Terrifying Fundamentalism

I was with a young pastor a week or so ago. His church is meeting in a building that has had three different church denominations in it previous to him. Although his is the fourth church to use the building, he has been there three years, and the Nazarenes who built the building have been was more than 30 years ago, to this day he says people will say "Oh, you are the Nazarene Church."

It just reminds me that people are not particular about their labels. To most people, a church is a church is a church.

The same goes with distinctions, the distinction of fundamentalism for instance. I realize that there is a multiplicity of fundamentalist organizations.
• Fundamentalist Jews
• Fundamentalist Islam and
• Fundamentalist Christianity
In fact, within Fundamentalist Christianity there is a multiplicity of divisions.

Marc Adler's article in Splice Today entitled, The Terrifying Christian Right, is written from the perspective on one who lumps all that anyone has ever labeled fundamentalist into the same inaccurate heap. Adler's article lumps Evangelicals, Pentecostals and Baptists in the very same camp as being dominionists.
• Dominionists are not Fundamentalists
• Evangelicals are not Fundamentalists for that matter
• True Baptists are not Fundamentalists

That there is a theological perspective called dominion theology is a fact. That dominion theology is dangerous, I will agree. That Baptists, along with evangelicals and fundamentalists have been misled into embracing dominion theology is an unfortunate truth. But to categorize everyone who believes the Bible to be the Bible to advocate dominion theology is inaccurate.

Fundamentalism has its problems to be sure. But let's be careful of our terminology. Bible believing Baptist people are not trying to take over the world. We do not want the media to proclaim the Good News, we are not asking women to stay and home and we certainly do not want to silence all voices but the Christian one.

We just want to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience.
We want the freedom to use the spoken and written word to persuade others toward our position and
We expect the Lord of Heaven to be glorified shortly


Marvin McKenzie
In the fields

It's Not Doing or Even Being, but Believing

I met with a young pastor last week who related the following account to me. He said that when they first began the church he now pastors, he held a series of lessons exposing the doctrinal positions of various religious groups and Christian denominations. As a part of this series of lessons, he had gathered literature from each of those denominations he was teaching about so people cold see what these groups themselves circulated, and not just what he said about them.

It happened that a visitor came to the services the night he was addressing this visitors own denominational background. Having a packet of material in his hands from his own denomination he told the pastor, "I have gone to that church all my life and never knew this is what we believe."

It is not impossible for a person to attend almost any sort of church for a lifetime without knowing what the church actually believes. It is because many churches focus all attention on what they are doing, not on what they believe. Most independent Baptists are every bit as guilty of this as some other group. Too often the focus of our efforts to get people into our church has to do with highlighting our various ministries;
• What we can do for your children
• How we minister to the family
• The type of music program we feature
• The activites the teens are part of
• Etc.

Often times the pulpit is no more specific concerning what the church actually professes to believe. The pastor careful crafts his messages in such a way that he feels he is helpful to the congregation without hitting on points of doctrine that might come into conflict with a person's core beliefs.

Frankly, most churches today conduct themselves in such a way that a lost person could attend faithfully and never come into conflict with the message of the church.

That brings me to my consideration today. So far as a spiritual things are concerned, it is not nearly as imprtant what we do or even what we are as it is what we believe.

There are plenty of do gooder societies in our world.
And they do good things. I will not contest that. I will just say that the church of Jesus Christ has been given a different commission that good deeds.

There are plenty of people who are very good men
Benjamin Franklin, I have no doubt was a good man. Though in his early years, it sounds like he might have been a scoundrel, as he matured he developed a passion for the good and moral. His efforts to benefit his country, his community and even his world are legendary. Franklin, for instance, refused to be compensated for his design of the Franklin Fireplace, believing that something with som much potential for good belonged to the people and it would be improper for him to be paid for making it available.
But Franklin was also obviously unsaved. Though the evangelist George Whitefield had stayed in his home and Franklin had heard his sermons and printed his papers, Franklin rejected the message of the preacher. As good of a man as Franklin was, he is in hell today (unless he believed later in life and it was never reported.)

The one work that God has given the local church is the work of faith.
It is our duty to reach out to all mankind, not merely to get them to attend our congregations and convert them to our way of life. We are disseminators of faith, of doctrine. So far as the church of Jesus Christ is concerned, it is
• Not what we do
• Nor even what we are
• It is what we believe
that matters.

Sunday

I had a conversation with my oldest son this week. Bohannan is a pastor of a smaller sized church and must work a full time job to care for his family as well as for the ministry in which the Lord has placed him. This week an extended family member made an expectation of Bohannan and expected that Bohannan would meet that expectation, as Bo said to me, "On Sunday."

For Bohannan, as well as for me, Sunday is a different sort of day than the rest of the week. We hold it as sacred and hallowed. Things that would be perfectly acceptable any other day of the week are just not; come Sunday. It is a day for God. Sure, we eat meals, care for our pets, enjoy family time and many other things like that on Sundays. But Sunday is not a day for traveling - unless that travel is ministry related. Camping or fishing and hunting and other forms of entertainment take on a different hue. It is Sunday.

Centuries ago, when Baptist churches first found the freedom to worship without fear of persecution, Sundays were given to worship and ministry. After morning worship the members of the congregation were encouraged to devote the afternoon to ministering to the needs of orphans, evangelization of their neighbors, and even educating children in reading, writing and arithmetic. The day was treated wholly different than other days.

Sunday is not the New Testament Sabbath. We are not bound to observe it under the same laws as the Old Testament Jews did the seventh day of the week. But this does not mean we treat the day as profane. It is not.

It is Sunday.

Marvin McKenzie
In the fields