There’s a deadly intersection in town. You may live close to it. Time and time again, two cars collide, and someone is seriously injured. All too often, someone dies.

We know about this intersection, and we keep asking, “Can’t something be done?”

Of course, we know something can be done, and we know what that something is, but we don’t seem to have the power to make it happen.

We keep crying out for a traffic light, and we’re told a traffic study has to be conducted to determine the need for a light at that intersection. We’re told a certain number of fatalities are required before a light will be installed at that intersection.

In the meantime, we have to wait, watch, and tally the dead.

‘Can’t something be done?’

There’s another deadly intersection in town. You may live very close to it, or you may watch it from afar via the news. Time and time again, projectiles and bodies collide. People are seriously injured, and all too often, people die.

We know about this intersection, and we keep asking, “Can’t something be done?”

Of course, something can be done, but we have to conduct studies. We have to weigh the cost. We have to consider how much restriction is too much because we don’t want to impede the flow of our Second Amendment rights.

In the meantime, we wait, debate, and tally the dead.

The facts behind the problems

In reality, traffic lights don’t stop people from dying at dangerous intersections. That deadly intersection near my house is still very deadly.

In reality, gun control won’t stop people from dying of gun violence. Gun control may slow the count, but gun control won’t stop the killing.

Traffic lights don’t solve the auto fatality problem because traffic lights address only one part of the total problem. The larger problem includes two facts: vehicles are deadly machines if not handled properly, and people don’t always pay attention.

The larger problem includes two more facts: we don’t intend to give up our vehicles, and we don’t appreciate being blamed for endangering lives with them.

Likewise, gun control won’t solve the gun violence problem because gun control addresses only one part of the total problem. The larger problem includes two facts: guns are deadly weapons by design, and people aren’t always responsible with them.

The larger problem includes two more facts: we don’t intend to give up our guns, and we don’t appreciate the insinuation we could be to blame for gun deaths.

Fair enough, I suppose.

Searching for a solution

In reality, if we are going to deal with that dangerous intersection, we will need more than limits. We will need more than assault rifle bans, background checks, gun registration, licenses to carry, gun safes and trigger locks. We will need more than these topical ointments because the problem is more than skin deep.

We will need to deal with our own violent culture fueled by violent video games, violent music, violent movies, violent television, violent cartoons and comics and violent sports. We will need to face up to our love of violence and own up to the fact we don’t really want to give it up.

We will need to deal with mental health. Much has been said about mental health already. The fact is, we don’t know what to do with mental health or those who struggle with depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, trauma, PTSD and a host of other unimagined challenges.

We will need to deal with broken homes and bullying and child abuse and neglect and all the things that lead people toward hurting others. We will need to do a better job of caring for the people around us.

We will need to deal with our own distrust and anger and desire for revenge and all the things that grow like weeds in our hearts, all the things that shape our minds, all the things that guide our thoughts, all the things that break out of ourselves and hurt other people. We will need to deal with ourselves.

In short, we must do the latter without neglecting the former, to paraphrase Jesus’ response to the Pharisees.

Becoming the solution

As Baptists, as Christians, surely we have more to offer than Second Amendment debates. Surely we have more to offer than calls for gun control, CHL classes and security teams in our churches and schools. Surely we have more to offer than cries for more mental health services.

As Baptists, as Christians, surely we remember we are what we are because we first recognized the larger problem was not out there but was in here, in our hearts. Surely we remember our cry wasn’t for moral policing but was for mercy, forgiveness and purification from all unrighteousness.

As Baptists, as Christians, we are what we are because we hope for more than simply the removal of sin. We hope for the replacement of sin with the presence of Christ.

Surely, as Baptists, as Christians, we can do more than merely wait, watch and tally the dead.

Eric Black is pastor of First Baptist Church in Covington, Texas, and a member of the Baptist Standard Publishing board of directors.

In 2005, Deirdre Sullivan wrote an essay for NPR’s This I Believe series titled “Always Go To The Funeral.” Her short piece was inspired by the words her dad instructed her when she was 16 and reluctantly preparing to attend the visitation hours for her fifth-grade teacher, who had unexpectedly passed away.

The essay was about the ways we should always do the “little things” that may not feel good in the moment but make a world of difference to someone else. She writes, “In going to funerals, I’ve come to believe that while I wait to make a grand heroic gesture, I should just stick to the small inconveniences that let me share in life’s inevitable, occasional calamity.”

For those Christians who observe Lent (as well as for those whose pastors have tricked them into it by instituting some form of “Six Weeks of ______ leading up to Easter”), we make a conscious choice to always, every year around this time, go to the funeral.

Ash Wednesday is, in fact, a sort of reminder-in-advance of our own funerals.

Dark days

Yet, unlike Sullivan’s vision of sharing in “life’s inevitable, occasional calamity,” Lent is a choice to share in the inevitable, constant calamity of the human condition of having come from dust, and our eventual return to dust. This may be why so many Protestants have shunned Lent in the past.

We want the hope of resurrection without the toil of the wilderness and the pain of the cross.

Can I be so bold as to suggest that our knowledge of what happens on Easter morning can sometimes serve to handicap our ability to fully experience what God wants us to experience in the dark days leading up to that glorious Sunday morning?

A long Friday

I attended more than the average amount of funerals as a child. Then, between 2005 and 2011, I buried three close friends, a mentor and my dad. I am entering the stage of life where there are far more funerals to attend than weddings, graduations and baptisms combined.

It seems a little macabre to rate funerals, but I’m going to do it anyway. The best funerals are the ones where the attendees don’t try to pretend that a death has not occurred. The worst ones are those in which people try REAL hard not to be sad.

Lent is a time for us to be sad. It is the time for us to recognize that death has occurred, is occurring and will keep happening until the end. And it invites us to figure out how to live in this reality.

When a close friend died, someone told me these dark words: “The really bad thing about this is that it is just going to keep on happening. We are going to keep on burying each other until there’s no one left.” But they were also hopeful words because they were spoken by a pastor, a messenger of the good news, that death isn’t all there is. He knew I believed the good part of the gospel but wanted to give me permission to embrace the bad news that came before the good news.

“It’s Friday, but Sunday is coming!” you have likely heard. Which is true. Equally true is the declaration, “Sunday’s coming, but right now it’s Friday.”

May we enter this long Friday going to the funeral, tending to broken and dying pieces within ourselves and our communities, naming the darkness and walking through the wilderness with Jesus.

Craig Nash grew up in Chandler, Texas, and is a graduate of East Texas Baptist University and Baylor’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary. He has lived in Waco since 2000, where he works for Baylor and attends University Baptist Church. If he were any more Baptist, he would need a committee on committees to help him decide who will help him make major life decisions.

Weariness brought them together.

The searing noontime heat made the dry and dusty road a walk of endurance.

The man stopped at the well and sat down. He was alone. His companions had gone ahead to the local market to buy food. He was tired and thirsty. It was good to rest.

Soon, a woman came along carrying a water bucket. She could have come earlier in the day, when it was cooler, but the women of Sychar knew her and she’d rather face the heat of the day than the glances and snickers of their scorn.

They detested her. She knew it. She knew why and she didn’t entirely blame them. It came with the territory of being who — and what — she was. To deny that would be to wallow in self-pity and that’s something she would not do. She would cling at least to that shred of dignity.

The man looked up at her, lifting his hand to his eyes for shade.

They were both thirsty, but she had the bucket. He smiled. Then he asked her for a drink.

The simple request triggered a profound awareness.

And some surprise.

“How is it,” the woman marveled, “that you, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” (John 4:9, emphasis added).

Somehow—we know not how—she knew he was a Jew. Jews didn’t have anything to do with “half-breed” Samaritans. And men didn’t have much regard for women.

A different kind of man

When was the last time a man treated her with kindness—or respect? Not that morning when she got out of bed. And Jews regarded Samaritans with nothing but contempt. No wonder this woman was surprised that Jesus would speak to her—and with such goodness in his voice.

Yes, he was different—very different.

And so began the dialogue most believers are familiar with.

The woman at the well understood the water literally. Jesus spoke of living springs gushing within the soul and leading to eternal life. Then the conversation got personal.

When the woman asked Jesus for “this water, that I thirst not,” he told her to go get her husband. She told him she had no husband. Perhaps she felt a painful sadness mixed with bitter remorse.

Jesus was getting close. Too close, she thought.

You’re right about that, Jesus replied. “The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband” (John 4:18 NIV).

Jesus knew her. Soon she would know him.

Before this conversation was over, Jesus revealed his identity as the Messiah. And this woman—tattered and torn by life and her own miserable choices — believed.

It says she left her water bucket.

A miracle of love

Suddenly the well and the water didn’t matter anymore. What mattered is that this man knew all about her and still spoke words of kindness.

For her it was a miracle.

That’s what she told the villagers when she went running back to town. “Come see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is this not the Christ?” (John 4:29 KJV).

The woman had nurtured her guilty despair for years, hidden in the deep recesses of her broken heart. Jesus saw her—not only as she was but for what she would become. His love healed her heart, set her free and saved her soul.

Her joyful testimony transformed her community—many believed.

But before she could love the Savior, this woman discovered how much he loved her. She had to know that first.

Jesus tells us loving God is the greatest commandment. The people of Israel were told to love the Lord their God with all their heart and with all their soul and with all their might (Deuteronomy 6:5). Jesus included our minds—and our neighbors.

We cannot love God like that—we cannot obey this greatest commandment—until first we are changed by God’s love for us. God is the Initiator of love and we are its receivers. Only after you and I have experienced God’s love for us—full, glorious and unconditional—can we begin to truly love God. Only then can we begin to keep the greatest commandment.

Only when Peter realized how much Jesus loved him—even after that horrible night of denials—did Peter love Christ enough to follow him to the cross.

David knew this experience too and wrote beautiful songs about it. His own love was enriched by the love and forgiveness of God.

The hardened heart that has not yet known God’s love cannot love. The heart touched by the love of God knows the joy of true love and it shows.

It is the love of God that makes it possible for us to accept and love ourselves, rightly and as we are, and then to love others as we ought.

“We love him because he first loved us” (I John 4:19).

An empty water bucket by a well reminds us.

Jack Wyman, a former preacher, pastor, community leader and politician, is the Director of Advancement & Donor Relations for Haggai International.

Rumor has it that Al Pacino turned down the role of Han Solo in “Star Wars.” Pacino is a great actor but casting him in “Star Wars” would have changed the entire tenor of the movie. Seems like the right person picked up the right script at just the right time. Pacino declined the role and Harrison Ford made Han Solo legendary.

The wrong person in the wrong role ruins a project. The right person in the right role at the right time is transformative.

For too long now, pastors and politicians have been picking up the wrong scripts. One trend remains consistent over the past decade: pastors continue to sound more like politicians, while politicians begin to sound more and more like pastors. As they meet in the middle, we miss the best of what each has to offer.

Theologians and politicians

Politicians love to play the role of pastor. Pastors relish the spotlight of the politician. When they switch roles, they forsake the gifts each can bring to the public sphere. Pastors can offer guidance in ethical decision-making and morals while politicians negotiate the difficult terrain of legislative consensus and compromise. With the right people in the right roles, there’s a better opportunity for the flourishing of all.

In 1954, George MacLeod, founder of the Iona Community in Scotland, voiced a similar concern about theologians and politicians. “The theologian is so frightened of what his clear principles imply that he accepts the practice of the politicians. The politician is so frightened of where his practice has led that, secretly he is aghast that the church has no firm principle to offer, such as might begin to save.”

Pastors and theologians have become more concerned with baptizing their preferred politicians than upholding the values and virtues our faith demands.

Davids and Nathans

The Old Testament devotes many pages to the rule of King David over ancient Israel. David tends to overshadow everyone else in those stories. But, in the David stories, the prophet Nathan plays a key role. He is the one who stands up to David and calls him out for his affair with Bathsheba and for the death of Uriah the Hittite.

We pastors aspire to be the next David when we should be aspiring to be the Nathan we need now. The lure to power is captivating. Who wouldn’t want to be David? But, David couldn’t have been the king he was without the prophet Nathan.

Pastors have a distinct vocation. Pastors can bring healing to our political discourse by crafting cultures within churches where republicans, democrats and independents work together for the kingdom of God. Through our shared righteousness, and even our shared brokenness, we can offer renewed conviction for a more just and moral society.

The gospel has political implications. The justice the gospel demands must be sought after in organized ways. But, that effort requires Davids and Nathans.

The great risk

When pastors go on cable news as pundits pawning a political candidate, it’s obvious that they are not so much interested in a policy as they are in protecting a golfing partner. When leaders of Christian institutions create limits to the ethic of Jesus by implying that the ways of Jesus are no way to run a country, then that leader is creating cover for the immorality of politicians.

Seeing pastors and Christian leaders act this way is awkward and confusing—almost as awkward and confusing as picturing Pacino flying the Millennium Falcon.

Preachers sometimes hear they need to stay in their lane, which means, “Don’t preach politics unless they are my politics.” The greater risk is not staying in our lane; it is learning the wrong role.

Pastors are not docents of the status quo. We are midwives of God’s kingdom.

Garrett Vickrey is pastor of Woodland Baptist Church in San Antonio.

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Philippians 4:8 ESV).

This is the final command Paul gives to the church at Philippi. He tells the church to focus their thoughts, their words and their hearts on the good around them. He tells them to remember and consider what is true and just. He calls them to reflect on what is lovely. Focus on the beautiful. Think about these things.

In a world of negativity and tension filled with fear, how do we think about these things? How do we center our lives on the good, the true and the beautiful?

Limit the outrage

One way we can begin to focus our hearts on the good and lovely is to tune out the outrage machine constantly blaring all around us. It is hard to think about what is true and honorable and lovely when we are discipled more by cable news and talk radio than by the word of God.

The truth is, talk radio and cable news need us angry so that we will tune in tomorrow. They stoke fear in us so we won’t tune in to the other side. When our hearts are filled with fear, tension and anger, it is hard to notice the beauty and goodness around us. We live in a world of noise. There are the hosts yelling on the radio, the pundits arguing on the television and the commenter typing in all caps on social media.

When we live in outrage every moment we are awake, it is impossible to think on the things of God. To focus our hearts on the good, we must limit the outrage we intake every day.

Seek stillness

When we limit the outrage, we should seek stillness so that our hearts may focus and think. In the stillness, we begin to notice the beauty around us and the goodness God has shown us. When we are still before God, our hearts can focus on what is pure and just. We begin to have eyes to see and ears to hear because they are not filled with the noise of the world.

Our smartphones have made it almost impossible for us to seek stillness. We are always connected, always a swipe away from the noise. These handheld computers have rewired our brains and our hearts to keep us from thinking about the things of God. The benefits of our phones are far outweighed by the damage they are doing to our contemplative lives.

We must seek stillness by putting our phones away and reforming our minds and hearts to be able to reflect and think about the things of God. When we see the world with our eyes, instead of through our phones, we begin to see the beauty and the lovely all around.

Relate face-to-face

Finally, we can focus on the true, the honorable, the lovely and the excellent when we focus on others. When we move out from behind our screens and into real, genuine community, we see beauty and goodness evident in the lives of others made in the image of God.

Following Paul’s command in verse 8, he tells the Philippians to practice what they have seen, heard and learned from him. In relationship, he has taught them how to focus their hearts on the beauty of God evident in the world everywhere they look. In relating to them face-to-face, Paul has shown them how to think about these things.

We are made for community, made to relate to one another in love. The place we see what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent and worthy of praise is in the lives of others, in community. We are meant to think on these things together and to practice seeing and proclaiming the good and beautiful in one another and to one another.

The church doesn’t need more outrage or more noise. You don’t need more outrage or more noise. Our spiritual health depends upon stepping away from the noise, from the fear and from the anger. Your heart needs stillness, it needs relationship and it needs to focus and think on what is good, beautiful and true, wherever these things are found.

Zac Harrel is pastor of First Baptist Church in Gustine, Texas.

A few years ago, The National Congregational Study posted some findings on the average church size in America. They discovered quite a bit about church sizes and trends, but two specific stats rang out to me:

• Half of American churches have less than 75 people.
• Ninety percent of American churches have less than 350 people!

What was it about these stats that made my pastoral spidey senses go off?

Well, I thought America was in the middle of a megachurch boom. Conversations about church growth are on the rise, newly minted denomination-neutral worship facilities are popping up in every major city, and it seems that every keynote speaker at every conference is the pastor of a large church somewhere.

Country, community and neighborhood churches are wringing their hands with worry about attendance because they’ve been told they should be growing (or that they could be growing if they’ll just subscribe to so-and-so’s simple five-week course for only $99.99).

With this current church-growth trend running full bore, whether it’s outright said or just subtly implied, the message is loud and clear: big church good, small church bad.

A typical pastoral conversation

Just ask any pastor what the first two questions other pastors ask him when they meet for the first time. Nine times out of ten, the conversation goes as follows:

“Oh, you’re a pastor? What church do you pastor?”

“I pastor at First Baptist Church of Somewhere, Texas.”

“That’s great! How many people do you have on a Sunday?”

That second question is rarely about their tenure of service, what it’s like to pastor in Somewhere, Texas, or if they even enjoy the job. That second question is generally, “How many people?”

I wouldn’t speak for any other pastors other than myself on this, but when I receive the question of how many people I minister to on a Sunday, I almost hear it with the hidden inquiries of, “Are you a good pastor or not? Should I respect you because you have more people in your church than I have in mine?”

Like I said, I could be alone here, but I’m willing to venture a guess that I’m not.

Sizing up success

It’s not that growth and size are bad. That’s far from what I’m saying. Keeping count of people in crowds has a biblical tradition, and it helps understand the effectiveness of new stuff we’re trying in services and other beneficial things along those lines. We also can’t ignore that the fewer people who are in the church, the more difficult it may be to keep all of the bills paid.

To add to that, some churches are called to be large. The influence that having large numbers creates is priceless in the kingdom. Ultimately, the only reason Rome and the Pharisees took Jesus seriously is because of how many people followed him. If his followers were in the dozens rather than the thousands, they likely wouldn’t have cared about him.

No, I’m not railing against large churches. I’m concerned with the practice of using the size of a church as the only means of judging success.

If consciously or subconsciously we associate the sheer size of a church with its success, then we’ve got a pretty big problem on our hands when we look at the stats mentioned above. Are 90 percent of the churches in our country that bad? Are 90 percent of our pastors failures?

If you talk to many pastors, they’d say yes. Well, what they’d more likely answer is that they think of themselves as failures for not leading a more substantial body. I may be preaching to the praise team here, but believing that church size is all that matters is wrong, and it’s time for a change.

The church began small

Nowhere in the Bible does Jesus tell us that all churches are supposed to look the same. All congregations all called to follow some overarching principles of worship and discipleship, but, aside from those, we all have a different purpose in the kingdom, and those objectives don’t all look alike.

Simply put, some churches need to be huge, but, clearly, most do not. Remember how God looks at the inward stuff while humanity has a bad habit of looking at the outward (1 Samuel 16:7)? God has just as much interest in the quality of a church as he does the quantity.

Are you praying for the sick? Shepherding the flock? Teaching the word faithfully? Are you making disciples of your people? How about regularly sharing the good news of Jesus with the lost? Are you a good steward of your resources? Then don’t stress out over how many pockets are in the multipurpose, padded chairs.

You may not hear this often enough, but, pastor, you’re doing a good job. Trust that your work for the Lord is meaningful. It’s significant in the eternal sense, but it’s also substantial today in the here and now.

Remember that Jesus needed just twelve men to spark a revolution. Believe that if it’s full of faithful people, God can do tremendous things in a tiny church.

Don McCaig is pastor of First Baptist Church Lipan in Lipan, Texas. Connect with him on Twitter @DonMcCaig.

Although I cannot remember the term inerrancy ever being used to describe the authority of the Bible in the churches I grew up in, I can look back and assume that most people probably believed the Bible was the inerrant written word of God.

I didn’t become familiar with the term until college and seminary as I learned about the battles that took place in the Southern Baptist Convention from the late ’70s to late ’90s. There were basically two ways of viewing these battles:

(1) Biblical inerrancy is a crucial doctrine for church and denominational health, and it must be affirmed by the leadership of the convention and the professors in the seminaries. If inerrancy is denied, the SBC will compromise in such a way that it will lead to cultural accommodation and decline similar to mainline, more progressive denominations.

(2) Biblical inerrancy is a man-made doctrine created to make the Bible the counter-authority to the authority of science that took hold in the West during modernity. Someone can “believe the Bible” without affirming inerrancy, and the doctrine should not be a litmus test for fellowship. Further, the ones seeking to advance the cause of inerrancy are mostly interested in power and will do whatever it takes to get it.

Those who believe biblical inerrancy was a crucial doctrine for church and denominational health won the “war,” and those who “lost” were clumped together in a large group of “moderate Baptists.” Most of the men and women who taught within the Baptist schools I attended were moderate Baptists. These men and women were, and still are, influential in my life, and, therefore, I viewed the doctrine of inerrancy through their lenses.

Rethinking inerrancy

This would probably be the end of the story, but I also attended Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts, for my first year of seminary before transferring to Truett Seminary for my final two years. GCTS is an interdenominational evangelical seminary. It was here that I was exposed to Northern evangelical life and a robust, intellectually deep evangelical faith. Unencumbered by the battles in the SBC, I was also taught the doctrine and importance of biblical inerrancy by a Presbyterian professor.

When I graduated from Truett Seminary, I entered pastoral ministry. As a pastor, I began to rethink the suspicion and disagreement I had for the doctrine of inerrancy and ultimately came to a place where I affirm the Chicago Statement of Inerrancy (1978). The rethinking came from two sources.

First, the practice of preaching sermons each week caused me to rethink what I believed about the Bible.

• When I preach, do I believe God’s Word has authority?
• How should I understand that authority?
• Do I believe God’s Word has power?

Questions such as these would take place each week as I opened the Bible and sought to be a faithful expositor.

Second, I was confronted with the challenges, hurts and disillusionment that can accompany being a pastor. As I struggled with these powerful emotions, I looked for truth that could sustain and encourage me. I needed to know, desperately, that what I was doing as a pastor was important and not a waste of my life. As I came to God’s Word, I found part of the nourishment, encouragement and bedrock I needed.

Affirming inerrancy

It is important to note that what drove me to affirming inerrancy was not primarily the reading of academic debates about inerrancy. There is a place for these debates, and anyone can find top-level scholars who affirm or disagree with inerrancy. I’ve read deeply on both sides of these debates.

The reality I came to, though, was not how many scholars I could line up to affirm my belief. I either believed it or I did not. Therefore, my affirmation of inerrancy came through the act of preaching, walking through the challenges of pastoral ministry and, yes, study and research.

As I write these words, I realize that telling this story will put me under suspicion and be concerning with many of my friends and those who have taught me. I don’t want this to be the case. I know a lot of people were hurt and had to defend lies/misrepresentations directed at them by those whose battle charge in the SBC was “Inerrancy.”

I don’t deny these realities. All I can say is that I’ve come to a place where I affirm inerrancy and hope that, at some point, this doctrine can be revisited and, perhaps, affirmed without the hurt and baggage of the SBC wars.

Ross Shelton is senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Brenham, Texas.

Christians were a strange sect in the eyes of second- and third-century Romans. They did strange things, things that didn’t make sense.

For example, if a Roman couple had a baby they didn’t want, it was socially acceptable (and common) to leave the baby outside to die of exposure. Christians would often go around areas where babies were left to die and collect them and raise them, incurring a huge financial cost to support a person they had no relationship to.

Likewise, Christians often took care of the bodies of people who died in cities without any family around, making sure that the corpses received a proper, respectful burial, usually at the expense of the Christian taking care of the body. This was also incomprehensible to Roman culture: Christians were giving up their time and resources to assist a person they had no connection to and who would obviously never pay them back.

What made early Christians, so willing to break from the rest of their cultural setting, able to see what so many were missing?

Because they knew Jesus, they knew God. And because they knew God, they knew something the rest of the world didn’t.

The church as a witness

The great 20^th-century theologian Karl Barth wrote that the church served as a “witness” to the state. Because the church is a community of people gathered around a revelation — that is, truth given by God unobtainable any other way — the church knows things that the rest of the world doesn’t. The church’s responsibility to society, wrote Barth, is to tell the world what it knows, to show the world what it’s missing.

This is what the early Christians were doing when they rescued infants left to die and took care of the bodies of those who died alone. Because of their relationship to God, they knew all people were endowed by their Creator with dignity and a right to life. They knew something society didn’t and acted accordingly.

The church and immigration

Immigration has been at the forefront of political discussion in America in the past week, culminating in the recent government shutdown because of the debate. The sticking point in budget negotiations right now is immigration. Most Americans want some form of extension of the DACA program protecting immigrants brought into the US without documentation as a child. As this program is negotiated, a segment of Republicans is calling for larger changes to the United States immigration system, largely restricting immigration from less wealthy areas.

Questions about immigration policy are complicated; claims to the contrary, either from the right or left, are unhelpful. Precisely because of how difficult and important the issue is, we have to think through it Christianly. We have to what we as Christians know that society doesn’t.

Paul, writing to the Galatian church, tells us that all social identities are relativized and made unimportant in Christ: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

Jesus abolishes ethnic identities like “Jew” and “Greek.” We might say the same thing about “American,” “Mexican,” “Syrian,” and so on. Because of Christ, ethnic and national identities lack any significance. We are no longer allowed to think of “Americans” and “Haitians” as different kinds of people. Christ has abolished those differences by giving us something much more important in common.

If we encourage a change to the United States immigration system on the basis of either restricting who has access to our national resources based on ethnicity or keeping out people who don’t look and act like us, we’re denying a fundamental reality enacted by the gospel: that because of Christ, there is only one kind of people, regardless of nation or race.

Paul tells us that the gospel affects how we think about different categories of people. Because immigration is fundamentally related to how we think about people, what we say about immigration relates to our Christian witness.

The “America is for Americans” attitude that lies beneath much of recent anti-immigration sentiment is incompatible with the gospel, which makes the concept of nationality ultimately unimportant and renders Americans with no more of a right to peace and happiness than any other person.

Immigration isn’t just a theoretical debate. We’re discussing the ability of people, in many cases, to live their lives in safety and freedom. Let’s take that responsibility as seriously as we can, and let’s remember what we know because of the gospel.

Jake Raabe is a student at Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary in Waco, Texas. He is also a co-founder of Patristica Press, a Waco-based publishing house.

Earlier this week, John Piper posted an article/interview in which he answers the question, “Is There a Place for Female Professors at Seminary?”

When I first saw the article pop up in my newsfeed, I had a feeling I knew what it would say even before I clicked. But as a female professor of ministry and scripture at a Baptist university and seminary, I could not stop my curiosity.

I would like to address some of the points that Piper makes in that article.

But before I do, I will say that Piper’s article is grounded in his interpretation of the Bible to limit the pastoral office to men. I have a different interpretation. In this brief article, I will not rehearse the detailed reasons why I, and many others, including some Baptists, interpret certain passages differently than he does.

However, I feel that I owe it to my students to respond.

We need a diversity of voices

First, I agree with Piper that seminary professors should model pastoral vision and should seek to shape the hearts, as well as the minds, of students. Most professors would tell you that they see their work as a calling and as a service to the church. Forming, rather than informing, the next generation of leaders in Christ’s church is our goal.

However, I greatly disagree with Piper that people who are “excluded” from a certain role cannot train, model and inspire people to execute the mission of that role.

Throughout history, certain people have been “excluded” from various occupations and leadership roles. If those people had not spoken out, inspired, modeled and even sometimes covertly trained the people who hold power, there would be no leaders anywhere in the United States except white men.

We need a diversity of voices informing the next generation of pastoral leaders so that pastoral vision might expand. For example, how can white men teach other white men about the needs of black women?

If we maintain a view that whosoever believes Christ may be saved, then we must listen to the voices of those different than us so that we can share Christ much farther than our own backyards.

And, most importantly, we must acknowledge that no person is perfectly qualified to be a pastor or church leader … which means no person, NO PERSON, is perfectly qualified to teach pastors.

We are all sinners in need of grace. The moment we decide that something about us makes us worthier than a large percentage of the population is the moment when we need to be reminded how Moses felt about his calling, and that Christ alone is perfect.

Is sharing Christ’s love a ‘man’s field’?

The second point Piper makes that I will address is that he says, “The issue … is not the competence of women teachers or intelligence or knowledge or pedagogical skill. … The issue here at the seminary level is largely the nature of the seminary teaching office.”

In many arguments against women in church leadership, a similar kind of statement is made. For example, “It’s not about how well you preach, but it’s the fact that you are a woman.”

In my opinion, this is illogical. Why in the world would God not want all people to use all their gifts so that Christ’s message increases? If a woman is a skilled teacher, why would God not want pastors to learn from someone who has the ability to teach them to think more deeply?

The Hardin-Simmons University Student Handbook defines university policies for students, and it also indicates that its parameters apply to faculty, staff and administrators.

In the section about sexual harassment, it states that beyond conduct of a sexual nature, “Sexual harassment also includes gender-based harassment, which may include acts of verbal, nonverbal, or physical aggression, intimidation, or hostility based on gender or gender-stereotyping, even if those acts do not involve conduct of a sexual nature.”

An example is provided to help students understand what is meant. “A male staff assistant in a biology lab repeatedly makes disparaging comments about women such as ‘science is a man’s field’ and ‘women don’t have the capacity to understand.’”

While I recognize this is not a perfect analogy and there are some nuances here, if it is sexual harassment to tell a woman she does not have the capacity to understand God’s good creation through science, is it different to tell a woman that she does not have the capacity to understand a “man’s field” of sharing Christ’s love to God’s good creation of humanity through ministry?

So to my students and potential students I say this.

I am not perfect. I make mistakes. But I am doing my best to be faithful to my calling and to use my gifts accordingly. May God bless our efforts to expand our pastoral visions together so that, humbly, we might have the opportunity to participate in the divine task of furthering God’s community on earth.

Meredith Stone is director of ministry guidance and instructor of Christian ministry and Scripture at Hardin-Simmons University’s Logsdon School of Theology & Seminary. She is a member of the Baptist Standard Publishing board of directors.

Americans don’t trust ministers as much as they used to.

Such is the latest finding of a recent Gallup poll examining American’s perceptions of the average trustworthiness of various occupations. Only 42 percent of those surveyed described the presence of ethical behavior among clergy members as “high” or “very high.”

Why less trust?

While that’s not a terrible rating overall, it’s the same as judges. For example, it’s a new low in a larger downward trend. That’s down more than 20 points from the survey’s high point in 1985, when 67 percent of respondents rated general clergy ethics as “high” or “very high.” This chart by Christianity Today shows the unmistakable long drop.

Why are Americans becoming less trusting of ministers? None of the easy answers seem to work.

We could say it’s because of public scandals around high-profile ministers, but trust in minsters was at its highest in the ’80s, a decade filled with public scandals surrounding televangelists in particular. If trust of clergy were related to disgraces surrounding very visible figures, the 1980s should have seen even less trust in minsters.

We might also speculate that declining trust in ministers has to do with our political context, but this doesn’t work either: the decline has been consistent for at least the last three decades, well before the turmoil of the 2016 election.

What’s changed about the church in America in the last 30 years to make the larger culture more suspicious of the church? I don’t actually think very much has. Rather, I think the change lies in American society instead.

A clash of values

Christianity upholds values that don’t make sense to those who aren’t followers of Christ and makes demands of its followers that aren’t intelligible to those who don’t share our convictions.

Followers of Christ surrender every aspect of their lives: Christ makes demands on our jobs, our wallets, our bodies and every other part of our existence.

Self-expression and inclusivity are today’s predominant cultural values, and Christian convictions temper both of these. Christ calls us to be our truest selves, but tells us that things that feel good and right to us are ultimately destructive. Christ calls us to bring all people into our fold, especially the disadvantaged, but he still requires repentance and submission.

The message of Christianity is not an intuitive one. Those without faith in Christ will find much of what Christianity demands unreasonable and suspect (particularly as this relates to money and sexual behavior), and the Christian can’t explain these things in a way that makes sense outside of the context of Christian discipleship.

As our society grows more secular, Christianity and American cultural values are reaching an impasse, a point of departure. Maybe that’s how it should be.

Aliens and exiles

Christ was crucified for the message he preached. Peter and Paul were killed by the state, and the apostle John lived his life in exile. It seems inevitable that the closer we follow Christ, the more alienated from the world we become.

Certainly, we can’t abandon the world entirely; this is the world God created, that God loves and that God has promised to save. But we have to recognize that, until Christ returns, we live as “aliens and exiles” in a foreign land.

Christians in America haven’t had to face this reality for most of our country’s existence. This is beginning to change, and that’s a good thing. We’ll follow Jesus more fully when we do so in the context of a society that doesn’t understand us.

I’m glad to hear that general American culture is becoming less trusting of pastors as it becomes more secularized. If this weren’t the case, it would indicate that the Church was becoming more secular as well.

Public scandals around clergy and less-than-Christlike behavior by Christians certainly occur and certainly impact public trust of Christians and Christian leaders. But even if these things weren’t the case, I suspect we’d see a similar trend. The Church is a challenge to the world, a testimony to something it doesn’t know.

Christians in America have been privileged since the country’s inception, and that privilege is only now beginning to face challenges. Rather than trying to reclaim or hold on to privilege, I think moments like these are an opportunity for the church to reflect on its nature and relationship to society.

If we find that the world doesn’t understand who we are or what we are doing, we’re in good company.

Jake Raabe is a student at Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary in Waco, Texas. He is also a co-founder of Patristica Press, a Waco-based publishing house.

Small church pastors, I want you to know you matter.

Your ministry matters. Your church matters.

We don’t hear this affirmation much in our church world, where it seems bigness is next to godliness. Ministry success, to many, is defined by how many people attend your church and how big your “platform” can be.

We know our value is not found in our numbers or our social media presence, but, the truth is, when all we see celebrated is the “success” of others, it is easy to be discouraged. Sometimes, those of us in the trenches of small church ministry need to be reminded of our value to the kingdom of God.

Serving the kingdom

I was reading in the gospel of Luke and came to chapter 17. In verses 20 and 21 Jesus says, “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold the Kingdom of God is in the midst of you.”

These verses encouraged me in my own small church ministry.

Sometimes, the work God is doing in us and through us and around us is unknown and unseen. Recognition for our ministry may never come, and that is OK. We don’t need the glory because the kingdom of God is in our midst.

The kingdom of God is in our churches, in our neighborhood, and in our communities.

The kingdom of God is here.

Our ministry is to help others recognize and join this kingdom. No matter the size of the crowd, God is there, and he is using the prayers of his people, the preaching of his Word and the songs of praise to form his church and to awaken hearts to the kingdom of God in their midst.

We can trust God is working because the kingdom of God is in the midst of us. Jesus has come, the kingdom of God is at hand, and we can minister in the hope and joy of this truth.

We may not be able to brag on social media about our numbers last Sunday, and we may have gone weeks or months without filling our baptismal waters, but we can know God is using us for his glory.

Running the race

Our call is to be faithful. That can sound cliché, but it is true.

Keep going. Keep preaching. Keep praying.

Remain faithful to the call of God on your life and know you matter. You matter to your church. You matter to God, and you matter in his kingdom.

He is using you in ways that cannot be observed, in ways the world will never see, and in ways you may never know.

Zac Harrel is pastor of First Baptist Church in Gustine, Texas.

This article originally appeared on Zac Harrel’s blog, Rural Ramblings.

At the turn of this century, Western Christianity experienced a dramatic shift.

Some felt these tremors were simply stylistic alterations, the age-old quest of the church to present itself in a way that attracts a new generation of believers into its fold, (or that keeps them there.) Others felt what was happening represented a once-every-500-year-or-so transformation of Christianity, similar to the “East-West” split of the Church in the 11^th century or the Protestant Reformation in the 16^th and 17^th centuries.

On a more local, congregational level, the conversation around what became known as the “Emerging Church” movement sounded much like the conversations in the ’70s and ’80s about contemporary worship or, in the present day, about what to do with those pesky “millennials.”

Everyone had an opinion. Depending on who you asked, the Emerging Church signaled either the future of Christianity or the death of it.

Submerged into postmodernism?

My own church, University Baptist in Waco, was at the forefront of this movement. We read (and wrote) books, held conferences, invited speakers and preachers at the forefront of the conversation and were intentional about leaning into this exciting new way of living out our faith.

This time was characterized by several points of emphasis: deconstructing traditional ideas of authority and the interpretation of Scripture, and the rejection of the idea that there is a clear line of division between what is sacred and what is secular, which led to a journey of finding God’s fingerprints in music, art and literature as a part of our discipleship.

And, most notably, a flirtation with the philosophical ideas of postmodernism.

Drowned in relativism?

Many critics of the Emerging Church, and even some of its proponents, falsely conflated postmodernism with relativism, which meant they believed we were abandoning the truth of Jesus Christ for a belief that there is no Truth. (Philosophers take note: I am, at best, a novice in the language of philosophy and fully understand that you are probably rolling your eyes right now at my lack of nuance.)

But this was an incomplete understanding of our engagement with postmodernism. We never questioned the existence of “Absolute Truth,” but we did wonder out loud whether the tools any of us had (individually or collectively) at our disposal to ascertain what is and isn’t “True” were sufficient to determine what actually is.

For many of us, the result of this wondering was abandoning long-established doctrines and institutions that claimed ownership of “Truth” and, instead, embracing a multiplicity of voices, stories, sources and witnesses to better understand the Truth, which was found in a person, Jesus Christ. (Which, by the way, I found quintessentially Baptist.)

There’s an irony about what became of this postmodern controversy.

Or ‘still hovering, going where the Spirit leads’?

One of the things our jeering section often accused us of was creating a dangerous reality in which observable facts could be questioned and even dismissed in favor of personal narratives. Things that “felt true,” they reasoned, would hold precedent to us over things that were observably true.

Not all, but many, of these critics would, in 2016 and beyond, go on to support a man for president (reasoning he was “God’s choice”) who exploited this by presenting “alternative facts” and relying on actual fake news, all while dismissing real facts which were unfavorable to him as “fake.” Our jaws dropped at what we saw, and I imagine more than a few of us wondered if we had helped create this.

So, whatever happened to the Emerging Church?

From my limited vantage point, I have seen the movement bleed back into the larger institutional church, where it is affecting it in ways that are yet to be seen.

We often described ourselves (borrowing a metaphor from Brian McLaren’s “A New Kind of Christianity”) as people who believed truth hovered above the proverbial “liberal-conservative” spectrum line, refusing to be categorized by old labels. But if we are honest with ourselves, we’d have to admit that the gravity of the last decade has brought many of us down to particular places on that spectrum.

Some of us landed where we jumped off from—conservative evangelicalism—while, I believe, the vast majority, if we landed back on the line of orthodoxy at all, just became good old-fashioned liberals.

But there are others who are still hovering, going where the Spirit leads them. From time to time, we hear dispatches from the frontier. Someone has joined a monastery. Another group is meeting in a home or a bar, while still others are sitting silently in the pews of a thousand churches but gathering with each other to report their findings.

“The wind blows wherever it pleases … and so it is with anyone born of the Spirit” (John 3:8).

Craig Nash grew up in Chandler, Texas, and is a graduate of East Texas Baptist University and Baylor’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary. He has lived in Waco since 2000, where he works for Baylor and attends University Baptist Church. If he were any more Baptist, he would need a committee on committees to help him decide who will help him make major life decisions.