Leaning Forward

Don't blame God

Numbers are declining and we're scratching our heads. While the Good News is changing hearts around the world, the church in the United States is in retreat. Just about every demographic is moving downward---membership, attendance, baptisms, financial support, and service. So, what else is new? We've witnessed in our lifetimes the spiritual demise of England and much of Europe. In the future we can expect to see dilapidated, boarded-up churches and further evidence of our spiritual decline. Woe is me!

What's worse, we tend to blame God. Now, be honest. Few of us would actually point to heaven and say "it's God's fault" because my church is dying or the culture is going to you know where in a hand basket. It's a more subtle blame-game than that, maybe even blaming God is reverse. You see, most of us are quick to pint to God ad give him the glory when we are in times of blessing. He is Sovereign and rules all things. At some level this could be one of those false humility robes most of us clergy-types like to don so as not to take credit for things only God could accomplish. Yet, we are usually sincere in thanking Him for His blessings and making sure we don't suffer swelled head syndrome. 

When the worm turns, however, we'll likely shrug, the "I dunno" of reversals. It's not always verbalized, but the under-the-breath hint is that God is not blessing us for some reason, lost in the mystery of His ways. The contemporary mantra is, "it isn't about me". So, let's scratch our heads and quietly look to heaven for an answer to this dilemma. We seem to forget the faith and works thing, the promise of God to those who are redeemed by His grace and sent forth to change the world. There is an obedience factor in all of this, and it isn't thermo-nuclear dynamics.

Run through this with me.
(1) God is all powerful, in India, in China, in Southeast Asia, and in North Charleston, SC.
(2) God is always working in our lives (John 5:17).
(3) He is working for the good of those who love Him and are called to His purpose (Romans 8:28).
(4) God desires that all humans be saved (2 Timothy 2:4).
(5) God's Word always produces what He desires (Isaiah 55:10-11).

Perhaps we're in times of decline because we're not speaking the Good News, not declaring His promises to those who serve, give, and go, not being faithful on this end of the faith and works tension. Yes, of course, God permits us to go through seasons, to experience wilderness times, to perhaps wander when we've moved away from the strong bases of His provision. Still, God's promises for obedience in Kingdom pursuits are firm and operative.

The parable of the sower guides this process. Let's avoid the debates about the titling of Christ's very diescriptive story. Most likely it would be better thought as the parable of the soils. Here's the point! There is no deficiency with the seed. It is the Word of God and it always produces fruit. There s the further issue of God's timing, another layer in the mission. Paul wrote it, " I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, and God made it grow" (1 Corinthians 3:6).

Stil, He asked us to do the sowing, the preaching of truth, the promise of His blessings to obedience, and the outcomes to those who trust Him in all things. And, we cannot blame Him when we're disobedient.

The church as hindrance

Let's push the envelope this morning. Here's the question: are there times in redemptive history when the church has been a hindrance to the extension of the Kingdom?

This is more than a fair question and goes much deeper than mere academic inquiry. Around the world missiologists indicate Christian spiritual awakening, millions of people responding to the Good News and becoming Christ followers. This data is reported mostly in nations accounted as "unreached" people groups, usually places where entrenched church tradition is rare. On the other hand, previously Christian "churched" locales, like Great Britain, France, and of course, the United States, are in decline. Can the answer to this dilemma be that the local church, as represented by our dated systems and strong divided denominational boundaries, be a hindrance to the advancement of the Gospel?

Let's don't spaz out here? Certainly we affirm that (1) the church belongs to Christ, (2) he promised to build his church, (3) he is the Head of the church, and (4) all things exist in him and for him. What is more, Scripture promises that even the gates of you know where cannot prevail over Christ's church. So, what is the deal here? Is Christ's church a failure? Is Christ's power and will for the church, through which the manifold wisdom of God is made known to the world, diminished by the times?

Well, no. There's no problem with his church. It is divinely instituted, constructed on the sure and firm foundation of Christ the Lord, and is the central mechanism for fulfilling Christ's Kingdom mission in this dark and lost world. So, analyzing church numbers and trends can't find fault in the plan of Christ or the church he dreamed. The problem must be that the modern depiction of the church has departed from the New Testament paradigm.  The death of the church culture is not the death of the church. Christ's church is inviolable. The church us humans invented is the one in retreat. We've strangled the church in an organizational hierarchy and smothered the embers of evangelism and missions in our buildings, budgets, by-laws, business, and bulletins. 

Around the world the Gospel has ignited fires of awakening in cultures that are not bound by the trappings of the institutional church. They're free of the labels, biases, traditions, and structures that so inhibit spiritual movement. On several church planting missions is these non-traditional church nations, the people discovered a level of service, fellowship, and authenticity before they owned buildings or became a part of an organized, hierarchical body.

So, what's the solution? Let's go to the edge again. Hebrews 12:1 advises,"...let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us". Everything that hinders covers a lot of ground. Usually we leap to the conclusion that this is basically sinful things, thing that spiritually keep us from "running the race".  Consider this: Could this descriptive refer to the baggage we've added to the New Testament model, what we discover in Acts and the Epistles? Is it now time to discard all the road blocks to advancing the Kingdom?

The church? The city of God. The people of God. The family of God. The Body of Christ.The redemptive commumnity. The fellowship of saints. 

Has anybody ever thought of the modern church as hindrance? Will I be burned at the stake for even thinking such a thing?

 

One solitary dogwood

The drive to Columbia @ 7:00 a.m. Monday for state convention business was by all accounts pretty miserable. It was raining cats and dogs, traffic was the usual South Carolina madness, and our beautiful spring had retreated for another blast of very cold weather. Dealing with another UTI (urinary tract infection) didn't help my disposition either. It had all the makings of a bad mood. The usual bright optimism that greeted most days was submerged in the pathos of rainy days and Mondays. They always get me down, I think the old song says.

It's a bleak stretch of highway too, between Summerville at mile marker 199 and the I-95 turnoff at mile marker 169. A group of really low, black clouds covered the new day with a shroud of darkness that didn't correlate with the clock. It seemed like night. Even though the heavy rain had cleaned the air of the seasonal pollen, it was still a dismal morning. Rain. Cold. Dark. And, the way South Carolinians drive during inclement weather. Thank God it wasn't snowing. Or, sleeting.

So, plug in the iPod and listen to some good music to alter atmospheric conditions a little. Ah, James Taylor, October Road. Too melancholy. Let's do some Casting Crowns Until the Whole World Hears, nice Christian rock. Too bright. Itzak Perlman and the Schindler's List soundtrack. Whooa! Depressing. Jazz. No. Alison Krause and Union Station for some bluegrass. Nope. Ahhh. Here it is. Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir, I'm Amazed Live. Music for the soul. The lead song, titled Thou O Lord, blew me away, for the umpteenth time. It was glorious. My little black KIA Soul was fulfilling it's name, throbbing up I-26.

That's when I saw the one solitary dogwood tree. The forests to the right and in the median were mostly evergreens, a few hardwoods, and tangles of vines, all brown and dark green, spring renewal not being so obvious in non-flowering foliage. Right in the middle was this small dogwood in full bloom. It was totally awesome, brilliantly white, something very alive on a dark day. It was perhaps God's reminder to weary traveler's and people in a bad mood that the storms of life pass and that hope resides right in the middle of even the darkest days. 

Go to Google and do a search on the legend of the dogwood. There are a number of them. Just for the fun of it, go here to discover just one, maybe a simpler version. Others are enhanced by poetry and music, but they all have the same essential story line. Yes, it is the legend of the dogwood, emphasis on the legend part. There's no biblical or historical precedents to give it credibility. It's just a nice story.

But, seeing a blooming dogwood in the middle of a dark morning on the road to Columbia sure added a new note to the rainy days and mondays I was humming in my Soul. It said hope. 

I said "wow"!

The Columbus Buggy Company

The Columbus Buggy Company made excellent iron buggies in the 1880's. They were among the 200 factories in the iron rich Columbus, Ohio area. Of course, Columbus Buggy didn't survive when broad-scale manufacture and distribution  of the automobile changed America's mobility at the turn of the century. 

Their eventual demise wasn't poor leadership. Names like Harvey Firestone and flier Eddie Rickenbacker were among the 1000 employees on the payroll of Columbus Buggy, led by President Clinton Firestone. At peak production, they boasted producing a new buggy every eight minutes. The original company, Iron Buggy Company was eventually sold and their location moved to open the new company, Columbus Buggy. They manufactured and sold several lines of expert horse drawn carriages. They were industry leaders, great employers, an asset to the greater community. 

So, what went wrong? The automobile? Not really, When the automobile made its debut the people down at Columbus Buggy Company could see the hand-writing on the wall. They re-tooled their factory to produce electric and gas-powered vehicles. They made excellent cars. With plants in Columbus and other locations they seemed to be competitive in building, distributing, and selling horse-less carriages. They had the vision to see the end of the age of horse-drawn transportation. But, their vision didn't see far enough.Go here it get their story.

They missed two other things on the horizon: the assembly line, and steel. These were innovations brought to the auto industry by none other than Henry Ford. He could manufacture cars faster and cheaper in his assembly-line production facilities. The honchos at Columbus Buggy thought the assembly line was a trendy whim. They decided not to convert their plants. They also thought steel wouldn't prove durable enough for America's transportation needs or that they couldn't afford to relocate to port cities where raw supplies for making steel could be shipped. So, they would keep making custom cars, one at a time, with a basically iron frame. Ooooh! Bad decisions.

There were some shocking stats shared at a conference the other day. Basically, the speaker offered numbers indicating a Pentecost experience happening every day at many locations around the world---in China, India, Indonesia, and other places. While most Americans believe Islam to be the fastest growing religion in the world, Christianity is actually making the greatest impact. That is, everywhere, except in America. Missiologists explain the reason. Christians in other parts of the world are not bound by the strictures and confinements of the American church. 

Biblical faith is fresh and vibrant, the American church a buggy factory. Around the world people are experiencing Jesus in the new wine of a life-changing Gospel, while the church is weighted down with structural iron. While we're balking at re-tooling or discarding our programs, Christians in the third world are making disciples the Bible way. While the Good News of Jesus is reaching the utter most part of the world, English speaking Americans are suddenly among the largest unreached people groups.

Comparisons? Well, making disciples isn't manufacturing horseless carriages, that's for sure. The spiritual commission from Christ is certainly more consequential than building cars, changing lives quite a bit more significant than getting us from here to there faster. Yet, there is the wine-skin thing. Jesus said it and it is what it is! The new wine of the Good News just cannot be contained in the worn out, stretched forms of thread-bare wine skins.

Not a good illustration I know. But, when 89% of our churches are declining or plateaued, maybe it's a comparison we ought to consider.

Reckon?

 

Two learnings from Jesus' prayer

Learning to pray is about, (1) reading and then implementing all of Biblical instruction about prayer, (2) studying the prayers that the various Bible characters prayed, and (3) asking the Holy Spirit to teach us and guide us in our prayer life.

Today, we're studying the prayer of Jesus in John 17. Not only is this among the longest prayers in the Bible, it is perhaps the best look into our Lord's heart. The content of the prayer, and the way Jesus approached the Father is highly instructive. The Lord insires us with his forthright requests, the expression of his inner most desires. Notably, that we are the objects of a large portion of this prayer is especially touching. He was thinking of us.

Underneath, however, there are a coule of nuances that are relatively new learnings for me. They have to do with the timing of Christ's petition, and the audience that would have been standing by as he led them in this prayer. It is pastoral is nature, as if he wanted his followers to hear his frank requests on their behalf. Perhaps it was a message in a prayer, aimed at us as well as his closest disciples.

Growing up, I heard message prayers a good bit. My dear Grandfather, Rev. O.F. Owens, was a profound message prayer. He was a man of God and he prayed deeply. When he stood before the congregation of West Greenville Baptist Church, often in prayer, he spoke to God and often to us, our pastor and spiritual guide. he would ask things of the Father that he knew would register in us. He asked God to help us be faithful, to make us good stewards, to guide us in our church attendance, to watch our manners. One Sunday he asked God to help his grandsons Sonny and Bobby to not cut-up in church. Reckon he meant for Bob and me to get the message?

So, we'll explore these two dimensions in our worship services today, how Jesus knew the need of th hour, and how he related his heart to the Father, and those around him.

Makes me want to say, "wow"! And, amen.

IMHO, muffin top is something U eat

So, finally the staunchly conservative Oxford English Dictionary has loosened their grip on the King's English and have added some of the more common texting symbols and language, along with a god many technical terms to their list of approved words. Hopefully, the people at Typepad, from whom I purchase this blogging stuff, will update their list too. Doing the spell check thing everyday is a chore if you use any of the more contemporary terms.

So, the historic word-smiths are finally joining the Urban Dictionary and Webopedia folks in factoring the new hieroglyphics and acronyms into their approved language lists. Fox News reported Thursday that FYI, IMHO, LOL, TMI, and the worst of them all OMG, are now approved for usage in other than internet formats. 

Chat room language and texting abbreviations are impacting the way we communicate. Some of it is very good, though hard to keep up with at times. The NetLingo list of chat room/texting shorthand may be one of the more extensive compilations of this new communication genre available, with more words and terms than I can or care to master. Still, it is the new wave and we may need to become fluent in this dialect if we hope to communicate in the years to come. I mean, they used to tell us we needed to learn Spanish if we're going to talk to people in the US of A in the next 50 years. How true, amigos! I mean. comprende? Yet, even more, in the transition between English and Spanish, we're going to have to learn a whole new vocabulary of texting jargon. IMJS. My dad is still learning smoke signals.

So, in my lifetime, I've learned Pig Latin (thanks to tutorials by Moe, Larry and Curly Joe), beatnik (with Maynard G. Krebs as the instructor), Biblical Hebrew (Dr. Elmo Scoggin), Koine Greek (Dr. Don Cook), infant jibber-jabber (Professor John Lewis Carpenter), puppie speak (Oliver Wendel Holmes), basic street language (name withheld to protect the innocent), reading between the lines (Harriet T. Holmes), iLingo (iPod, iPhome, Mac, and soon to receive iPad), church speak, nuevo church speak, and missional church speak, and facial expressions (Lie to Me series on TV). Now, I must learn the language of the twenty-first century. LMKHTWOFY.  Want to review the list? Go here.

TMI? GOI. HAWTLW. ITNW. P2C2E.

OO. :) <>< TOPCA. OODGAY EYEBAY.

Southern fried, youse amigos!

There was a time when "southern fried" meant chicken! Well, that was then, this is now. Today you can Google "southern fried" in your images search engine and discover 3.55 million hits. At right, southern fried dill pickles. It just as well could have been southern fried green tomatoes, spaghetti, rice, turkey, mac and cheese balls, grits, corn puffs, salmon patties, catfish, okra, tamales, cous cous, ice cream, haggis, chopped steak, egg rolls, kibi, or chitterlings. It's the new world. Ain't nothing sacred anymore?

Say, Southern Baptist Church. There was a time when the mind's eye would picture the little church in the dale, the quiet pastoral setting out in the country, white wooden church building, church cemetery, steeple. Or perhaps, the town version, tall columns, long flight of steps, pipe organ---Baptists moved up town. It was the church I grew up in, a small town church my grandfather pastored so many years.

Now, we're as diverse as southern fried, maybe more so. Today, Southern Baptist churches run the gamut of shapes and sizes, styles and particulars. You know, rodeo and motorcylcle congregations, language missions, northern Southern Baptist churches, western, eastern, north-western, south-western, middle eastern, Canadian, regular, particular, reformed, informed, deformed, and conformed. We have churches in New York City, youse guys, as well as in Mexico City, Dodge City, Carson City, Atlantic City, Oklahoma City, Siler City, and Kansas City, to mention but a few. Would someone please say, Oui, Si, Ja, Sem, Ken, Na'am, Shucks Ya'll, or Amen?

Cookie cutter faith, that is, templates of standardization, beyond basic theological agreement, is just not a biblical design. Sure, like-minded people gather and share their interpretations of faith, mission, methodology, outreach, and covered-dish supper. But, the church of the New Testament wasn't stamped out in an assembly line of shape and size. They spoke Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin, and many of the other dialects of the broad New Testament world. They were influenced by socio-economic and cultural factors, accommodated the rich and the poor, slave and free, educated and non-educated, and all the other human distinctions that could force us into separate corners. The deal then, and now, is that faith in Christ over-shadows those lines. We are one in Christ.

This is the word of our times, diversity! We have made it mean so many things, and have permitted the politically correct definitions to govern life instead of the faith oriented biblical ideals. Suddenly, in a world that morphs valued things at the speed of thought, unity has been transformed into uniformity, and the body imagery of 1 Corinthians is being challenged by the template crowd. When rapid change stretches the limits of understanding, we like to impose norms and lines, control mechanisms to slow the mania and provide some order and reason to things. 

God's plan is better. He's the God of order and reason. What is more, His order and reason aren't human schemes and diagrams, rule-books and exclusions, plotted standards, and membership profiles. His body is arranged just the way He wants it, a little more light on the more unusual parts, and the differences being celebrated because He makes them fit. This body needs all the parts to make it function the way the Designer intended. Even so, the Southern Baptist tribe is no longer only sorgum and biscuits.

See, southern fried, doesn't just mean chicken anymore, youse amigos!

 

 

Historical precedents

It's an oddity of personal make-up! According to the people at
the Gallup organization, my personal strengths lean me toward the future. Yet, I most often find myself browsing the History section of Barnes and Noble and downloading histories on my Nook. There is a fascination with the past that makes history my recreational reading outlet, an object of curiosity. So, here I am, the anomaly, a person reaching forward yet with an eye on the rear-view mirror most of the time, glancing back.  Weird?  Or, what?

Trying to make sense of some of the strange angles of Baptist life these days has pulled me backward this week. Get this right! I have no desire to go back. The best for me is always yet to come and my affection for history is simply a means of being informed for the future. Looking at historical precedents isn't a yearning for the good old days or a belief that what worked then could possibly work today. More to the point, the glance back is just a way to determine what someone intended at a given place and time and how that should affect what we're doing now.

So, I've been reviewing the founding documents of the Southern Baptist Convention. Interesting reading to be sure. Yet, compared to the volumes of legalese and theo-speak that characterizes so many ruling documetns, it's not bad. They were, of course, simpler times. Communication was slow, travel slower, churches were typicaly broadly dispersed, most often comprised of rural people, and were, for the most part, small congregations. The issues that divided them, northern and southern Baptists, were largely about missions, significantly about local church autonomy, and then, the political hot-button that pitted them against each other, slavery. A fierce independence throbbed under the surface.

So, when the 293 delegates met to form the Southern Baptist Convention, they did so with an aim to work together in missional enterprise that would accomplish the mission of Christ while protecting their rights for congregational rule. Article II of the Preamble and Constitution of the Southern Baptist Convention required: It shall be the design of this Convention to promote Foreign and Domestic Missions, and other important objects connected with the Redeemer's kingdom, and to combine for this purpose, such portions of the Baptist denomination in the United States, as may desire a general organization for Christan benevolence , which shall fully respect the independence and equal rights of the Churches. The new associational form of structure could not violate local church rule.

Article XI provides further: The bodies and individuals,composing this convention, shall have the right to specify the object, or objects, to which their contributions shall be applied. But when no such specification is made, the Convention will make the appropriation at its own discretion. 

Well, sure, that was then, this is now! Those founders could not envision the speed and vastness of the little missionary work they launched then. What is more, the organizational structure, constitution and by-laws, and simple understandings of cooperation and partnership have been eclipsed by ministry in megapolis, the city of the future. Yet, some of the fundamental principles remain, like, for instance, this valued ideal of local chuch autonomy. Our association is a voluntary partnership of churches. We must decide in our own hearts the direction of our funding formulas. 

That was a cherished principle then, and it is a cherished princple now. Maybe we should pay attention to these historical precedents.

Our friend, the gnat!

Jokes are funnier when they depict some subtle truth. Sarcasm too stings a little more when it is on point. So, here's the joke/sarcasm/truth for the day: Baptist's national insect must be the gnat. It's because we spend inordinate time straining at them, if you know what I mean.

Here's an example. The other day someone posted this sage advice:

in necessariis unitas, in non necessariis libertas et in omnibus charitas

Roughly translated, in essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.

The truth of such wisdom has often been lost in our obsession to trace the origin of the statement. It has been attributed to Solomon, Jesus, Augustine, Philip Melanchthon, John Wesley, a number of lesser known reformers, popes, Ben Franklin, Will Rogers, and Curly Joe Howard. If you like to run down these kinds of historical tid-bits go here for some additional information. Of course, it's like running in circles. Personally, I think that's why Baptists are such great NASCAR fans: we love to see people running in circles at high speeds, about the crash. Then again...

Agreement may not the hair-ball. Jesus said, "...if two of you agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven" (Matthew 18:19). Agree here is sumphone, you know, symphony, the one voice thing that keeps us humming the same tune. It connotes harmony, beautiful music. We all like to strike resonate chords and make beautiful music together.

The straining at gnats part moves in two directions. One, we're so manic about identifying who actually said the statement in necessariis unitas, we've all but ignored the implementation of such advice, like we can't do this until we know who said it. Just maybe this is another of those orthodoxy dilemmas, our need to background check things to insure their credentials to speak such wisdom. So, it will be discounted and then thrown under the bus if someone not on the approved list uttered such a profound statement. If the author was Catholic or a heretic, or didn't give enough to the CP, then we're off the hook as to applying the truth.

At the same time, we love to quibble about the meaning of "essentials". In Scripture, the debate is about what Jesus really meant when he said "...agree about anything...". We usually annotate the text with an asterisk beside "anything". This is really where Baptists specialize in the gnat straining thing,  the rare spiritual gift of shaping words to mean what we want them to mean and staking out positions that exclude others. Usually we can agree that we need to agree on the things in which we can agree. Defining those things is often the train-wreck.

So, what are the"essentials"? How do we define them? Are they points of doctrine, mission commitments, structural or hierarchical leanings, personal preferences, methodology, regional distinctives, monetary considerations?  This seems to be an issue as we face disrupting the calm waters of the status quo in search of mission connections for the twenty-first century. We'd better get busy defining the "essentials" if we're going to connect to this lost and dying world.

We'll miss the mark if we keep playing footsie with the gnats!

Something from Baptist History

OK, history isn't all facts and numbers. Historians have their biases too. Their written record contains adjustments, some slight, some large, all significant, that reflect the lens through which they view, and therefore interpret, events. American writer Mason Cooley said, "Radical historians now tell the story of Thanksgiving from the point of view of the turkey."  We often super-impose contemporary attitudes and perspectives over what happened in another age. It's the revisionist thing. No wonder our favorite oldie is "Don't Know Much About History."

So, I've been re-reading some Baptist history, again. Our strange times have shoved me back to the text-books in search for some precedents in our past. The text is none other than The Southern Baptist Convention and It's People 1607-1972 by Robert Baker, Th.D., Ph.D. (Broadman Press, Nashville, 1974). He was professor of Church History at Southwestern Seminary for more than forty-two years. The book is lined and under-scored and highlighted like my life depended on it. The consult with the venerable Baker resulted in a couple of surprises, even when I understand that Baker may have been influenced by the neo-orthodoxy of the early '70's. Yet, there's a great lesson here.

Great Commission Giving (GCG) is one of the hot-button issues in implementing the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force Report around the convention in general, and in South Carolina specifically. There is a good bit of vocal opposition to designated giving. Interestingly enough, Baker mentions designations as a built-in safe guard to the threat that a centralized institution posed to the autonomy of the local church. Baker writes (pp. 174-175), "In his pre-convention address, William Bullein Johnson (pictured) specifically mentioned that the interests of the constituency would be safe-guarded by the power of financial designations. If the constituency were to see tendencies toward ursurping the authority of the congregations, it would be a simple matter for finances to be withheld, temporarily undermining the general body."

This is notable. Evidently the 293 delegates to the 1845 meeting in Augusta, Georgia, feared that a centralized associational organization would violate the autonomy of the local church. Previously, a societal affiliation had permitted totally voluntary participation with local churches defining the parameters of their benevolence and mission. The proposed system would establish a centralized agency with broad discretionary powers, perceived to be a threat to the decision-making ability of the church. So, Johnson announced designations as a means of maintaining congregational authority. Designated gifts were part and parcel of the system that initially drew Southern Baptists into this unique convention.

Acid-test giving formulas and prescribed percentages have slowly become the orthodoxy of Southern Baptist partnership. Churches with preferences for designations to other causes, even bona fide SBC agencies and institutions, are depicted as rogue operations and non-cooperating congregations, without consideration of mission imperatives or local demographics. In reaity, if Baker's history is correct, these designations are simply a means of local churches reamaining free of denominational control. This permits our 42,000+ churches to "vote with their pocket book", the ultimate democracy.

Reading Baker after all these years was an eye-opener for me. Of course, America in 1845 was smaller, less mobile, and communication deprived. They initially met only every three years and few people could attend the sessions. So, how could these scattered, remote, rural congregations particpate in this great partnership? How could they express their opinions about the mission or the agencies formed to pursue their commission from Jesus? 

They could designate their money. It was part of the sytem. And, today we want to demonize those who would exercise this autonomy issue.

It's something from Baptist history. Maybe we should study it, again.