supported my wife’s and my desire to go overseas
with IMB. He recommended that he (re-)baptize me. His reasoning can be
condensed as follows:
- The SBC is a loose confederation of churches with non-identical beliefs regarding what constitutes real baptism
- Some of these churches who contribute to the Cooperative Program think that you have to be the right kind of Christian to apply baptism legitimately
- They are the weaker brother and so you can in good conscience accede to their weakness
- It’s worth it to get on the foreign mission field
So to my shame I conceded and was
re-baptized a few weeks later. The pastor prefaced my re-baptism with an
explanation to the congregation why a respected longtime member and a
leader of a Sunday
School class and community group was up in the baptistery. I held my
nose, literally and figuratively, and got wet to satisfy the short-lived
and short-sighted compromise that the IMB made with legalists.
One wonders how the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8) or the disciples of John the Baptist (Acts 19) would answer the question “In what church were you baptized?”. I guess they’d have to get re-baptized too.
It’s hard to picture the Apostle Paul
requiring people baptized by, say, John Mark (before their subsequent
reconciliation), Barnabas (after their rift), or Demas to be re-baptized before they could join with him on missionary outreach.
It’s difficult to imagine the Apostle
Peter holding one set of requirements for becoming a part of his local
fellowship but reserving more stringent requirements regarding one’s
past associations for “serious” Gospel work.
I can’t see the Lord Jesus finding no
fault in a man’s work, confession, or doctrine such that he is called a
son of the Most High, but telling him that a ritual he once engaged in
wasn’t done by someone whose doctrine was quite as good and so remains
entirely incomplete.
I allowed the IMB to use me to
illustrate to my entire church body at the time the hypocrisy and
compromise into which the Cooperative Program has had to enter for the
sake of a “greater good”. I performed a shameful act in order that I
might get in good with an organisation who would later bring my wife and
me out to a candidate orientation, lecture us about nonsensical things
like a “call to missions“,
judge our personality based on nothing more than a few hours of
observation, and never contact a single one of our references, church
leadership, or friends to ask what kind of people we were.
I acceded to worldly wisdom in pursuit
of a godly aim. Now the IMB is relaxing that requirement. Will it
attempt to bear fruit in keeping with repentance in explicitly
re-educating people against the hypocrisy and compromise in which it was
until recently engaging?
I repent. I call on the IMB to repent.
Friday, May 08, 2015
"Be lukewarm and spewed"
Steve Hays renews his ill-advised critique of immediatism by... branching off into all sorts of issues that are not all that pertinent to immediatism.
\\It's revealing how abolitionists think their agitation gives them bragging rights\\
It's an uncharitable and in fact incorrect interpretation of my words to think that I/we have some sort of bragging rights.
Yet let the Lord protect us from such an attitude, to be sure!
Perhaps Steve thinks that the Apostle Paul was trying to claim bragging rights in Philippians 3 or 2 Corinthians 10-11.
\\Abortion isn't the only important issue that Christians need to be involved with\\
Nobody has said it is. Yet we have made the case again and again why the murder of 60 million and counting humans over the course of 42 years and counting should take a very, very high priority over even something like whether the gaystapo gets to tell 501c3 organisations whom they should marry.
Euthanasia - get back to me when it's legal to shoot senior citizens in the head willy-nilly and the death rate surpasses a few thousand a year. I'm not trying to sound callous here, but I actually think Steve is the one who is being callous and turning a blind eye toward child sacrifice. Nobody is saying that we should do nothing about those other things - those ought to be combated with immediatist calls to repentance and the Gospel of Jesus Christ the same as abortion ought to be. The Word of God is the weapon.
Steve also misses the fact that all of these are intertwined in many ways. Attack the powers of darkness in one area and you diminish it elsewhere too. But you have to use godly weapons and wisdom, not the worldly kind.
\\We need to resist secular totalitarianism in its various manifestations.\\
Ironic that Steve says this in defense of the pro life movement, which "resists secular totalitarianism" while teaming up with atheists, papists, eastern conciliarists, and other pagans.
\\the church has different body parts. Different members have different gifts. All Christians don't have the same duties or calling\\
Have this kind of discussion long enough with people and you can see this coming a mile away.
Steve runs afoul of the Bible at this point.
"Calling" is not the same as "gifting". And Steve needs to prove, not assume, that
1) variously gifted people can't address abortion with the Gospel
2) variously gifted people shouldn't address abortion with the Gospel
3) certain giftings mean you don't have an obligation to love your preborn neighbor who is being murdered down the street.
\\There's a need for Bible scholars, ethicists, and apologists.\\
A few, sure. Most churchgoing people are not in position to be those things, and that majority is too busy watching movies, amusing themselves, and "attending services" to do much of anything about anything, let alone sacrifice for the good of their neighbors being taken away to death.
\\Anti-abortion activism isn't the only way of loving your neighbor. \\
What about your preborn neighbor, 1.2 million or more of whom will die this year alone?
\\Visiting shut-ins and nursing home residents is a godly activity. Or caring for enfeebled parents.\\
Is Steve assuming these are mutually exclusive?
\\Moreover, it's very time-consuming just to be a breadwinner, as well as a husband and father\\
1) What does this have to do with immediatism, again?
2) Don't I know it! I have three children, one a newborn with Down Syndrome, two jobs, a 35 mile commute to the main one, and all the worries and difficulties of anyone else. I make time to speak up for my preborn neighbors, and all around me I see armchair QBs like Steve who whine they don't have time.
3) And this:
\\It's revealing how abolitionists think their agitation gives them bragging rights\\
It's an uncharitable and in fact incorrect interpretation of my words to think that I/we have some sort of bragging rights.
Yet let the Lord protect us from such an attitude, to be sure!
Perhaps Steve thinks that the Apostle Paul was trying to claim bragging rights in Philippians 3 or 2 Corinthians 10-11.
\\Abortion isn't the only important issue that Christians need to be involved with\\
Nobody has said it is. Yet we have made the case again and again why the murder of 60 million and counting humans over the course of 42 years and counting should take a very, very high priority over even something like whether the gaystapo gets to tell 501c3 organisations whom they should marry.
Euthanasia - get back to me when it's legal to shoot senior citizens in the head willy-nilly and the death rate surpasses a few thousand a year. I'm not trying to sound callous here, but I actually think Steve is the one who is being callous and turning a blind eye toward child sacrifice. Nobody is saying that we should do nothing about those other things - those ought to be combated with immediatist calls to repentance and the Gospel of Jesus Christ the same as abortion ought to be. The Word of God is the weapon.
Steve also misses the fact that all of these are intertwined in many ways. Attack the powers of darkness in one area and you diminish it elsewhere too. But you have to use godly weapons and wisdom, not the worldly kind.
\\We need to resist secular totalitarianism in its various manifestations.\\
Ironic that Steve says this in defense of the pro life movement, which "resists secular totalitarianism" while teaming up with atheists, papists, eastern conciliarists, and other pagans.
\\the church has different body parts. Different members have different gifts. All Christians don't have the same duties or calling\\
Have this kind of discussion long enough with people and you can see this coming a mile away.
Steve runs afoul of the Bible at this point.
"Calling" is not the same as "gifting". And Steve needs to prove, not assume, that
1) variously gifted people can't address abortion with the Gospel
2) variously gifted people shouldn't address abortion with the Gospel
3) certain giftings mean you don't have an obligation to love your preborn neighbor who is being murdered down the street.
\\There's a need for Bible scholars, ethicists, and apologists.\\
A few, sure. Most churchgoing people are not in position to be those things, and that majority is too busy watching movies, amusing themselves, and "attending services" to do much of anything about anything, let alone sacrifice for the good of their neighbors being taken away to death.
\\Anti-abortion activism isn't the only way of loving your neighbor. \\What about your preborn neighbor, 1.2 million or more of whom will die this year alone?
\\Visiting shut-ins and nursing home residents is a godly activity. Or caring for enfeebled parents.\\
Is Steve assuming these are mutually exclusive?
\\Moreover, it's very time-consuming just to be a breadwinner, as well as a husband and father\\
1) What does this have to do with immediatism, again?
2) Don't I know it! I have three children, one a newborn with Down Syndrome, two jobs, a 35 mile commute to the main one, and all the worries and difficulties of anyone else. I make time to speak up for my preborn neighbors, and all around me I see armchair QBs like Steve who whine they don't have time.
3) And this:
Alexandra and accusations of lying
In which someone posts on the AHA page, says a bunch of nonsense, then reveals herself to be nothing more than a troll.