As I’ve mentioned in an earlier post at the Farmville Baptist blog, I’ve recruited twelve church leaders to read and discuss a book by Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger called Simple Church. I’m hoping to use the book as a springboard to help us discern God’s vision and mission for our church. Well, this past Sunday morning, one hour before our 11 a.m. morning worship service, I had a stimulating conversation with one of those leaders about the book. She hated it. She hated the fact that the book advocated doing away with ministries and programs. At least that’s what stuck with her as she read it. Furthermore, she said: “I went online and did a little more research about Thom Rainer, and he’s a fundamentalist!” What’s more, she was concerned that I was taking the church in a fundamentalist direction through my leadership style. Now, if that doesn’t get the attention of a moderate Baptist pastor, nothing will!
I hope to unpack more of that conversation in later posts, but for this post, I want to make one simple point: simplistic labeling of others is not only confined to conservatives or fundamentalists. We moderates do it too.
Sometimes it is easy to pigeon-hole someone with a derogatory label and think that we’ve “nailed” that person. But often times in our eagerness to paint with a broad brush, we then miss some important distinctions and nuances . Take Dr. Rainer, for example. Yes, he is a Southern Baptist and the President of LifeWay Christian Services, the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. Yes, he’s aligned with the “Conservative Resurgence” and would not approve of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the national body that we’re affiliated with. But I must say that I’ve learned a lot about the unchurched from his research and books. I don’t know him personally, but I liked his article “On Building Bridges.” It doesn’t sound like something that a fundamentalist would write. And having read it, I too, will try not to let labels keep me from building bridges. And even if my church member is right about Dr. Rainer, it doesn’t mean that I can’t learn something from him, just as I’ve learned much about churches and the unchurched from Anthony Robinson, Dan Kimball, Darrell Guder, Reggie McNeal, Diana Butler Bass, Neil Cole, Robert Lewis, and Rick Warren.
It will be interesting to see what comes out of our reading and discussing Simple Church. So stay tuned!
