Hurtling through the air at hundreds of miles per hour, I looked around at my fellow passengers. There we were—held thousands of feet above the ground, pushing forward in something a bit wider and three times longer than a charter bus—with nowhere to go if things went wrong.

The principles of aerodynamics tell us the shape and size of the wings combined with enough thrust from enough engines cause a plane to lift off the ground and stay aloft. The wings and the engines get all the glory.

What goes unnoticed is what holds the plane together. The wings and engines contribute to the flight, but it’s good fasteners that get us to our intended destinations.

Be the glue in your world. Hold strong in fractious times.

The glue we don’t see

I doubt anyone else on the plane gave any thought to the fasteners holding strong as we fought gravity and intense physical forces. My wife would say I am right. She rolls her eyes and urges, “Don’t,” whenever I say I want to see the airworthiness certificate for the plane we’ve just boarded.

What we tend to think about are the things we see: the wings, cockpit, exits, seats, overhead bins, aisles, tray tables, inflight magazines, lavatories, flight attendants and pilots. All these are part of air travel. They are to flight what schools, neighborhoods, businesses, governments, civic organizations, arts, sports and so many other things are to society. They are necessary, but they don’t hold it together.

What holds our society together is what holds the church together and gives it its mission. The glue we don’t see is the Spirit of Christ living in his followers.

This is a bold assertion because the church hasn’t acted like glue holding things together. Rather, the church has contributed to the fractiousness of our times.

Be the glue in your world. Hold strong in fractious times.

The world needs glue

Consider the headlines over the last several months. Even if you don’t want to, even if you’ve had enough, consider the condition of our world reflected in the headlines.

Politicians are having a difficult time holding things together. Families are struggling to hold things together. Economies are straining to hold things together.

Even the natural world seems to be fraying. The Earth’s climate is off balance. The Earth’s bounty of water and oil is at the center of numerous and growing conflicts. Land is a precious commodity and fodder for war.

Addictions, diseases, racism and distrust are fracturing and eating our families, neighborhoods, communities and country.

The plane we’re all passengers on is hurtling forward, and the acid of fraction is eating away the glue.

Body of Christ, be the glue in your world. Hold strong in fractious times.

Is it ignorance or trust?

During the flight, gregarious businessmen made small talk. Jokes produced laughter like popcorn throughout the cabin.

Some of the passengers are in favor of impeaching President Trump. Some are opposed. No one told me this, but I know it’s true. Despite our mixed opinions about the top news story of the day, we managed to make the trip in peace.

Was it because we simply didn’t talk about it, that we stayed ignorant of our differences? Is it because we assumed we all think alike and didn’t need to talk about it? Is it because you don’t get into a fight about such things when you’re 30,000 feet in the air?

Something held us together, and I wonder if any of us were aware of it. I wonder if any of us acknowledged it. I wonder if any of us gave any thought to our ability to travel together in such close quarters without a fight over what is dividing us on the ground.

Whether the passengers knew it or not, the glue held strong.

Be the glue in your world. Hold strong in fractious times.

Acid of fraction is eating away the glue

Some blame Congress—specifically, the Democrats—for the current impeachment inquiry. Others blame President Trump—his words and actions—for what is happening.

We are not pointing the finger at ourselves, yet we elected—maybe not individually, but corporately—those we blame. Like Isaiah, we are wrapped up in the wrongs of our people.

Impeachment inquiries have taken place four times in 243 years of American history, three times in the last 45 years. Is this because our politicians are more corrupt than they’ve ever been? Are they more given to impeaching one another than they’ve ever been? Is impeachment more acceptable than ever?

In answering these questions, we must remember our politicians come from us. They are us. The fractiousness in our politics is not in Washington, D.C., or 50 state capitals. The fractiousness is in us.

We haven’t given enough attention to the glue that holds us together and have allowed the acid of fraction to eat it away.

We can have the perfect aerodynamics and flying conditions, but if the glue doesn’t hold the plane together …

Be the glue in your world. Hold strong in fractious times.

Christ is the glue

“In him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church” (Colossians 1:17-18).

The body of Christ needs to remember itself. The body of Christ—the church—needs to give renewed attention to its place in the world, which is not power, prominence and prestige. The church’s place is to carry, to proclaim, to live and to give the gospel of Jesus Christ—his life, death and resurrection, his lordship and reconciling work.

In, through and by him, the church is given the ministry of reconciliation and the charge to “go and make disciples of all people, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything” he taught (Matthew 28:19-20).

We all are called to enter the fray of these fractious times. We all must face the intense physical forces and fight the gravity of this world being eaten away by the acid of fraction. We must because we have the glue that holds the world together.

Remember your line

The last thing the flight attendant said to us after we landed was, “Be kind to each other.”

And I thought, “Hey, that’s our line!”

Kindness is, after all, a fruit of the Spirit—sandwiched between patience and goodness; joined by faithfulness, gentleness and self-control; following love, joy and peace. Why do we have to be reminded by a flight attendant when it’s the body of Christ’s job?

I’m thankful the things holding the plane together didn’t quit on us and that I made it safely home. May the body of Christ be the glue this world needs, holding strong in fractious times so others will reach their home in Christ.

Be the glue. Hold strong.

Eric Black is the executive director, publisher and editor of the Baptist Standard. He can be reached at eric.black@baptiststandard.com or on Twitter at @EricBlackBSP. The views expressed are those solely of the author.

“A camp experience your students won’t forget!”
“Help your youth ministry change the world!”
“No sweat, easy prep Bible studies!”

Phrases like these litter the ads I get in the mail. Books promise tips for a successful career or managing family dynamics. Conferences promise optimal management of social relationships by attending an eight-hour workshop on personality archetypes.

While there’s nothing wrong with memorable events or experiences, much less self-examination, I was struck at how little Jesus is mentioned in so many ads directed at churches.

Bible study is spoken of as an afterthought—“No sweat! Easy prep!”—but shouldn’t this important task make any minister sweat at least a little?

Churches and students under pressure

I know why these ads exist. Churches are under pressure. The news is rife with warnings of church decline. Certainly, we need something to make church “relevant?”

Students are under pressure, too. They are connected deeply to their friends’ problems because of technology. And, paradoxically, they can feel as if they have no one to talk to about it.

Extracurricular activities, sports and jobs all pile up in students’ lives. Students are encouraged at younger and younger ages to consider their future careers. “Push” notifications about grades can appear on their phones at any moment.

While we don’t have all the information about how such pressure is affecting students, signs indicate deteriorating mental health.

During most of their lives, students are told what to do. They either push themselves to try to measure up, or they resist by giving up on the entire “rat race.” It’s no wonder “burnout” has become a watchword among the young.

What can we say to churches and students who are under pressure?

Where Jesus Christ is the main attraction

This summer, I visited 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. The church was at the epicenter of the civil rights movement, one of the greatest Christian social movements of the past century. Many tourists come to see the historic building where Dr. Martin Luther King preached and where four children unconscionably were killed by a white supremacist’s bombing.

I read an informational pamphlet about the church that said 16^th Street Baptist Church is “Where Jesus Christ is the main attraction.” That simple statement was reorienting.

If we tell students the church exists only to enact social change, what will students do when they find a more efficient organization enacting that change?

If we suggest the church is primarily where they learn techniques to be good people, and manage social relationships, what will students do when they think they’ve learned all the skills we have to teach? Will they believe they have graduated from church?

Kara Powell has noted, “Almost half of all young people drift away from God and the church after they graduate.”

If the church exists for the show it can put on, the skills it teaches or the self-improvement it can point toward, what could the church ever say to those who are just burned-out, done, finished?

Making the main attraction central to youth ministry

While not having all the answers, I always try to give a central place to gathering together to read and understand Scripture. We decorated a wall with the books of the Bible. We’ve discussed the basics of Christian doctrine. Now, we are exploring how the Old Testament families are our family of faith. None of this is aimed at ensuring students merely know more Bible trivia; there is nothing “trivial” about it.

When students see the Lord’s purposes fulfilled in so many different biblical figures, including outsiders like Ruth or Rahab, they are reminded we, too, were strangers who were far off and have been brought near by the blood of Jesus (Ephesians 2:13).

More than once while reading an Old Testament story or hearing about God’s promise of a new covenant written on their hearts (Jeremiah 31:33), a student has said: “Wait! That’s like what Jesus says” (see Luke 22:20)! Seeing those connections form always is a delight.

When we gather, I want students to see the Bible speak not just to people of old, but to them. In this way, we begin to retell our stories in light of Jesus’ life.

You may find superior versions of “church programming” elsewhere, but there is one thing only the church proclaims. This one thing cannot be sold or mastered. It is not just for the go-getter. It also is for the world-weary. This one thing is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And the main attraction is …

After giving a hard teaching, Jesus asked his disciples if they wanted to leave him. Peter responded: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God” (John 6:68-69).

Just before his ascension, Jesus told his disciples his teachings were so that “in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

In a world full of trouble, we cannot promise students they will have none. In a world where students feel the pressure of the future, we cannot promise them control. In such a world, the church can be the community that comes alongside them to witness to Jesus’ goodness.

Jonathan Balmer is a student at Truett Theological Seminary and a youth minister at Seventh & James Baptist Church in Waco. You can find him on Twitter: @JonathanCBalmer.

Joel Gallegos, a member of Live Oak Community Church in Lubbock, has worked in the oil and gas industry, especially beam well analysis, for 12 years. From deep in the heart of one Texan, Gallegos shares his background and thoughts on being a follower of Christ in the marketplace. To suggest a Texas Baptist leader in the marketplace to be featured in this column, or to apply to be featured yourself, click here.

Background

Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Plains, Texas, a small, rural community in West Texas.

How did you come to faith in Christ?

My family and I attended Templo Bautista in Plains. I was involved in Royal Ambassadors and youth and committed my life to Jesus Christ while in high school. Shortly after graduation, I moved away to attend college. I connected with Alliance Church in Lubbock several years later and recommitted my life to my Savior. It was at Alliance where my faith was rekindled by strong Christian leaders.

Where were you educated, and what degrees did you receive?

I received my Master of Business Administration degree with a general business major from Wayland Baptist University.

Life in the marketplace

How does being a Christian influence your decisions in the marketplace?

Scripture has given me direction in handling situations, whether it involves coaching an employee, receiving correction or speaking encouragement. We are asked to work or do anything we do as unto Christ, not man, and to do it in a joyful manner.

What is your favorite aspect of the marketplace? Why?

The oil and gas industry is very cyclical, and this presents challenges. However, within those challenges, opportunities for improvements arise and force you to be efficient with less resources. Out of necessity creativity abounds.

Name the three most significant challenges and/or influences facing your place in the market.

In new oil and gas developing areas, the existing infrastructure is not capable of handling the new oilfield traffic. This has pros and cons. Many landowners are now commanding higher fees for their land. The vehicle traffic accident and mortality rate is at an all-time high for some areas in West Texas.

The decline in number of experienced workforce is a challenge. In the last downturn, the oil and gas experience drove many new or aspiring employees to seek other careers, some choosing not to come back.

What do you wish more people knew about the marketplace?

The oil and gas industry is composed of many disciplines. You have a team dedicated to drilling the well. One team services the well, and another team designs the equipment used to produce the oil. Other teams include construction, handling everything above the well, and support teams like HSE—health, safety and environment—and consultants.

About Baptists

What are the key issues facing Baptists—denominationally and/or congregationally?

Baptist are facing an identity crisis, and the problem is they aren’t aware of it.

Believers are self-deceived partly due to messages that tickle their ears and speak on emotions and appreciation.

Baptist are concerned with the number of baptisms and use it as a gauge for the congregation’s impact.

About Joel

Who were/are your mentors, and how did/do they influence you?

My dad, Evodio Gallegos, is a great influence. Growing up in a different denomination, he came to saving grace, and his life’s testimony led my mom, sisters and me to salvation. My dad’s conversion caused him to be mocked and ridiculed for his faith. He did not waver, and his faith remains steadfast. He knew the cost of following Jesus and girded himself for the challenge.

Roberto Ordonez was key in spiritual growth. He took me under his wing for four years and guided me in Scripture. He taught me to study Scripture, and because of this, I followed in his steps and started a Sunday Life Group. He expected me to read a chapter and come prepared to teach him what I learned in my studies. I value the time he devoted to my development, and my desire is to provide the same guidance to a young believer.

Other than the Bible, name some of your favorite books or authors, and explain why.

John Maxwell is tops on my reading list. His books allow me to sharpen my leadership skills. Recently, I was given Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes Into Stepping Stones by Maxwell. The title startled me because no leader seeks to fail. Yet, while reading it, I could appreciate his wisdom to touch on a sensitive topic leaders don’t discuss.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is another author I read. His book The Cost of Discipleship provides an insightful teaching into the Sermon on the Mount. It challenges believers to evaluate one’s theology on grace, or what he calls “cheap grace,” a common problem in Christian circles.

What is your favorite Bible verse or passage? Why?

My spirit takes comfort in reading Ephesians 1:20-23. This is a great reminder that no matter the external or internal circumstances we face, believers have the assurance that Christ Jesus is reigning at the right hand of God. This is important because everything is subjected under Jesus’ feet, reminding us we should not devote our time worrying about the future. This does not preclude us from being active, though we know the outcome is under his dominion.

Who is your favorite Bible character, other than Jesus? Why?

I relate to Peter on so many levels. You have Peter ready to fight the soldiers when they take Jesus. Then a few hours later, a girl makes a liar of Peter when she accuses him of knowing Jesus, and Peter denies it. It is easy to be brave when surrounded by believers, yet while alone become afraid much like Peter did.

You also have Peter who boldly stepped out onto the water. The wind startled him, and he sank. I can speak about the truth and find myself questioning my faith. But I am encouraged that he who started a good work in me is seeing me out to the finish line.

Peter did not allow these episodes to define his relationship with Christ, and knowing this, I also can accept my failures and grow from them.

Name something about you that would surprise people who know you.

I’m a bookworm. I never really was until the last eight years or so. I enjoy the company of any reading material, sometimes more than having a one-on-one conversation.

Despite any formal documentary evidence, I am convinced my grandfather was Northern Indiana’s foremost connoisseur of garage sales. We thought his prized find was a thoroughly dilapidated and, frankly, somewhat deranged-looking toy organ grinder’s monkey. What’s not to love? Wind it up, and it’d clang its cymbals and stomp its feet, making plenty of racket but never going very far.

Fast-forward some years, and consider my—or your—social media feed during any recent election. I see plenty of foot-stomping and racket-making, but I’m not sure it’s going anywhere productive.

Perhaps that’s because, without love, we’re all just wound-up cymbal-clangers.

I may be biased in this view. After all, we’re all products of our own time and place, and I’m a preacher’s kid who found an intellectual—and now professional—home in Howard Payne University’s Guy D. Newman Honors Academy.

Over its more than five decades, the Honors Academy and its graduates continue “Facing the Future with Faith and Knowledge” by intentional study of those things that prepare us to be scholar-citizens in service to our local and global communities. Part and parcel of this mission are courses like the senior-level seminar I’m honored to teach, as well as courses like Christianity, Ethics and Politics where we grapple with the often-treacherous intersection of faith and politics. To be clear, I believe they must intersect.

Partisan and polarized politics

Some contextual facts: The Gallup polling organization reports ours definitively is the most partisan, polarized era in United States history. Each of our three most recent presidents have faced persistent and partisan approval rating gaps of 70 to 86 percentage points.

While such polarization is unprecedented, extreme divisiveness isn’t. Prior members of Congress physically have assaulted each other in the chamber. Elected officials have dueled to the death. Almost 10 percent of our presidents have been assassinated, with several others surviving attempts.

Andrew Jackson blamed hateful campaign rhetoric and opposition newspapers for the stress that killed his wife. Perhaps it’s fair to wonder what he would have thought of Twitter’s influence on public discourse today.

Lowered barriers don’t negate responsibility

As a medium, the Internet is more immediate and more visible than any other media in human history. In lowering the barriers of entry to public discourse, the Internet has had a democratizing effect. Unfortunately, the immediacy and the available variety of our information has made us impatient consumers seeking convenience and preference above content and perspective.

We feed from increasingly narrow rhetorical troughs; so, perhaps it’s not surprising that our public voices—the perfectly acerbic post or reply that will “really get ‘em”—often betray a lack of caution and compassion, qualities enhanced by presence and community but that are lost in the isolation of the echo-chamber. This modern reality risks—perhaps even invites—incivility and condescension in new and troubling ways.

Good citizenship is necessary and proper, but no political system can save our souls. Nor can any form or degree of civic engagement fulfill our overriding obligations to God and to each other, obligations that must be—or become—the beating heart of our civility.

Various views of proper politics

In the Garden, Adam and Eve received instructions for stewardship and for maintaining community with God. Later, the Levitical code provided boundaries for neighborliness and security, helping establish our earliest conceptions of citizenship and civil sovereignty.

Then the Greeks advanced the practical notion of community beyond the tribe to the city-state. After them, the Roman republic developed something of even closer semblance to our modern conception of nation-state. Within that context, we were instructed to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” (Luke 20:25). But, how?

Augustine suggested a dual citizenship, where Christians might support initiatives of the City of Man so long as they were premised on one’s duties to the City of God.

Aquinas investigated God’s eternal truth through natural laws governing the human experience and suggested that political authority is derived from natural conceptions of morality and goodness.

Luther pushed for a separation of the sovereignty of the state over one’s life from the sovereignty of the church over one’s soul but didn’t reject civil authority. He understood—as Hobbes and Locke later would assert—the state could mitigate our baser instincts and enable, or enforce, community.

Rather than divorcing Christians from politics, each of these voices articulated—in unique ways—faith as the foundation for citizenship and citizenship as a function of faith.

The relationship of faith and citizenship

This should be all the more true in a representative democracy founded on liberty and tolerance and dependent entirely on “good citizenship.” Furthermore, Jesus gave us eminently practical models for such engagement.

Jesus was informed and knowledgeable, generous and compassionate, patient and submissive, humble but steadfast. He was a rabbi to rabbis, even as a child. He called Judas “friend,” healed Malchus’ ear and redeemed Peter after his denials. He fed the hungry, washed his disciples’ feet, subordinated his will and wishes to God. Crucially, he taught us the greatest commandment is to love God and others.

Considered in this light, community is both godly and a practical reality of contemporary life. It’s how we might “be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 5:21).

It’s simple, even if it’s not easy: Our love for God and for one another must imbue our every word, thought and deed—even the political ones we post on social media.

Otherwise, we’re just clanging cymbals and stomping feet, all wound up but going nowhere.

Matthew McNiece is the director of the Guy D. Newman Honors Academy at Howard Payne University.

RE: Editorial: A Baptist voter guide for the 2020 election

EDITOR’S NOTE: The content of this letter has been removed at the writer’s request.

For letters to the editor to be published, writers must provide their first and last names and their city and state. As a courtesy and prior to publication, writers are asked for permission to publish their letters.

Letters to the editor should be within 250 words and emailed to eric.black@baptiststandard.com. Every letter receives a response from the editor. Not every letter is published.

If we’re being honest, the only time we worry about the topic of civil discourse is when we see others being uncivil. Finding and condemning the sins of others is one of our specialties as humans. But if we, ourselves, are uncivil, we easily defend it as an impassioned argument for some cause worthy of our bold attempts to “tell it like it is” by any means necessary.

Those tendencies to find fault in others can blind us so strangely, we might even think there’s never been more incivility than right now.

When enough people in a society convince themselves of such things, historians call that a “declension narrative:” a story people tell themselves to reinforce the notion that times used to be better.

Humorist Will Rogers repeatedly tried to warn us about producing declension narratives, most pointedly with the quip, “Things ain’t what they used to be and probably never was.”

How bad has it been?

The political world takes a lot of heat for its incivility, but here again, politics in America has been uncivil since the beginning.

The 1790s were rife with hostility of all kinds. The unenviable President John Adams was called “an inept politician who was a burden to the party”—and that was from someone in his own party!

An Adams foe publicly denounced him as having a “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.”

Insults could lead to actual violence, most famously as when Matthew Lyon, a U.S. Representative from Vermont, spat in the face of Roger Griswold of Connecticut in 1798. This led to Lyon and Griswold pounding each other with a variety of handy devices apt for pounding. Then came the kicking and wrestling, all on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Things didn’t improve with time. Historian John F. Kasson’s 1990 book Rudeness and Civility, a study of manners in the 1800s, should have shattered the declension narrative related to American civility. He examined the immense number of works giving advice on how to behave in public, authored mostly by the middle class for the middle class and by the old for the young.

The advice never stopped and clearly never took. In 1859, one guide for good behavior lamented, “It is rare to meet with persons who can converse agreeably.” A few years after this, Americans North and South took some time to stop conversing entirely and start killing one another in the hundreds of thousands.

The advice continued into the 20th century, but civility seemed always just out of reach as we continued to idealize the past and worry about the future. By 1992, in the midst of the Los Angeles riots, Rodney King plaintively asked, “Can we all just get along?”

One could easily have asked in retort, when have we ever gotten along? The cloud of negative witnesses seems to stand against us.

It stands to reason then, if we historically have had such a hard time being civil, there’s never a bad time to appeal to the “better angels of our nature,” as Lincoln hoped Americans might in 1861.

We value and praise technology so much, in part because we can see it improving over time. It helps give some people hope. Virtue and wisdom, on the other hand, need cultivating constantly.

The next generation can’t inherit and improve upon virtue in the same way they will with technology. They’ve got to be carefully taught, to paraphrase Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Creating a civil world

At Hardin-Simmons University, we’ve embarked on a project to help our students improve their civility, emphasizing the emergence of community when we reason together. The overarching goal of the project is for our students to learn that community—or what Parker Palmer calls the “capacity of connectedness”—doesn’t simply happen. Rather it emerges through intentional personal interaction. The project is, in many ways, an experiment in experience.

Student data several years ago told us Hardin-Simmons could strengthen its curricular and co-curricular focus on better understanding the perspective of others. Thus, in our core courses, particularly in our first-year seminar classes, we’ve begun emphasizing application of effective communication skills, collaborative skills and appreciation of perspective. Overall, we hope to enhance community on campus and help our students learn to be more humane humans.

One popular aspect of the project is the creation of a Community Coffee Hour. An hour every Thursday morning, everyone on campus is invited to converse together in our university library. Lest there be nothing really to talk about, we also provide a question for the week that helps us explore important topics related to community.

The questions align well with the weekly chapel topic. Examples include:

“How do we love those who disagree with us?”
“If you were in the margins, how would you want people to reach out to you?”
“How do we stay positive in the midst of struggle?”
“What’s so hard about being welcoming?”

How would you answer these questions? And are you open to hearing how someone else would? That’s the key to civil discourse.

Employers certainly want these skills from those in their workplace. Even more importantly, our world seems to be demanding people who can listen carefully as well as speak kindly, work together toward a greater goal, and appreciate that others aren’t always going to see things the same way.

Since these are big life questions, students, faculty and staff alike share our perspectives, our struggles, our frailties. And if we’re being honest with each other, the conversation becomes a laboratory in the larger project of creating a more civil world.

Rich Traylor is professor of history at Hardin-Simmons University and serves as director for the university’s quality enhancement plan entitled “Enhancing Community.”

Can we be hopeful people in a hope-starved time?

Yes, we can.

Will we be?

Who are we?

We are Baptists in Texas. By Baptists in Texas, I mean people whose lives are ordered by Jesus Christ and who hold to historic Baptist principles, such as the authority of Scripture, believers’ baptism by immersion, soul freedom and religious liberty, the priesthood of the believer and autonomy of the local church.

There are a lot of different kinds of Baptists in Texas who hold to these principles. Despite sharing this common set of principles—and one Lord—we Baptists also disagree about some things, some of them vociferously.

The world has seen our disagreements and doesn’t care nearly as much about them as we do. I wonder if the world and our one Lord stand together on that point.

We are Baptists in Texas. When we are at our best, we are hopeful people shining hope (to borrow a phrase from a great Baptist institution) in a hope-starved world.

We’re not always at our best, though.

Who we are

Because we are not always at our best, Baptists in Texas go by so many different names. We cluster in so many different groups.

We are conservative Baptists, moderate Baptists and progressive Baptists; right, left and center Baptists; Republican and Democrat Baptists; East, West and South Texas Baptists; North and Central Texas Baptists; male and female Baptists; young and old Baptists; white, African American, Hispanic, Latino and every-nation-under-the-sun Baptists.

We are Southern Baptists of Texas, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and Baptist General Convention of Texas Baptists. We are Calvinist, Arminian and not-quite-one-or-the-other Baptists. We are Primitive, Independent and Missionary Baptists, and many others, too.

When we are not at our best—and let’s admit, the Southern Baptist variety spent at least a decade at our worst—we fight each other; we splinter within and repel without.

We still are reeling from times when we weren’t at our best, and when hopeful suggestions are made about mending fences and building bridges, the response is often somewhere between, “Psh! Yeah, right,” and “Ha! Good luck.”

And we think we’re hopeful people.

To be hopeful people

If we’re going to be hopeful people in a hope-starved world, we have to start with us.

We have to live out among ourselves the hope we proclaim to the world. Until the world sees us mending fences and building bridges as though we really are “confident of what we hope for,” then the world has little reason to believe we offer anything the world doesn’t already have.

To be hopeful people in a hope-starved world, we need to hold our differences not as sources of pride or weapons of war. We need to hold our differences as part of imperfect humanity in need of salvation—every one of us, and no one more than another.

To be hopeful people in a hope-starved world, we must hold to the common denominator of one God and Father, one Lord, one Spirit, one body, one faith, one baptism—aye, one hope (Ephesians 4:4-6). We must hold this One above all our differences.

Who the world needs us to be

The world is too in need of the hope we profess for us to overemphasize the differences between us. The world doesn’t have time for us to bicker. Yes, when we give our differences undue attention, we are wasting time. Our differences matter … to a point, and we’ve far surpassed the point.

The world sees a bunch of infighting, and the world needs us to drop it.

Young people concerned about the environment need us to drop it. They don’t need us to point out each other’s faults. They need us to point to the One who will restore all creation (Romans 8:19-23). They need us to live in his image. They need us to be restorers.

Our divided government needs us to drop it. They don’t need us to line up sides. They need us to point to the One who orders all things. They need us to embody his wisdom. They need us to “seek the welfare of the city” (Jeremiah 29:7).

Nations going to war need us to drop it. Hungry throngs need us to drop it. The enslaved need us to drop it. The impoverished, the brutalized, the exploited, the addicted, they need us to drop it. They need us to drop our family feud and take up the mantle of those who live because of the hope of Jesus Christ.

They need us to hope in redemption and reconciliation by living it out with each other. They need us to be at our best.

Hopeful at our best

When we’re at our best, what the world needs is what the world gets.

When we’re at our best, the world gets Jesus Christ lived in and through us.

When we’re at our best, the world gets Texas Baptist Men and Disaster Relief, Woman’s Missionary Union, Baptist Student Ministries, local and regional associations, compañerismos, fellowships and local churches. When we’re at our best, the world gets universities, hospitals, child and family welfare institutions. When we’re at our best, the world gets uplifting out of poverty, civil discourse and wise counsel.

When we’re at our best, the world gets millions of messengers of Jesus Christ’s good news.

Instead of competing over who is most doctrinally pure, most committed to justice, has the most baptisms or who simply is the best, let’s race to be the hope of Jesus Christ in a hope-starved time.

Eric Black is the executive director, publisher and editor of the Baptist Standard. He can be reached at eric.black@baptiststandard.com or on Twitter at @EricBlackBSP. The views expressed are those solely of the author.

The preaching of the Apostle Paul was remarkably simple. In the first few verses of 1 Corinthians 2, Paul summarized the message he preached to the Corinthian church and other churches he visited:

And when I came to you, [brothers and sisters], I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:1-2).

Paul’s message to the Corinthians has a single subject: “Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” His message was not meant to be a display of wisdom but was meant to demonstrate the Spirit and power of God and the transforming work in the lives of its hearers (2:4).

The gospel misunderstood and understood

The same gospel Paul preached launched the church at Pentecost and has sustained it ever since. Oftentimes, though, the church has added to and subtracted from the message of the cross—and resurrection—for reasons other than the demonstration of the power of God.

The word of God often has become instrumental in the life of the individual believer and the wider church. This means that we, as those who live under the word of God, mis-explain or explain away certain inescapable portions of the biblical message in order to prop up our individual—and many times collective—purposes or preferences.

I recently attended a series of lectures delivered by Fleming Rutledge, an Episcopal priest and pastor-theologian from New York. Throughout her lectures, Rutledge helped her hearers understand that the gospel is an announcement or proclamation rather than a suggestion.

The gospel of the crucified Christ is announced as truth that has a total claim on the life of the disciple of Jesus as well as the lives of those who reject him. For both disciples and those who reject Christ, this gospel is an offense to a human race held captive by the power of sin (1 Corinthians 1:22-25).

The gospel offensive and salvific

Paul clearly understood there are many who hear the gospel of the crucified Christ who will reject it as “out of touch,” “ridiculous” or even “unwise.” And all of these descriptors are true.

The fact that an entire faith movement would be initiated by the gruesome murder of an innocent God-man hardly makes sense. One would not expect any sort of salvation to come out of such a bloody and shameful death. As Paul wrote, however, only those who submit themselves to the power of God by his word—both in the Scripture and incarnate in Jesus Christ—can and will come to know the simple and radically transforming truth contained within the gospel of the crucified Christ.

The church, too, often has been scandalized by the gospel with which it is entrusted. There are many Christians today—and especially Christians in America—who preach the gospel of Jesus of Nazareth but leave out—intentionally or unintentionally—his crucial title: Christ.

Without the crucial title “Christ,” Jesus of Nazareth is no different than any other great religious teacher who has come and gone. The untitled Jesus is one who guides the individual believer on a “journey” towards spiritual “wisdom” and “knowledge.” It is difficult to see this Jesus as the same Jesus who was crucified and who called—rather, commanded—his disciples to follow him, suffering as he suffered (Luke 9:23), a hard and offensive command that throws a wrench in our expectations of Jesus Christ.

The gospel unwanted and wanted

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, during his imprisonment by the Nazis, that the crucified Christ is not what a religious person expects or even wants from God. Many Christians—on both the left and the right of the theological spectrum—select for special attention the most offensive portions of the Christian life as described in the New Testament and upheld in the rest of Scripture in order to explain these portions away.

At some point or another, every Christian is guilty of such selection. But this guilt is no excuse to give up the fight of faith, which means submission to the word of God, who is Jesus Christ. Such submission is the only way believers—both new and seasoned, both wrestling with God and resting in him—are able to experience the transforming power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

A Jesus of Nazareth who only offers moral and spiritual suggestions has absolutely no power. I am afraid many churches in America today suffer from the preaching of just such a domesticated Jesus who has no power whatsoever to transform lives. Jesus is, as stated in the Gospel of John, “Teacher and Lord” (13:13).

The gospel of man and the gospel of Jesus Christ

Yes, Jesus teaches us how to live. But what we quickly forget is that for life to be considered Christian, it must be patterned after the life of the suffering and risen Christ.

We cannot live this kind of life under our own power. Rather, the Christian life requires the power of God to be lived effectively and to the fullest extent. We cannot simply be taught to live this life. We also must be transformed by grace into the image and likeness of God in Christ, an action done to us rather than by us (Philippians 2:12-14).

Too often today, the church trusts in human agency alone to effect cultural or individual change. But human progress is a myth. Humans are not bad, they are dead (Ephesians 2, Colossians 2:12-13).

God’s business is—by his word incarnate and written down—offering transforming life into his image. For Jesus the Christ is, as Paul wrote in Colossians 1:15, “the image of the invisible God,” for and through whom all things have been created, and through whom all things will be made new—and yes, transformed.

Sam Still is the music minister at First Baptist Church in Elm Mott and is pursuing a Master of Divinity degree in theology at Truett Theological Seminary. The views expressed are those solely of the author.

Keith Skaar, a member of First Baptist Church in Midland since 1989 where he serves as a deacon and trustee, is a petroleum geologist and has worked in the oil and gas exploration business for 35 years. From deep in the heart of one Texan, Skaar shares his background and thoughts on being a follower of Christ in the marketplace. To suggest a Texas Baptist leader in the marketplace to be featured in this column, or to apply to be featured yourself, click here.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Background

I love and am proud to fellowship in a Baptist body of Christ and love the cooperative work of Baptists, not only here in Texas, but throughout the world. I owe my Christian heritage to Baptists.

What other businesses have you been in, and what were your positions there?

I worked some part-time jobs in the restaurant business at night to make ends meet in the mid-1980s but have worked steady in the oil and gas business, even through that brief time period.

Where did you grow up?

My dad was a chemical engineer for Shell Oil; so, we moved around every four years. My young childhood was spent in southern Illinois, my grade school years were spent in Odessa, and my middle school and high school years were spent in Humble.

How did you come to faith in Christ?

My mother grew up in a broken home. At the invitation of some friends when she was a teenager, she accepted Christ as her Savior in the First Baptist Church of New Orleans, when Dr. J.D. Gray was pastor.

My father was the youngest child of Norwegian immigrants. He was serving as a young GI at the end of World War II, building barracks for Lackland Air Base in San Antonio, when he made his public profession of faith and was obedient in baptism at Riverside Baptist Church.

I became a follower of Christ at the age 6. I remember attending an evening worship service with my family at Calvary Baptist Church in Edwardsville, Ill. I don’t remember anything about the sermon Rev. Freeman preached, but I remember clearly a real conviction from the Spirit urging me to go forward at the altar call to acknowledge I was a sinner in need of a Savior.

Where were you educated, and what degrees did you receive?

I graduated from Humble High School in 1980 and Baylor University in 1984 with a Bachelor of Science degree in geology and a petroleum major.

Life in the marketplace

Why do you feel called into the marketplace?

As a teenager, a small group of men in my church, Forest Cove Baptist Church in Humble, were owners or partners of independent companies in the domestic oil and gas business. After services, they always seemed to gather in a group and talk about their week in business while everyone else broke into groups defined most by their friendships.

I never noticed a group of accountants gather together to talk accounting or engineers gathering to review the events of their week. My Dad was an engineer, but I never saw him gather with other engineers to talk “shop.”

I became fascinated by what these independent oil and gas men did. As they provided me opportunities to observe and experience their business during my collegiate years, I knew the oil and gas industry was for me.

Even as the domestic industry collapsed in the late 1980s and struggled all through the 1990s, in all my career trials, I never lost faith that our Lord called me to be a geologist in the oil and gas business to fulfill a purpose.

How does being a Christian influence your decisions in the marketplace?

To paraphrase some Scriptures:

“Love God and love others, upon these two commands hang all the Law and Prophets.”

“He who would be greatest among you, let him be the servant of all.”

“Promotion comes neither from the east or the west, north or south, but it is the Lord who lifts up some and pulls down others.”

The world tells us we have to look out for ourselves first and foremost because no one else will. I am free to engage the marketplace each day as a follower of Christ Jesus, looking out for his interests and the interests of others, rather than being consumed each day looking out for my own.

Our Lord’s Spirit equips me to engage in the marketplace serving others, putting their interests ahead of my own because I have a “Heavenly Father who knows I have needs and gives good gifts to his children” and “longs to be gracious to me, rising up to show compassion.”

What is your favorite aspect of the marketplace? Why?

I always am amazed at the creativity of the free market. The marketplace identifies a need and creatively responds to meet those needs, rewarding those who are best at it. Certainly, in the Permian Basin oil industry, we see evidence of that each day. There are still problems to solve, but the market has found the people and development resources to keep everything growing.

I pray the church would learn from the market by identifying needs in our communities and meeting those needs, representing our Lord in service and earning the opportunity to share the words of eternal life.

The Roman emperor Justin the Apostate, who gave one last effort to push back against the Christian church, declared the problem he faced to be “ … these Christians, they not only feed their own, but they feed our hungry people as well, the Christians not only bury their dead, but they bury our dead as well.”

The early Christian Church exploded in growth throughout the Roman Empire, identifying a need in their community—which at the time was burying those who died of plague—and meeting that need. Our modern communities don’t need burial services, but our churches do need to be better at identifying our community needs and meeting those needs so they can earn the privilege of sharing the answer to the fundamental need of all humanity, which is Jesus Christ.

What one aspect of the marketplace would you like to change?

I fear the truth about service is getting lost, particularly among our young people. I have numerous young people come by my office asking for money. They are fresh out of college and are responding to a calling to serve our Lord by joining some non-denominational Christian non-profit where they have to raise their own salary in order to serve.

I never question their calling, but often wonder why they feel the only way to answer their calling to serve our Lord is in a “full-time” ministry where they have to beg family and friends of their parents to provide for their salaries.

I think the marketplace is losing more and more influence from engaged Christian young people because they don’t believe there is a place to serve our Lord in the secular world.

As a trustee of First Baptist Church in Midland, I help oversee funds that provide “personal support for Baptist missionaries serving in a foreign field.” Over the past 10 years alone, we have been privileged to provide support to more than 100 church plants through indigenous missionaries, most of whom are bivocational.

Our most effective vocational missionaries all have spent a large portion of their lives engaging in the business world before surrendering to a full-time calling. They are the best at identifying the needs of their target communities and finding the resources to meet those needs. As a result, our Lord’s church is exploding throughout the world.

About Baptists

What are the key issues facing Baptists—denominationally and/or congregationally?

One of my favorite stories in the New Testament is our Lord’s answer to Martha as she complains that Mary is not working but only enjoying fellowship and learning in the presence of our Lord. Jesus told Martha there are so many important things to worry about—such as feeding and serving the Body of Christ—but there is only one necessary thing.

Baptists in America seem to preoccupy ourselves with conflicts over some important things often to the neglect of the one necessary thing. We seem to have let our differences on important things distract us from presenting to our communities and the world our common bond—the one necessary thing.

Jesus said, “All men will know you are my disciples by the love you have one for another.” I really doubt sometimes that the world is seeing the love.

We meet as a large convention where we are supposed to gather to figure out how to cooperate together to share the words of eternal salvation with the world. We end up making scriptural pronouncements on submission of wives.

Just like Martha, we have lost focus, being distracted over important matters while neglecting the “one necessary thing.”

About Keith

Who were/are your mentors, and how did/do they influence you?

I have too many mentors to name them all. One piece of advice sticks out. Bruce Wilbanks—the first independent to drill below 20,000 feet, breaking the world’s record for drill time by six months—told me that “in this business, we are all just learning.” That wisdom applies not only to the oil and gas business but to life itself.

Other than the Bible, name some of your favorite books or authors, and explain why.

During my freshman year in college, my brother—Bill Skaar, pastor of First Baptist Church in Grand Prairie—was president of Baylor University’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter, and so, I attended. That fall semester, we went through The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges, which not only made a lasting impact on me but really introduced me to the world of Christian literature.

C.S. Lewis, Max Lucado, John Eldridge, Philip Yancey and Erwin McManus all come to mind as authors I have enjoyed and who have made significant impacts on my life at very strategic times.

I also enjoy Joel Rosenberg political thrillers.

What is your favorite Bible verse or passage? Why?

“All things work together for good to those who love God” (Romans 8:28), and “trust in the Lord with all thy heart and lean not on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3: 5-6) are promises that should always be fresh in our minds and hearts daily.

I have a friend walking through a tragic and dark circumstance, and obscure Scriptures come to mind, such as found in Isaiah: “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.” “I’ve been young, and now I am old, but I’ve never seen the righteous forsaken or his seed begging for bread.” Like Solomon, I can say I’ve never seen his word fail. Even in the tragedy my friend is walking through now, I know one day our Lord will stand him up again as a tall reed in the wind, and his flame will shine bright again.

I don’t know how I would get through life without the promises, guidance and assurances of Scripture.

Who is your favorite Bible character, other than Jesus? Why?

Jonathan, son of Saul. Like him, all of us have been named a “son of the king.” Likewise, this is not heaven, and we all still dwell as children of God in “occupied territory.” We may think we are insignificant and can’t make an impact, but “nothing restrains the Lord from saving by many or by few” (1 Samuel 14:6). Like Jonathan, we need just to be faithful to our calling, and our Lord will do the rest.

If you could get one “do over” in the marketplace, what would it be, and why?

In a Romans 8:28 sense, I am not sure which failure, mistake or struggle God didn’t use for my good to mold me into the follower of Christ I am today. Hopefully, as I continue to mature in the faith, I’ll need a lot less discipline and will be more responsive and obedient to our Lord’s Spirit to grow in my Christian walk.

If we look around, the world is full of exercises in spiritual formation.

Our hot water heater went out over the weekend. City living quickly became like camping, and I came face-to-face with how much I take for granted. Attending church, a speaking engagement and meetings without a “proper shower” made me a little self-conscious of my nonverbal communication—my scent.

I thought about what a good life I have that I can be inconvenienced by cold water. I thought about some of my children’s schoolmates who, for lots of reasons, don’t get a “proper shower.” I thought about people desperately trying to get to a place like the United States where life is as good as I have it. I thought about how the good life I enjoy is what others want, too.

But I grumbled before I thought.

While trying to enjoy my first shower in a few days—you read that right—my mind was pulled by the bitter debates over education and immigration. Just mentioning those two topics seems to light a fuse. How can we see these topics differently?

Then, it hit me. Both are opportunities for building spiritual muscle. The opportunity often is obscured by the details of the debates.

Education strengthens the community and the church

Consider this detail: Nearly 60 percent of students enrolled in Texas public schools are economically disadvantaged. An economically disadvantaged student is defined as a student eligible for free or reduced-price meals, eligibility being determined by the relation of household size to household income.

An aside: Included in that 60 percent are the children of some of our pastors who can’t afford private schools or who serve churches in communities too small for private schools. While we may not want to admit that some of our pastors are economically disadvantaged, our awareness of that fact might change how we advocate for our public schools.

Back to the opportunity: Instead of seeing economic disadvantage as a shame better left unexamined, Christians can see economic disadvantage as an avenue for connection.

While addressing the causes of economic disadvantage, Christians can connect with students, families, teachers, school administrators and the larger community in many practical ways.

Christians can encourage educators with regular prayers and notes of support. They can provide supplies—along with a flyer about who provided the supplies—to families and teachers who can’t afford to buy supplies. Dennis Boswell and the School Ministry Network are a resource for these and other ideas.

Christians also can visit their elected officials to advocate for better policies governing public education. Elected officials know that every visit from one of their constituents represents many more votes. Christians can stand in the gap between the students and teachers in their district and the officials who determine so much of public education. Pastors for Texas Children can teach us how to advocate.

By connecting with students and educators, Christians live out Jesus’ connection with us, practice the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23), and create and strengthen the connection between the community and the church.

Another aside: How does the way in which Christians engage public education mirror the way in which we engage education in our churches? Working for stronger public education may strengthen our Sunday schools, Bible studies and other discipleship efforts.

Immigration strengthens the community and the church

Just as our involvement in education is an outward expression of how the Spirit of God is shaping us internally, so is immigration. Like public education debates, current immigration discussions tend to be more discord than discourse. We have very different opinions about what to do with people who “aren’t from around here” but who want to be.

An aside: Many pastors are a kind of immigrant. They are called to communities foreign to them. Some churches welcome pastors well, and other churches welcome their pastors and their pastors’ families like those Americans who don’t want immigrants coming to the United States. The way a church welcomes a new pastor and family is good practice for welcoming other foreigners, to use a biblical term.

Brenda Kirk and Tim Moore, south central mobilizers for the National Immigration Forum and the Evangelical Immigration Table, teach people how to overcome polarity by building relationships of trust through “living room conversations.”

To date, Kirk and Moore have conducted at least four living room conversations in Lubbock, Corpus Christi, Sugar Land and El Paso. They ask open-ended questions of the 10 to 15 participants, beginning with a focus on feelings and moving to questions about participants’ knowledge of their community. Participants are free to pass on any question, and they are not to interrupt or attack another person’s response. Instead, they are to listen respectfully and speak honorably.

These conversations generally last about two hours. After 30 to 40 minutes, participants finally trust each other enough to begin to be honest.

Instead of being drawn in to the bitter tension of immigration debates, Christians can practice patience, kindness, self-control and other fruit of the Spirit by listening to others voice their fears and concerns about immigration. Christians can be examples of God’s peace in the midst of heated circumstances.

Heavy lifting builds muscle

I’m no Pollyanna. Engaging in public education and immigration in the ways mentioned above isn’t easy. Lifting heavy weights or running a marathon isn’t easy—even for the pros. But the exercise puts feet to our faith, showing it’s alive.

When exercising, it’s important to know a few things about our bodies so we don’t injure them. We need to know how to stretch, bend, lift and pace ourselves. In the same way, it’s good to know a few things when we want to exercise our minds and spirits so we don’t wound ourselves and others.

In addition to Pastors for Texas Children, the School Ministry Network, the National Immigration Forum and Evangelical Immigration Table, the following informational resources can help:

• Raise Your Hand Texas—report on public school funding
• Center for Public Policy Priorities—faith-based advocacy for education, immigration and other concerns in Texas
• Out of Many, One—report on immigration
• Bibles, Badges and Business—network for immigration reform
• Rational Middle—short films about immigration

Eric Black is the executive director, publisher and editor of the Baptist Standard. He can be reached at eric.black@baptiststandard.com or on Twitter at @EricBlackBSP. The views expressed are those solely of the author.

Chris Johnson has been the pastor of First Baptist Church in San Antonio since 2017. From deep in the heart of one Texan, he shares his background and thoughts on church and ministry. To suggest a Baptist General Convention of Texas-affiliated minister to be featured in this column, or to apply to be featured yourself, click here.

Background

Where else have you served in ministry, and what were your positions there?

• First Baptist Church in Covington as youth minister
• Chalk Bluff Baptist Church in Waco as pastor

Where did you grow up?

Carrizo Springs, Texas

How did you come to faith in Christ?

I was born into a devout family of believers. From day one, I was in the church, leading to the blessing of knowing God and growing in the faith from childhood by accepting Christ in the children’s ministry, then deepening my faith as a youth at First Baptist Church of Carrizo Springs.

Where were you educated, and what degrees did you receive?

• Baylor University, Bachelor of Arts in religion
• Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University, Master of Divinity in theology
• Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University, Doctor of Ministry in spiritual formation

About ministry life

Why do you feel called into ministry?

When I was a junior in high school, I began to understand God was calling me into ministry. God gifted and prepared me to become a pastor even as a youth. Every step of the way since that time, God has continued to affirm through schooling, mentors and the church that this is exactly where I am supposed to be.

What is your favorite aspect of ministry? Why?

My favorite aspect of ministry is that I am supposed to pray, and I have the privilege of praying often, even during office hours.

What one aspect of ministry gives you the greatest joy?

The greatest joy comes when someone gets it, when a light comes on and they begin to understand the peace of a deepening relationship with Jesus Christ. There is no greater feeling in ministry than when a friend finally comes to know the Lord or a church member has a spiritual breakthrough.

How do you expect ministry to change in the next 10 to 20 years?

In the coming decades, we must get back to the basics of the faith. The resurgence of the church will not be in entertaining programs but the foundational pillars of repentance, witnessing and discipleship. As the church gets back to the heart of what she was called to do, we will thrive.

What do you wish more laypeople knew about ministry or, specifically, your ministry?

Pastors have more work to complete than days in the week. Wearing so many hats, we have learned to be pastors who can produce in great quantity, but the greater quantity naturally inhibits our quality.

About Baptists

What would you change about the Baptist denomination—state, nation or local?

There are three things Baptists can learn from other denominations that would enrich our hearts and worship.

1. Confession. We do not need to confess to a minister; however, we need to learn the value and joy of confession before our Lord.

2. Art. Baptists have never been known for their art, but there is room in the church for a deeper appreciation of our creative efforts.

3. Church calendar. Baptists have little concept of the church calendar outside of Christmas and Easter. It would do us well to celebrate scriptural moments as much as—if not more so—than cultural holidays.

About Chris

What did you learn on the job you wish you learned in seminary?

I found a great educational divide on sex. One of the most shocking revelations as a pastor was how pervasive adultery was and is in our congregations and how quickly pornography is becoming an epidemic. I quickly had to learn how to talk about healthy sexual relationships and have had to use those skills often in every step of ministry.

What is your favorite Bible verse or passage? Why?

Exodus 14:14—“The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still” (NIV).

During my most recent pastoral transition, my wife and I prayed for a year about the coming season, and as often as I worried, God put this passage in front of me to calm my fears.

Who is your favorite Bible character, other than Jesus? Why?

There are two who fit a similar mold: Zacchaeus (Luke 19) and the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8). Both men long for Jesus, and when they find him, their lives are completely changed. Zacchaeus could not wait to repent for past wrongs, and the Ethiopian could not wait to be baptized. May we meet many like Zacchaeus and the Ethiopian eunuch in our witnessing.

Name something about you that would surprise people who know you.

Bananas are my enemy. I cannot stand the smell of a banana. For April Fools’ Day, my 4-year-old daughter thought it would be funny to put a banana under my pillow so I could smell that disgusting fruit all night long.

As we seek to learn from Baptist Standard readers around Texas, we are holding listening sessions to hear and respond to questions, concerns and comments about the Standard. During the session in San Antonio, I was asked how the Standard maintains its independence.

This is an excellent question. Many of our readers have the same concern. As you might expect, so do the board and staff of the Baptist Standard Publishing Company.

To answer the question well, however, I need to do what I didn’t do yesterday. I need to ask a preliminary question: What is independent journalism?

If we don’t know what independence means in relation to journalism, we will find independence hard to maintain.

Defining independence

What I think many people mean when they talk about independent journalism is, “Will you be able to say what needs to be said when you need to say it?”

Notice, the ability to say what needs to be said is not the same as the willingness to say what needs to be said. Some journalists are able but unwilling, while others are willing but unable. We praise the courage of the latter and all too often take for granted the freedom of the former.

Does the Baptist Standard have the freedom to say what needs to be said when it needs to be said? Yes.

The next question is, “How?”

I hear in this question a desire to know if the Baptist Standard is free of outside influences—organizational, financial or otherwise.

Organizationally, the Baptist Standard Publishing Company is a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation independently related to the Baptist General Convention of Texas. As such, the BGCT does not exercise editorial control over our publications.

Financially, we are not subsidized by any state convention. We do not directly receive Cooperative Program funds from the BGCT, as stated on page 12 of the Texas Baptists 2018 Cooperative Program Annual Report. Our funding comes from ad sales, subscriptions, donations, grants for special projects and an endowment.

Otherwise? That’s a broad category, and the truth is, the Standard is as influenced by being in this world as all of us are.

Contextualizing independence

The reality is our independence is not without limits. Our independence meets its limits where our accountability begins. In this way, we are interdependent.

Our certificate of formation reads: “The purpose for which this corporation is formed is the operation of a communications organization, using a variety of technologies to support, inform, and resource the Baptist General Convention of Texas, churches, and faith-based institutions that serve the broader Christian community, and individual people of faith.”

From this, we understand we are accountable to the people, churches and institutions of the BGCT. We exist in relationship to the BGCT.

Understand, however, that such accountability does not preclude courage, for our primary accountability is to the Lord Jesus Christ, who frequently spoke discomfiting words.

Courage and independence

While the Standard is free to say what needs to be said when it needs to be said, the obvious question seems to be, “Are we willing to say what needs to be said when it needs to be said?” In other words, do we have courage?

From what I’ve read in the Standard and feedback I’ve received in my time as editor, I don’t think the Standard has lacked for courage. Editors of the Standard regularly have exhibited courage to say what they thought needed to be said when they thought it needed to be said.

Notice, saying what one thinks needs to be said is not the same as saying what others think needs to be said. This gets to a different level of independence: individual versus organizational independence.

Some journalists say what we think others need to hear, while other journalists say what we don’t want to hear. We praise the prophetic gifts of the former and condemn the perturbing tendencies of the latter.

Any courage the Standard has is rooted in our primary accountability to Jesus Christ and our commitment to his redeeming and reconciling work. If that work requires news and opinion that unsettles, we will publish it if it is factually true and fairly stated.

Emanating from our primary accountability and commitment to Jesus Christ is our commitment to historic Baptist principles, including soul competency and religious liberty—two freedoms as important for the individual as they are for the collective. Safeguarding the editorial independence of the Baptist Standard Publishing Company is a crucial expression of our core beliefs as Baptist Christians.

Answering the question

I should get back to answering the question.

How do we maintain our independence?

The question is only five words, but five significant words because of their relationship to one another.

We maintain independence the way all of us do—in the ongoing push and pull of relationship.

Eric Black is the executive director, publisher and editor of the Baptist Standard. He can be reached at eric.black@baptiststandard.com or on Twitter at @EricBlackBSP. The views expressed are those solely of the author.