Archive for May, 2009
Best Web Junk (May 29)
This is one of those times. So I won’t bore you with uninteresting blogposts.
I will show you a couple of very impressive tricks by Ricky Jay. He’s pretty much amazing
Here he is on the old Arsenio Hall show
And another amazing trick
Enjoy
A very quick question
Best Web Junk (May 22)
This is very long, but I was pretty much fascinated by it. If you have a chance, give it a read – Now THAT’S a Commencement Speech
This picture is so awesome, you need to see it for yourself. I get why the adults can do this but for the kid it should be called child abuse
This is a long-overdue invention. I am totally on board
They are calling this a hamburger fail, but I’d call it a small print win
I have not seen the new Star Trek, and I’m not a trekkie, but this vid is very clever
Last week I posted a Price is Right video, why not make it 2 in row?
Because this is associational emphasis week in the SBC, I began yesterday to explore the answer to the question; are Baptist Associations still necessary? Today I intend to give my answer. I find it interesting that the first two responses to this post at SBC Impact happen to express opposite opinions on Baptist associations.
Before I answer, in the interest of full disclosure, I should let you in on my bias today. I serve on my associational youth team, I am an associational messenger from my church, and I participate regularly in associational ministers meetings. (I even spoke at one.)
My church is a member of a very large association. The NSRBA has over 100 churches spanning 3 counties. To drive from The Bridge Community Church to Union Grove Baptist Church (one end to the other) would take well over an hour. Many of our churches are extremely rural, and some of our churches are quite urban. All of this diversity should benefit everyone, but there are still those who feel the association is unnecessary.
As I see it, here are some of the weakpoints of the local association.
- Big churches don’t participate – this is obviously not a hard and fast rule, but during my 12 years of ministry in 3 different associations there are very few big church pastors who feel the need to be active in the association. I’ve never been in leadership of a church that averaged more than 150 in Sunday school so I can’t speak with certainty, but my thought on why large churches don’t participate on an associational level is that they don’t need the resources that the associations can provide
- The flat world means that small churches now have less need for what associations can provide – The training, resources in the form of media, curriculums and technology, guidance, and even the financial assistance available through associations can all be procured elsewhere
- Some associations are just not good – There are associations with poor leadership who do nothing, or who pander to every complaining pastor. There are associations that take in churches that are cast-offs from other associations because of theology or disagreements. And there are associations which make no effort to impact their local area for Christ
Despite those problems, I still feel that associations are viable and worthy of continuing into the 21st century. Here are just a few things that associations offer.
- Fellowship for pastors – Pastors, as God-called leaders of their congregations, need someone with which to fellowship. Obviously they need to be a part of their church’s community, but occasionally there needs to be someone outside the church who shares the same sense of calling with which to discuss common issues and decision making. I realize that this could be done apart from the association, but the association makes this easy, and you will find a distinct lack of this sort of fellowship when you move to independent church situations. (Youth ministers also, are notoriously poor at this type of fellowship.)
- Vision for the community – This is where local associations can truly thrive. Associations are broader in their ministry scope than local churches are. But much more focused than a state convention could hope to be. And even in an association as diverse as the NSRBA, the association can have a vision of ministry for greater Fayetteville that no single church should be concerned with. This should guide where church plants are needed, and where specific ministries can best be focused. This is a function that the state convention could never hope to carry out. (Also, state conventions have a tendency to focus outside themselves and look to inter-state partnerships and even international partnerships for ministry opportunities.)
- Cooperating allows for greater ministry – This is the entire concept behind the cooperative program. (I’ll add here that associational money is not CP money.) The simple fact is that we can do more together than we could ever do alone.
- Cooperative local ministries – There are many worthy ministries that would be too large a task for any one church to carry out. For example, in the NSRBA we have a ministry to the workers at the Cumberland Co. fair. One church may be able to provide bottled water, lunches, and some counseling, but this ministry also provides a dental bus and lasts the duration of the fair. That would be a huge burden for even a very large church. Without a dentist and a few hygienists in membership it would not even be possible. There are also ministries to migrant workers, a Christmas toy store for needy families, and two thrift store / food pantry ministries. These things would simply not be possible by any single church.
The state convention could simply not do any of those things. Fellowship with a group too large is not possible. It could never see the need for ministry at the local level, and even if it did, coordinating thousands of churches would be too difficult.
My conclusion is that the local Baptist association is still very useful and will serve a Great Commission function into the 21st century.
This is Associational Emphasis week in the Southern Baptist Convention. So I thought I would write a couple of posts dealing with the following question: Is the Baptist association still needed?
Serving Together for Harvest
One of the things being brought to our attention as Southern Baptists with the Great Commission Resurgence is the inefficient spending of cooperative program funds. Specifically, people have a problem with the duplication of efforts. This is a valid concern. It is both an issue of good stewardship and responsibility. And let’s just be honest, is there really a need for church growth experts, or evangelism trainers, or church resource specialists at the state, SBC and associational level? I recommend listening to the most recent Insight Podcast which is an interview with Johnny Hunt. In part 1, the host quotes Dr. Mike Day from the Mid-South Baptist Association. Dr. Day relays an example of the same function being performed by the three levels. This is just a real-life example of why the question should be asked. Are associations necessary?
The most significant reason why there would be a change in the need for associations would be because the world is flat. Allow me to explain what I mean by the flat world. The flat world concept comes from William Friedman’s book, The World Is Flat. The thesis of the book is that technologically and politically we have reached a point in which a place on the other side of the country or the other side of the world can be reached instantly. We have globalized nearly everything and the distance between us has shrunk to a negligible amount.
So what dies this have to do with Baptist associations? In order to answer his question, I’ll need to explain what the purpose of a Baptist association is and how it works. The Baptist association is a gathering of cooperating churches to do ministry on a local level. Interestingly, because of the strongly held Baptist view of church autonomy, this is the same definition for a state convention or the SBC. (They are just different geographically) This connection of churches cooperate to carry out ministry on a local level and to help one another with training, resources, and historically, even finances.
This is the same definition of the SBC and the state Baptist conventions. With the flat world making distance less significant, that explains the duplication of functions. Many people feel that the weakest of the 3 levels is the local association. Hence my question.
Now that the explanation is out of the way, tomorrow I plan to actually answer the question, are associations still necessary.
Before I get there, I would like to hear from you in the comments. Do you think the local association is still needed? Even though the world is flat? Even though many of the same functions are performed on the state and SBC level?
Rhodes Pond
It's beautiful inside the cypress tree forest
About a week after I moved to North Carolina, I drove past a beautiful lake called Rhodes Pond. I was told it is private but has really good fishing. That was 6 years ago. About a month back I heard that the state owned it now and that it is free to fish. So, last Friday, since I already had an errand on that side of town, I decided to try it out. Before going, I googled Rhodes Pond to see if I could learn anything useful to help out with fishing there. But there is absolutely no new information. The most recent info I could find at all, was about the dam and dated to 2007, completely unhelpful to a fisherman. So I’m writing this post about my experience just so there will be something useful as a guide for others.
Time & Conditions: We fished there on a hot day in mid-May. It was the hottest day of the year so far. The morning began heavily overcast, threatening rain, but became only partly cloudy and about 93° before we left. We arrived about 9:00 am and left at 1:00 pm.
Your guide to the lake
The Lake: I kept reading the Rhodes pond is a “black water” lake, but I don’t know what that means. (Although the water is very dark, so maybe that’s all it means) It is an impound of the Black River and it is 461 acres. (Here are the coordinates for use in your GPS or with Google Earth35.2293, -78.6517) It has an excellent ramp, as good as any lake I know of that is limited to non-gas motors. The lake is divided into two sections by a long peninsula. The part with the ramp is unfishable because of the weeds. Maybe I just don’t know how to fish in weeds, but that entire half of the lake has weeds growing up to within a foot of the top. Not one cast came back clean for me. (Much like Smith Lake on Ft. Bragg)
On the other side of the lake the water is quite clear. There are cypress trees scattered in the main lake, fields of lily pads and dollar pads around the edges, and a forest of cypress trees inside the pads.
The fishing: Uhhh…there’s probably fish in there…maybe. For such a beautiful lake with limitless cover, Neither me nor my co-angler got as much as a bite. I fished my 2 standby baits, a Rapala super shad-rap (because I mostly fish shallow-water lakes), and a spinner. I even threw a 4” tube around some of the Cypress trees. Jack fished red worms trying to catch a bluegill. There was one other boat on the lake but I couldn’t say if they caught anything. And there were 2 people fishing from the levee in the other side of the spillway. One of them said he had 8 crappie.
I caught lots of salad
My final verdict: I don’t know of a more beautiful lake anywhere. But I’m also not smart enough to fish it. Too much backwater, too many weeds, too many pads and too much cover. I would have settled for a grinnel. If anyone reads this that had luck, let me know in the comments how you caught em.
After writing an entire article about Rhodes Pond does that make me a Rhode’s [pond] Scholar?
Milestones
Today is my 34th birthday. Birthdays always make me take stock of my life. Last year I posted a fun list of stuff I had accomplished over the course of my entire life and you may remember my pseudo bucket list. I thought I would do a hybridized version of those two this year. I like to do things I’ve never done before, so here is a list of stuff just from the last year that I have accomplished.
- Visited the Korean War Memorial (My grandfather is a veteran of that war)
- Visited the WWII Memorial
- Saw an MLB game that went into extra innings
- Fished every open lake on Ft. Bragg
- Live-Blogged a tropical storm
- Became an uncle for the 3rd time
- Went to an ACC football game
- Spoke at a city council meeting
- Won my church’s Fantasy football league
- Filled the pulpit on a Sunday Morning
- Went 40 days with no sugar
- Went to 2 MLB ballparks for the first time
- Got in early on an internet meme
- Drove in New York City
- Ate a real cheesesteak in South Philly (Geno’s)
- Made a LOLcat
- Taught a college class
- Biggest mistake of the year – Got confused and had all my youth show up at an event one week early
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