Josh Claibourn

Except this time you vote with us and you apologize to Mike Law. 2/2

My Suggestion: Amend Article 3. Section 1 of the SBC Constitution inserting the following after #5 : “6. Does not affirm, appoint, or employ a woman as a pastor of any kind, whether as a matter of title (name) or as a matter of authority and responsibility (function).” 1/2

One of Screwtape's strategies for his nephew Wormwood was not to keep his patient from church altogether, but to ensure he only attended once he found the perfect one. The man should go to church, but always on his own terms, constantly scanning for faults and measuring the congregation against some ideal in his head. If Wormwood can convince him to hold out for the perfect church, he will never find it. This does several things: - It keeps him from committing anywhere. - It feeds pride, placing him in judgment over the church rather than under it. - It cuts him off from real Christian fellowship, which requires patience and humility. - It trains his attention on trivial concerns rather than the substance of worship. The goal is to keep him sitting back, critiquing and comparing, and ultimately detached from any actual body where he is known and corrected. This pattern seems apparent today in how people consume online discourse. Podcasts and social media raise expectations that no local pastor or congregation can realistically meet. The subject becomes doctrinally opinionated and ecclesiastically rootless, which ends up being a disaster for the patient. I was recently part of a conversation with a man who avoids church entirely because no congregation is sufficiently "based" in his area. "Most are compromised," he said, and he was actively encouraging others toward the same conclusion. Honestly, Screwtape could not have scripted it better.

@merelyjwright But for real, I paid $60 for two basic meals from IHOP in Anaheim.

This is a good idea for a parody account. Worth following because as whoever does the caricature of conservatives their actually backward engineering themselves into the truth, as below.

You can’t boast about 47,000 churches as a badge of honor while disenfranchising 81% of that body through inaccessible meeting locations. True denominational health requires a centralized Annual Meeting that allows the vast majority of our churches to actually participate.

There are two groups emerging in the SBC right now: 1) Those who want to visit vast places across the U.S. And 2) Those who want to make the SBC Annual Meeting consistently available to the majority of Southern Baptists. 👀👀👀

@drandrewhebert @griffingulledge @albertmohler What do you do with the BGCT who does not hold to the same convictions as the SBC?

This article by @griffingulledge involves a lot of inside baseball for the SBC but I largely agree & couldn’t have written something better myself. I agree with @albertmohler: we cannot continue to debate the issue of women pastors indefinitely… thebaptistreview.com/editorial/solv…

@WilliamWolfe @jaredcornutt This is the same disrespect for “Billy Baptist” when someone motions to make the annual meeting in Hawaii every year.

@jaredcornutt The fact you think this is a joke says a lot

The SBC Annual meeting should be in Anaheim every year. -Elite weather for June -3 MLB ballparks nearby -Tons to do (amusement parks, national parks not far) -Hotel space is awesome and convenient -Convention center is great Someone make the motion.

When it comes to the SBC Annual Meeting, location matters. Here are some of my thoughts and concerns.

@JoshDaws Gosh. I’m so sorry. Thoughts on Lorcana?

I was just laid off from The Walt Disney Company after 12.5 years with the company. Ask me anything.

@EvangelicalDW @WilliamWolfe @BaptistLeaders You would have to make an amendment to the motion replacing the individual with another making sure that all the requirements for nominations be met, otherwise, they’ll just rule it out of order. They are required to release the nominations 45 days prior to the annual meeting.

@WilliamWolfe @BaptistLeaders All the appointments are rubber stamped under the same motion, so when can the messengers actually object?

Hey Bart. Thanks for engaging! It’s shorthand—and everyone knows what @BaptistLeaders meant You’re quick to harp on the dill and cumin of the procedural niceties, neglecting the weightier matters: Yours, Litton’s, and Greear’s appointees were egalitarian or egalitarian-friendly

“Money cannot manufacture qualified pastors.” @dmichaelclary shows what happens when the SBC faces pressure to spend money for church planting but does not have enough qualified men to plant churches. christoverall.com/article/concis…

G.K. Chesterton, what a line

Such a vile, disgusting interruption of Cities Church's worship service by an anti-ice mob.

You think you're immune to propaganda because you are a Bible believing Christian who stands for the truth. Actually, no. That's not how propaganda works. "The people most susceptible to propaganda are intelligent, educated, follow the news closely, and are convinced they are impervious to it." My latest piece for @BaptistLeaders 👇

@tyler_austin55 This is the way.

🔥🔥🔥 “It’s the responsibility of grownups to ignore the fake threat and confront the real threat.” This is an excellent, wise post from Clary.

I’m convinced that the most fertile mission field right now is right-wing unbelievers. Right wing and left wing unbelievers are not the same. It’s a naive pipe dream for churches to play the middle, offending neither left not right, in order to reach both with the gospel. It won’t work. We don’t live in a monoculture. We’re gonna offend somebody. It’s only a matter of who and why. Right wing unbelievers generally believe in God, have some respect for the Bible, and live lives that fall short of Christian teaching but are nevertheless compatible with it. They have some knowledge of God’s truth and know they don't live up to that standard. In other words, they are sinning against the light of knowledge. Left wing unbelief is different. It’s explicitly secular. If they do believe in God, it’s a pagan perversion that only bears a faint resemblance to the God of scripture. Having rejected the light of truth, they’ve gone on to rebel against nature itself. They remind me of what Paul describes in Romans 1. As people rebel against nature, Romans 1 describes their downward spiral into a moral abyss. When you think of a garden variety leftist, you likely think of someone who is openly hostile to God, Christianity, history, tradition, laws, norms, and the civil order. They wear moral anarchy as a badge of pride. Therefore, God has given them over to all manner of sin (Rom 1:24). These people are some of the most arrogant people you’ll ever meet. They have masters degrees and PhDs, yet they cannot put together a rationally coherent argument. “Claiming to be wise, they became fools” (Rom 1:22). They are emotional thinkers who have “exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Rom 1:25). Thus they also exchange natural sexual relations for those that are “contrary to nature” (Rom 1:26). Leftists are full-throated advocates of the LGBTQ revolution. The left has also mainstreamed political violence. Watch videos of Antifa or “No Kings” protests and you’ll see all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless (Rom 1:29-31). Right wing unbelief reminds me of Romans 2. Even though they aren’t Christians, they have enough light of truth to acknowledge God, have high regard for the Bible, have some respect for the rule of law, and want to uphold natural law and the civil order. Garden variety right wing unbelievers are responsible adults with families and kids. Since we do not live in a monoculture, it is naive for a church to act as though they can play the middle to reach people on both sides. The left is clearly worse than the right, and churches who refuse to acknowledge this fact come across as disingenuous at best or dishonest at worst. Churches that refuse to confront the evils of the left will be offensive to the non-Christian right. If a right wing non-Christian shows up at a squishy church and hears about “evil on both sides,” they’re gonna think that church has lost its mind. Their fear of the left's growing wickedness may have prompted them to come to church to begin with. I’m not saying churches should pander to right-wing unbelievers, I’m just saying don’t act like both sides are the same. Most normal right-wing unbelievers won’t take offense at having their sins called out. They expect it and respect it. That's what preachers and churches do and they know it. But a right-wing unbeliever will be deeply offended at any preacher who panders to the left. He'll just walk away thinking, “that preacher has no spine.” Again, right wing unbelievers aren’t looking for preachers to pander to them. They are looking for preachers they can trust to tell them the truth. A right wing unbeliever may have a wife and kids. He naturally wants to protect and provide for them and he’s looking for help in an increasingly dangerous world. If he shows up at church and the preacher talks about Christ conquering evil powers, he’ll sit up and take notice. And if the preacher says, “you need to get your own house in order first. Get rid of porn. Take care of your body. Be more disciplined. Take care of your family. Repent of your sin and Jesus will forgive your failures. Then trust his power to overcome them and grow,” there’s a good chance he’ll turn to his wife and say, “this is our church.” In other words, right wing unbelievers know what time it is and they’re hungry for a message that gives them hope and purpose. They know that the left is trying to destroy their way of life. They need to hear that Christ has overcome the evil one and, in his power, they can too. The bottom line is this: one way or another, you’re gonna offend somebody. There is no such thing as a non-offensive position. You can't play the middle between left and right, you must pick a side. You must choose. Left wing unbelievers will be offended by churches that confront sins and calls people to repentance. Right wing unbelievers will be offended by churches that don’t confront sins and don’t call people to repentance. For this reason, I’m convinced that the most fertile mission field right now is right-wing unbelievers. Jesus himself recognized that some unbelievers are “not far from the kingdom” (Mark 12:34). Right wing unbelievers are closer to the kingdom because their values are more conducive to and compatible with Christian belief. So right wing unbelievers may not (yet) know Christ, but they still want to live in a Christian society. From there, it’s not a far leap to explicit Christian faith.

The pulpit is a type of fire pit. From it, the Word of God burns bright. Friends of Christ gather round, faces lit by the Light of the world, hearts warmed by the Word. The preacher speaks and the sermon becomes what Lloyd-Jones called logic on fire.

Battlefield Promotions… There is a great leadership transition unfolding before us. Men we have rightly, and sometimes wrongly, looked to for their example have been swept from the scene. Some departures were expected: after many trips around the sun, they finished their race with the slow dignity of old saints. Others were sudden and brutal. Some fell by death… whether by a bullet that tore through flesh or by a heart that quit at fifty-six, a heart that had burned strong for the Lord until it simply stopped. Others fell by disgrace, dragged down by sins they thought they could leash. They were fathers, brothers, mentors, and now they’re gone. The battlefield of this fallen world claimed them in one way or another. And as in all wars, those left behind receive a promotion. The gaps are there, gaping like shell holes. They must be filled. We must step up. But beware. Some fell not from enemy fire but from their own weakness. That fact should put the fear of God in us. Look hard at where you are most easily tempted and starve the flesh there. To us, they seemed like giants, and if even they could fall, how much more must we guard our steps? Lord willing, we’ve already been imitating the virtues of those godly men who finished well. But this is no time for coasting. Now we must double down, even triple down, in the pursuit of holiness. May God strengthen us in devotion and discipline. He alone knows our true capacity. Many of us will never write books stacked high in libraries or stand before roaring crowds. Those things belong to His providence. Only a fool grasps for reach without the spine to bear its weight. Great transitions are nothing new. God calls men home, often sooner than we think, and what remains is not a fable but a legacy. We’ve been handed a battlefield promotion. The smoke is thick, the ground shakes beneath our boots, and the Lord of Hosts still reigns. Lord, help us to be faithful. Help us to honor You.