Today, I am in Garden Grove, California speaking to the Converge Worldwide / Southwest Baptist Conference. For those of you uninitiated to all things Baptist, there are about 431,034 Baptist denominations. This one descends from the Swedish Pietist movement.

Wikipedia explains:

The Baptist General Conference grew out of the great revival of the 19th century, but its roots can be traced back to Swedish Pietism. In 1852, Gustaf Palmquist emigrated from Sweden to the United States. Forty-seven days after his arrival, he and three others organized a Swedish Baptist church in Rock Island, Illinois. Frederick Nilsson, who was instrumental in leading Palmquist to Baptist views, arrived in America the next year with 21 immigrants. Some of these united with the Rock Island church, while others organized a church at Houston, Minnesota. Nilsson traveled widely, founding and strengthening churches. Anders Wiberg was another pioneer among these churches from 1852 until 1855, when he returned to Sweden as a missionary.

Christian experience was a major emphasis among these Swedish Baptists, and they prospered from the awakenings in the 19th century. Immigration, aggressive evangelism and conversion through revivals brought rapid growth to the denomination. John Edgren founded the Swedish Baptist Seminary in Chicago, Illinois in 1871.

In 1879, when the Swedish churches had grown to 65 in number, they formed a General Conference. The members of these churches assimilated into American society and gradually lost their separate ethnic identity. By 1940, most churches were English-speaking. In 1945, the Swedish Baptist General Conference dropped "Swedish" from its name and became the Baptist General Conference of America. Swedish Baptists had maintained an alliance with the American Baptist Publication Society, American Baptist home and foreign missions, etc., and later the Northern Baptist Convention. Some Swedish Baptists expected to merge with that body, but the groups moved toward different developments of theological emphasis. The conservative Swedish Baptists pulled back from growing liberalism of the Northern Baptists, and in 1944 formed their own Board of Foreign Missions. This moved them toward independent existence, which they have maintained to the present.

Today, they are a newly renamed group, now called "Converge Worldwide," and have almost 1000 churches in the U.S.

In 2006, the BGC had 194,000 members in 950 churches in the United States. These churches are also organized into 13 district bodies: Columbia, Florida/Caribbean, Great Lakes, Heartland, Iowa, Mideast, Michigan, Minnesota, Midwest, Northern California, Northwest, Northeast, Rocky Mountain, and Southwest. There are a further 105 churches in Canada organized into 5 district bodies. These congregations cooperate together nationally through the Baptist General Conference of Canada.

I have had the privilege of consulting with them as they merged their national and international mission boards a few years ago (focused on the idea that "one worldwide mission" requires "one mission board").

Based on a research project I did for Leadership Network, I have said that they are the leading mid-sized to large denomination engage in North American church planting. (I will unpack that more in a new and forthcoming book, our in 2010, on church planting.)

Great folks and honored to spend the day with their leaders today.

I am in my hotel room in Bentonville, Arkansas. It is late, but I am feeling a "blog urge" and wanted to post.

Tomorrow (at 5:30a.m.), I head over to Springfield, Missouri (and it is midnight here!). So, I better make this a quick post. I am speaking to two Baptist groups in two different states. I am in the heartland with Baptists in Missouri and Arkansas.

I recognize that most of my blog readers are not Baptists and thus do not necessarily speak "Baptist." Thus, a little explanation might he helpful.

Tomorrow, I am in Springfield, Missouri to speak at Baptist Bible College. Bible Baptist College is part of the Independent Baptist church movement. Wikipedia explains:

Independent Baptist churches (also referred to as Independent Fundamental Baptist, or IFB) are Christian churches holding to generally Baptist beliefs. Like all Baptists they are characterized by being independent from the authority of denominations and church councils. However, the reason for the distinction, "independent," is that they eschew even the Baptist conventions or associations in which other Baptist churches participate (although many Independent Baptist churches do belong to fellowships). They remain autonomous and congregationalist in nature and are generally fundamentalist in teaching. The IFB movement is not a denomination per se, but there are similarities that run throughout most Independent Baptist churches.

I am not IFB, so I am particularly blessed that they would invite me to share with their students and the pastors attending the conference. We will be talking church planting and evangelism and I look forward to it.

Tuesday, I am back in Bentonville where I will speak to the Arkansas Baptist Convention. They theme is Reaching Generation Next Now. I will speak just before lunch and will share some research and speak on engaging emerging generations. After I speak, I will meet with some contemporary church pastors over lunch (see below).

Part of what I help the International Mission Board is help them connect with innovative pastors to get them involved in global missions. During lunch on Tuesday, we are hoping to do that very thing. Jeff Noble, who came with me to Poland last week (see his interview here), is organizing a lunch meeting of innovative church pastors who might want to talk about engaging in church planting in Central and Eastern Europe.

Rob Brown, who oversees much of the work there, explained the opportunity this way:

Come visit the IMB teams serving in Central Europe to see what God is doing and prayerfully explore how their churches can serve alongside these teams in impacting peoples with the gospel through creative access venues and relational exchanges.

If you are interested, be sure to check out my recent Europe posts here and contact Jeff immediately if you can come to lunch on Tuesday in Bentonville.

Updated: Check out this article. It just came out and gives great info about the partnership.

Good night.

I am in Lynchburg, VA today spending time with the leadership of Thomas Road Baptist Church, so I won't be around to comment much. But, here are an unusually long Friday is for Friends update.

Dave Ramsey

Michael Edwards, a friend and my most recent commenter here on the blog, invited me to come speak to the staff of the Financial Peace University folks. I was surprised at just how many people they employ. I guess I knew Dave Ramsey was famous, but I did not know they had such a large ministry. I had the chance to talk with Dave and was impressed with his (and their) focus on using finances as a "bridge" to share the gospel. I think they are onto something-- and appreciate their ministry.

Mark Dever

I interviewed each of the speakers at the recent Whiteboard Conference. It was a good group with some interesting dialogue.

However, I have been (pleasantly) surprised by the response to my interview with Mark Dever. As of now, almost 2500 people have downloaded the video, more than all the other interviews from Whiteboard combined.

The video shot up when the king-of-all-Reformed-bloggers, Justin Taylor posts it with commentary including:

This is a great interview of Mark Dever by Ed Stetzer, who asks great questions. They cover worship (Capitol Hill and Sovereign Grace), contextualization (MacArthur, Driscoll, Mahaney), the seeker-sensitive movement, partnership with those you disagree with, whether the gospel is too big (Dever admits he was being provocative at T4G, that some qualifications are needed, and that euangelion is semantically larger than the God-man-Christ-response scheme), and whether working for Habitat for Humanity is necessarily kingdom work.

In the spirit of keeping my humble, you will notice that Justin does not know how to spell my name (in the title). :-)

You can watch the interview in two parts: part one // part two

Let me also encourage you Reformed folks that it is OK to watch (and even glean some nuggets of wisdom from) the other interviews as well. Dever did not come to the conference just to talk, he also stayed and listed to the other speakers. And, watching his kind interaction and learning spirit with the other speakers would be a good example and something many could emulate. (Click here for the conference channel videos.)

And, one more thought. As one who speaks in a lot of different settings, I believe that conversations like these are essential. There is much we can learn from each other. There is only one body of Christ... and we need each other.

Michael Kelley and The Tough Sayings of Jesus II

Check out the interview with Michael Kelly, the author of a new curriculum through Lifeway called, The Tough Sayings of Jesus II. In the interview Kelly explains why he wrote the material.

We like a picture of Jesus where among other things, He's "nice.�? So we gravitate towards those passages. But that leaves us with an incomplete and mishapen view of Jesus and doesn't allow us to examine the fullness of what He taught and lived. So I wanted to write something that engaged people at a lot of levels - emotionally, intellectually, as well as spiritually.

Be sure to stop by the website to see all you get with the Leader's Kit and download a sample. Michael has become a friend at LifeWay and I think he has much to say.

OneMission.tv

A few years ago I was privileged to plant a new church north of Atlanta with some very good friends. One of those was Doug Keesey, a media guy I had worked with in the past. Doug and his team have just launched a new website that offers a unique variety of video resources for the local church. The website, www.OneMission.tv, is almost a "one-stop video shop�? for nearly every church video need. They have a growing library of high quality videos for worship, including a number of creative video sermon illustrations, countdowns and motion backgrounds. They also offer 55 downloadable TV & radio spots, something I've not seen anywhere else on the web. All of the spots are customizable and very affordable. And finally, the guys at OneMission.tv have partnered with several Southern Baptist entities to deliver downloadable missions videos free to the local church. Although the site is less than a month old, it's worth a bookmark to watch as the list of video resources grows.

Paul Chitwood and the International Mission Board

My friend Paul Chitwood is the Chairman of Trustees at the International Mission Board (the largest Protestant mission board in the history of the world with over 5000 missionaries). In a great article he recently reminded me and my fellow denominationalists that God is at work around the world. Yes, we may have slipped into decline in the states, but there is powerful news from around the world.

Paul shares:

The work of the IMB is the primary thing that brings us together. While the statistical analysis -- and the analysis of the analysis -- of the current state of the Southern Baptist Convention continues, I fear the most important statistics are escaping.

Is there any good news to tell concerning the work that brought us, and yet holds us, together? Indeed there is.

The number of Southern Baptist missionaries serving overseas is 5,359. Our most recent statistical analysis reveals overseas baptism totals at an all-time high of 609,968. The number of new believers being discipled overseas totaled 567,413, another all-time high. Last year's new churches overseas totaled 25,497. You guessed it -- an all-time high.

When it comes to missions, the sky is not falling. It is exploding -- with opportunity.

So get on a plane, take to the skies and help spread the Gospel among the nations. It's still a good day to be a Southern Baptist. In fact, analyzing the statistics, it's the best day to be a Southern Baptist.

Please note his important comment, "The work of the IMB is the primary thing that brings us together."

Let us not forget that our convention was once defined by missions... and I believe it is a uniting around missions and evangelism that will unite us again. I am Southern Baptist because of missions-- starting as a Home Mission Board Mission Service Corp church planter in the inner city of Buffalo. NY to today working part-time for the IMB.

Paul and I dialogued a bit about the article and he reminded me that the first thing the SBC did was found what is now called the International Mission Board. What a great idea. Perhaps the first thing we need to do this year at the SBC in Indy is to get excited about God's global mission.

Thanks, Paul, for that reminder.

David Dockery and The Future of the SBC

Over the last few years, David Dockery has become a friend. I have blogged on him before (link) and look forward to preaching in Union University's chapel this Fall.

David has a new and thoughtful book out with some solutions to get Southern Baptists to the "other side" of our denominational challenges. I read the book on the plane yesterday on my way to Lynchburg.

The book is a good read and points to a bright potential future for our convention. You might want to check out an interview with David via the InSight Podcast of the North Carolina Baptist State Association.

Denny Burk also gives a brief word about the book here.

David shared this with me via email:

My new book, SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONSENSUS AND RENEWAL: A BIBLICAL, HISTORICAL, AND THEOLOGICAL PROPOSAL, will be released by B&H Publishing Group in May (2008). I am grateful that B&H will initially make the book available for $9.99 to help provide a wide circulation for the book. I am hopeful that the book might help move us forward as a Convention in our work, witness, as well as in our cooperative efforts.

SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONSENSUS AND RENEWAL does not attempt to deal with every issue or wrestle with every intramural squabble that can be named among us as Southern Baptists at this time. Instead, by reflecting on our history and our heritage, particularly our theological heritage, we call for renewed commitments to our shared cooperation around the truthfulness of Holy Scripture and the uniqueness of the Gospel message. We then look for avenues that point us toward a new consensus, with a focus on overarching issues like missions, worship, education, and leadership. Other key theological and ethical issues are addressed along the way, together with a reminder of our Baptist distinctives and identity. The proposal for a consensus is grounded in a biblical, historical, and theological framework.

Outline for SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONSENSUS AND RENEWAL

INTRODUCTION: Southern Baptists: Past, Present, and Future

CHAPTER ONE: Renewing Markers of Southern Baptist Identity: Scripture, Global Missions, and Cooperation

CHAPTER TWO: Focusing on the Gospel: Toward a Southern Baptist Consensus

CHAPTER THREE: Giving Glory to God: Baptist Worship Then and Now

CHAPTER FOUR: Serving Church and Society: A Vision for Baptist Education

CHAPTER FIVE: Rediscovering Our Theological Heritage: Learning from the Past as We Look to the Future

CHAPTER SIX: Praying for Church and Convention Leaders: Character, Conviction, and Cooperation

Just about everyone seems to have endorsed the book:

On Saturday, I was speaking to the General Association of General Baptist Churches in a very rural part of Missouri.

The General Baptist denomination is an Arminian Baptist denomination. In many ways, they are similar to my own denomination, but they do not hold to the idea of "eternal security"-- or the idea that (in popular terms) once you are a believer you can't "undo" that. This view is held by Wesleyans, many Pentecostals, etc.

Over lunch, we reminsced a bit of the Second Great Awakening history.