I hate talking about money. Most people hate hearing pastors talk about money. Still, how we handle money falls under Jesus’ command to “teach them everything I have commanded you.” So, talking about how Christians and churches handle money is a discipleship issue. As we begin a new year, then, let’s consider four principles of generosity we observe as the Christians in Antioch responded to the financial need of the Jerusalem church.

Principle 1 | They gave willingly & deliberately (Acts 11:29)

Once the need was known, the disciples in Antioch determined that they would send a relief offering—no one asked them to. That word determined may also be translated “decided” or “resolved.” In other words, knowing the need, they resolved to be generous. And notice that the determination was both individual (“every one” v.29) and corporate (“the disciples determined” v.29). 

There could be any number of reasons one might determine to give. Some people give out of obligation or obedience, others out of shame or guilt. But the greatest fuel for generosity is love. Think about it! We’re all generous with whom or what we love—generous with our time, our resources, and our money. If we love self, we lavish ourselves with what makes us most happy. If we love others, we lavish them with what makes them most happy. Because I love my wife, I delight in showering her with generosity, even to the point of personal sacrifice. And that’s no surprise, because love by definition and example is sacrificial. God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). And Jesus’ love for us is such that he laid aside his wealth in heaven to become a poor servant on earth, so that through his perfect life, substitutionary death, and victorious resurrection, we who are poor in spirit may share in his heavenly inheritance through repentance from sin and faith in him. That’s good news!

Jesus cares for his people through the generosity of his people, and he gives us both the definition and example of what that generosity looks like. Let us love others as Jesus loved us and resolve to be generous.

Principle 2 | They gave proportionally (Acts 11:29)

We cannot give what we do not have, and Jesus never asks us to do so. Instead, the Christians in Antioch resolved to give according to their ability—literally, according to how each prospered. The question we need to help our people ask is ‘What do we have to give’? Truth be told, as Americans, we have a lot more to give than we realize. We need to help our churches understand that everything we have comes from God, and that we are merely God’s managers of what he gives us. God provides for us that we may live and care for our family, and he blesses us in ways that allow us to be his instruments for the care of his people.

It’s possible that our people’s love for self has driven them into strangling debt. As a result, they feel they cannot give. Encourage them to get help getting out of debt so that they may be free to be generous. Then encourage them to begin giving generously according to what they have, not what they do not have.

Principle 3 | They gave purposely (Acts 11:29)

The disciples in Antioch gave for a particular purpose—to send relief to the saints in Judea. They didn’t collect a general offering for general needs; they were purposeful. And so should we be. At most churches, the purpose of giving is outlined in their annual budget. Use your budget as a teaching tool. Help your church understand the purposes for which they should give generously. Then, use the budget as a prayer guide—praying for your pastors, ministries and gospel partnerships throughout the world. And as the Lord prospers your church, remember the Cooperative Program. Together, we are giving to advance the gospel in Texas and beyond.

Principle 4 | They gave wisely (Acts 11:30)

You want your church to be purposeful in their generosity, but you also want to provide accountability. The church in Antioch wisely chose trusted men (Paul and Barnabas) to take the offering to Jerusalem. And Paul and Barnabas wisely delivered the offering to the elders of the church, not just anyone.

If we want to cultivate a culture of generosity in our churches, then we should follow the example of the church in Antioch. Because of their faith in Christ, they were labeled Christians—Christ-followers. Because of their generosity, they displayed the unity of the one church, made up of Jew and Gentile, and they displayed the promise that Jesus cares for his people through the generosity of his people. May the Lord grant our churches to grow in generosity that we may bring him glory and show the world that we are Christians. 

PORTLAND, Tenn. — Churches that don’t balance discipleship with evangelism will likely struggle to grow sustainably.

That’s what a Texas Southern Baptist leader recently told a room full of Kentucky and Tennessee pastors. On Dec. 3, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary sponsored a RevTalk at First Baptist Church of Portland, Tenn. Kenneth Priest, who serves as the director of convention strategies at the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention and an adjunct professor at SBTS, coordinated and spoke at the event.

Steve Rice, who leads the church consulting and revitalization team at the Kentucky Baptist Convention, and Steve Holt, the church services director at the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board, also spoke during the RevTalk. Revitalization leaders from a number of other state Baptist conventions attended as well.

Priest regularly hosts RevTalk events throughout Texas. When he realized he’d be at SBTS around Dec. 3, he worked with the seminary to host a nearby talk for Tennessee and Kentucky churches.

“RevTalk is a revitalization conversation for pastors, to raise the level of awareness for the need of church revitalization. These are conversations I do all over Texas,” Priest said.

During his talk, Priest drew from his book, Rubicons of Revitalization, to share about the Great Commission Code, the idea that churches must evenly balance evangelism and discipleship to fulfill their Great Commission mandate effectively.

“Historically, as Southern Baptists, we provide an emphasis on evangelism or an emphasis on discipleship,” Priest said. “In doing that, we’re out of balance. The Great Commission is perfectly balanced between evangelism and discipleship. By separating the two we’re actually not accomplishing the Great Commission. That is my hypothesis as to why churches are in a state of decline because they are doing one or the other and not providing a balance.” 

Priest says the balanced approach means that everything the church does should answer the questions, “How is this discipleship and how is this evangelism?”

“That means if you’re going to have an AWANA ministry or a benevolence ministry then you actually have to have an evangelism strategy for it and a discipleship strategy,” Priest said. “If you can’t do both, it’s probably something the church isn’t supposed to be doing because the church is supposed to be accomplishing the Great Commission.” 

He adds that this is a plan he has taught about and encouraged throughout Texas. He can point to examples of this in churches around the state who are baptizing and discipling more people because they’re focused on balancing these two aspects.

Rice focused his talk on the marks of godly leaders, based on the book of Nehemiah. He noted how godly leaders demonstrate care, face opposition, live an exemplary life, prioritize prayer and commit themselves to God’s Word. He also noted that Jesus focused heavily on developing leaders and the church grew as a result.

“We have discovered that a godly leader is still the key for his church to experience renewal and fresh growth,” Rice said. “It starts at the top. [In Kentucky,] we are focusing on helping the pastor be the leader that he can be and part of that includes how he can recruit and develop leaders around him.”

Holt shared about “The Power of Fear,” centering his talk around Luke 12:32.

“I believe that it is God’s will that his kingdom grow and he wants the human expression of that kingdom—the church to grow as well,” Holt said. “Consequently, if we are actively seeking to fulfill the Great Commission by making disciples, we know God will bless our efforts. That knowledge should encourage us and drive any fear from our lives and ministry.”

Holt notes that often what pastors fear in church life are byproducts of focusing on human strength and perspective.

“We allow circumstances and people to unduly influence our willingness to step out in faith when God leads,” Holt said. “This creates ‘fortress’ or survival-type thinking that paralyzes growth and ensures decline and death.”

To learn more about upcoming RevTalks throughout Texas, visit sbtexas.com/revitalization.

No doubt the 120 believers in Jerusalem’s First Downtown Church Plant, in Acts Chapter 1, were uneasy. The commission Jesus had given them was completely impossible. Unless, of course, God wanted to do something fresh, new and maybe even a little bit unconventional.

Enter Acts Chapter 2—fresh, new and definitely a bit unconventional. Ten days earlier, Jesus had told the disciples to wait in Jerusalem. “Don’t do anything, until you’ve been baptized with the Holy Spirit.” For the rest of Chapter 1, these 120 believers were in a 10-day prayer meeting together, laboring intensely before the throne of grace over what exactly this promise of God would look like when it came.

When it did, there was no question it was from God. The church could have set all the systems and structures in place. It could have had the best worship leaders, the most gifted expositors, the most dynamic children’s and youth ministries, and the trendiest technology but unless God breathed on it nothing would happen. So He did.

These 120 church members were completely overcome by the presence and the power of God when the Holy Spirit came over them. Then Jesus unleashed His Holy-Spirit-filled church on the world.

As Southern Baptists organized in the 19th century, God was stirring the waters. There was a fresh wind blowing through Christendom. Churches across the United States would lock arms together to take the name of Jesus around the globe. They formed associations. They sent missionaries. They trained local pastors. In 1925, with the formation of the Cooperative Program, Southern Baptists were poised to be the most operative mission-sending body in modern history. They had the systems and structures in place, and God breathed on it. In the decades to follow they would plant churches, send missionaries, advocate in Washington for biblical justice and storm the gates of hell for the sake of the Gospel to the glory of God. 

But is God done with the Southern Baptist Convention? 

We have all heard the reports of declining baptisms. There is an ominous political tension lurking between us. Racism and classism have begun to threaten our fellowship again. Moral failures have been exposed from within the ranks.

But, ultimately, who is writing this narrative? Are Southern Baptist churches not still churches of the living God? Are we not still baptized in God’s Holy Spirit and sent with power and purpose to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth? Even in our uneasiness, is not the Gospel-centered local church still God’s only plan to propagate the Gospel of Jesus Christ among the nations? 

God is not done with the Southern Baptist Convention. 

I don’t know how you feel about the future of the SBC, but I get the feeling that right now in Southern Baptist life we are gathered together in an upstairs room in prayerful expectation that any day God could breathe on us and unleash us on the world anew. I honestly believe that God is getting ready to do something fresh, new and maybe even a little bit unconventional through our fellowship of theologically conservative, missionally driven, Gospel-centered churches.

Our recent past should serve to remind us that we can have all the right systems and structures in place, but unless God breathes on it nothing will happen. Without the breath of God, churches and groups of churches lay lifeless in the dirt like a valley full of dry bones. But when the Holy Spirit moves in us and through us, we are filled with the power and the presence of God. I’m on the edge of my seat in prayer today, brothers and sisters. It could come at any moment. There’s a fresh wind blowing through the SBC.

I’m not exactly sure what God’s new thing is going to look like in this generation, but I’m laboring in prayerful expectation. We’ve got some great systems and structures in place. God has gathered the nations at our doorstep. But we need Him to breathe on us again. We need the Holy Spirit to saturate us with the power and presence of the Almighty.

I know this thought makes us nervous. I recognize it is a bit unsettling to pray with supernatural expectation without knowing exactly what supernatural things to expect. But I just want to get this out there today: I believe in God’s work in and through the SBC. Whatever God wants to do through our fellowship of churches today and tomorrow, as long as it’s God’s thing engulfed in God’s presence and fueled by God’s power, I’m in. Are you?

In June of 1987, Adrian Rogers was elected to his third, non-consecutive term as president of the Southern Baptist Convention at the annual meeting in St. Louis. Just four months later, then-vice president George H.W. Bush announced his candidacy for president of the United States.

While an internecine war was coming to a close within the Southern Baptist Convention, the Cold War continued to rage. Many evangelicals threw their initial support behind evangelist Pat Robertson, whom they saw to be one of their own, during primary season. Robertson came in second in the Iowa caucus behind Bob Dole, and Bush placed third. It wasn’t until the next month when Bush swept all 16 primaries on Super Tuesday that he was seen as the presumptive nominee.

Southern Baptists were faced with a choice in 1988: Bush, the Republican, or Democrat Michael Dukakis. According to Richard Land, who took the helm at the SBC’s Christian Life Commission (now the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission) that same year, Bush was the clear choice for Southern Baptists.

“Politics and public policy is a comparative business, and you can’t make the perfect enemy of the good,” Land said. “You have to evaluate George H.W. Bush and his importance to Southern Baptists in comparison to the alternative, and clearly, compared to Michael Dukakis, he was a fantastic president. He was pro-life, pro-religious freedom, and he helped turned back the invasion of Kuwait in the Gulf War. All of those things had significant Southern Baptist support, and none of those things would have happened if he had lost to Dukakis.”

According to Land, much of Bush’s legacy stems from the furtherance of positions and continuation of policies enacted during the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

“He continued the Reagan legacy, and in many ways was the keeper of that legacy throughout his term,” Land said. “His chief importance was, he became more pro-life because of his association with Reagan and more sympathetic to the issues important to Southern Baptist during the eight years he served under Reagan.”

As liaison to evangelicals during his father’s campaign, George W. Bush ensured Land that he was pro-life, his father was pro-life, and that Southern Baptists would have a friend in the White House in George H.W. Bush.

In addition to overseeing the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union, one of Bush’s greatest contributions as president was his assertive leadership after Saddam Hussein led Iraq to invade Kuwait in August of 1990. In a speech delivered to the National Religious Broadcasters January 28, 1991, just a week and a half after the beginning of Operation Desert Storm, Bush assured evangelicals that the basis for the war stemmed from classic just war doctrine.

“The war in the Gulf is not a Christian war, a Jewish war, or a Muslim war; it is a just war. And it is a war with which good will prevail,” Bush said. “The first principle of a just war is that it support a just cause. Our cause could not be more noble. We seek Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait—completely, immediately, and without condition; the restoration of Kuwait’s legitimate government; and the security and stability of the Gulf.”

Daniel Heimbach, who currently serves as senior professor of ethics at Southeastern Seminary, worked at the time as deputy executive secretary of the Domestic Policy Council. He wrote the memo which prompted Bush to utilize just war doctrine to gain support for military intervention in the Gulf amid a sea of moral questions.

“I was very conscious at the time of the Lord’s hand and had a very strong sense that I was [at the White House] not to pursue my own career but to make a contribution to the Kingdom of God,” Heimbach said. “The Lord knew what he was doing.”

Later that year, convention president Morris Chapman welcomed President Bush to address the the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in Atlanta.

“On behalf of Southern Baptists, I want to thank you for your commitment to cherished beliefs that we hold in common. Thank you, Mr. President, for giving high priority to your personal family and to family values and for your leadership in advocating parental choice in education and child care. Thank you, Mr. President, for standing up for the unborn, who cannot stand up for themselves. Thank you, Mr. President, for setting an example of spiritual commitment by attending public worship,” Chapman said.

Bush’s address included a call for Congress to pass a constitutional amendment that would allow students to pray voluntarily in public schools, an endorsement of school vouchers, and a commitment to religious liberty.

“Let’s put people first and allow them the freedom to follow their faith,” he said. “Putting people first also means making sure government allows people to make their own decisions, and that means giving parents and families the right to choose the kind of child care they want for their kids.

“Every family should have the freedom to choose a school for a child,” he said. “Our efforts for choice in schools seek to put power in parents’ hands. We trust them to make the right decisions for their kids. I’m confident that choice will make bad schools better.”

Come 1992, a few things stood in the way of Bush’s reelection. For one, many Americans perceived Bush to have reneged on his promise of “no new taxes” when he struck a deal with Congressional Democrats for a budget agreement in 1990 that required raising existing taxes. For another, the Democratic base was energized by Bill Clinton, his youthful, charismatic opponent in the general election.

“Sadly, I and most Southern Baptists wish he had won reelection because he would have been a much better president than Mr. Clinton was on the issues that were important to us,” Land said. “He was a man of tremendous moral rectitude, and it sets a tone that’s important. He was a gentleman’s gentleman. Most Southern Baptists lamented that in his successor.”

Southern Baptists can be grateful for the life and legacy of George H.W. Bush, a president who stood firm in protection of religious liberty, maintained a solidly pro-life stance throughout his administration, and conducted himself in a way that brought honor to his family and his country.

Chris Osborne serves as pastor of Central Baptist Church in College Station, Tex., just around the corner from the elder Bush’s presidential library.

“We love having his library here because of the integrity he showed in his life,” Osborne said. “He had no scandals, and was a man who lived well in a number of areas of service.”

© 2018 • Southern Baptist Texan. All rights reserved.