Don't Confuse Me With The Facts (Part One)

There is an old adage that goes, "Some people are like owls, the more light you shine on them, the less they see." Well if that is the case then there is a very vocal contingent of "owls" who are determined that Reformed theology is going to be the death knell of the Southern Baptist Convention. It amazes me how willfully oblivious such persons can be to the salient issue that evangelism is killed by revivalism, shallow theology, easy believism, and a lack of Biblical discipleship not Reformed theology.

This point was quite clearly demonstrated in a recent article on the Baptist Press website entitled, "Evangelists Lament Calvinism, SBC Trends" . Apparently a group of SBC evangelists met in Tennessee to discuss the danger that a rise in sympathy towards calvinism poses for evangelism. I wont beat that dead horse, but what struck me as ironic was their secondary concern which was the "willow creek-non-confrontational" style of evangelism. Upon reading this, I was at a loss for words. Am I jumping the gun in drawing the conclusion that these evangelists are saying that calvinists are proponents and practitioners of this "willow creek-non-confrontational"evangelistic style? If that is true then I'm afraid that they have made a most unfortunate and grossly incorrect assumption. If anything the exact opposite is true. A cursory hearing of any of the calvinist sympathetic speakers from the Building Bridges Conference back last fall can easily dispel this myth. Particularly I would direct any of these gentlemen to the excellent challenge by Pastor Jeff Noblit.

I was especially troubled by one of the comments made by one of the evangelist participants in which he stated...

he currently is working with some young pastors who are "so leaning in this morphed Calvinism that they almost laugh at evangelism. It's almost to the extent that they believe they don't have to do it. So [Calvinism] gives them an excuse not to do evangelism."

I suppose that there may be some young pastors out there who are genuinely like this man described but I have yet to meet one. I would be curious to know who their major influences are. I know for a fact that such attitudes are not fostered by true Reformed theology such as espoused by Calvin, Boyce, Dagg, Broadus, Fuller, Carey, Spurgeon, Piper, Dever, Mohler, and the like. I don't wish to cast a shadow on this comment but it has straw-man written all over it.

This post is the first of a 2-part series...