The Backwoods Baptist

Somewhere between Gandhi, the movie Full Metal Jacket, and Barney Fife is a proper understanding of church security. Too many church security teams resemble the cartoon character Dale Gribble from King of the Hill. While others take a pacifist approach to their safety. Let me apply some backwoods logic to a sticky situation. But before we get started I want to update you on the events of my personal life and why I've been away for the last few weeks.

The short answer is that I am a missionary sent out of Lee Creek Baptist Church in Van Buren, AR who works with pastorless churches and churchless pastors. The long answer and biblical support for this kind on ministry are found in today's podcast.

If you're a member of a Baptist church you've been in a business meeting. There's a good chance you've had a bad experience in a business meeting. The bad business meeting is really the result of a bad church or bad leadership in the church. These bad experiences have led a few churches to quit these meetings all together. I don't think this is the answer. I believe you should address the church issues and conduct business to the glory of God. In this episode I'll give some practical advise on business meeting and rebuke those who refuse to hold them. I even make a biblical case for the use of committees, give it a listen.

We are clearly in the age of the Christian mega conference. Many of the national conferences host thousands of attenders each year. These events have grown to the point that they teeter on celebrity culture drawing from an all-star line up of famous preachers. During these events social media fills with pictures of average Christians posing with the favorite teacher/preacher/author. Exhibit halls fill with every sort of Christian vender under the sun. Shame on you if you wait to long to buy your ticket and miss out. I'm asking you to unplug from the culture for 30 minutes and hear me out, is this the way to do a conference? Is bigger better? Where does this lead us into the future?

What should we wear to church? The answers range from a legalistic uniform to nearly nothing at all. In this episode I lay out four different common categories of church attire and recommend an approach that glorifies God without offending man. 

So what do we do with all these opinions? Who's right? Who's wrong? One thing we know for certain, everybody can't be right. In this episode I lay the ground work for holding Scripture as our standard of right and wrong. Our views must be Biblically consistent or they are simply our views. We don't need opinions nearly as much as we need bed rock truth. Let's go to the Scriptures and cut through all these opinions.

Social media is shaping the way we think about situations as well as making it easier to share our own opinions. This modern way of consuming and publishing information can have both positive and negative impacts on our day to day lives. This episode seeks to present the best and worst of both sides of the social media coin. I also offer a challenge to limit your consumption of social media and return to some of the healthy practices that you enjoyed before the Information Age. 

The Southern Baptist Convention has been in a downward spiral for a few years now. Why do so many churches and pastors stay in this broken system. Why does the Convention stay in a constant state of turmoil going from scandal to scandal? Will it ever end? I'll give three reasons for the current state of the SBC. These are more practical reasons than historic reasons but I think will shed some much needed light on this saga.  

A short drive anywhere in our country will invariably lead you to cross paths with an odd church name or two. It seems to be a contest as to who can come up with the newest most absurd church name. There's one in our area called "Beyond Church." Lets talk about this trend and offer some practical options to curb these downward trends.

When we equate time in the outdoors as highly as attending church we do church a disservice. The same goes for blending our hobbies with the worship of almighty God. While creation clearly points us to a Creator, it falls drastically short of communing with our Creator.