Month: August 2014

SBTC”s Annual Meeting is just around the corner

It may be August but the convention’s Annual Meeting is on my mind. I am so excited about having the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention meet at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth this November. The SBTC and Southwestern share the same passion for the church and the gospel.

Pre-convention activities begin on Sunday night November 9th. A Spanish-language session will be held on campus. Attendance has been growing. This is great time of fellowship. Inspiring music with challenging messages are always a part of the program.

Pastor Michael Dean of Travis Avenue Baptist Church is the president of the Bible Conference. Sessions will be on Sunday night, Monday morning and Monday afternoon. Some of the featured preachers are Belleview Baptist Church, Memphis Pastor Steve Gaines and Eric Thomas, pastor, FBC Norfolk. Texas pastors Jack Graham and Michael Pender will minister to us from the Word. Southwestern’s Richard Ross and Stephen Smith are speaking as well. At lunch on Monday a ministry café will feature timely topics with a Q&A.

The actual convention will convene on Monday night and conclude on Tuesday night. The four sessions will feature common elements. Biblical exposition will kick off each session. A missions and ministry testimony segment will highlight the work done through the efforts of SBTC staff. This is a shareholders report to those who participate in giving through the Cooperative Program. The CP is an investment with eternal returns. As the theme of the convention centers around seeking the Lord, special prayer times have been scheduled. If ever there was a need for God’s people to seek his face it is now!

Monday night First Baptist Church, Forney, Pastor Jimmy Pritchard will deliver the President’s Address. Tuesday morning features recognition of Jimmy Draper with the Paul Pressler lifetime achievement award. Pastor Tony Mathews of North Garland Fellowship will bring the Convention Sermon. Tuesday afternoon has business on the agenda but an extended prayer time is allocated.

Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, is our guest preacher on the last night. He will challenge us to be salt and light. A multi-ethnic choir will show us what heaven will look like.

There are numerous auxiliary events at the SBTC. Tom Elliff speaks at the President’s Luncheon. A church planters dinner, church revitalization dinner and affinity group meals will take place over the three days. A special reception for Southwestern students is scheduled after the final gavel.

November 9-11 is the date for the SBTC Bible Conference and Annual Meeting. The beautiful chapel and grounds make for a wonderful setting. I encourage you to get your hotel reservations. Bring your messengers. Invite guests to join you. Childcare is provided for those who pre-register.

Finally, let me ask that you pray for God’s Spirit to move on us. Maybe this is the place God will bring us to himself in a new way. Oh Lord, please cleanse us, and then fill us, all for your glory!

Who”s the thermostat?

I was arrested recently by I Samuel 12:14. In this passage, the last and greatest of Israel’s judges is powerfully reminding the people of their sin of rejecting the Lord and asking for a human king like other nations. They got just what they asked for in Saul. I’d never noticed verse 14 and I found it convicting: If you fear the Lord and serve Him and obey His voice, and do not rebel against the commandment of the Lord, then both you and the king who reigns over you will continue following the Lord your God.

Israel was apparently trying to put a king between themselves and the obligation to obey God and worship him only—they’d failed to do those things many times since entering their homeland. They would fail in hiding themselves from the Lord but this verse brings that home from a new perspective. “If you [y’all] fear the LORD,” they were told, “both you and the king…will continue following the LORD your God.” Perhaps they thought, as we often do, that having a great person as magistrate will free the people up to live without so much responsibility. The king or governor or president will tell us what to do, and if it doesn’t work out well it’s his fault. Not so fast.

I’ve heard Richard Land say often that Washington DC is not a thermostat, controlling the climate in America, so much as a thermometer, reflecting it. Isn’t that what Samuel is telling Israel? Saul will be an impressive king like other nations have, but he’ll also represent who the nation is spiritually, no better and no worse.

There’s hope in this message. I take the verse to promise also that the leaders God places over us will become more godly as we become more godly. Either the Lord will change the leader’s heart or his actions or his address. The hard news is that this puts us right back where we started, responsible to God for what we do.

We are just a few months from an important mid-term election day in our country. After that we have an endless presidential race that will culminate in fall of 2016. Over the course of these months and years we will hear ever more urgent messages about what will happen if a candidate is elected, overblown promises from one side and overblown threats from the other. Our brothers and sisters will send panicked emails about the candidate they favor or the one they fear. For the most part they’ll be wrong in either the content or volume of their promises and warnings. America will get in 2014, and in 2016, the leaders we want and deserve. The people we elect matter but they won’t determine how God blesses or disciplines America—the elected candidate may actually be the agent of that blessing and cursing, and he will reveal who we are as a nation.

A magistrate can only do certain things. He can restrain us in good and bad ways and he can punish evil doers. He cannot make us good or frugal or devoted parents or faithful husbands. He cannot do much about the most crucial problems our families and communities face. Those problems are ultimately spiritual. Bad parents have a spiritual problem, as do lazy people and thieves. Good parents and good citizens are people who honor God or those who live in the afterglow of God-honoring neighbors or families. As that glow fades, families and communities will become less functional and so will our nation’s leadership.

It sounds easier to just elect people much better than ourselves who would forcibly set the tone for our communities. Places where that has been tried have become the worst regimes in history. We’re still on the hook, responsible for our own deeds and for the well-being of our communities. There is no shortcut to national renewal.

I offer a last caution. A revival of strong families and communities would be a byproduct of something more essential. It is God we are made to worship. Our devotion to him will bear marvelous fruit in the lives of all around us, but our devotion to him is the point and not the revitalization of a nation. Remember that as we pray for our leaders and our country in the run up to future elections.

And, oh yes, Christians who are not registered to vote are on the sidelines of spiritual warfare in our nation. Registered voters who do not show up on Election Day are in sin. There’s time for you to become a registered, informed voter before this year’s mid-term election. You should do that. Be good stewards of your Christian citizenship but the hope for any people is, from the first to the last, in the Lord.

State-wide prayer effort draws hundreds

AUSTIN–Standing in a circle under an oak tree at the State Capitol in Austin, Aug. 2, about 30 participants in “Praying Across Texas” earnestly prayed for restoration, revival and rain. They joined hundreds more spread across the Capitol grounds and in communities throughout the state.

Individuals scattered across Capitol grounds, according to Austin National Day of Prayer organizer Jim McGee, a spokesperson for the event. They prayer walked, prayed in various Capitol buildings and sat in small groups on the lawn praying or reading scripture.

A number of large groups also met to pray in multiple churches in Killeen, San Antonio, Dallas, El Paso and in other small towns and communities, McGee told the Texan. In Georgetown, participants met at a park gazebo to pray.

Steve Washburn, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Pflugerville, started out under the tree at the Capitol and took a young deacon inside the Capitol to pray with him, laying hands on the office doors of legislators and leaders.

“We were just asking for the Lord to protect what happens in this building because as this building goes, so goes the state of Texas and as Texas goes, so goes this nation,” Washurn said.

Describing being inside the Capitol as like being in a “spider-web” of sorts, traversing various hallways and corridors, Washburn said. He added that since the legislature is not in session, it was the perfect time to be able to wander around and pray in that manner.

Exiting the building, Washburn said it was a very positive experience to see people he recognized outside gathered into small groups reading their Bibles and praying. He watched as people visiting the State Capitol grounds walked by respectfully and appeared to smile in agreement with the message those gathered sent by their presence.

“It was just a very positive, joyful announcement to most people coming by that we were Christ-followers and we were lifting up the Capitol and the state to Christ,” Washburn said.

Watching people come and go, and pray, throughout the morning, was encouraging to McGee, who said he has been involved in the Day of Prayer movement for many years.

“That we still have the freedom and ability to do that and that God still answers our prayers, is exciting,” McGee said.

Speaking with one young man, McGee learned that the man and his friends, once a month, walk around the Capitol to pray for the state and country.

“It’s exciting this has been going on before we even did this,” he said. “Most people like us, we don’t know who prayed all around Texas. We don’t know; only God does,” McGee said.

McGee said he learned of another woman who goes inside the Capitol tundra and sings the Lord’s Prayer once a week. “It was like, ‘Thank you Lord.’ It’s exciting to see what God’s people are doing. It isn’t just us organizing it; God is organizing it.”

Washburn, who went from the “Praying Across Texas” event Saturday, to his own local monthly prayer meeting with local pastors in Pflugerville, said he is encouraged by the new direction the local group, which he initiated years ago, has taken.

About 17 conservative evangelical pastors meet regularly to eat, pray and discuss a current topic of interest, he said. The Aug. 3 meeting changed with each of the pastors inviting several members of their congregations to the meeting.

“It was a very sweet time,” Washburn said. “We have asked each other and we are praying about how to reach the community for Christ and to share the Gospel.”

Washburn said the monthly opportunity gives the men, and now some of the members of the various churches in the community, the chance to see how pastors of other denominations and those who are non-denominational, get along.

“I told these men I feel closer to them because of their conservative positions than some of the more liberal Baptists,” Washburn said.

After two days of prayer meetings in two locations centering on his country, state and community, Washburn said he was struck by an irony at the Capitol Aug. 2.

Shortly after the prayer initiative, thousands of pro-Palestine protestors participated in a rally at the State Capitol supporting a defeat of Israel.

“It was a God thing that the Christians got there first and had already bathed the entire campus in prayer and honeycombed the Capitol in prayer,” Washburn said.

Ultimately, he said, “We were praying for the Lord’s ‘reign’ and ‘rain,’ as well as the salvation and holiness of Texas.”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry sent greetings to event organizers July 30.

“Throughout our history, Americans have turned to prayer and reflection during times of strength and weakness and in moments of joy and despair. Prayer is an opportunity for majestic communion; through it, joy is amplified, pain is comforted and emptiness is filled up.

“I join you in believing in the power of prayer, and I thank you for your commitment in praying for government leaders, our state and our nation,” Perry wrote.

Earlier this year he declared May 1, 2014, “A Day of Prayer” on the anniversary of the National Day of Prayer.