Write the check today

If you are one of the millions of folks in the Southeast whose neighborhood roads looked like this on Sunday, and whose church services were canceled due to snow and ice, write the check today.

As a pastor for 26 years, I always had mixed feelings about snow days. Like anyone else, I enjoyed having an unexpected day off, though I missed the fellowship and worship I always looked forward to on Sunday.

There was always another cause of concern, too -- no offering. Few churches can afford to lose a full week's offering, especially in this current time of economic difficulty when churches are already struggling more than usual.

So, if you tend to contribute your tithes or offerings each week rather than once per month or on a budget basis, remember that you didn't put anything in the plate today. Go ahead and write the check anyway. Next Sunday, write another one. If you don't usually contribute, we need to have a whole other talk.

Church expenses go on whether services are held or not. Mission obligations remain. Salaries and utility bills need to be paid.

So, if you didn't set something aside on Sunday, please write the check today, and bring it with you next week. If God's folks don't remain faithful, the financial health of the church, like the squirrel who left these tracks, could be up a tree.

Life is too short ...

I heard a radio report about a new Google app called "Google Xistence" that can supposedly live your online life for you, posting random tweets and Facebook status reports, and interacting with other social media sites. At the end of each week it can send you an email to let you know that you did.

It turns out that the Google Xistence is really just a farce, though a funny one. The tagline of its promotional video is "Because life's too short for social interaction."

Folks who are so socially interactive that they constantly post updates to Twitter or FaceBook could use something like Google Xistence to take a brief hiatus from the web without losing their rep as power posters. Folks who rarely post could use it to pretend they're more plugged in than they are. I'm somewhere in the middle, I suppose: I have accounts but rarely visit the sites unless I get an email saying someone has sent a message or wants to be a friend -- or unless I'm posting a teaser to a blog I think readers might appreciate.

There's certainly a place for social media websites, and many people really like keeping in touch with their friends on a really regular basis. I'm both old school and a bit of an introvert: I prefer my social interaction to be intentionally directed rather than broadcast, and in person when possible. I suppose I don't fully appreciate the allure of social media as a means of constant contact, but it provides for many people a portal for conversation, and I guess that's good ... life's too short for social isolation.

Power in the box

By now most folks have heard about the U.S. Airways jet that diverted from its flight path last week and landed in Philadelphia because an Orthodox Jewish boy was using phylacteries in a morning prayer ritual. The flight attendant had never seen anyone doing that before, and warned the pilot that a passenger was behaving strangely and might be manipulating wires and a bomb.

Oy. We're so paranoid about security and fearful of anyone different -- and in this case, woefully ignorant of a common religious practice -- that we'll stop a plane because a boy wants to pray.

Of course, most Americans probably haven't seen phylacteries in action. Also called tefillin, they are used by Orthodox Jewish men in conjunction with a prayer shawl and in what they believe to be strict obedience to a command from Deuteronomy. The two phylacteries are small black leather boxes attached to leather straps. One is tied around the forehead so that it sits just above and between the eyes. The other is attached to the bicep of the left arm with a very long strap that is wound all the way down the arm and twisted in a precise pattern among the fingers. Orthodox boys first put on phylacteries at their bar mitzvah, and are taught to use them in conjunction with morning prayers except for Sabbaths and certain high holy days. When worn at Jerusalem's Western Wall, as above, they appear in character. On a plane, not so much.


The leather boxes contain hand-written copies of Exod. 13:1-10, 11-16 and Deut. 6:4- 9; 11:13-21. Their usage is based on a very literal interpretation of Exod. 13:9, 16; and Deut. 6:8, 11:18, all of which speak of binding "a sign upon your hand and as frontlets between your eyes" as a reminder of the covenant between Yahweh and Israel. 



To folks unaware of the custom, the phylacteries look about as strange as the 18th century Polish frock coats and fur hats still worn by many Orthodox Jews, as well as the long sideburn ringlets that reflect the literal interpretation of another text. Even so, one would think that flight attendants would have sufficient training to make them aware of typical behaviors of various ethnic groups. 


It occurs to me that, while the flight crew was entirely mistaken in thinking the boy had a bomb, they were not wrong in recognizing that the tefillin twisted around his arm and head, as they contain words of scripture, do indeed have amazing power inside -- but it's only when scriptures themselves are twisted that they take on power to bring down planes.

That's the Spirit!

It's been a year and a half since I've mentioned Spirit and Opportunity, two mechanical rovers that celebrate their sixth anniversary on Mars this month.

Six years -- imagine that. When launched, NASA scientists hoped the rovers would hold up for three months in the harsh conditions of the cold and dusty Martian landscape -- but six years later, both are still sending new findings back to earth.

The solar-powered rovers have proven to be an engineering marvel, so durable that NASA has had to scramble more than once to get funding renewed for a project that no one thought could last for so long -- but when you've got really smart robots loaded with scientific equipment sitting on another planet, it's hard to imagine that you wouldn't continue to explore.

Thus far, the rovers, sent to different parts of the planet, have traveled for miles. They have climbed hills taller than the Statue of Liberty, and crawled through craters to explore layers of the crusty surface. They have drilled into rocks and analyzed their mineral composition, while keeping an eye on the weather and even photographing a Martian dust devil. They've found convincing evidence that water was once abundant on the red planet's surface, and can still be found.

After six years, the rovers aren't as healthy as they once were. Spirit (right) has been forced to drive backwards since 2006, when one of its six wheels stopped functioning. For the past several months, it's been stuck in a sandy spot on the edge of a small crater. Another wheel has quit working, but the little rover that could is still making scientific discoveries.

I don't know how much longer the rovers will continue their amazing run, but I'll keep a hot link to their website on my toolbar for as long as they do. They remind me of the unsung heroes that make churches work: the lady who's worked in the nursery so long that babies she once kept are now bringing their grandchildren to her, or the man who volunteered 40 years ago to stay behind to turn off the lights, adjust the thermostats, and lock up the building -- and is still doing it. 

Every church has its faithful members who cook the fellowship breakfast and count the money and teach the senior adult Sunday School class -- enduring folk who get little recognition but keep on keeping on. You know who those people are. I hope you'll send them a note this week, or give them a hug, and thank them for making the church wheels keep on turning.

[All images courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech]

Bush's biggest victory?

Thursday's Supreme Court decision allowing unlimited political spending by corporations may turn out to be George W. Bush's greatest victory, one that could tilt the political landscape in dramatic ways.

The former president managed to get the U.S. into two wars that may prove to be unwinnable, but the court's hotly debated 5-4 ruling -- which far overreached the case that sparked it -- was made possible by Bush's success in getting conservative justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito appointed to the court. Most political analysts and common sense agree that it will stack the deck in favor of future Republican candidates, who tend to be much chummier with big business.

Advocates of the decision claim it is a victory for free speech as defined under the First Amendment, defining money as speech. What it actually does, it seems to me, is give giant corporations the ability to buy so much airtime and ad space that they'll virtually drown out the free speech of ordinary folks. You don't have to pay individual voters in order to buy an election.

Given the economic devastation brought on our country by the irresponsible actions of big banks, the environmental damage associated with big oil, and skyrocketing health care costs related to big pharma, it hardly seems to be a smart idea to augment the mega-companies' mega-lobbying influence with the ability to pour mega-dollars into individual partisan elections.

Our election system is crazy enough as it is -- adding another layer of influence-buying can only make it worse.  It doesn't take a political genius to see the court's decision opening a broad new road paved with serious trouble. 

I hope Congress will have the good sense and the courage to put the Supreme Court's new majority in its place and bring some sanity back to the system.

Awash in a media sea

Five years ago, when researchers determined that youth ages 8-18 were spending an average of six and a half hours per day plugged into some sort of electronic media, they thought the trend had topped out, limited by the number of hours in a day.

They were wrong: a more recent study (as reported by the New York Times) shows that youth now spend an average of seven and a half hours per day using their computers or smart phones, watching television, or listening to music. Since youngsters often do two or three of these simultaneously, they get the equivalent of 11 hours per day of media exposure -- and that's not counting time spent talking or texting on their cell phones.

I believe it. Our 13-year-old doesn't use his cell phone enough to remember where he last put it down, but he would spend most of his waking minutes on the computer if he could. That's troublesome to geezers like me, who worry about things like exercise and homework and time with family.

The study suggests, however, that heavy or light media users got about the same amount of exercise. That's contrary to what you would expect, and at odds with some other studies that suggest a link between obesity and heavy media usage.

While it's easy to criticize the younger generation's heavy use of electronic media, I am confident that, had it been available when I was young, I would have done the same thing. There might have been an hour per night of TV programming that interested me: the rest of the time was spent doing chores and homework, spending time with my family, or reading in my room. I confess that I was often happiest with my nose in a book.

If our son is typical, the "lonely guy in a room with his computer" stereotype doesn't apply. Samuel looks like an air-traffic controller as he sits at his desk wearing a headset, with computer displays on multiple screens. While immersed in the virtual world of Runescape, he's also chatting loudly on Skype with half a dozen local friends who are playing the same game: they can see each other's avatars, help each other through the hard parts of various quests, or just laugh when one of the guys lets a balrog get the best of him. Last weekend, he and several of his young online buddies -- some of whom he had not previously met in person -- got together for a sleepover.

When I was a boy, a six-family party line telephone was our only link with other folks: now distance is little impediment to social interaction. Our children are natives of a different world, and though homework still needs to be done and common sense has to apply, I remind myself not to be overly judgmental.

The story cites a telling comment from Michael Rich, a pediatrician at Children's Hospital Boston who directs the Center on Media and Child Health. With media use so pervasive, he said, it's time to stop arguing over whether it's good or bad and accept it as part of the younger generation's environment, where it is "like the air they breathe, the water they drink and the food they eat."

Today's youth are swimming in media like dolphins in the sea. We still need to help them guard against predators and keep a close enough eye so they don't drown, but we can't really stop them from swimming -- and some of us might wish we could swim so well.

One limb at a time

Big jobs appear completely overwhelming when you think about the project as a whole: sometimes it helps to realize that even the largest project consists of many smaller jobs that have to be done. Whether it's building a house or writing a book, you have to approach it one step at a time.

My closest neighbor decided to take down some trees in his backyard, along with one between our two houses, which are very close together. None of the trees could be cut down in the way we think of lumberjacks doing it ... they all had to be taken apart from the top down. Fortunately, my neighbor's brother is in the tree business, and he's a wizard at climbing into the branches and rigging ropes so that each piece he cuts away swings safely to the ground. Several large trees hit the dirt, one limb at the time.

After helping them drag the brush and stack the wood for part of the afternoon, I came inside to find emails with pictures of a medical team composed of Baptists from North Carolina and Hungary, working together through the BWAid ministry of the Baptist World Alliance. After two frustrating days of delays, the team managed to fly into the Dominican Republic and travel overland to Port au Prince. In the photo, a volunteer assists a man who has been badly burned, one of several being treated while others sat nearby, waiting their turns.

That's how a job as big as the one in Haiti has to be approached: by as many workers as possible, each helping one person at a time.  And we can help them, one dollar at a time, one prayer at a time -- for a long time.

[A second North Carolina team is awaiting clearance to get into the country. You can follow the teams' progress on Twitter at http://twitter.com/NCBMHaitiRelief, on Facebook, or on the North Carolina Baptist Men website.]

 

The way we are

Baptists often squabble. That's just the way we are. It's in our DNA, I suppose. Sometimes we squabble face to face, sometimes in letters to the editor, sometimes in blogs. We do it because we care passionately about what we believe and our ability to decide what we believe. We do it because we're loyal to people who (in our minds) have been mistreated or misrepresented. We do it because we love institutions and ministries that have been built together through the years. When we don't see eye to eye, we squabble.

There are times, however, when our differences seem much smaller and you see us all on the same page. It's a tragedy, perhaps, that tragedy brings us together more quickly than anything. When disaster strikes, we're all over it, and the unspeakable suffering in Haiti has us focused on something other than our differences.

Baptist World Alliance is mourning the death of a prominent Baptist pastor in the quake, and missing others. As of Thursday, a BWAid team was on the ground in Florida (above) awaiting clearance from U.S. officials before flying to Haiti, with other teams -- including a dog rescue unit from Hungarian Baptist Aid, also waiting for clearance.

The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is raising money and working together with the American Baptist Churches in the USA to coordinate relief efforts in the ravaged country. A Southern Baptist team is making plans to go, as is a team from Florida.

A medical team from North Carolina Baptist Men has left for work in a medical clinic in Port au Prince (you can follow their progress on Twitter), and North Carolina Baptists will no doubt have a long time presence there.

I'm sure other Baptist groups are at work that I don't know about, along with many other Christian and charitable organizations. All of them are raising money through donation portals on their websites, and donations are certainly needed.

Baptist work will be one small cog in international efforts to relieve the unspeakable suffering in Haiti, but it is an important cog, working tirelessly because we care.

That's just the way we are.

Care about religious liberty issues? Read this.

If you haven't read the headline article from the Jan. 12 issue of Associated Baptist Press, you should. It announces the release of "an unprecedented consensus statement aimed at advancing public understanding of -- and preventing needless controversy over -- the legal issues around religious expression in the public square."

The 32-page statement was drafted by a disparate group of experts in the field of public policy and religion, brought together through the auspices of the Wake Forest University Divinity School's Center for Religion and Public Affairs, which is led by Melissa Rogers, former legal counsel fo the Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty.

The panel included members as diverse as Brent Walker of the Baptist Joint Committee and Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. Colby May of the conservative American Center for Law and Justice was on the panel, as was Jeremy Gunn, formerly with the American Civil Liberties Union. In addition to Christians of various stripes, the panel included representatives from Jewish, Muslim, and Sikh faith traditions.

Here's the important thing: panelists acknowledged that they disagreed in some areas about what they believe the law should be, but came to a consensus understanding of what the law is as it relates to religious liberty. Following an introductory section, the statement raises and responds to 35 important questions relative to religious liberty and the law, citing both the Constitution and case law to support the response to each question.

Questions range from "May the government require individuals to pass a religious test in order to hold office?" (no) to "Is the motto 'In God we trust' found on our money unconstitutional?" (no) to "May religious organizations apply for licenses to operate radio and television stations?" (yes) to "May public schools teach about religion?" (neutral education, yes; indoctrination, no). Some crucial questions weren't designed for up or down answers: "What kinds of activities are prohibited by the ban on religious discrimination as applied to the secular non-governmental workplace?" "What are some ways in which students may express their faith in public elementary and secondary schools?"

Readers may or may not like all of the answers, but they can read in confidence that the statement gives a fair representation of the law as it now stands with regard to religious freedom. The statement, in a slick pdf format with convenient internal links, is well worth downloading to your hard drive and saving to an appropriate place. School and government officials, pastors and religious leaders, and any other folk who want to discuss matters of religious liberty intelligently will want to download and keep the statement handy as a helpful resource for years to come.

Congratulations and thanks to the many people who worked hard to produce this statement: they've accomplished an important service for the American people.

The statement is on my hard drive: is it on yours?

Race at the ball game

I've never been a fan of professional hoops, but at age 58 I finally attended an NBA basketball game. While in Cramerton for a church engagement, a friend was given a pair of tickets to Saturday night's Charlotte Bobcats - Memphis Grizzlies game, so we took it in. After a sloppy first half, it even turned into an exciting contest, with the home team pulling out an 89-87 victory with a tip-in at the final buzzer.

The seats were good: about 15 rows from the floor, near the foul line. I couldn't help but notice that it was loud -- no, I should say -- it was LOUD. Pounding beats on the sound system before the game and at every time out, along with an exuberant announcer who rattled the rafters, kept the noise level high. The amplified sound and assorted entertainments during time outs are apparently designed to compensate for the lack of excitement from the fans, which fell far short of a typical college game.

As more of an observer than a supporter, I couldn't help but notice several jarring disparities: of the 27 players on the two teams, 26 of them were black, and the one white guy was from Spain. The coaches and other staff on the bench, on the other hand, were almost uniformly Anglo. So were the dancing girls a.k.a. cheerleaders: there were 18 of them, with only three or four being women of color. I quibble on the number because the girls who weren't white were all still relatively light-skinned. The fans in attendance were mixed, though the majority appeared to be white, especially in the higher-priced seats.

I don't claim to understand all the social and cultural factors behind the various racial stratifications so evident at the game -- I could guess at some of them, but so could anyone else.

Whether one finds this disturbing or not, it's another reminder that racial divides still run deep. In Wake County, where I live, a newly-elected school board majority is promoting policies that will almost certainly result in the near re-segregation of some schools. Across the nation, many Americans show disturbing disrespect for the president, at least in part because of his racial heritage.

The Martin Luther King holiday is coming up in a week or so, but every day, on every hand, we see sharp reminders that we still have a long way to go.

Old inscription, long stretch, good message

An apparent press release from the University of Haifa (though not yet posted on the school's website) says the oldest known Hebrew inscription -- found more than a year ago -- calls for social sensitivity to slaves, widows, orphans, and strangers. Those sentiments, similar in thought to biblical texts like Isaiah 1:17, Deuteronomy 10:18 and many others, are bound to engender future studies about the understanding of justice in ancient Israel.

At present, however, its translator is putting more emphasis on what he believes the text reveals about the prevalence of writing in ancient Israel and the date at which the scriptures were composed. The inscription was discovered during excavations led by Yosef Garfinkel at Khirbet Qeiyafa near the Elah valley, about 30 miles southwest of Jerusalem, and announced shortly thereafter. Written on a pottery shard about six by seven inches in size, it was dated to the 10th century BCE, the time of King David and his immediate successors.

There has been some question about whether the inscription is in Hebrew or some other local language, as several of the ancient Northwest Semitic languages used variations of the same proto-Canaanite script and had much vocabulary in common. Gershon Galil, the University of Haifa professor charged with translating the inscription, insists that the inscription is indeed an early form of Hebrew, pointing to the use of several words or word forms that are common to Hebrew but rare in related languages.

I'm not a good enough linguist to argue with him about that, but I believe he goes too far in his claims for what the text demonstrates. According to the press release, he stated that the text "indicates that the Kingdom of Israel already existed in the 10th century BCE and that at least some of the biblical texts were written hundreds of years before the dates presented in current research."

Hold your camels, professor, that's a stretch. I'm not questioning whether Israel had a king by then, but this inscription doesn't demonstrate it. The existence of a 10th century Hebrew ostraca in a fortress guarding a highway through the Judean hinterlands does indeed provide extrabiblical evidence for some sort of organized Hebrew presence that might well have been a kingdom, but that can only be extrapolated so far. 

The biggest stretch is Galil's claim that the inscription indicates "at least some of the biblical texts were written hundreds of years before the dates presented in current research." Critical scholars, for a variety of reasons, routinely suggest that the Pentateuch, while containing ancient traditions, may not have reached its final form until the fourth or fifth century BCE. The inscription reflects thoughts similar to sentiments expressed in a variety of biblical texts, and that certainly suggests something about the antiquity of important notions about social justice in Israel. It may indicate the presence of some written traditions, but it doesn't begin to prove that Deuteronomy or any other biblical books that mention widows and orphans had been completed by that time. If that's what Galil meant, I believe he's gone beyond the evidence.

In either case, there's little question that the inscription is extremely significant, and will be the subject of debate (and competing translations) for years to come. For the record, here is an English version of Galil's efforts at deciphering the difficult text (brackets indicate where the text is broken and assumed words or letters have been restored):

1' you shall not do [it], but worship the [Lord].
2' Judge the sla[ve] and the wid[ow] / Judge the orph[an]
3' [and] the stranger. [Pl]ead for the infant / plead for the po[or and]
4' the widow. Rehabilitate [the poor] at the hands of the king.
5' Protect the po[or and] the slave / [supp]ort the stranger.

If Galil's translation is correct, the ancient text is a reminder that the importance of loving one's neighbor, especially those who are the least fortunate, has been a cardinal rule among the Hebrews for a long, long time. May that teaching -- and practice -- never cease.

[Image courtesy of the University of Haifa.]

Lottie Moon's rooms

In a story that's been largely overlooked (who reads Baptist news during the holidays?), Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary unveiled several shipping crates purported to contain remnants of Lottie Moon's rented house from P'ingtu City, China, along with personal possessions and other 19th century antiques from the area.

Seminary president Paige Patterson displayed open crates reported to contain "some of Moon's furniture, such as chairs and a stove, as well as shingles, bricks and other remains from her house in P'ingtu, China," according to the article, which offered no information about how the items were authenticated as being Moon's.


Since Moon is known to have lived exceedingly frugally in a tiny dirt-floored house, the 35,000 pounds of materials reportedly contained in the shipment must have included many tons of bricks and clay shingles, as well as a lot of stuff that never belonged to Moon.

As expected, Patterson used the occasion to praise Moon as a champion of biblical inerrancy, something I've heard him do since the old "School of the Prophets" days at Criswell Bible College back in the 1970s. According to the article, Patterson prefaced his dedicatory prayer over the artifacts with a talk that "explained why Lottie Moon is so significant to Southwestern Seminary and the Southern Baptist Convention 'in the aftermath of the conservative renaissance of the convention.'"

Patterson repeated a timeworn story of how Moon was once engaged to Southern Seminary professor Crawford H. Toy, but broke off the engagement because Toy had "imbibed historical-critical thinking" and developed a skeptical attitude toward biblical inerrancy. While there is evidence for a broken engagement, I've seen nothing to substantiate the motives Patterson attributes to Moon.

The article led me to imbibe in thinking along two tracks. The first was to note that the acquisition of Lottie Moon's effects from China, if indeed they are authentic, appears to have completely bypassed Woman's Missionary Union, whose history is closely intertwined with Lottie Moon, and which has raised untold millions of dollars for international missions through its trademaked "Lottie Moon Christmas Offering." Southern Baptist leaders have sought during the past decade to gain ownership of the Lottie Moon trademark as well as to control WMU by making it an agency of the SBC, but both efforts have been (thankfully) unsuccessful. The plan to build a public shrine to Lottie Moon at SWBTS may be well-intentioned, but it could also be used to reframe the mission pioneer's role as a defender of conservative Southern Baptist orthodoxy while diminishing her historic connections with WMU (there is no mention of WMU in the article). One could hope that WMU will be invited to partner with SWBTS in developing the display, but given that the ultra-conservative Southern Baptist Convention of Texas is raising funds for the project, exclusion is a more likely scenario.


The article also inspired me to reflect on the life of Moon's spurned suitor, Crawford H. Toy, a brilliant scholar and a man of great piety who was loved by colleagues and students, but who felt forced to resign his post at Southern Seminary rather than surrender his integrity. He later had an illustrious career at Harvard, but was lost to Baptists. A quick search of the web led me to this enlightening biographical sketch of Toy by Dan Gentry Kent, a former professor at SWBTS (now deceased, according to a comment below), and it's well worth a few minutes of your time.

I have admired Lottie Moon from childhood, when devoted WMU ladies taught me about her willingness to suffer deprivation because of her devotion to Christ and to missions.

Increasingly, I have also come to admire Crawford Toy, who was no less devoted to Christ, and who was willing to suffer rejection by Southern Baptists rather than surrender to the narrow-minded demand that he forgo scholarship and limit his teaching to popularly accepted notions.

There's more than one way to be a hero.



[Top photo from Baptist Press, image of Lottie Moon from the WMU website, image of Toy from Harvard Divinity School.]

Will "goodwill ambassador" bring good will?

The current issue of the Christian Index, the public relations journal of the Georgia Baptist Convention, features an article praising former Southern Baptist Convention president Bobby Welch, now employed by the SBC as"Strategist for Global Evangelical Relations."

Index editor Gerald Harris touted Welch as the SBC's "ambassador of goodwill to Baptist and evangelical bodies around the world." That's quite a task, considering that the SBC alienated itself from most of the world's Baptist bodies in 2004 by withdrawing from the Baptist World Alliance in a very public snit. When it became evident that the BWA's 200+ member bodies would not knuckle under to the SBC's demand that the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship be refused membership in the global organization, the organization's biggest donor decided to take its cash and go home. 

Not willing to participate when it they could not dominate, SBC leaders persuaded convention messengers to approve a recommendation to withdraw from the global body, justifying their actions by charging the BWA with a "leftward drift," tolerance of homosexuality, and pronouncements of "anti-American" sentiment.

The charges were bogus then, and they're bogus now. Many BWA member bodies are very conservative -- some more fundamentalist than the SBC itself. Some have more moderate tendencies, and a very few border on liberal. BWA members recognize, however, that unity does not require uniformity. Attend one meeting of the BWA General Council and you'll hear lively debate, different opinions, and both yeas and nays when votes are taken. Attend a worship service, and you'll observe a great harmony of spirit, a commitment to a common Lord and a common mission.

Yet, Harris's feature continues to beat the dead horse of deceit: four of the first five paragraphs repeat the SBC's misbegotten justification of its decision to go it alone. By keeping alive the tired aspersions, though, Harris illustrates how badly the SBC needs an ambassador of goodwill. I know Baptists from many countries on several continents, and few of them feel kindly toward the SBC, whose top-down missions strategy is often at odds with the goals of local Baptists.

Bobby Welch is an extrovert's extrovert who, I believe, really wants to do good things. It's hard not to like him. What I fear, however, is that his goodwill efforts in promoting the SBC will be directed primarily toward those bodies or local leaders who are most in tune with the SBC's brand of theology, and that the end result will be to take the SBC's intra-family power struggle global.

We live in a world that needs all the good will it can get: we all would do well to be "goodwill ambassadors" to all we meet: a worthy goal for this year, and every year.

Cleaning house

After writing about the issue of loving stuff on Wednesday, I spent New Year's Eve cleaning our garage and hauling bags and boxes of stuff to Goodwill. New Year's Day will be devoted to continued cleaning, reorganizing, and preparing even more stuff to be given away -- much of it well-used but still serviceable toys that Samuel has outgrown.

I have four large plastic bins filled with dissassembled LEGO toys, for instance, that weigh probably 30 pounds apiece. After eight or nine years as a certified Lego-maniac, Samuel has moved on to other things.

I don't even want to think about how much we and others have spent through the years on complicated trains and trucks, planes and boats, Star Wars and other other creations. I hope we can find someone else who will enjoy them as much as he did.

Getting mentally prepared for the New Year can involve cleaning out the spiritual and emotional cobwebs, boxing up some bad habits and putting them in the trash. It can also mean putting behind some of the things we've outgrown -- or should have outgrown -- and moving on to greater maturity.

Of course, cleaning house is not the only element in the process. Jesus once told a story about a man who someone managed to rid himself of an evil spirit that just wandered around for awhile before  returning with some fellow fiends when he found his former abode swept clean but unoccupied (Matt. 12:43-45).

What are you cleaning out this year? What are you putting in its place?

The second question deserves just as much attention as the first.