As some of you know from past posts (years ago now) I’ve written a new book about evangelicals. It’s called “The Fall of the Evangelical Nation: The Surprising Crisis Inside the Church.” It won’t publish until May 1, but I’ve been re-connecting with some of my sources and friends from when I was a religion reporter at The Dallas Morning News. One of them is George Mason, the senior pastor at Dallas’ Wilshire Baptist Church. George spoke at the New Baptist Covenant meeting in Atlanta.
For those of you who don’t know a lot about Baptists, the Southern Baptist Convention was taken over by ultra-conservatives, some say fundamentalists, a couple of decades ago. A lot of Texas Baptists opposed that takeover. George has been a leader in the alternative Baptist convention called the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.
I asked to see his remarks at the Atlanta meeting. I’ve always admired George and know that he is fearless in being willing to think through hard questions. Read the rest of this entry »
02-20-2008 |
12 Comments »Jim forwarded this to me. If you have any favorite (blog appropriate) jokes, add them in the comments.
In a small mid western conservative town, a new bar was preparing to open for business. The local Baptist church started a campaign to block the bar from opening with countless petitions and daily prayers. Work progressed, however right up till the week before opening, when lightning struck the bar and it burned to the ground.
The church folks were rather smug in their outlook after that, till the bar owner sued the church on the grounds that the church was ultimately responsible for the demise of his building, either through direct or indirect actions or means and prayers.
The church vehemently denied all responsibility or any connection to the buildings demise in its reply to the court. As the case made its way into court, the judge looked over the paperwork at the hearing and commented, “I don’t know how I’m going to decide this, but as it appears from the paperwork, we have a bar owner that believes in the power of prayer, and an entire church congregation that doesn’t!”
09-17-2007 |
6 Comments »