Special Sundays as Outreach Tools

Every church has special Sundays, but not every church uses them to offer outsiders the excuse to attend church. I’m happy, for example, to observe Veteran’s Day in Sunday worship, but do so pragmatically, with the intention of making it a big attendance day. Most churches give some minimal recognition of the day, and then hurry on to the next item in the church bulletin. For me, however, Veteran’s Day (and other such events) is something to be exploited as an opportunity to increase attendance and to expand the scope of the ministerial radar.

We make the day special by putting on display veterans’ memorabilia —uniforms, pictures, medals, etc., for perusal before and after the worship service. As part of the service, we invite a color guard (JROTC, VFW, Boy Scouts, etc.) to present the colors in procession, with our veterans in parade. A roll call is taken, and the veterans are recognized individually. I set aside some time to discuss Just War concepts and we pray for world leaders’ wisdom, world peace, and protection of our own military personnel.

We are sure to invite the veterans’ own family members to this special service. This gives family members an excuse to attend, and the pastor gets to meet them, thereby getting them to blip ever more prominently on the ministerial radar. The same is true for the visiting color guard.

While other churches might observe Reformation Day, my churches observe All Saints Day. Baptist observance of All Saints Day entails the recognition of all those church members who died in the past year. I recruit church members to offer a short remembrance or eulogy for each one, as time permits. We strongly promote this special day. It fuels the memory of our recently departed members and urges us to follow their example in running with perseverance the race set before us. We also use the service to invite the surviving family members, thus boosting our attendance and, again, increasing the scope of our ministerial radar.

The same is true for all special events. Vacation Bible School Sunday, high school and college graduation day, baby dedications, baptisms, Thanksgiving, etc. If the church happens to have a cemetery, we will host a special community service at the cemetery on Memorial Day. Increased attendance may not be the primary purpose for observing any of these days, but the church should avail itself of the opportunity to increase attendance for each one of them. 

Statement of Faith--More than What We Believe, but also How We Live

I read many statements of faith produced by churches and individuals alike. I just came across a fresh statement of faith produced by a church. It was more than just a statement of what they believed, but also a list of implications that arise from their faith statements.

What a brilliant idea. I've adapted my own statement to fit the template, and you can see it here. I'm still revising it--leave feedback if you have suggestions, except that I'm not going to add anything about KJV-Onlyism.... ;)

Big Theology on Narrow Shoulders: a Brief Outline of Arminian Baptist History

Here is the amazing thing about the Arminian Baptist theology espoused by Reformation Arminians like Robert Picirilli and his long time colleague Leroy Forlines.

Thomas Helwys???

Arminian Baptist theology is a Baptist theology with a long pedigree going back to the first Baptist congregation (Thomas Helwys) and Thomas Grantham--one of the best known Christian writers in 18th century England. (Arminian Baptists preceded Calvinist Baptists by a few decades.) It was imported into the colonies (Roger Williams and the first Baptist church are said to have begun as Arminian), but largely succumbed to a highly resurgent Calvinist strain of Baptists in the Philadelphia Baptist Association which aggressively preyed on disorganized Arminian Baptist churches in the south in colonial times (especially in South Carolina).

With the explosive growth of Southern Baptists after the Civil War, Arminian Baptist theology mixed with Calvinist Baptists theology to produce the Majoritarian Baptist position in SBC. Southern Baptists liked Arminian views on the extent of the atonement and election, but preferred Calvinist views on continuance in salvation (who wouldn't like a doctrine of once saved always saved?).

In 1907-1911, the Calvinistic Northern Baptists and the Free Baptists [= Freewill Baptists] in the north merged, having decided that their soteriology was compatible enough to cooperate as a unified denomination (1100 Free Baptist churches merged at that time, along with denominational infrastructures such as 7 colleges and a press). Free Will Baptists in the south were never really organized and mostly languished until their organization in 1935. 

Now, the very narrow ecclesiological swath of the modern FWB denomination preserves the much larger Arminian Baptist theology of Helwys and Grantham. That is to say, this venerable and very significant Arminian Baptist theology in its pure form is carried on the very small shoulders of a minor and mostly regional denomination of about 2200 churches. Its preservation and dissemination is largely the result of the efforts of two capable theologians, Leroy Forlines and Robert Picirilli, both octogenarians who are still very active. They were hardly known outside of their denominational context until the Calvinist resurgence of the 1990s when Arminians began desperately seeking good Arminian books to read.

But here is my point: despite the frail denominational structure that undergirds this Arminian Baptist theology, I have found the theology itself to be incredibly strong. I carried it with me through J.I. Packer's systematic courses at the graduate level, and tested it in the most rigorous exegetical courses of Fee and the Calvinist Bruce Waltke. I carried it with me to Cambridge where it was tested by my PhD supervisor and by Cambridge NT scholar Simon Gathercole. I may not have convinced those who were already committed Calvinists, but many of my peers felt that I satisfactorily presented a system that passed exegetical muster and the logical demands of a unified theological system. Forlines' overall view of Romans has survived even the New Pauline Perspective debate (indeed, he was making comments similar to E.P. Sanders for years prior to the publication of his 1987 commentary).

Click on Helwys for more info on Helwys.

For more on Reformation Arminianism click here.