Silent, but dearly

Each year during the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship annual assembly, a silent auction is held to benefit artists and ministries in various parts of the world. Tina Bailey, one of CBF's global missions field personnel (i.e., missionary) in Southeast Asia, is both an organizer and a contributor.

Tina, shown here beside her acrylic on canvas painting titled The Mantle, will use the proceeds from her painting to help develop Balinese music and dance in the churches where she serves. Many other ministries among the most marginalized people of the world — the focus of CBF global missions — benefit from the annual auction.



Likewise, those who place winning bids benefit from taking home a piece of unique art — whether a painting, a tapestry or a Hungarian nativity — and knowing that it is more than a mere souvenir.

[Thanks to Bill Allen of Chattanooga for taking the photo of Tina and her art for me. For more information on CBF Global Missions visit here.]

Same song, different meeting

"We need more money and more young people."

This week I've met with a church staff, some of my own directors, the Whitsitt Baptist Heritage Society board and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Coordinating Council. I could have gone to a dozen more meetings and heard the same bottom-line report.

Reflection doesn't come easy when your mind and feet are tired from long days of busy baptistness. But I may be seeing a consistent theme emerge.

CBF structure to get studied look

Cooperative Baptist Fellowship moderator Hall Bass of Arkansas told the group's governing body yesterday that he has appointed a 14-member task force to look at the CBF organizational model that has evolved over the past two decades. Pastor David Hull (pictured) of Huntsville, Ala., will chair the effort.

New energy for looking at how the Fellowship and its autonomous state and regional organizations and partners relate and share funding flowed from an April retreat hosted by CBF Coordinator Daniel Vestal and philanthropist Babs Baugh of San Antonio, Texas.

Vestal told the CBF Coordinating Council that "a tremendous amount of consensus" exists in the movement around mission and core values. However, "the challenge we face is with structure and, frankly, with money."

Vestal said the current structure fosters competition and needs to face the question: "Is this still the best model?"

With some voiced opposition, the council overwhelmingly voted to affirm the effort of the task force — with assurances from Bass and Vestal that any recommendations concerning governance must come through the governing body before any changes are made by the larger Fellowship in assembly in the future.

Baugh, whose family foundation funded the April retreat of Fellowship movement leaders, said the word "audacious — as in audacious dreams" was used frequently during three days of dreaming. "They came up with wonderful ideas ... (and) want to go forward."

Conversations around round tables, said Baugh, fostered trust and a sense of everyone having an equal chance to engage in discussions about the Fellowship's future with no hidden agenda brought to the experience.

Vestal quoted Bab Baugh's late father, John Baugh, a Houston layman and successful businessman, saying: "When you get good people together, good things happen" in describing his impressions of the spring retreat.

Kansas City pastor Keith Herron, a member of the Coordinating Council, said he believes that same experience will result from the newly appointed task force's work and the listening sessions they will hold around the country.

"I'm very jazzed about this," said Herron, about the possibilities for examining how the Fellowship moves forward organizationally.

With the 20th annual CBF General Assembly getting underway in Charlotte, Coordinating Council recorder Joanne Carr of Augusta, Ga., compared the Fellowship's fresh look at reorganization to the human maturation process. "What I heard (at the retreat) was ... where do we go from here as an adult organization?"

In addition to Hull, the other 13 members appointed by Bass to the task force are: Jean Willingham, St. Petersburg, Fla.; Alan Culpepper, Atlanta, Ga.; Ray Higgins, Little Rock, Ark.; Larry Hovis, Pfafftown, N.C.; Tony Hopkins, Greenwood, S.C.; Stephen Cook, Danville, Va.; Rene’ Maciel, San Antonio, Texas; Ruth Perkins Lee, Auburn, Ala.; Hollyn Holman, Washington, D.C.; Kasey Jones, Washington, N.C.; Susan Deal, Orlando, Fla.; Laura Hoffman, St. Louis, Mo.; Connie McNeill, Atlanta, Ga.

Baptist bureaucracies in the bull's eye

The Great Commission Task Force report that was overwhelmingly approved by messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention on June 15 has its roots in an chapel address given by Southeastern Seminary President Danny Akin in April 2009. In that address, but not in the adopted report, is an expressed concern over "bloated bureaucracies" in the denominational structure.

Nothing gets bloated bureaucrats more agitated than someone bringing up bloated bureaucracies. But clearly Baptist bureaucracies get a closer look when money dries up or when some loyalists become concerned that too little of it is getting to the preferred location — in the case of the SBC, that is the international mission field.

How the recommendations of this report play out in SBC structures are uncertain and likely varied. But staking down turf is sure to increase.

More than anything, the vote for the task force report and the election of Georgia pastor Bryant Wright as SBC president — whose congregation splits its SBC mission giving between the unified budget (Cooperative Program) and direct support of international missions (Lottie Moon offering) — signal that change is coming. However, restructuring old systems is more likely to result from the vote of congregations with the direction of their funding than any report or self-initiated insider trimming.

Likewise, the much younger and smaller Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is looking at restructuring. During a retreat of Fellowship leaders and partners in April, there was much discussion about how the CBF has evolved over the past 20 years and how it might need to evolve structurally over the next several years.

Coming out of the singularly controlled SBC, the Fellowship made every effort to be structurally free from the possibility of a takeover. But such looseness has its own challenges.

For example, theology schools have emerged in much greater number than the six that are owned and operated by the SBC. These schools relate to CBF to various degrees along with ties to other institutions and agencies.

Other independent partners (including Baptists Today) work in voluntary cooperation but have no clear divisions of responsibilities (like SBC entities). And state and regional CBF groups, that have emerged over the past two decades, are autonomous as well and require funding for their own operations.

Also worth noting, these groups dip into the same limited poor of resources for funding.

CBF leadership left the retreat with a promise to explore some ways the Fellowship could be restructured. Many of us are eager to hear these ideas and to have the chance to respond.

Change is never without pain and is rarely initiated by those who feel it the most. But it is often necessitated by realities (such as funding and other strong indicators of need) and dealt with because simply "staying the course" will not work.

Such efforts can be done with clinched fists or open hands. Yet, if change is inevitable, the latter sure seems to produce better results than defensiveness and territorial protection.

However, it takes a certain amount of openness — to fresh thinking, new methodologies and even personal risk — to consider a future that is unlike the past. But the results are often worth the pain, if an organization comes out leaner, healthier and more effective.

For Big Boi, good ol' boys and everyone else

Seated next to me at the Atlanta Braves game on Tuesday night was a true fan hailing from Cedartown, Ga. He cheered on the home team with a distinct Northwest Georgia accent that would blend in at one of my family reunions.

Like me, he knew (better than the future Hall of Fame manager who led the team to a record 14 consecutive division titles) exactly what the Braves should be doing at every point of decision making. We talked about all aspects of the current game and recalled players of yesteryear like Ralph “the Roadrunner” Garr and Rico “Big Boy” Carty.

Before the game, a young rapper known as Big Boi stirred the cheering crowd out in the outfield plaza. He was a true fan of the home team as well. A Savannah, Ga., native who came to Atlanta to study music in high school, he showed a solid knowledge of baseball.

Big Boi has been hangin’ with Braves rookie phenom Jason Heyward recently, he acknowledged. The former member of the hip hop duo Outkast spoke the language of baseball with an urban sound.

The absence of a time clock and the unique nuances of the game are not the only attributes that separate baseball from lesser sports. It has a broad appeal that crosses racial, ethnic and socioeconomic lines.

Whether one cheers in Spanish or Japanese — or in English with tints of the Bronx, Boston or Birmingham — the sounds resonate with the movement of the game. And whether one enjoys the comfort of private, corporate-funded luxury boxes or rides the backless bleachers beyond the fences, the status of fan has more to do with a keen understanding of the game and an allegiance to the team than those superficial factors.

There are few places, including churches, where such diversity is routinely found. The ballpark is common ground — for Big Boi, good old boys and anyone else who grasps the joy of the national pastime.

[ABOVE: Big Boi (a.k.a. Daddy Fat Sacks), born the year after Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record, gets Atlanta Braves fans going before last Tuesday’s game with the Tampa Bay Rays. Photo by John Pierce, to prove to his daughters that his musical knowledge exceeds Haggard, Jones and Cash.]

Southern Baptist Convention as spectator sport

There was a time — a long time — when much of my personal and professional identity was tied to being a Southern Baptist. Today I keep up with my former denominational home from a detached journalistic perspective only.

The truth is that the Southern Baptist Convention and I have been traveling in opposite directions for quite a while. I thought of that when catching up on the latest big SBC gathering in Orlando this week and while reading an unrelated (or not intentionally related) email from good Baptist historian and good friend Walter "Buddy" Shurden.

Buddy pointed to author and emergent church leader Brian McLaren's explanation of why he left the Plymouth Brethren tradition in which he was raised. In his book, Finding Our Way Again, McLaren writes that "...as grateful as I am for my heritage, it lacked breathing room.”

While, like many others who continue to hold on to the basic Baptist principles of individual and congregational freedom and an emphasis on personal responsibilities for faith, I left the SBC (and the Georgia Baptist Convention which became equally controlled by Fundamentalists) to avoid spiritual suffocation.

There will be no going back. The SBC's rigid (and wrong) stance against women as equal leaders and the constant actions against gay and lesbian persons (among many other reasons) make it an undesirable place to practice my own faith.

But I do think the SBC put in place two good leaders — Bryant Wright as SBC President and Frank Page as president of the SBC Executive Committee — who will make the convention no less conservative but perhaps less strident.

I hope so — for the sake of those who (whether aware of the great shift to fundamentalism or not) still call the SBC their denominational home and for all us other Baptists who get lumped in with them in the public eye.

Going for a good cause

Creativity in charitable fundraising is be admired. And I've witnessed some wild ideas from my many years of hanging around college students.

Typically, I don't drop money in a bucket being pushed toward my car window at an intersection. I prefer seeing a little more ingenuity at work.

The Courtyard by Marriott in downtown Chattanooga is taking advantage this week of being located at the main entrance to the Riverbend Festival that features big crowds and lots of music. While the hotel's rooms have long been booked, another valued amenity is being offered.

Since many festival goers prefer a more proper privry than a portable potty, the hotel is offering its cool, clean restrooms to passersby — for a price. Proceeds benefit the local Ronald McDonald House that serves families with severely ill children.

Now that's going for a good cause.

Not too high, not too low

A few months ago my good friends Betty and Raymond Hall gave me a copy of Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court. When the legendary basketball coach died on June 4, at age 99, I revisited some of his insights.

In the book, Coach John Wooden, who led the UCLA Bruins for 27 years and amassed a record 10 national men's basketball titles, defined himself as a "realistic optimist." He avoided negativism, he said, by setting realistic goals.

"Goals should be difficult to achieve because those achieved with little effort are seldom appreciated, give little personal satisfaction, and are often not very worthwhile," wrote the Wizard of Westwood. "However, if you set goals that are so idealistic there's no possibility of reaching them, you will eventually become discouraged."

Most of us can name people who aim too high or too low — and maybe have done so at times ourselves. Being a "realistic optimist" seemed to work well for Coach Wooden. So his advice is instructive for developing the fine art of goal-setting that helps chart our futures.

Good point, Colleen

Truer words have not been spoken than those from Colleen Burroughs upon accepting the nomination as moderator-elect of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

“It's much easier to have an opinion about how someone else should lead than it is to actually lead yourself," said the gifted vice president of the wonderful youth camping organization, Passport, Inc.

Colleen, who was raised in a missionary family in Africa, is right that standing on the sidelines and looking for every possible weakness in a program or organization is not nearly as challenging as jumping in and seeking constructive ways to serve.

Her observation applies to so many situations, but she was being specific about the one in which she will assume a new leadership role. She added to her comment: "...especially a group of Baptists."

Moderate Baptists in particular, who reject hierarchy and have a distaste for authoritarianism, seem to be a highly critical group. So my prayers and best wishes go out for her and all leaders — in all situations — who willingly leave the sidelines to join the game. Be careful in there.

Stirring good memories

For 13 weekends and counting, I have enjoyed serving as interim pastor to the good people who make up the historic yet lively First Baptist Church of Chattanooga, Tenn. This experience puts me in close proximity to where I was born and raised, but have not lived for more than 30 years.

After spending this past weekend with many friends of my childhood and youth, the words of Susan Mott, in the September 2007 Journal of American History, come to mind: "Homesickness is a longing for a lost place, nostalgia is a longing for a lost time."

Processing the feelings that come from reconnecting with the past is interesting. Exactly what are those feelings that come from old (and often embellished) stories, strong laughter and communication that goes beyond words?

For me, it is not homesickness. I've called too many places home and have created one of my own. But there is a mellowness — with a touch of nostalgia — that results from such experiences.

But, for me, the feeling is primarily one of deep gratitude for those dear persons — many gone on to their reward — who created real community and invested their lives in mine.

The tackiness of Ted Haggard

Former megachurch pastor Ted Haggard is the Brett Favre of evangelical Christianity. He always finds a way to stay in the news.

As anyone with any exposure to news knows, in 2006 Haggard left New Life Church in Colorado Springs, a congregation that he started a decade earlier, after reports surfaced of him hiring a gay male prostitute and seeking to buy meth. Such activities, somehow, conflicted with his role as president of the National Association of Evangelicals as well.

Since then Haggard has said and done all sorts of things. Mostly, he has denied being gay and making plans to start a new church. Even after incorporating St. James Church a few weeks ago, he was dismissive.

"A corporation does not a church make," he told Religion News Service. Then he tacked on the spiritually elusive: "(There is) no way to know the future."

Yet this week Haggard and his stand-by-her-man wife, Gayle,mugged for the cameras once again in announcing the new church start at their home in Colorado Springs.

According to an AP report, Haggard said he is not competing with his former congregation or any other in the area — noting that many people in the city of 375,000 don't attend any church. Wink, wink.

That is the time-honored, hyper-spiritual justification for creating church splits. For once, just try admitting what you're doing, Hag.

Of course, he may not build his new church family exclusively from former New Life members still mesmerized by his winsome personality or sheep from other area flocks. Who knows, there may be a number of non-church members looking for a pastor who seems to have trouble admitting his own sexual orientation while condemning the many who do.

Personally, I don't care what Haggard does or who goes to his church. Yet again, it is just a sad spectacle of another big-time preacher who simply can't imagine doing something good for God and others without having his own face in the spotlight.

There can be perfect games but never perfect people

Surely 54-year-old Jim Joyce had a hard time sleeping last night. The American League umpire's missed call at first base — with two outs in the ninth inning — cost Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga the rare accomplishment of a perfect game.

By all accounts, Joyce is a highly competent umpire who simply blew it on this occasion. And in humility not often seen among professional umpires, he admitted his failure and has apologized profusely for his error.

After seeing the replay in the locker room, Joyce sought out Galarraga to express his deep regret. The pitcher who was denied a well-deserved place in baseball history was gracious.

"You don't see an umpire after the game come out and say, `Hey, let me tell you I'm sorry,' " said Galarraga, according to ESPN. "He felt really bad. He didn't even shower."

While sports talk shows are abuzz this morning with debates over the pros and cons of video replays in baseball officiating, a better use of this experience would be to ponder the reality of human frailty and the divine impact of forgiveness.

Comfortable or comforting?

In a recent Religion News Service column, Rabbi James Rudin, senior interreligious adviser for the American Jewish Committee, considered how marketing firms might advise various religious groups. He addressed the loss of "market share" among mainline Protestants.

He noted that one focus group had called mainline Protestants "the General Motors of Christianity" — a brand that "once dominated American religious life" but in more recent times has suffered from the results of "choice and decentralization."

"Many Americans, facing a myriad of religious alternatives, want comforting churches with a progressive theology," Rabbi Rudin writes. "However, our research shows you often come across as cold, self-righteous and a little too zealous in the quest to be 'prophetic' and 'cutting edge.'"

I'm still trying to process how this outside perspective speaks to those Baptist congregations — especially older, historic churches — with whom I have some contact. Perhaps one of the current needs is to give more energy to making our congregations "comforting" rather than "comfortable."

It is fairly easy to find places that are comfortable — cozy coffee shops or the sofa at home can do that. However, the church can have a unique role in providing an environment that "comforts" those dealing with the pain and struggles of life.

Just maybe we have have been giving too much attention to providing the wrong kind of comfort.