Ho-ly crap! When I began writing this series on the intermixing of SBC and Acts 29 interests, I was not expecting the most spectacular part to be Matt Chandler’s appearance at the FBC Jacksonville Pastors’ Conference. Given Mark Driscoll’s reputation and propensity for being a little extreme I was sure some detail would come out of the weekend at Southeastern that his critics might latch onto and make a fuss over. But, little did I expect Chandler to travel over from Dallas to Jacksonville and point the two-edged sword of the gospel right at the throat of the SBC idols.
Here’s what went down. Tuesday morning, Matt Chandler gave a session at FBC Jax which was structured to be a lesson/Q&A about how to reach the younger generation. During this time he went through his personal history and his experiences in being called to, straightening out, and growing his church, The Village in Dallas, TX. This turned out to be a nice testimony interspersed with comments about how The Village became what it is today, a rapidly growing congregation of 6000 people spread over 10 services and 2 locations.
There were a couple of interesting points in this period. First, Chandler wasted no time getting the fact that he is a Calvinist out on the table. It wasn’t in a “I’m a Calvinist and so is God” pseudo-instructing manner, but simply came out as a depiction of who he is overall ministerially. Also, there were a number of instances when he made comments that, though not directed at FBC Jax, could be taken as against FBC Jax if someone wanted to pick a fight. For example, Chandler said that his conviction was to not spend $40 million on a new facility for his church.
The last interesting remark to come out of the morning session with Matt Chandler was when he said that he is thankful to the older generation of Southern Baptists for fighting the war for inerrancy and winning, but that now they need to learn to stop fighting for secondary issues over and above simply focusing on the primary concern of the gospel. When he said this I was amazed. It seems similar thoughts have been in my head (and on my blog) in the past, so to hear Chandler voice them on a stage like FBC Jax, if at nothing more than a minor session among early-rising preachers, was an incredible moment.
However, as it turned out, that incredible moment that I felt when Chandler said this during the AM session, grew into an incredible hour as this message elaborated was the topic of his afternoon sermon. Using the example of the church at Ephesus to illustrate (Acts 18-19, Revelation 2), Chandler talked about what happens when a formerly vibrant community of God remains biblically faithful and yet still “abandon[s] the love [they] had at first” (Revelation 2.4). This, he claims, is what has happened in the SBC as church leaders have promoted secondary issues, specifically moralism, into the primary focus of the church to the exclusion of emphasizing the gospel’s power to salvation.
After using various examples and situations to hammer on this for a while, sometimes to much applause, sometimes to a reserved acknowledgment of the veracity of his statements, Chandler moved to the story of the Prodigal Son as a close. He briefly overviewed the story and then began describing the last scene, with the good son standing in defiance against the celebration of the Prodigal’s return. The son stands firm against the father’s plea to come and celebrate and in his selfishness complains that, “You never gave me a young goat!” (Luke 15.29). This, Chandler claims, is what the older SBC is doing. They are crying, “We want our goat!” and then turning various moral stances and practical convictions into a goat of favor which they can use against the world saying, “Look what we’ve got. You should get some too.” And it is this that Chandler says is causing them to lose the younger generation from the ranks of the SBC.
When he finished with his message, my blood was pumping harder than it previously had been. Seeing the way in which Chandler took a hard message from Scripture and personal observation and drove it home, all while standing in the pulpit of a benchmark of SBC tradition in FBC Jax, was an unbelievable experience. My hope is that this was a message taken to heart by the pastors and SBC leaders in attendance, and that that old familiar enemy of pride doesn’t just cause them to bull up and deflect the charges to those around them while avoiding any serious self-reflection here. Matt Chandler really went out on a limb with his message at the FBC Jax Pastors’ Conference, but he said something that needed to be just put out there and I pray God can now use that to ignite change for the better within the ranks of the larger SBC communion.
