Blame it on the Milk Cow
Monday, July 11, 2005
The terrorist bombings in
London will forever define this past week. It was the worst
attack on London since World War II, and the British are on edge as
the perpetrators remain at large. Against this somber
backdrop, the Baptist World Alliance will celebrate its 100th
anniversary in Birmingham, England, the last week of this month. BWA leaders have condemned the terrorist violence
and declared that the Congress will proceed, noting that "in
the face of appalling evil we need to show our strong faith in Jesus Christ as
Lord." Some 15,000 Baptists from all over the world are expected at
the meeting.
Southern Baptist leaders
are shunning this gathering of the largest Baptist group in the
world (although there will be many Baptists present from Southern
Baptist churches, in defiance of SBC leaders' mandates).
Instead, SBC leaders recently held their own conference with
European Baptist leaders. Earlier this year, in fact, the SBC
leadership made a big deal about building their own worldwide
coalition of conservative Baptists. They persuaded (read $$)
Paul Negrut, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Oradea, Romania
(Romanian Baptists, a historically conservative group of folks, were
the only international Baptist group to support the SBC in its
withdrawal from the BWA) to invite them to hold a meeting. How
convenient. As reported by
Baptist Press on July 5, that meeting was held the weekend of
July 1-2 ... and a total of 12 people other than Southern Baptists
showed up, all from Eastern European conservative groups. SBC
officials refused to identify the participants, but apparently a
significant number of the 12 were seminary personal and staff.
In other news around the
country, fundamentalist Memphis-based
Bellevue Baptist Church called Steve Gaines, current pastor of
Gardendale Baptist in Alabama, to succeed the legendary Adrian
Rogers. Gaines will have a hard time being as bombastic as the
flamboyant Rogers, who once declared that if Southern Baptist
churches taught that "pickles have souls," then SBC seminaries
should teach the same thing.
Actually, Rogers has long
since been surpassed in terms of mega-ness. In Oklahoma, of
all places, Craig Groeschel (who?)
preaches at 23 services in five churches throughout the state
each Sunday. He could well be called the "closed-circuit
riding preacher." Meanwhile, in Chicago, the 22,000 member
House of Hope church
moved to a new, 10,000 capacity building that is so big the
Chicago Bulls will be using it for a basketball camp. Will the
church continue to grow? It appears to be a slam dunk.
The week's more
interesting stories, however, came from a variety of decidedly
smaller Baptist settings.
In Stamford, Connecticut,
cellular phone provider T-Mobile announced a plan to install
a cell phone antennae atop a bell tower at the Stamford Baptist
Church. Imagine the silent conversations that will be swirling
through the airwaves atop the church Sunday morning during the
worship service ... while the congregation will likely be instructed
to turn all cell phones off.
In Alabama, the Huntsville
Times is running a
compelling series on couples called into the ministry.
North of the border, Doug
Wood, pastor of London's Harvests Baptist Church, is
riding a horse in Western Canada to help raise $40,000 for a
Philippines orphanage.
And back down South on the
ranch in Plainview, Texas, the members of First Baptist Church, in a
spontaneous show of community support,
helped a dairy through a crippling power outage.
The traditional Sunday AM church time was set
a few centuries ago based on the fact that rural folk (who
comprised most of the nation's population at the time) had to do
the farm chores (including milking the cow) before piling in the
wagon and heading down the road (or path) to church.
And just how many members in your church have
milked a cow in the last 50 years? Yet unbeknownst to most,
ol' Bossy still determines what time most Baptist churches hold
their Sunday AM worship services.
Admittedly, I can think of a few mega-church
pastors that would do well to step down from their fiefdoms and
spend a day or two in overalls milking cows. They just might
get a kick or two out of it.
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