Opinion Column Archives - Baptist & Reflector

WELCOME TO TENNESSEE — A MISSION FIELD

June 14, 2021

By Lonnie Wilkey
Editor, Baptist and Reflector
lwilkey@tnbaptist.org

Tennessee Baptists extend a warm welcome to our Southern Baptist brothers and sisters in Christ who are in Nashville this week for the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Many of you may be in Nashville for the first time while this may be a regular place to visit for others. Even without Opryland, a theme park that used to bring thousands of people to the city each summer (the park closed in 1997), there is still a lot to see and do in Music City.

I would daresay that many of our visitors think they have arrived at the “buckle of the Bible belt.” After all, Nashville is the home of the SBC Executive Committee and Lifeway Christian Resources, the publishing and distribution arm of the SBC.

No doubt that every other person you pass on the street will be sitting in a pew on Sunday morning, right? Well, not really.

Lewis McMullen, church planting specialist for the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board, summed it up well when he addressed seminary students who were in town last week to participate in Crossover, an evangelistic event that has been held in the host city of the annual meeting for more than 30 years.

He told the students, “The belt has broken.” [Read more…]

I LOVE BEING A TENNESSEE BAPTIST

June 14, 2021

By Randy C. Davis
President and executive director, TBMB

I love being a Tennessee Baptist, and there are countless reasons why, beginning with our rich history and continuing with our very bright future.

Just a few years ago, the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board exhumed the remains of Tidence Lane, the first Baptist pastor to journey over the Appalachian Mountains and into East Tennessee to invest his life in church planting, the pastorate and actively participating in associational ministry.

His remains were in a family plot in the middle of a pasture on land he received for distinguished service during the Revolutionary War, just a couple hundred yards from the spring near where he planted Bent Creek Church in the 1780s. That’s a decade-plus before Tennessee even became a state.

His remains, along with that of his wife and other family members, were reinterred about a mile away, at Whitesburg Baptist Church, which is the direct descendant of Bent Creek. [Read more…]

BEST GIFT FOR DAD? YOUR PRESENCE

June 11, 2021

By Carolyn Tomlin
Contributing Writer, B&R

When I was a small child, my father often called me to help him with a task. Sometimes it was holding a board he was sawing with a hand saw. Another time, he needed me to help plant corn in the family garden. And I recall the numerous times I was called to sit on the ice cream freezer, holding it down, while my father turned the hand-crank as the custard hardened.

Looking back, he could have accomplished all these things by himself. But with his daughter nearby, we could talk and laugh about things. It wasn’t my skills he needed; it was my presence.

This Father’s Day, instead of the fancy package with beautiful paper and ribbon, how can we honor those men in our lives who have given us so much? The answer is by giving them our ‘Time.’ Give experiences, not things. Could some of these ideas work for your father? [Read more…]

FAMILY UNITY REQUIRES EFFORT FROM ALL

June 10, 2021

By Scott Shepherd
Worship And Music Specialist, Tennessee Baptist Mission Board

“What’s Critical Race Theory?”
“Why did Russell Moore resign?”
“Can women be pastors?”
“Who are you going to vote for as SBC president?”
“Why did Beth Moore leave the Southern Baptist Convention?”

No, these aren’t hallway conversation predictions for the Southern Baptist Convention. Rather, they’re the types of questions I’m asked at home every day — at the dinner table, during morning coffee chats, car drives and a never-ending volley of text messages and Facebook Messenger replies.

The same discussions that dominate our national discourse (and, at times, fuel our Southern Baptist debates) have slipped into the Shepherd household.

And here’s the hard part: Sometimes members of my family come to drastically different conclusions. It’s challenging enough when I disagree with folks in a church or denominational setting, but how am I supposed to walk through these issues with the ones I love most?

I think the apostle Paul has a perfect answer:“Therefore I, the prisoner in the Lord, urge you to walk worthy of the calling you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” — Ephesians 4:1-3 [Read more…]

A GRADUATION LIE AND FOUR TRUTHS

June 5, 2021

By Ray Van Neste
Dean and professor of Biblical studies for the School of Theology and Missions, Union University

It’s graduation season, and I’d like to congratulate all you graduates, as well as your parents, family and friends. This is a momentous accomplishment for which you should be justly proud.

I have long thought if ever I gave a graduation address, I would speak to what I call “the graduation lie,” which shows up in many commencement addresses. The lie is this: “You can be whatever you want to be.” It is not true.

The fact is you have been created as a unique and particular individual with specific gifts, as well as distinct limitations. The family into which you were born, the place you were born, and the era in which you were born all shape and limit who you are. We are all limited, or directed, by our genetics, our interests, our opportunities.

God, the Creator of the universe, made you for something. You are not an amorphous entity ready to be shaped into anything you desire. God has given you certain gifts. There is a lot of potential in those gifts, but you are not self-determining to create your own realities. [Read more…]

NASHVILLE WILL SOON BE ABUZZ WITH BAPTISTS

June 2, 2021

By Lonnie Wilkey
Editor, Baptist and Reflector
lwilkey@tnbaptist.org

In less than two weeks, Nashville will be abuzz with Southern Baptists. More than 12,000 messengers are expected to register for the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention to be held June 15-16 at the Music City Center in Nashville.

Music City and Tennessee last hosted the SBC annual meeting in 2005 and 11,641 messengers registered for the event.

Attendance has dwindled at SBC meetings in recent years. Since 2000, only four annual meetings have produced more than 10,000 messengers — Orlando in 2000 and 2010, Nashville in 2005 and Greensboro, N.C., in 2006. When Southern Baptists last gathered in 2019 in Birmingham, Ala., 8,183 messengers attended. Last year’s annual meeting, again scheduled in Orlando, was canceled due to COVID-19.

There was some question as to whether this year’s event would take place in Nashville due to COVID restrictions still in place. On April 15, Ronnie Floyd, president of the SBC Executive Committee, announced the venue was being moved from the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center to downtown to “provide abundant space conducive to holding a meeting that is efficient, effective and safe for every attendee” while adhering to local COVID-19 protocols (See story). [Read more…]

THE SBC AND MAINTAINING MISSION FOCUS

June 2, 2021

By Randy C. Davis
President and Executive Director, TBMB

We are going to meet. We are actually coming together, in person, to represent more than 40,000 churches that comprise the network of churches called the Southern Baptist Convention.

While gathering for the annual SBC isn’t that earth shattering in itself – after all we’ve been doing it every year since 1845 through wars, pandemics, heated (and needed) theological debates, cultural shifts and massive economic downturns – it is a big deal this year because of the unceremonious way the global COVID-19 pandemic brought an abrupt end to us having the convention last year. And like you, I’m excited to be gathering together.

However, there is a great danger to our future gathering if we allow our focus to stray from our purpose and results in “mission drift.” Possible? Absolutely, look at institutions like Harvard and Yale that were birthed as bastions of Christian values and biblical conservatism. You’d have to search long and hard to find a vestige of those roots on today’s campuses.

I’ll repeat what I’ve heard my friend and president of the International Mission Board, Paul Chitwood, say many times. “When the Great Commission is not the lead topic of conversation in Southern Baptist life, the other topics tend to divide us.” [Read more…]

FIRST-PERSON: A CALL TO PRAYER AND FASTING FOR SBC ’21

May 24, 2021

By J.D. Greear
President of the Southern Baptist Convention
Pastor of The Summit Church in Durham, N.C.

DURHAM, N.C. – John Wesley famously said, “God does nothing in the world except in answer to prayer.” That’s probably an overstatement, but the apostles’ experience in Acts verifies at least the sentiment behind it. It was after a 10-day prayer meeting that God gave Peter the power to birth the church through his preaching in Acts 2.

The apostles prayed for 10 days, Peter preached for 10 minutes and 3,000 people got saved. Nowadays, we pray for 10 minutes, we talk for 10 days, and three people get saved. (We need to rearrange our zeros!) And it was during a prayer meeting (Acts 13:2), not a missions conference, that God raised up the church’s greatest missionary, the apostle Paul.

Above all things, our annual meeting needs to be saturated by prayer. We need to pray before it, during it and after it. This convention should not be about what we think or what we want, but what God wants. And the way we discover that is through prayer. [Read more…]

WE NEED LESS GREED, MORE COMMON SENSE

May 21, 2021

By Lonnie Wilkey
Editor, Baptist and Reflector
lwilkey@tnbaptist.org

Last week, Tennessee and other states in the southeast faced a gas shortage due to a cyberattack on a pipeline. Hopefully, by the time you’re reading this, the issue has been corrected and gas is once again readily available at fuel pumps.

I know people who were in other parts of the state when the gas shortage became apparent and there were legitimate concerns they might not find enough gas to return home.

It’s just a guess on my part, but the shortage last week probably had more to do with greed and lack of common sense than it did the cyberattack.

We are living in such a “it’s all about me” culture and society that nobody or nothing else matters. That is why there was story after story of people flocking to gas stations and sitting in lines to fill their tanks when they probably had enough gas to last through the crisis. But what made matters even worse are the people who brought numerous gas cans to fill up. [Read more…]

THE RISING HOPE FOR DAYS AHEAD

May 20, 2021

By Randy C. Davis
President & Executive Director, Tennessee Baptist Mission Board

Sometimes all people need to press forward is a sliver of hope. Last week we got it.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky delivered that hope when the director of the Center for Disease Control stepped to the microphone during a press conference and said, “Anyone who is fully vaccinated can participate in indoor and outdoor activities, large or small, without wearing a mask or socially distancing.”

That simple pronouncement was like turning the corner at the end of the long driveway and seeing the Biltmore Mansion for the first time.

Her declaration is a monumental, long-awaited signal that light is dawning after plodding through the dark night of the coronavirus pandemic. [Read more…]

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