This week three of my boys started little league practice.  Literally, every night of the week we will soon be running from field to field.  If you look in the back of my Suburban in the next four months you will likely find baseball gloves, bats, baseballs, chairs, and blankets.  In a couple of weeks we will be living at the ball park every Friday night and Saturday.

But there is nothing like it.

In the past, baseball has always provided a unique way to bond with my oldest son.  In the back yard, while we work on a four seam fastball and fielding grounders, a connection is made that would not otherwise be there.

But this year, working on technique in the backyard has a more significant meaning for me.  With the addition of 3 more boys to our family by adoption, baseball has been a catalyst for building a father–son relationship.  When I walk in the door to pick them up for practice, I can hardly get a word in before they start asking if their grip is right, or if their stance is correct.

I now have something in common with my sons that I didn’t before.  And now, through baseball, I have many opportunities to teach them lessons about biblical manhood.

I started thinking about this yesterday when Baptist Press published an article that connected baseball to fatherhood by David Prince, pastor of Ashland Avenue Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky.

Be sure to read the entire article, “Pitchers and Catchers report–will Dads?” Here is an excerpt.

“Without fathers, there is no baseball, only football and basketball” (Diana Schaub, “America at Bat,” National Affairs). It was one of those lines that paralyzes you when you read it. As a former high school coach I began reflecting on just how true that sentence was in my experience. In football it was common for a young man with superior brawn or athletic ability to begin playing the game successfully at an older age with no background or former tutelage in the sport. Height alone can equate to some measure of basketball success at younger ages and skills can be honed in isolation with nothing more than a ball and a hoop. None of this is true with baseball. In most cases, the way a love of baseball is transmitted is through dads.

Baseball is a sport of fathers and sons. When Willie Mays speaks of his dad teaching him how to walk when he was six months old by enticing him with a rolling baseball, he is telling the story of baseball. It is not uncommon for friends to ask me how I can continue to love the game in light of exorbitant salaries and the shame of the steroids era. My passion and love for the game did not begin in multi-million dollar parks with 40,000 seats and it cannot be taken away by what happens there. It began with my dad rolling a baseball to me at six months of age and grew with countless times of catch, ground balls, and batting practice with my father.

I fear that the diminishing popularity of baseball in recent years has less to do with the sport and more to do with the diminishing popularity of intentional fatherhood in our culture.

As a Christian father I try to remember to pray every time I drive past a little league baseball park. I thank God for fathers who are intentionally investing time in their sons and I pray that the game of baseball would remind Christian fathers that calling the next generation to hope in God (Psalm 78:5-7) works in a similar way. It takes time, effort, diligence and never-ending conversations about God and His grace (Deuteronomy 6:4-9).

I recently read Counterfeit Gods by Tim Keller.  Here is a convicting excerpt from the chapter on greed.  I highly recommend the book.  Keller has a unique way of telling you more about yourself than you ever knew.

Some years ago I was doing a seven-part series of talks on the Seven Deadly Sins at a men’s breakfast.  My wife, Kathy, told me, “I’ll bet that the week you deal with greed you will have your lowest attendance.”  She was right.  People packed it out for “Lust” and “Wrath” and even for “Pride.”  But nobody thinks they are greedy.  As a pastor I’ve had people come to me to confess that they struggle with almost every kind of sin.  Almost.  I cannot recall anyone ever coming to me and saying, “I spend too much money on myself.  I think my greedy lust for money is harming my family, my soul, and people around me.”  Greed hides itself from the victim.  The money god’s modus operandi includes blindness to your own heart.

Why can’t anyone in the grip of greed see it?  The counterfeit god of money uses powerful sociological and psychological dynamics.  Everyone tends to live in a particular socioeconomic bracket.  Once you are able to afford to live in a particular neighborhood, send your children to its schools, and participate in its social life, you will find yourself surrounded by quite a number of people who have more money than you.  You don’t compare yourself to the rest of the world, you compare yourself to those in your bracket.  The human heart always wants to justify itself and this is one of the easiest ways.  You say, “I don’t live as well as him or her or them.  My means are modest compared to theirs.”  You can reason and think like that no matter how lavishly you are living.  As a result, most Americans think of themselves as middle class, and only 2 percent call themselves “upper class.”  But the rest of the world is not fooled.  When people visit here from other parts of the globe, they are staggered to see the level of materialistic comfort that the majority of Americans have come to view as a necessity.

Jesus warns people far more often about greed than about sex, yet almost no one thinks they are guilty of it.  Therefore we should all begin with a working hypothesis that “this could easily be a problem for me.”  If greed hides itself so deeply, no one should be confident that it is not a problem for them.

I just watched this modern day parable about the church by Francis Chan, and I had to share it.  He’s right on the money.

The Big Red Tractor from Jacob Lewis on Vimeo.

How can you tell if someone has a mental disorder?

For starters, if your son throws too many tantrums, he could have “temper dysregulation with dysphoria.”  If your teenage daughter is particularly eccentric, she might just suffer from “psychosis risk syndrome.”  If your husband really likes to have sex, he probably has a disease called “hypersexual disorder.”

According to a story in The Washington Post, “There are dozens of proposals being unveiled today by the American Psychiatric Association in the first complete revision of the 1994 of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or ‘DSM.’”

Here is a quick history lesson on the DSM.

WWII was the first time all American soldiers were screened by psychiatrists and physicians for their mental fitness for war.  In 1945, a doctor by the name of  Will Menninger introduced an entirely new diagnostic approach for the field.  He created new categories specifically geared to incorporate the war experience.

Menninger, influenced by Freud, had far reaching influence beyond the war.  Eventually his approach became the basis for the American Psychiatric Association’s first diagnostic manual in 1952, the direct predecessor of today’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

On February 5, 1963, President John F. Kennedy delivered a national speech on mental health.  He referred to mental health as the nation’s number one health problem.  In order to confront this mental health crisis he signed into law the Community Mental Health Centers Act on October 31, 1963.

In 1977 President Jimmy Carter organized the Commission on Mental Health.  And in the 1980’s an eruption of 12 step programs provided a disease label for virtually anyone who wanted one.

Now, the DSM-IV is about to undergo yet another revision.

The report in The Washington Post explains that,

The product of more than a decade of work by hundreds of experts, the proposed revisions are designed to bring the best scientific evidence to bear on psychiatric diagnoses and could have far-reaching implications, including determining who gets diagnosed as mentally ill, who should get powerful psychotropic drugs, and whether and how much insurance companies will pay for care.

Even before being made public, the proposed changes have been the subject of sometimes bitter debate over whether the process was based on solid scientific evidence and was adequately shielded from influence by the pharmaceutical industry, and whether some critics were driven by financial interests in maintaining the old diagnostic criteria.

“By massively pathologizing people under these categories, you tend to put them on an automatic path to medication, even if they are experiencing normal distress,” said Jerome C. Wakefield, a professor of social work and psychiatry at New York University.

There are three fundamental problems with the DSM.  First, it is subjective.  According to Edward Welch in Blame it on the Brain, “Psychiatric medication is not treating a verifiable chemical imbalance in the brain.  Contrary to popular perception, psychiatric medications are not chemical bullets that target one particular brain chemical.  They are more like chemical blitzkriegs, strafing chemical sites in the brain and hoping for the best.”

The second problem is that it leads to over medication.

Third, it leads to legitimization of the blame game, the one we learned from our first parents in the Garden.  Instead of sin and guilt, we can now use cleverly devised labels for rebellion against God.

When all of the layers of sophisticated academic talk are pealed away, we are left with two worldviews.  The worldview of this present age tells us we are merely the product of biological and genetic code.  The biblical worldview, on the other hand, tells us we are in the midst of a cosmic battle that is spiritual in nature.  In short, our hearts are desperately wicked, and God is in the process of redeeming the world through the work of His Son.

David Tyler and Kurt Grady explain the distinction between these two competing worldviews in their book Deceptive Diagnosis.

Sin, culpability and guilt are hard to determine in a world where people color and cloak their sin in all kinds of psychological language.  Is she a shoplifter because she is willfully sinful or does she have kleptomania?  Is the child willfully selfish or does have Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder?  Is he an arsonist or is he a victim of pyromania?  Does he need a pastor or a psychiatrist?

Although I could write about this issue ad infinitum, suffice it to say, “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers;  but his delight is in the law of the Lord” (Psalm 1:1-2).  That man is Christ Jesus, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3).

Back in 2006, in the book The Meaning of Marriage, Robert George argued that,

As a matter of subjective preference, people can commit themselves to fidelity and enter into loving, long-term, monogamous relationships that mimic what, on the traditional understanding of marriage, they have strict moral reasons to do.  But the key thing to see is that on the lifestyle liberal conception, there are no such strict moral reasons.  Even the choice of fidelity is an emotionally motivated subjective preference.  And that, I submit, explains why people who reject the traditional terms of marriage—even for putatively conservative reasons, for instance, to make the good of marriage available to people who prefer sex with partners of their own sex, find it impossible, in the end, to condemn promiscuity and the like, except, occasionally, on pragmatic grounds.

Turns out he was right.

Gay marriage is not an isolated issue.  It will eventually completely destroy the entire institution of heterosexual marriage.  An article in The New York Times explains why.

The article tells about a gay married couple from the Bay Area who intentionally did not mention fidelity and monogamy in their wedding vows.

The article goes on to explain that,

A study to be released next month is offering a rare glimpse inside gay relationships and reveals that monogamy is not a central feature for many. Some gay men and lesbians argue that, as a result, they have stronger, longer-lasting and more honest relationships. And while that may sound counterintuitive, some experts say boundary-challenging gay relationships represent an evolution in marriage — one that might point the way for the survival of the institution.

According to Denny Burk,

What is stunning here is that the report suggests that monogamy is not just a problem for gay “marriages,” but for the institution of marriage itself. In other words, they are saying that heterosexuals should also consider abandoning monogamous marriage. As one “expert” put it, “The traditional American marriage is in crisis, and we need insight. If innovation in marriage is going to occur, it will be spearheaded by homosexual marriages.”

Be sure to read Burk’s full article here.

My father sent me this picture yesterday and I just couldn’t resist.  Go Colts!

Yesterday while I ran on the treadmill, I listened to Dr. Moore preach a very convicting sermon on finances.  Your relationship with money and stuff says everything about your relationship with Christ and his kingdom.

Take a few minutes to read the text and listen to the sermon below.

Your Christ-Haunted Credit Card Statement: Why Your Finances Test Your Readiness for the Kingdom (Deut 8:1-20) from Russell Moore on Vimeo.

Deuteronomy (ESV)

8:1 “The whole commandment that I command you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers. 2 And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. 3 And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word [1] that comes from the mouth of the Lord. 4 Your clothing did not wear out on you and your foot did not swell these forty years. 5 Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you. 6 So you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God by walking in his ways and by fearing him. 7 For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills, 8 a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, 9 a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. 10 And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.

11 “Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, 12 lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, 13 and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, 14 then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, 15 who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you water out of the flinty rock, 16 who fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end. 17 Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ 18 You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day. 19 And if you forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. 20 Like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God.

John 4 (ESV)

31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. 36 Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37 For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”

As I mentioned in my last post, First Baptist is involved in planting a church in Cordova, Peru.  Cordova is located in the Huancavelica region, which according to The Guardian, is in danger of extinction.

The few hundred people who live here are hardened to poverty and months of sub-zero temperatures during the long winter. But, for the fourth year running, the cold came early. First their animals and now their children are dying and in such escalating numbers that many fear that life in the village may be rapidly approaching an end.

In a world growing ever hotter, Huancavelica is an anomaly. These communities, living at the edge of what is possible, face extinction because of increasingly cold conditions in their own microclimate, which may have been altered by the rapid melting of the glaciers.

A consequence is that Quechua-speaking farmers and their families, who have managed to subsist for centuries at high altitude, believe they may not make it through the next southern winter.

There have been warnings from meteorologists in Peru that this month will see the Huancavelica region hit by the worst weather conditions in years with plunging temperatures, floods and high winds. The weather is already claiming lives; last month seven people died and scores were treated in hospital after torrential rain caused flash flooding in Ayacucho, the capital of the neighbouring region.

This makes our mission even more urgent.  May the Lord cultivate a desperate hunger among us for the same food Jesus ate!

If you are interested in being a part of Mission.Peru, please let me know.  Even if you can’t go, you can contribute through prayer and financial aid.

Recently, my good friend Robbie Sagers posted a statement about the Great Commission on Twitter.  He said, “To my Southern Baptist friends: we NEED a Great Commission Resurgence. The GC in ALL its fullness. One from the Spirit of Christ

I couldn’t agree more.

Yes, the GCR Task Force (see my previous blog) will recommend needed institutional changes for NAMB, the Executive Committee, etc (which will be presented to the Executive Board this week).  But more than anything, the main goal of the GCR is to produce a renewed commitment to the proclamation of the Gospel.

Here are a few ways the Great Commission will be emphasized at FBCW this year.

1.  Our theme for 2010 is Sent.

2.  Every sermon in January is based on the Great Commission.  You can access the sermons here.

3.  Exit Strategy.  We are offering classes that teach the evangelistic approach of  Two Way’s To Live.  We are also providing regular opportunities to be sent out to specific locations in our community in order to share the Gospel.

4.  10 in 10.  Every member is encouraged to make a list of 10 friends or family members to pray for and share Christ with in 2010.

5.   Peru.  By partnering with Ashland Avenue Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky, we will be sending 3 to 4 teams to the village of Cordova to continue our efforts to plant a church through the ministry of Reap South.

6.  We raised our CP giving from 8% to 11%.

7.  Adoption Conference June 4-6 with Dr. Russell Moore and Andrew Peterson.

There has been an ongoing debate within the Southern Baptist Convention for about a year now.  I decided to take a few minutes and briefly explain the issue.

At the 2009 Southern Baptist Convention, delegates voted yes on only one proposed motion. That motion, made by Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, called for Johnny Hunt, President of the SBC, to appoint a Great Commission Task Force designed to study how Southern Baptists might work together more faithfully for the cause of the gospel.  The motion passed with a 95% vote.

How did this motion come about?

Prior to the convention, “On April 16, 2009, in a chapel service at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. Danny Akin delivered a message entitled ‘Axioms of a Great Commission Resurgence.’”

Following this sermon, a document, entitled, “The GCR Declaration,” which calls for renewed focus on the Great Commission, was drafted by Dr. Akin and Johnny Hunt. In the words of the authors, “We are thankful for the Conservative Resurgence and believe that God has also called Southern Baptists to Great Commission Resurgence as the next step in the fulfillment of our mandate in missions and evangelism.”

The document consists of 10 points.

I.  A Commitment to Christ’s Lordship.
II. A Commitment to Gospel-Centeredness.
III. A Commitment to the Great Commandments.
IV. A Commitment to Biblical Inerrancy and Sufficiency.
V. A Commitment to a Healthy Confessional Center.
VI. A Commitment to Biblically Healthy Churches.
VII. A Commitment to Sound Biblical Preaching.
VIII. A Commitment to a Methodological Diversity that is Biblically Informed.
IX. A Commitment to a More Effective Convention Structure.
X. A Commitment to Distinctively Christian Families.

There has been a wide range of responses to the GCR and the Task Force.  Some are against it; others are for it; and some have signed it with caveats.   The only controversial point in the declaration is article IX.  The reason for the controversy is quite simple—talking about the structure of the convention means talking about change, and change, as we all know, is difficult.  Here is what article IX calls for:

We call upon all Southern Baptists, through our valued partnerships of SBC agencies, state conventions/institutions, and Baptist associations to evaluate our Convention structures and priorities so that we can maximize our energy and resources for the health of our local churches and the fulfillment of the Great Commission. This commitment recognizes the great strength of our partnership, which has been enabled by the Cooperative Program and enhanced by a belief that we can do more together than we can separately.

The guys over at B21 recently posted a two part blog about the problem as they see it.  In their words, “The most critical and sensitive areas under examination has to do with the way our Cooperative Program dollars are split up.”  In particular, “One of the key questions that many are asking is whether or not 70 cents out of every CP dollar should stay in state.”

The main issue comes down to  missions.  Millions around the world are starving both physically and spiritually.  Millions are without the gospel.  Unreached people groups have never even heard the name Jesus.  Hundreds of thousands of children are victims of sex trafficking and slavery.  Thousands are dying everyday of AIDS.  The list goes on an on.

I agree with my friend Jed Coppenger, we need to be honest about all the facts.  We should be clear about what we want the GCR Task Force to accomplish (or what we don’t want them to accomplish).

To be sure, there are several changes that would be good for the convention, but I, for one, am praying the Task Force will result in a convention-wide commitment to raising the percentage of Cooperative Program dollars flowing out of the state conventions.  Right now, most states keep 70 cents of every dollar given to the Cooperative Program.

FBCW is currently partnered with the Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT).  Sadly, 79% of what our church gives to the Cooperative Program stays right here in the state.  Yes, its a big state, but its a bigger world full of unreached people!

In a few weeks, Dr. Jim Richards will be with us to explain the advantages of changing our partnership to the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention (SBTC).  One of the most exciting advantages is how the SBTC distributes CP dollars.  Amazingly, the SBTC only keeps 45%.

One last thing I would like to point out about all of this is that we are not debating whether or not we should spread the message of the gospel.  While the GCR has stirred up controversy within the SBC over secondary matters of methodology and strategy, there is no controversy as to the reality of the church’s mission.  Absolute solidarity exists concerning the clear mandate given to the church to take the gospel to the nations.  That point is not in dispute.