The Fried Chicken Army

I was recently reading an Article in the Southwestern News Magazine that the seminary publishes. It was brought to my attention from a friend and so I thought that I would read it and see what it had to say for myself. Now before going any further, I have never been ashamed to say I was a member of a Baptist church. The church I grew up in was Baptist and it was never an issue when it came to telling people where it was that I attented. My church was very much out of the politics that is the Southern Baptist Convention and for that I am thankful.

So with that out of the way now I can go back to the article I read. It was written by Dr. Malcolm Yarnell who is the Assistant Dean for Theological Studies here at Southwestern. He spends the article saying that there is a new renaissance going on here at Southwestern and throughout the Baptist world. Dr. Yarnell goes into detail saying that baptist churches need to go back to old fashion church discipline. What exactly is church discipline? Honestly when I hear the word discipline I cringe a little, just because that I’ve never been good at following the rules..haha ooops! The point they are talking about is that members shouldn’t be allowed to do nothing and call themselves a member. He quotes a minister from Washington DC who’s church goes through a vast process for membership so that all members of his church are active. Then Dr. Yarnell ends his Renaissance Manifesto with this statement: “Send us your students and we will return you Bible-believing Baptists.” Welcome friends to the Army of Southern Baptists. We’ll take over your town and eat all your fried chicken!

Can we as Baptists sound anymore hostile or full of ourselves? We sound as if we have it all figured out. If there is a PR department for the Southern Baptist Convention he or she…hahaha never mind…he must be mute. It seems to me that the convention loves to be as controversial as possible today. Can Methodist not believe the Bible? What about non-denominational churches, can they not believe the Bible?

We are not called to follow a denomination, we are called to follow Christ! We do not serve a denomination we are called to serve Christ! We need to quit thinking backwards. We are not called to church the unchurched, we are called to show the unchurched Christ in us. Maybe the renaissance in the church needs to be a return to loving our neighbor. Maybe the church needs find the happy medium between not loving the sin but loving the sinner. Send your kids to Southwestern so that they might better understand Gods word, hopefully their Bible believing before they get there!

Peace and Love,
The White-man

I want my Bling Bling

This is just going to be a random posting because I havent posted anything for quite some time. I’m sitting in class and we’re talking about childhood, adolescene and then adulthood. When do we actually become an adult? Is there a day that I missed where someone hands you a key and from that day forth you grow chest hair and maybe the occastional annoying nose hair. I mean I’m finding the chest hair and yes, the nose hair too but I never got my key. I want my bling bling key man. When we become adults do things get stressful or do we make things harder? Maybe its a little of both. Have you actually thought about the dumb stuff that stresses us out? As I was sitting here thinking I began to think about all the pointless crap that stressed me out. Stuff that really doesnt matter but it gets you stressed you know. I believe sometimes we write in our blogs about life and all the crap thats getting us down instead of focusing on all that we have. I wonder if a kid read some of the stuff that adults wrote on blogs if he’d even want to one day become an adult. Sometimes I think we focus on the bad sides of life. We vent and rant and rave about how crappy life is, where God is leading us and we just sound like despressed Socrates wanna be’s…hahaha I’m completely guilty of this too but it makes me wonder. Maybe we need to sit back and smell the roses or smell the crap and deal. I’ve been thinking lately that maybe I make things worse by over thinking about the crap in my life. I dont have all the answers, I wont know all the answers and maybe thats good enough. Maybe thats what being an adult is all about. Realizing that I really dont know crap and that God does. Wow now that sounded deep, ok well maybe not. I wonder if Socrates used the word crap….HMMMMMM

Peace and Love,

The Whiteman