Posted on 03/11/2006 5:42:09 AM PST by WKB
Baptists are caught up in controversy again.
This time conservative Southern Baptists are in contention over a new rule approved by the International Mission Board that disqualifies future missionary candidates who admit to speaking in a charismatic "private prayer language."
Proponents say the new regulation is needed to emphasize Baptists' long-held position against charismatic practices such as praying and speaking in unknown tongues, or "glossalalia," a practice popular among Pentecostals and other groups.
The irony is that Jerry Rankin, the leader of the Richmond, Va.-based foreign mission board, has long used a charismatic prayer language in his private prayers. So, could the man who runs the worldwide organization of 5,000 missionaries be disqualified under the rule? Not at all. The new regulation is not retroactive.
The mission board already prohibits missionaries from publicly speaking in tongues, but in November added the regulation disqualifying new missionary candidates who, like Rankin, admit to having a private prayer language.
Future candidates who use a private prayer language also have a right to appeal to try to convince screening committees that their practice doesn't violate Baptist policy.
Rankin said in a press conference with Baptist editors that he's used a private prayer language for 30 years but doesn't encourage others to do it. Rankin strongly opposes publicly speaking in tongues.
One mission board trustee, the Rev. Wade Burleson, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Enid, Okla., has led the opposition to the new private prayer language rule and believes it may have been meant to discredit Rankin. Burleson criticized the new rule as narrow and restrictive.
"For the record, I do not have the gift of tongues," he said on his Web site. "I never have had it and I don't desire it, but I sure don't mind going to Africa and serving on a mission field with someone that prays in tongues in their prayer closet."
David Rogers, a Baptist missionary and son of the late Rev. Adrian Rogers, an icon among conservative Baptists, agreed. He said in a letter to Burleson that he doesn't use a private prayer language but works with many missionaries who do.
The Rev. Tom Hatley, chairman of the mission board, this week said trustees thought the rules were needed to address some problems with charismatic practices in Baptist missions in some parts of the world, particularly South America. He doesn't think the rules were meant to target Rankin.
"One of the reasons it hasn't come faster is that trustees knew Jerry Rankin had a private prayer language and the rule might be wrongfully perceived as trying to hurt him," said Hatley, pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Rogers, Ark.
Hatley, a native of Fort Worth who grew up in Glen Rose, sent out an open letter this week to pastors urging them to study the proposals and offer their views by e-mail. He included position papers quoting the late Rev. W.A. Criswell, longtime pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, and Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, as critics of charismatic practices.
"Most pastors and theologians among Southern Baptists of recent decades and of today regard the charismatic movement as divisive, encouraging spiritual pride, and stressing minor gifts out of proportion to biblical evidence," the paper states.
Burleson has said he opposes the new rule on his widely read Web site, www.wadeburleson.com. The trustees adopted, then rescinded at Hatley's request, a motion that the Southern Baptist Convention remove Burleson as a trustee.
Central to the controversy are different interpretations of the New Testament. The Book of Acts tells of the Holy Spirit coming down on the Day of Pentecost "like a rushing mighty wind." It says cloven tongues like fire appeared over Jesus' followers and they began to speak in other tongues. Non-Christians from many nations heard the story of Christ in their own language and scores were converted to the new faith.
Southern Baptists generally have taught that the event in Acts was a one-time miracle related to building up of the early church and that the tongues mentioned were then-known languages.
But Pentecostals and many charismatic Baptists, Catholics, Episcopalians and independent Christian groups say they experience their own New Testament-style Pentecost today. They believe the Holy Spirit comes over them, enabling them to speak a spiritual language and drawing them closer to God.
Regardless of the fun people like to have at the expense of Baptist, it is remarkable what the "Baptist Men's Association" has done for such as the Katrina victims - one example of their many good charitable and effective works.
You shouldn't. Hey, just because I haven't experienced something doesn't mean it's not true. Your nephew, the guy who spoke in tongues, and their whole church were no doubt having a real experience of God at that moment.
My point was that a lot of the people who appear to be praying in tongues may indeed be having a close connection with the Lord at that moment, but that doesn't necessarily mean everybody else who hears the babbling is being edified. Sometimes it really is just babbling to express religious joy, not a foreign language.
Amen.
Fact is tongues were a sign to the Jew (unbelievers) not believers (1Cor.14:21-22) before the Fall of Jerusalem (70AD).
Here's my .02, following up on the concerns I expressed in another post in this thread. Does this stuff get to the point where getting caught up in emotionalism drowns out any legitimate worship experience?
So true. Some time back I listened to a Baptist pastor from Houston called R.B. Thieme.< He got so fed up that he just got completely rid of the choir and the music director. That was that.
He said that the mission of the church was first, second, and third -- teach the Word. He was old school, kind of the Bobby Knight of pastor-teachers.
LOL! That is exactly what I have heard when present as a pastor supposedly veered into tongues during a otherwise rational and enlightening sermon. Needles to say that my esteem for said Pastor took a nose dive at that time.
The Bible says that God is not a God of confusion and such babble is confusing and disruptive. Therefore I reject all such babbling that I have heard so far as phony.
"Anyone who claims to speak in tongues, and makes unintelligible sounds, is either faking it, or possessed by something other than the spirit of God."
My thoughts exactly.
Tongues have two uses, one as a sign and the other as a gift. Tongues are a sign to unbelievers, yet 1 Cor 14:26 tells us to bring tongues to a church service. 1 Cor 14:22 he says that prophecy is not for unbelievers but for believers. Yet in 1 Cor 14:23-25, the unbeliever is repulsed by tongues and converted by prophecy. Interesting twist.
J/k.
What a shame. That takes all the fun out of the Baptists.
No we still have the liquor store. :>)
You know, no one is asking any of you to believe in the gift of speaking in tongues. If you really want to know the truth all you have to do is study it out and ask God to prove to you if what He has promised in His word is true. If you can not do that then you should not comment on something you have no understanding of. Speaking in tongues also known as the baptism of the Holy Ghost, IS in the bible. It is real. For you to mock something because YOU see it as foolish or don't understand it is very distasteful and definitely NOT very Christian. “For you are known by your love, one toward another.”
...1 Cor. 2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
...1 Cor. 1:27 But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;
Truly, you are walking on very dangerous ground for you are not just mocking some of God’s children but also the Holy Ghost. Both of which God takes great exception to.
...Matthew 18:6 But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
...Matthew 12:31-32 Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. [32] And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.
The SBC is reaping the results of allowing liberalism into it's ranks during the 60's and 70', and finally taking a stand against it in the 80's and 90's. THe disease took several years to get into the convention. It will take several years of dilligence to remove it.
HA!
Interesting thread, WKB.
To me, though, "private" is the operative word.
There's some good thoughts on the subject.
And, some funny ones, too. ;o)
"I thought the author's name made this article
a little suspect."
LOL!
***Can anyone help me find 'private prayer language' in my bible? ***
Wy, it is all through the Bible. Unknown tongue=foreign language.
If you are preaching to people who don't speak your language, you speak in their language. If you don't know it you better have a translator to translate your preaching. if you don't have a translator keep quiet because to them you are just speaking to the air as no one understands you.
In private, you pray to God in the language you know, probably English.
And here's what the Bible says:
Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.
And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; To another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues: But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will....Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
1 Corinthians 12:4-11, 29-31 and 13:8-10.
you not only have that right to judge, but you have a responsibility to judge whether something is from God or not!
So is this a yes or a no?
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