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A Little Bit about Being a Baptist

On June 11-12, messengers from Southern Baptist churches across our country will gather for the annual business meeting of the largest evangelical denomination in the United States. Being Southern Baptist is a part of my heritage. I grew up in the home of a Southern Baptist pastor, went to Southern Baptist schools for my education, and pastor a Southern Baptist Church.

We are far from perfect as a denomination, and I expect that the annual meeting will result in a fair amount of politics and controversies. Being millions of member strong and 50,000 churches, doctrinal and practical diversity are part of what it means to be Southern Baptist. Here are a few general observations about our denomination.

We believe in the gospel and the authority of Scripture. Decades ago grassroots Baptists anchored the denomination on the inerrancy and inspiration of Scripture. This doctrinal and political battle waged on the floors of annual meetings in the 1980s, and the result has been that Southern Baptists retain a high view of the authority of Scripture which undergirds the gospel that saves.

Missions is the reason we cooperate. The reason we give, gather, and go is for the spread of the gospel to the nations. The cooperative program has been around nearly 100 years and combines giving from churches across the US to support missions across the globe. When giving from thousands of churches is combined, missionaries can go to the nations with the gospel and not have to fundraise for their income. While we don’t always agree on everything (see below), we do agree that cooperation for the spread of the gospel is the primary reason we exist.

Church autonomy and doctrinal latitude have resulted in Southern Baptists being a big tent. At the annual meeting, messengers gather from cooperative churches for two days. The convention is only for two days with messengers making up the decision-making body of the denomination. In Southern Baptist life, there is no church hierarchy or governing body that decides for the convention messengers. If you’ve ever been to a church business meeting, the SBC annual meeting functions similarly. This means that votes will happen about business (budgets and denominational entities), leadership, and even theological issues when we gather next week. The messengers attending, the votes cast, and the decisions made will vary. Church autonomy means that each local Southern Baptist Congregation is responsible for governing itself and decides whether or not it will cooperate with the convention. The convention can separate its cooperation from churches whose practice or doctrine does not function within the parameters of the Baptist Faith and Message. Some of the decisions at this year’s annual meeting reflect these tensions. For example, the messengers will vote on an amendment to the denomination’s bylaws establishing who is eligible to pastor Southern Baptist churches and remain cooperative within the denomination. Positions on this issue vary even though the prevailing doctrinal position of Southern Baptists has a strong consensus that the role of pastor/elder is reserved for qualified males. Even so, how this doctrinal consensus will be applied at the denominational level has a variety of perspectives and will receive attention at the upcoming meeting.

If you are reading this as a member of a Southern Baptist church, like Wilkesboro Baptist, I would encourage you to pray for the upcoming annual meeting. Pray that Christ would be honored when we gather and as we interact with one another. Pray that messengers and guests would act in a Christlike manner toward each other. Pray that the decisions made, the budgets passed, and the missionaries commissioned will help to spread the gospel to our neighbors and the nations.

If you would like to learn more about Southern Baptists, here are a few links to follow.

Photo by Joshua Rodriguez on Unsplash

The Day the King Rose…

Billions of people all across the globe celebrated the Risen King on March 31, 2024. Just because billions of people celebrated doesn’t make something true, but the fact that billions of people celebrated one unique story does warrant investigation.

Over the years, I’ve preached on Easter Sunday, taught about the resurrection, invited people to trust in Christ, argued for the resurrection, and defended the gospel to and for people over and over again. There is little doubt that the resurrection is the most important miracle in all of the Bible.

Without the resurrection, there is no Christianity. Theologian and author N.T. Wright has written extensively on the subject of the resurrection.

“There is no evidence for a form of early Christianity in which the resurrection was not a central belief. Nor was this belief, as it were, bolted on to Christianity at the edge. It was the central driving force, informing the whole movement.”

N.T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus, 133. 

Wright’s book, The Resurrection of the Son of God is a classic on the subject. The resurrection has been questioned, debated, argued, and defended. The evidence for this miracle has brought skeptics to faith and changed the lives of billions of people across the planet. Journalist turned pastor, Lee Strobel, has written about how his search for evidence against Christianity brought him to faith in Christ in his book The Case for Christ. He’s also written specifically about Jesus’ resurrection in his work The Case for Easter.

Maybe you’re a Christian discouraged by the skepticism that abounds. Or maybe you’re a skeptic willing to consider the evidence for the resurrection. Would you consider reading one of the above books? The entirety of Christianity turns on the historicity and validity of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

If you don’t have time to read a book, here are several good reasons for believing in the resurrection:

  1. The resurrection best accounts for the empty tomb. Even the religious leaders in Jesus’ own day acknowledged the empty tomb. Remember, they came up with the suggestion that the disciples stole the body of Jesus in the night (Matthew 28:13). An empty tomb suggests that the body of Jesus was not accounted for in his own day. 
  2. The body of Jesus has never been accounted for. There are really only a couple of options regarding Jesus’ body. He was buried in a public tomb. His followers and the religious leaders knew where he was, so it is not like Jesus’ body remains buried somewhere to be discovered by someone else. The religious leaders would not have taken the body. They were responsible for Jesus’ death. They would have wanted to destroy Christianity before it began. They would have produced the body if they could have. 
  3. If the disciples took the body, then that means they died for a hoax. A theory that goes all the way back to the New Testament is that the disciples took Jesus’ body and perpetrated the resurrection as a hoax. Not only would this make Christianity the greatest hoax in history, but it does’t square with the historical evidence of Jesus’ followers. The apostles all died as martyrs following lives of preaching the resurrected Christ. Would they have all really gone to their graves for a lie that they perpetrated? 
  4. The first witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus were not legally able to testify in court. One of the critiques against the veracity of the Gospel accounts is that they were legends that developed over years far removed from the actual events. This would mean that the Gospel writers put their accounts together for theological purposes with the singular aim of convincing readers of their version of Christ. But all of the Gospel accounts identify women as the first witnesses to the resurrection. This makes little sense if the Gospel writers were trying to convince their readers in the court of public opinion. Women could not serve as witnesses in a court of law. In that case, why would the Gospel writers include them in the story? The only reason for including the women in the story is that they were the first witnesses to the resurrection. This is an incidental detail that lends great credibility to the resurrection account.
  5. The drastic change in the disciples validates the resurrection story. At the end of Jesus’ crucifixion, the disciples cowered in fear in a locked room. They abandoned Jesus after his arrest. They were afraid. Yet in the book of Acts, they were different. The disciples boldly proclaimed Christ in front of the Jewish religious leaders. Even a persecutor named Paul met the risen Christ in a vision and proclaimed the good news in front of kings and emperors. These men didn’t become rich or powerful. They did not live in luxury. Pain, persecution, and death awaited them. Yet, they embraced their sufferings because they genuinely believed the message they proclaimed: that Jesus rose from the dead. 
  6. The rise of Christianity is a powerful witness to the resurrection. Two thousand years later Christianity has more than two billion adherents on earth. People from all walks of life, nationalities, languages, and ideologies have become followers of Jesus. Men and women and boys and girls from all over the world believe that Jesus rose from the dead. More importantly, they have been changed by the Christ they believe in. 

You may remain unconvinced of the reality of the resurrection. Sure, there have been other arguments against the resurrection throughout history. And there are other arguments for the resurrection. But here is my concluding thought in this post. The historical, physical resurrection of Jesus Christ is the best explanation for the evidence we do have. If you are a skeptic or unbeliever, then I challenge you to provide credible answers to the evidences we do have. 

  • Why is there an empty tomb? 
  • Where is the body of Jesus? 
  • Why would the disciples die for a hoax? 
  • Why would the Gospel writers include women as the first witnesses? 
  • What changed the disciples from fear to faith? 
  • What explanation exists for the rise of Christianity? 

If you already believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ or if you study the evidence and come to believe in the resurrection, then you must come to understand this one important reality: If Jesus rose from the dead, then he is both Lord and King. After the resurrection, Jesus said, “All authority has been given unto me in heaven and on earth” (Mt. 28:18). He is the King who rose. This means that we are obligated to believe in the King, worship the King, and follow the King unconditionally.

The truest response to the Risen King is to believe and follow just like the first witnesses and apostles. May the Risen Christ change and lead us!

Photo by Ch P on Unsplash