Truly Saving Bellevue, part 3

Something has me fired up today!  The more I think about this, the more I become angry and saddened.

No, this is not directly related to the big news that came out today that I'm sure people who are following the craziness at Bellevue are aware of.

This is about something else I read this morning.  Apparently several members of the Bellevue have decided to form their own organization that will have a board of directors and a Charter.  From the organization's website

CORDOVA --- It is not uncommon for leadership changes within a church to result in some discontent and even discord within its membership. But, for a group of members inside a church of 30,000 to incorporate themselves, form a board of directors, and set out for the sole purpose of instilling accountability in its own church government and leadership is unusual and perhaps unprecedented.

Integrity Does Count, Inc., (IDC) consisting entirely of Bellevue Baptist Church (BBC) members, announces its charter and aims to bring truth to both the unanswered questions as well as to the non-disclosed facts and records of the current administration. Members of IDC, Inc. have been carefully following the events as they have occurred over the past 18 months at Bellevue Baptist Church under the leadership of Senior Pastor, Dr. Steve Gaines.

Integrity Does Count, Inc. will hold a church-wide meeting away from the campus of BBC on or before February 16, 2007, where it hopes to address the above concerns as well as to establish a congregation-approved framework for church governance that will include up-to-date bylaws and regulations. An attempt was made to seek approval for an on-campus meeting. A further attempt was made to obtain a mailing list of church membership in order to inform each member of the upcoming, church-wide meeting. Both attempts were futile, and IDC’s requests were denied by BBC staff members.

The church administration has willfully neglected to uphold the State of Tennessee Statute, T.C.A. 48-66-101 et. seq., that governs Not-For-Profit organizations and leaves this incorporated group of BBC wondering what the church administration stands to gain by locking its doors and closing its books.

Realizing the necessity for following God’s design as illustrated in Matthew 18, and missing the fellowship of faithful members who are choosing to worship in sister churches, Integrity Does Count, Inc. is even more compelled to sound its voice, take necessary measures, and use all available resources for seeking the truth concerning questionable events and actions within Bellevue Baptist Church in Cordova, Tennessee.

 

OK, so they are going to meet outside the church to discuss the church's problems.  Apparently without the leaders of Bellevue being present.  And they are going to try to discuss how issues at the church could be resolved better.  My friend John told me this sounded like a union meeting because essentially they are ganging up on their leadership.  He's exactly RIGHT!  He also mentioned that the leadership was placed there by the Lord.  Again, exactly RIGHT!

Hey, here's a thought - Put a steeple over the building you meet at and call yourselves a church!  Would that not solve your problems?  You'd have a group of people in agreement about how church should be conducted and you could just conduct them in that manner and move on!

What is meeting outside of your church going to accomplish?  I'll tell you!  It's going to accomplish gossiping, bitterness, and all kinds of other things that the devil will absolutely delight in!  Again, if you aren't happy with your leadership, LEAVE THE CHURCH!!!  If enough people leave, something will change.  If your issues are justified, then God will use the situation as a chance to humble the leaders and turn things around.  If you are wrong, the church will be stronger without you (and God will likely show you why you were wrong).

There, I feel better.

In other somewhat related news, I read in the news today about a situation that is very similar to what is going on at Bellevue.  A long-time pastor of 30+ years retired at a church in Florida, they chose someone to replace him, the new guy wasn't like the old pastor, some members didn't like that, and the pastor ended up resigning because of the stress.  Really sad.  This would be counted as a "success" if the same thing happened at Bellevue I'm sure.  As I've mentioned before, another large church in Memphis recently had the same thing happen.  I fear that there may be a trend developing in the Southern Baptist Church denomination.  I have some thoughts on why I think this is happening and I hope to post something about that real soon.  For now, I'll leave you with the same conclusion as my previous posts on this subject...

People of Bellevue, please stop this madness before it's too late!  Bellevue Baptist Church has a long tradition of being a beacon of hope to the community by sharing the good news that Jesus Christ came to earth, died for our sins, rose from the grave, and wants to have a close relationship with all of mankind if we would just turn from our ways and make Him the Lord of our lives.  How can you continue to spread that message and have all the bickering and fighting at the same time?  You know you can't and, if you belong to Christ, you know what is the RIGHT thing to do.

Since Hillary wouldn't answer the question...

...I'll answer it for her.

From this news story, related to a town hall meeting that Hillary Clinton held over the weekend...

One questioner asked Clinton if her track record showed she could stand up to "evil men" around the world.

"The question is, we face a lot of dangers in the world and, in the gentleman's words, we face a lot of evil men and what in my background equips me to deal with evil and bad men," Clinton said. She paused to gaze while the audience interrupted with about 30 seconds of laughter and applause.

Meeting later with reporters, she was pressed repeatedly to explain what she meant. She insisted it was a simple joke.

"I thought I was funny," Clinton said. "You guys keep telling me to lighten up, be funny. I get a little funny and now I'm being psychoanalyzed."

Stating the obvious, she was making a little joke about what she went through when Bill was president.  To her credit, I actually think it was a pretty funny joke.

But...

She's allowing a correlation to be made that could\should be very damaging to her.  Why do I say that?  Because let's look at how she handled the problems with her husband...

1.  At first, she denied that there was a problem and made a point to place blame on her husband's political opponents.  Although who believes she didn't know what was going on all those years?

2.  When the problem is proven to be true to everyone outside her family, she was totally silent.  Although I do seem to remember the press saying she gave him ugly looks from time to time.

3.  Separation.  I doubt anyone believes Bill and Hillary spend any personal time together.  She moved to New York after he left office to setup her Senatorial campaign.  He is all over the place.  They meet together for some events, but there's no way there is any kind of relationship between them.

4.  Almost forgot about this one.  She wrote a book so she could make a bunch of money explaining what it felt like when she found out Bill cheated on her.

So there you have it.  Deny there is a problem, place blame on someone else completely unrelated to the problem, separate yourself from the cause of the problem, profit from the problem.

Great qualities for a president to have, huh?!!

Sports talk

NFL

The Colts made it to the Super Bowl!  Woo Hoo!  Very glad to see Peyton finally get a chance to win the big one.  I was surprised to see the Bears end up beating the Saints so badly.  If their defense plays that good in the Super Bowl, they are going to be nearly impossible to beat.  It should be a good game.

One thing that I was disappointed in after the Bears won the other day was all the talk about "First black coach in the Super Bowl".  Then of course, the Colts won and the talk went to, "Now we know we'll see the first black coach to win a Super Bowl".  When is the madness going to stop people?  There have been black coaches in football for a long time.  Many of them have been very successful.  Does one black coach winning a Super Bowl make it easier for a team to decide to hire any black coach in the future?  No!  They will be hired if they have the skills to coach a winning team.  Period.  Regardless of all the misdirection by the media, congratulations to coaches Dungy and Smith.  I always knew Tony Dungy could get the Colts to the big game.  Lovie Smith is obviously a great coach too.  Taking a struggling team like the Bears and turning them around in just two seasons is amazing.  Dungy and Smith being where they are at has nothing to do with their skin color.  It has to do with their talent.  Can we please focus on that for once?

NASCAR

I heard about the changes to the Chase on the radio this morning.  To break them down.

 - Instead of 10 drivers in the Chase, there will be 12 now.  Actually it used to be 10 drivers and anyone within 400 points of the leader got in.  They took the points-behind allowance part off too.

- The driver who wins each race (in the regular season and in the Chase) will get an extra 5 points for each win.

- When the Chase starts, the Chase drivers will be given 10 points for each win.  That will be the only points separation between them.  Previously they were separated by 5 points each.

Not too bad.  I like the last two quite a bit actually.  I do think it is much better to give drivers more incentive to win races.  I still think they should've added more incentive to win during the Chase though, but consistent driving still must be rewarded also and keeping things the same still allows for that.

I'm not a big fan of the first one though.  I think the 10 driver limit was pretty good.  I think changing the 400 point allowance to 500 or something like that would have been better.  It is obvious why they changed it to 12.  In the last several years, the most popular drivers were the ones who ended up just outside the Chase.  So it is clear that NASCAR was trying to appease fans with this move.  But I do have to wonder if doing that waters down the competition.

All in all, I think the changes will make things more exciting throughout the year.  Each driver will be more focused on winning and that should cause more exciting races.  Hard to believe it's all just a few weeks away!

Thursday thoughts

A few things on my mind today...

NFL

First, my picks for the weekend - Colts beat Patriots and Saints beat Bears.

Yep, Colts meet Saints in the Super Bowl.  What an accomplishment for both teams if that does happen.  Some great stories all around.  Of course, a big one will be Peyton Manning finally making it to the big game and the side story of him having to go through his dad's old team to win it.  The Saints have been a good story this year too.  If it does happen, the game should be pretty good too.  Two great offenses squaring off.  Could be a lot of points on the board.

24

So the show 24 had terrorists setting off a nuclear bomb this year.  Well, one so far anyway.  They've had a nuke explode on the show before, but not one that actually killed people.  For whatever reason, the way they did it this year has made more headlines.  Likely it is because the bomb in the show was in a suitcase, which is a bit more believable than terrorists getting a big one and managing their way into the US with it.  I heard a guy on the radio this morning discussing whether or not such suitcase-size nukes exist.  He said they do exists, the show was very accurate with the size and shape of the bombs, and that there are indeed some that were developed in Russia during the cold war that are missing.  Scary thought, huh?

Global Warming about to get a lot of attention

This may be one of the biggest problems that come out of the Democrats winning control of Congress.  We're probably about to see more stupid discussions and eventually laws about how to stop something that isn't really happening.  I recently read State of Fear, a novel by Michael Crichton, which gives a lot of reasons to be skeptical about the way global warming is presented today.  Specifically, it deals with the arguments that even if it is happening, there is no real evidence to prove that we caused it or that we can stop it.  It is fiction and reads really fast, but he also gives a lot of footnotes and has a bibliography in the back, so there are many non-fictional aspects to it also.  Some things really amazed me and opened my eyes.  I'll probably post a little bit more about this subject in the future, especially if I'm right about the Dems making it a major topic over the next couple of years.

Hey, what happened to Truly Saving Bellevue?

I know, I know.  All you readers out there (all three of you) are on the edge of your seat waiting for more on that series.  :)  I've still got plenty of thoughts on it and some more things to say.  Maybe I'll get around to posting some more next week.

Truly Saving Bellevue, part 2

OK, now it's time for some preachin!  Time to open up the scripture and see what God has to say about handling conflicts in the church.  I intend to make the case that church matters are exactly that - church matters.  Here is one passage to consider...

from 1 Corinthians 6

1 If any of you has a dispute with another, dare he take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the saints? 2 Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? 3 Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! 4 Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters, appoint as judges even men of little account in the church! 5 I say this to shame you. Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers? 6 But instead, one brother goes to law against another--and this in front of unbelievers! 7 The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? 8 Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers.

Now, I realize this is talking about lawsuits and not directly related to making church matters public, but I think we can easily make a correlation here.  If the Lord does not want us to bring judicial disputes before the secular public, do you think He would want us to bring private church matters before the secular public?  Surely not.  The fact is that when we present the secular world with our issues, we are allowing them to judge us.  They are saying things that might influence other non-Christians to make a decision to exclude Christ from their lives forever.

Here is another passage that deals specifically with how to handle discipline within the church...

This is Jesus speaking, in Matthew 18

15 "If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. 16 But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that 'every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.' 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector

This can go in several directions.  First, the deacons\elders of the church have the responsibility to correct the person(s) that are causing the disruptions.  If they do not listen, they should be asked to leave and allow God to deal with them.

On the other hand, I realize that the people causing the disruptions feel they are being wronged by the church leadership.  On many matters, I've seen little evidence that the methods explained above were used to resolve the matter.  If they were used and nothing was done, I believe the end still holds true.  Members are to submit to the leadership of the church and point out any place they feel things are being done incorrectly.  If the matter cannot be resolved and the member believes the issue is important enough to leave, then they should do just that.  And do it quietly.

I do not know enough about the situation at Bellevue to say what direction should be taken by the leaders and\or the congregation.  What I do know is that the scripture is clear on how things should be handled and that is not being followed right now.  So, I'll end this post the way I ended my last one...

People of Bellevue, please stop this madness before it's too late!  Bellevue Baptist Church has a long tradition of being a beacon of hope to the community by sharing the good news that Jesus Christ came to earth, died for our sins, rose from the grave, and wants to have a close relationship with all of mankind if we would just turn from our ways and make Him the Lord of our lives.  How can you continue to spread that message and have all the bickering and fighting at the same time?  You know you can't and, if you belong to Christ, you know what is the RIGHT thing to do.

Truly Saving Bellevue

This issue has been on my mind a lot since it started several months ago.  I was hesitant to blog about it because it has little to do with me really.  I honestly don't know all the details, but I do enough to know that what I am seeing and hearing is so wrong and so sad.  I decided to "go public" with my thoughts because that is what this blog is all about - my thoughts and trying to RIGHT any wrongs I see.

Bellevue Baptist Church has some issues they are dealing with.  For the most part, they started when their former pastor, Adrian Rogers, stepped down as senior pastor and eventually passed away a few months later.  His successor was named while he was still alive, with his full backing and likely with a lot of his input.  Adrian Rogers was truly a great man.  I respected and admired him, just like many people in this area and the world did.  You can read more about him at http://adrianrogers.org.

Back to the issues they are dealing with.  Like all churches, Bellevue has some disagreements within their congregation on some decisions that are being made.  Some in the congregation have chosen to use different forms or media to express what they think the church is doing wrong.  There are websites and blogs setup that get many visitors.  The have also been in local and national news several times over the last few months.  There have even been nationally broadcast radio hosts chime in.

Getting down to it, the issues Bellevue are dealing with are really because the new pastor is not Adrian Rogers.  My friend Gary posted an entry on his blog about this that pretty much sums up my thoughts.

That should catch things up somewhat.  I really hope this to be a multi-entry subject, but for now I'll start with some very basic thoughts and will try to get into more details later.  In this post, I'd like to give a an example of something I dealt with at my church (I do not attend Bellevue) that could be somewhat compared to what is going on at Bellevue.

 

Early last year (2006), the leaders of my church announced that they wanted to research and have the congregation vote on a new project that they really wanted to pursue.  I'll not go into details here - you'll find out why later.  I had a pretty strong disagreement with the decision.  At the time, I was not a member of the church, but my family and I had been attending for over three years.  I was torn between what to do about my disagreement.  Since I was not a member, I would not have the ability to vote on the matter.

I ended up deciding to send an email to a couple of the church leaders.  In the email, I explained my disagreement and what I thought a better solution was.  I heard back from them very quickly and a meeting was scheduled for me to meet with some other leaders of the church about the matter.

We met for about thirty minutes and discussed my feelings and their feelings in detail.  In the end, we agreed to disagree.  I left a little bit bummed out that I could not convince them to change their mind or at least consider the alternative(s) more closely, but at the same time I was very impressed that they let a non-member even have such access to the people making the decisions.

While I disagree with the decision, I have decided it is not a big enough issue for me to leave the church.  They are going forward with their plan, and I am supporting the plan through the resources I have to support it.  I do this out of respect for the leadership of my church, and in essence out of respect for God, who is the leader of the church.

 

I don't know any other way to say this - The folks at Bellevue are completely handling their problems the wrong way and I do not believe that God is pleased with what is going on.  I believe the way I handled my disagreement was the way that the Lord intended for church matters to be resolved.  Going outside church walls is against scripture.   People outside the church have no business knowing what is going on.  Admittedly, I confided in some friends and family outside of my church for advice and commentary, but there is a major difference in telling folks you trust and blasting your problems all over the world.

If you have a problem with the leaders of your church, schedule a meeting and tell them about it.  If you can't agree and you think it is a major issue, then LEAVE!!  I have a good friend who recently left his church for that exact reason.  He talked to some of the leadership, decided things were not going to change, and left.

Personally, I'm saddened and angered at the same time at what I'm seeing at Bellevue.  I know it's going to continue and it breaks my heart.  This is not the first time something like this has happened in the Memphis area.  Another large church congregation ended up "winning" their publicly broadcast fight when their pastor decided to resign.

People of Bellevue, please stop this madness before it's too late!  Bellevue Baptist Church has a long tradition of being a beacon of hope to the community by sharing the good news that Jesus Christ came to earth, died for our sins, rose from the grave, and wants to have a close relationship with all of mankind if we would just turn from our ways and make Him the Lord of our lives.  How can you continue to spread that message and have all the bickering and fighting at the same time?  You know you can't and, if you belong to Christ, you know what is the RIGHT thing to do.

Note to Pat Robertson...

..."Sometimes I miss" CANNOT be said by a true prophet.

The article

 

Yep, he's at it again.  Saying God tells him something that everyone knows has a 50-50 chance of happening anyway.  From the article...

In what has become an annual tradition of prognostications, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson predicted Tuesday that a terrorist attack on the United States would result in "mass killing" late in 2007.

"I'm not necessarily saying it's going to be nuclear," he said during his news-and-talk television show "The 700 Club" on the Christian Broadcasting Network. "The Lord didn't say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that."

Robertson said God told him during a recent prayer retreat that major cities and possibly millions of people will be affected by the attack, which should take place sometime after September.

...

...

 

In May, Robertson said God told him that storms and possibly a tsunami were to crash into America's coastline in 2006. Even though the U.S. was not hit with a tsunami, Robertson on Tuesday cited last spring's heavy rains and flooding in New England as partly fulfilling the prediction.

 

This kind of stuff makes me so angry!  Let's start with his prediction last May about the tsunami.  We had plenty of recent history of hurricanes and tsunamis around the world that likely made him think this was a "safe" prediction.  Why not just say the common (albeit misguided in my opinion) statement that storms\hurricanes\tsunamis could hit us because God is trying to tell us something?  Nooo, can't say that.  God had to personally tell him this, right?  I just don't understand the lack of fear this man has.  The Old Testament makes pretty clear what God thinks of false prophets...From Deuteronomy 18:20-22

But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded him to say, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, must be put to death."  You may say to yourselves, "How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?" If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him.

So I guess Pat Robertson should be very glad we don't practice Old Testament law or that first verse would have gotten him a long time ago.

Anyway, pay most attention to the last few sentences in that section of scripture.  Robertson is just saying something that could have been true in any of the last several years.  We could have read or watched the news at pretty much any point in time and seen terrorists make the exact threats that Robertson is speaking of.  We should not be afraid because he claims God told him it would happen.  He's already been proven to be a false prophet.