Fred Luter’s Call for African-American Missionaries
Fred Luter with Tom Elliff
Fred Luter is the first African-American to serve as SBC president. But of the 4,900 missionaries serving the International Mission Board, only 27 are African-American. That’s only 1/2 of 1%, despite the fact that 1 million of the SBC’s 16 million members are African-American. There are far more Hispanic and Asian missionaries in the field, and Luter would like to promote change.
“A lot of our African American churches are in the ‘hood,” said Luter, who pastors Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans, La. “It’s a daily fight every day. [People ask me], ‘Why do I need to go to Africa, Asia or Europe? We need to get people saved in this community.'” “It’s a both/and approach,” Luter said. “We need to reach the people in our neighborhoods and get African Americans out on the foreign field.”
Read this article in full at Baptist Press.
Do Unto Other Bloggers…
Coffee with Jesus – Doable
I was reading a list of blog writing tips on Chief of the Least, and he ended by asking for additional advice. I jotted down what I consider the usual for the beginning blogger, then stumbled onto something profound: stats are people too. Continue reading
Happy Monday
As a public service to our guy readers, you have three shopping days left.
A Short Lesson About Reading the Bible
There’s an old saying about a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. The key to understanding scripture is context. If you quote half a verse to support any argument, the first thing I’m going to do is go find the whole verse, then read the whole paragraph. We need to know who is writing, to whom, and under what circumstances before applying any particular verse to our situation.
There are always critics of religion in general and of Christianity in particular that insist religion was invented or the Bible was written to control people. Roman emperors used religion to build an empire, Medieval kings used it to build wealth and add territory, and Christians today use scripture to justify everything from suppressing women to persecuting homosexuals. Sadly, to some extent, each of those arguments have some merit. Emperor Constantine made the switch from persecuting Christians to embracing Christianity in order to defeat the enemies of the Roman Empire. I think we should blame Rome for that, not Christ. The problem with the Middle Ages is that the vast majority of Europeans were illiterate. If the kings and knights of Medieval Europe could have read the Bible for themselves, they would not have been so easily manipulated. Thank God for Gutenberg, am I right? Which brings us to today. Continue reading
A Lesson for Those Who Serve
Church people are notoriously bad tippers. This is certainly not news to me, and I consider myself something of an expert. I worked at Shoney’s while in high school, Chick-fil-A during college, and am today an ordained minister. With much apology I realize the above statement is true. The worst case I ever heard of was a church group going out on a Sunday afternoon following their morning service. After being served by the cook and wait staff, they informed the waitress they would not be leaving a tip because they believed it was wrong to work on Sunday. Let me repeat: AFTER they ate the food the cooks worked to prepare and the waitress worked to serve, they told her it was wrong to work on Sunday. That’s the opposite of sharing the Gospel. If those are really your convictions what you should do is NOT eat out or shop on Sundays.
Yahoo News recently carried this story of a waitress fired from Applebee’s for posting a receipt online. Continue reading
Happy Monday
Happy Monday, proving there is more to the Internet than cat pictures since 2012.
Congrats to the Baltimore Ravens on Super Bowl 47! Apparently the 49er’s plan of only playing the second half didn’t work out this time.
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Things the Bible Doesn’t Say
I started listing well known sayings that people tend to think are in the Bible but actually aren’t. As the list got longer I began to realize they could all basically be grouped in three categories. This also helps to understand some of the confusion.
Misquotes – In this case the often quoted statement is similar to actual Bible verses, perhaps abbreviated.
The best example is “Money is the root of all evil.” What 1 Timothy 6:10 actually says is “The love (or lust) of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” While the wording is similar, the meaning is quite different. Money is neutral and the evil comes from our attitudes concerning it. Continue reading
Happy Monday
Child of Two Worlds
Moses was born during the time the Hebrews were enslaved to Egypt, and male children were being thrown into the Nile. Because Pharaoh’s daughter had found Moses floating in a basket and raised him as her own, he grew up in the house of Pharaoh. Moses became the product of two cultures; his adoptive mother immediately identified him as Hebrew and found a Hebrew women to nurse him. (Which just happened to be, if you believe in that sort of thing, his real mother.) But he was raised as a prince of Egypt. He had a crisis of identity when he saw a Hebrew being beaten by an Egyptian, one of his own people (Ex 2:11) and he struck and killed the Egyptian. The very next day he tried to resolve a conflict between two Hebrews and was asked who appointed him as judge. “Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” The Hebrews rejected his leadership because they identified him as a member of Pharaoh’s house, and after learning of the Egyptian’s death at his hand Pharaoh sought to kill him. This is when he fled Egypt for Midian, where he laid low for the next 40 years. Continue reading
The Master's Table 