Page 4 of 158

A Christian Response to the Attempted Assassination

Like many of you, I’ve been attentive to the news cycle since the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. The news is disconcerting and troubling in the midst of our increasingly divided political climate.

Like many of you, I gathered with my congregation at worship on Sunday July 14. One of our lay elders, Steve Robinson, preached a fantastic message about our hope in God in the midst of trial. Another of our lay elders, Vince Adams, prayed for our country, the former President, the current President, and the political atmosphere in our country. Worshiping with God’s people on Sunday was a reminder of the necessity of trusting in a sovereign God in the midst of turmoil and uncertainty.

As I’ve wrestled with the events of this past Saturday, here are a few observational reminders for us as Christ-followers.

We must align ourselves with truth and justice, not speculation and conspiracy theories. The memes, political commentary, and conspiracy theories are running rampant. From social media to mainstream media; from podcasts to water cooler conversations, opinions, theories, and speculations are prevalent. I’ve had some of these conversations myself. We may never know all the details. Sixty years from now the information surrounding this assassination attempt may be just as convoluted as the information surrounding the JFK assassination. It is our nature to speculate, wonder, and attempt to figure out. These pursuits are not wrong in themselves. But as Christians, we are to pursue truth and justice, not foolish speculations and conspiratorial wonderings. Our cultural moment situated between mainstream media and social media is primed for conspiratorial and political divisiveness. When we inordinately focus on these speculations, we can be driven to fear and anxiety. Fear and anxiety drown out faith and peace in our lives. As a result, the attention of our hearts and minds must be rooted in the eternal Word of God and the truths that bring calmness and peace. God’s Word not only addresses the peace we need in this moment, but even more importantly points to eternity where God’s justice and truth will reign forever.

We must pursue loving-kindness and compassion for our neighbors, even those with whom we disagree politically. Paul wrote, “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another as Christ forgave you” (Eph. 4:32). Jesus preached, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). The political division in our country is evident in our communities, on social media, and in many of our relational interactions. Too many people in our country view the other side of the political aisle as true enemies rather than political opponents. Too much vitriol and anger has been spewed through political rhetoric. Christian should not be part of the vitriolic speech and combative, enemy driven terminology. Yes, as Christians our values and morals are in conflict with prevailing culture. And, yes, we should participate in the political processes available to us to engage Christian morality in our culture . But we must remember that our kingdom is not of this world. We do not enter this conflict playing by the world’s rules or the standards of our culture. Our character and conduct must rise above the vitriol and political divisiveness of our land. Our demeanor must reflect that of our Savior and King who teaches us to live for eternal victory in the world to come, not political victories in the world of now.

We need a revival that stems from God’s work in our country and repentance in our hearts. We must lament, pray, and seek God’s face for ourselves and for our country. While we should be grateful the assassination attempt was unsuccessful, we should grieve for the family of Corey Comperatore as well as the shooter’s family. Pursuit of revival will mean personal and corporate repentance and prayer. Pursuit of revival will mean unapologetic, prophetic preaching from our pulpits against the sins of our land. Do not misunderstand. To love one another in compassion and to love and pray for our enemies is not to condone sinfulness or ignore the unrighteousness surrounding us. If you want to see Jesus’ example of prophetic preaching with lament for the sinfulness of his people, read Matthew 23. What this means for us as Christians is a proper balancing of political and revival perspective. The proposed solutions of political parties and candidates can only be partial solutions (if that) to the problems and issues in our land. The real solution, the ultimate need is not for our politics to get fixed, but for our hearts to repent and revival to attend our land. See God’s invitation in 2 Chronicles 7:14. May God bring to our land another Great Awakening where his people are found in lamentation and repentance and those far from God are found and rescued by the Good Shepherd.

We practice faith and confidence in God’s rule by gathering for worship regularly to declare our allegiance to Jesus . Our primary allegiance is to our King. The Kingdom of Jesus is now (the rule of Christ in the spread of the gospel through the works and words of his church) and future (the rule of Christ as King of kings and Lord of lords when he sets up his throne over heaven and earth). The reason our laments, our frustrations, our prayers, our concerns for each other, and our gospel works and words in the world have meaning in the broken world today is that they point to the coming King who will bring peace and perfection when he returns. The way we declare allegiance to Jesus today and prepare for the future is to worship Jesus now–regularly and consistently. Author and theologian N.T. Wright described the role of Christian worship as a declaration of allegiance to Christ and our positive affirmation of the kingdom of Christ (now and to come) as well as our act of protest against the prevailing wickedness in the world today:

All kingdom work is rooted in worship. Or, to put it the other way around, worshipping the God we see at work in Jesus is the most politically charged act we can ever perform. Christian worship declares that Jesus is Lord and that therefore, by strong implication, nobody else is. What’s more, it doesn’t just declare it as something to be believed, like the fact that the sun is hot or the sea wet. It commits the worshiper to allegiance, to following this Jesus, to being shaped and directed by him. Worship the God we see in Jesus orients our whole being, our imagination, our will, our hopes, and our fears away from the world where Mars, Mammon, and Aphrodite (violence, money, and sex) make absolute demands and punish anyone who resists. It orients us instead to a world in which love is stronger than death, the poor are promised the kingdom, and chastity (whether married or single) reflects the holiness and faithfulness of God himself. Acclaiming Jesus as a Lord plants a flag that supersedes the flags of the nations however ‘free’ or ‘democratic’ they may be. It challenges both the tyrants who think they are, in effect, divine and the ‘secular democracies’ that have effectively become, if not divine, at least ecclesial, that is, communities that are trying to do and be what the church was supposed to do and to be, but without recourse to the one who sustains the church’s life. Worship creates or should create, if it allowed to be truly itself—a community that marches to a different beat, that keeps in step with a different Lord.”
–N.T. Wright, Simply Jesus, 217.

May we gather weekly to do all the work of the mission by worshiping the Savior King to whom we belong. May we pursue revival in our preaching and our prayers. May we act with the compassion and loving-kindness of Jesus our Savior. May we live our lives seeking truth and justice.

Photo by Pedro Lima on Unsplash

SBC Annual Meeting 2024

The annual meeting for Southern Baptists is finished, and here are some of my observations for the several days in Indianapolis. Regardless of the headlines you’ve read or the assessments you may or may not have heard on social media, remember this, Southern Baptists may never win the headlines. Our wins happen in the churches, seminary classrooms, and mission fields as the gospel is preached, theological fidelity practiced, and unreached peoples are engaged with the gospel.

Polity matters. One of the more helpful insights for me came from the 9 Marks at 9 event on Monday as Jonathan Leeman discussed the differences between connectional and cooperational denominations. He described connectional denominations as ones with structures that decide doctrine or practice for local churches (in varying degrees see the Roman Catholics the United Methodists). Leeman described the Southern Baptist Convention as a cooperational denomination. Churches remain autonomous with their own local church polity, statements of faith, and practices. In essence Southern Baptist Churches are not member churches of a denomination, but rather autonomous churches that cooperate for missional purposes. Because churches aren’t members, they send messengers who can attend and participate in the business based on the church’s cooperative giving. Giving through the denominational mechanisms allows churches to send and seat messengers as representatives to the annual meeting. The SBC can and does decide the grounds for seating messengers. This is the job of the credentials committee.

The SBC is complementarian and considering churches who are “not in friendly cooperation” remains a difficult process. If you’ve read any headlines, they probably highlighted the failure of the “Law” amendment to become a part of the constitution. Amendments to the SBC constitution have to pass by a two thirds majority in two consecutive annual meetings to become established. The proposed amendment stated that churches in friendly cooperation affirm, appoint, or employ “only men as any kind of pastor or elder as qualified by Scripture.” The stated aim of the amendment was to make the process of not considering churches in friendly cooperation more economical. As it stands now, the credentials committee can consider a church “not in friendly cooperation” on the grounds of doctrine or practice out of bounds with the Baptist Faith and Message or a church whose doctrine and practice on LGBTQ issues, sexual abuse issues, or racism issues are in contradiction to the stated position of the SBC. Churches that have women as pastors have also been considered “not in friendly cooperation.” This process happens on the convention floor and requires a messenger vote. While the proposed, but failed “Law” amendment, may have made the process more economical, I personally believe that dealing with this issue on the convention floor provides a healthy and weighty grief for the messengers. It offers the messengers consistent opportunities to articulate the complementarian position of Scripture that reserves the role of pastor for qualified men and in so doing, teaches the denomination. Our current, and for the time being at least, continuing process affords this opportunity to affirm our established conservative, complementarian position while allowing the messengers to function as a voting, disciplinary body. While cumbersome, the current process is weighty and closely aligns with the healthy process of church discipline in local congregations.

Leadership and character is indispensable. Too many SBC and evangelical leaders with large platforms and well-recognized names have fallen in sin or leadership folly. It is wonderful to begin well, but God has called us to finish well. To this observation, I express gratitude to Dr. Albert Mohler at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for more than 30 years leading the flagship seminary of the SBC, to Dr. Danny Akin at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary for more than 20 years at SEBTS, and to Dr. Jeff Iorg who retired from Gateway Seminary to take on the role of the President and CEO of Executive Committee for the denomination. These men are representative of the many thousands of obscure baptist pastors and leaders who remain faithful to their calling and service to Jesus Christ. May we learn from their example and remain faithful.

Our large and diverse body will always have differences of opinion. In the lead up to the annual meeting, much is made of our disagreements and divisions. And we will always have them. I have great friends on various sides of different doctrinal and practical issues facing Southern Baptists. Several tried to convince me of their positions this week. And our polity allows for any messenger (some of them affectionally referred to as “crazy uncles”) to bring motions or speak to the messengers at microphones. Our diversities and “crazy uncles” are part of what makes the SBC special.

We have much work left to do. I mean this in two ways. First, the SBC remains cooperative for the spread of the gospel to the nations (see next observation for more detail). But even as we celebrate what has been done and is being done, we reflect on the great task in front of us. With nearly 3000 unengaged, unreached people groups, the frontier project of the SBC is to send pioneer missionaries and researchers to find, evaluate, and begin the process of evangelization of these people groups. Second, the SBC has moved the needle on handling sexual abuse issues, but is not there yet. The Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force (ARITF) has made progress in curriculum development, but has not completed the ministry check website. Southern Baptists must remain vigilant in establishing protocols to protect and defend those who attend our churches. The work of justice and congregational care in this area is far from complete.

Missionaries and mission sending remain the central reason for cooperation. Eighty-three missionaries were commissioned or re-commissioned to the field this week. Some will go to places where the gospel is not welcome. Some missionaries were not able to introduce themselves with their own voices or show their faces because of the security risks in the places they will go. Recently, the IMB celebrated the retirement of 40 career missionaries whose cumulative service was more than 1100 years. These missionaries who have given their lives or who are going to the field for the first time ought to be our heroes and the ones we celebrate.

The location and weather for the annual meeting was excellent. Indianapolis was a fantastic host city. Hotels and amenities are in close proximity to the convention center. Even with large crowds, the plethora of restaurants surrounding the vicinity handled the messengers and visitors easily. But the most excellent thing about Indianapolis was the weather! Comfortable, not sweltering weather for an SBC annual meeting was a plus for this year’s meeting.

Here are some of my favorite quotes for the week:

“If we evaluate the SBC on twitter, we’ll hate it. If we evaluate the SBC in the convention hall, we’ll like it. If we evaluate the SBC by working with a missionary on the field, we’ll love it.” Dr. Juan Sanchez

“Between the Great Commission (Mt. 28) and the Great Multitude (Rev. 7) is the Great Pursuit, the responsibility of the church to reach the nations with the gospel.” Dr. Paul Chitwood

As imperfect as we are, we remain solidly biblical, theologically diverse, and missionally committed as the largest Protestant denomination in the country. For those that live in proximity to Wilkesboro Baptist Church, I will take the Wednesday evening gathering on July 10 at 6 pm in our church sanctuary to discuss more of these denominational details and answer questions about the state of the SBC.

Photo by Corbin Mathias on Unsplash