My Helpful Recommendations

The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is accepting resumes for executive coordinator.  Applicants should be forty years old and have thirty-five years of experience, inspire people who are not sure they want to be inspired, and enjoy playing guitar with teenagers and piano at the nursing home.  The new coordinator should be hard as nails, soft, and fuzzy.  He or she should have vision, vision, vision, but not the kind of vision with which
people might disagree.

Stacks of resumes of qualified, capable, and competent candidates are piling up on the search committee’s desk.  The ten member committee looking for a replacement for Daniel Vestal is receiving tons of helpful feedback, and a plethora of brilliant nominations, but if we are not careful we will be so thoughtful that we only think of candidates that make sense.  Here are several not-even-in-the-same-zip-code-as-the-logical-possibilities recommendations:

Tony Campolo – He would appeal to those who care about the poor, American Baptists, and bald people.

Bill  Moyers – He’s ordained and a seminary graduate.  One negative is that he hasn’t been a member of a Baptist church in a  while, but he has his own television show and it is not on TBN.

Barbara Brown  Taylor – Anyone who points out that she’s Episcopal is nit-picking.

Tim  Tebow – He would be the first Heisman Trophy winner to serve as Executive
Coordinator. 

His parents were Baptist  missionaries in the Philippines, but he’s not accurate past twenty yards.

Anne  Lamott – She has experience as a political activist, public speaker, and novelist.  Her newsletter columns would be well-written  and she seems to be cursing less lately.

Barack Obama  – He has extensive administrative experience and cute children.  Like Jesus he was a community organizer, and  it’s possible that he will be looking for a job soon.  One negative is that he got into an argument  with his last pastor.

Jeremiah  Wright – He was once Barack Obama’s pastor.

Bill Gates – If he were  our Executive Coordinator we would not need a fundraiser.  On the downside, he is a college dropout—though  in his defense it was Harvard.

Hillary Clinton – She’s a Methodist, but dealing with rogue leaders around the world is excellent preparation for working with ministers.

Mike Huckabee – He was president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, so maybe not.

Bono – The lead singer of U2 works hard to make the world a better place.

He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, but he didn’t win.

Jimmy Carter – He won the Nobel Peace Prize and he’s an excellent Sunday school teacher.

Rosalyn Carter – She’s a deacon, but she has many fine qualities.

Jon Stewart – One hitch is that he’s Jewish, but he’s smart and funny.

Stephen Colbert – He’s not as funny as Jon Stewart, but he’s a  Sunday school teacher.

Tom Hanks  –His roles in Philadelphia and The DaVinci Code might lose him a few
votes, but he saved Private Ryan and Buzz Lightyear.

Garrison Keillor – This captivating storyteller grew up in the Plymouth Brethren, an
Irish fundamentalist denomination, which might be strangely helpful.

Carol Younger – My wife is a seminary graduate and has substantial church experience.  Everybody loves her.  She already lives in Atlanta.

Clarice Younger – My mother would appeal to the Sarah Palin wing of the CBF.

Sarah Palin – She’s not a Baptist, but she has some of the same advantages as my mother.

Pope Benedict  XVI – He’s Catholic, 85 years old, and pretty austere, but it would be a pretty big story if he took the job and the CBF would loosen him up.

 

Justin Bieber – I keep hearing that we need someone who appeals to young people.  Would being Canadian disqualify him?

Feel free to inundate the search committee with my suggestions.  (It would also be a fine idea to pray for the committee.)  If any of these recommendations actually become the Executive Coordinator, remember you heard it here first—unless it’s Justin Bieber.

Posted in Hopefully Humorous Columns | Leave a comment

Preaching Peace in a Timid Church

Brian McLaren spoke powerfully: We preach the peace of one who was
crucified, so we cannot preach power that crucifies. We preach a way of love
and service, so we cannot preach conquest and domination. At the 2012 William
Self Preaching Lectures at the McAfee School of Theology, “Preaching Peace in a
Crumbling Empire,” McLaren argued that the Bible is a call to speak God’s word
of peace to an empire built on power.

McLaren’s words in the chapel were challenging and inspiring. The words in
the hall—not so much. Popular opinion seems to be that peace belongs in
lectures, but not in sermons:

“That peace stuff wouldn’t fly at my church.”

“Now we know why McLaren isn’t a pastor anymore.”

“His last church must have been in Switzerland.”

“If I preach on peace, war will break out in the next deacons’ meeting.”

“I’ll preach against the war when McLaren agrees to pay my kid’s college tuition.”

In Jesus’ day prophets were run out of town, thrown off a cliff, or stoned
in the middle of the village. Now we dismiss prophets in the conversations
between lectures. When did peace become a peripheral issue? How can ministers
read the Gospels and think peace is an optional topic? When Jesus preached,
“Blessed are the peacemakers,” he included preachers. Would the one who commanded us to “love our enemies” think we do enough to stop killing our enemies?

The church has become reticent to preach on war and peace. During
the Vietnam War preachers like Martin Luther King, Jr. and William Sloane
Coffin were well-known for speaking prophetically against the war. Why weren’t
there similarly well-known prophetic voices during the war in Iraq? If Christians never hear a sermon on peacemaking will they assume that faith has nothing to do with the most important issues of our day? Will they get the impression that God has no concern about the war in Afghanistan?

Ministers are not exempt from preaching peace because it will be
uncomfortable, the finance committee will not be happy, or the inbox will fill
up on Monday morning. The United States has amassed the most
formidable weapons systems the world has seen. Our military spending is equal
to that of the rest of the world put together. The combined military budget of
Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and Syria is less than 4% of our budget. The United States’ planned military spending in 2012 is $671 billion while China’s budget is $106 billion (Newsweek, March 19, 2012, 14).

Courageous preachers speak to the cost of war, the present wars, the next war, the shedding of blood, the wasting of innocent life, the demeaning of people, the destruction of property, the poverty that results, and the hatred that poisons. When war is portrayed by politicians as the less painful option, ministers need to persistently speak the hope of peace. Killing terrorists does not defeat terrorism. Pre-emptive wars do not make us safer. Crushing a few despots perpetuates hatred. War on Islamic countries ultimately increases the number of Islamic terrorists.

If the United States supported a policy based more on human rights, international
law, and sustainable development for poor countries, and less on arms transfers
and military attacks, we would be safer. Our national security must be based on
more than military power. We should preach in support of diplomacy, economic
development, and the protection of human rights. We should recognize that
poverty and national humiliation are as dangerous to our security as any weapon.
We need to return to the most effective ways America has influenced nations
throughout the world, by offering a helping hand and abiding by our deepest
principles.

When ministers are afraid to speak prophetically about peace they fail to
be a voice for the Prince of Peace. They have ceased to be ministers of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ. Christian preachers proclaim Christ’s different, better
way—even when it is hard.

Posted in Articles | Leave a comment