Tag Archive - American Baptist Churches

Biennial Day One: Be Epic

June 26, 2009 in abc with 4 Comments

sfs_sweetlen_intro[1]The first day of the American Baptist Churches Biennial in Pasadena, CA began Thursday.  The major events of the day were special General Board events and other smaller group meetings.  The biennial was still coming together yesterday as vendors and workers set up rooms and displays.  I continue to discuss the “Missionary Situation” with many of my friends, colleagues, and other ABC attendees.  In addition, I learned that one of bloggers on my blogroll, Tripp, who is a pastor of an ABC church in Chicago area, is here.   I was able to be in contact with Tripp.  The wonders of the globally connected world.

Day one of the Biennial, which was mainly pre-biennial events, primarily consisted of Leonard Sweet’s speaking session (over 3 hours) in which he contrasted the old world vs. the new.  His phase for this contrast is the Gutenberg world (pre-1973) and the Google world (post 1973).  He picks 1973 as a point of division because that is the year the internet was invented.  Sweet contends that we as churches and pastors must understand that we are the google world.  The google world is a world of Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, and the internet.  The google world is a world of information in the form of images.  The Gutenberg world is a world of texts and books.

Sweet related this concept to how churches must understand the world is changing and we must adapt.  The most striking connection he made with this concept was to worship.  He did not advocate for contemporary worship or innovative worship, but rather whatever worship a churches does it must be epic.  He spoke of his congregation and how it was full of 20 and 30 year olds worshipping in high-high liturgical worship.  He encouraged the attendees to see worship as God centered, but to think about how culture is highly image based.

Great stuff here.  More to come,

Missionary Crisis?

June 24, 2009 in abc with 0 Comments

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I just arrived in Pasadena, CA for the American Baptist Churches Biennial.  Every year, the ABC gathers as a national body to address important concerns, vote on pressing issues, worship, learn, and celebrate.  This will be my fourth ABC biennial that I have had the honor of attending.  This year’s location is fantastic.

Before I left, I heard numerous comments about a very concerning situation involving American Baptist missionaries.  It seems that that American Baptist missionaries will now be responsible for seeking to secure the majority of their funding sooner rather than later.  As I understand it, in the past, missionaries were not required to raise the majority of their financial support.  Now, due to a variety of reasons, ABC missionaries will now have the burden of asking churches for more money.  These reasons include lower support for missionary giving and lower returns in investments that support missions.

ABC of Ohio has made an appeal to their churches about it.  The letter can be read here.

Missionaries should not have to spend their time lobbying individuals, churches, and non-profits to support themselves.  One of the reasons for being a part of a denomination is to have the national body do some of this administrative/financial work.  I can understand the need to have missionaries to be responsible for part of their funding (say 10%-20%), but the majority?  Many of these missionaries have families and cannot raise enough money to support a family of four for a year or two.

If all this is true, this presents a crisis for our ABC missionaries.  More to be updated later.  I am sure that I will learn more from the denominational reps at the biennial.

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