John Vaughn: " Evangelical Fundamentalist Convergence"?

For example, I rarely think Christians should separate over music used by other Bible-believing Christians.

I think it’s a little more complicated than that, myself. I would say that there is a need to recognize different conclusions that have been reached, and when there are times the people with differences get together, everyone needs to be willing to defer to one another a little. I think the T4G sessions led by Bob Kauflin provide a wonderful model of what that could look like, given the variety of practice in those gathered.

If someone is seen to be purposefully thumbing their noses at those with different conclusions, in a setting like a conference or camp where many churches get together, the responsible parties might need to be confronted… not necessarily because of the specific music choices, but because their lack of sensitivity has contributed to a discordant spirit. There are different ways to handle this other than the T4G model, too… one suggestion we had after the Midwest Congress I organized in 2015 was to reduce or eliminate the congregational singing. That’s something I would consider, though it wouldn’t be my first choice.
So, if people demonstrated a tendency to flaunt their differences with brothers they knew were making an effort to fellowship with them, I would consider ending participation in such an event or working with that congregation or leader (even if I personally wasn’t offended). There are better ways to make your point. If that is separating over music, I would do that.
I would also perhaps prioritize meetings I attended based on some factors related to music. For example, when we chose a week to attend an event as a family a few years ago, one of the things we took into account as we made the choice of which week to attend was the kind of music that tended to be featured. I’m not sure if that is “separation,” but we made an effort to be selective.

Greg and Steve have blessed Mark with back to back homers. My journey and position is similar to Steve’s. (I think he and I have at least one mutual good friend who isn’t “exactly” like us.) I was Greg’s pastor many years ago and take the credit (blame?) for encouraging him to ask questions.

They have summed up the situation very well. I tried to be a pastor like the one you knew Mark but I often found myself in a minority and outnumbered by those to whom “separation” seemed to be the cure to every problem and the reflexive action to any change.

[Greg Linscott]

For example, I rarely think Christians should separate over music used by other Bible-believing Christians.

I think it’s a little more complicated than that, myself. I would say that there is a need to recognize different conclusions that have been reached, and when there are times the people with differences get together, everyone needs to be willing to defer to one another a little. I think the T4G sessions led by Bob Kauflin provide a wonderful model of what that could look like, given the variety of practice in those gathered.

…………

Greg,

You’re right. It is complicated. I was trying to be brief. I’m thinking more about disagreements over music, what churches use, contemporary, traditional, blended. I can’t think of when/why I would separate from a brother because of the music he uses in his church. We may’ve reached different conclusions on what music should be used. We might not partner for certain events. There could be other things accompanying the music that make it impossible to participate or fellowship but not simply because of the church music. And I agree that we should be selective in our choices. Sometimes we don’t have a choice and have to bear it (like if you’re sitting on the platform and getting ready to speak).

I’m reminded that years ago when I was a student at BJ I traveled the summers with Neighborhood Bible Time. The summer of 1975 or 1976 I was in a Baptist Church in Texas. It may’ve been BBF. The morning service had a band with electric guitars. To me it was a cacophony especially from the background I came from. I had a hard time with it. Plus it was badly done. And I had to get up and preach. So I’m not an anything goes guy for music - in our church at least. I don’t like performance or entertainment. We don’t have a choir or any special music. It’s all congregational with a worship team on the side. I just don’t pay much attention to what other churches are doing musically.

I’ve been in and to churches with great music. One of my favorites was Mike Harding’s church when I used to speak there (he hasn’t had me back recently but I still consider him a friend :-). The music was beautiful, God-honoring, with excellence. I love many of the classic hymns. In our church we are much more blended. We sing hymns and contemporary songs, have a couple guitars, a keyboard, a drum, a harp, sometimes a flute. We are careful in choosing songs for their message but we are far too contemporary for many. We worship the Lord and I believe He is honored both at First Baptist Troy and Grace Church of Philly.

I grew up in North Philly and ran the streets with gangs. I did a lot of fighting. I won some. I lost some. I learned to pick my fights. Well I tried anyway. Sometimes they pick you. I’m still learning to pick my fights. Music is low on the list.

Steve

We’d arrive at a few different conclusions on things, Steve, but I think on this specific issue it’s becoming lower on my list, too. Not that there aren’t principles to be considered in the choices we make, but the practical fact is that you have a generation of Evangelicals (and many Fundamentalists at home, let’s be honest) who have been raised listening to music that would not be “traditional instrumentation and style,” let’s say. For better or worse, my generation and my parents’ might have been making more of a statement embracing the innovative styles and so on, but to the current generation, it’s the environment they’ve been raised in. I like to joke sometimes that the kind of music that would have gotten me suspended from my Christian day school as a teen is now the default ringtone on my 80 year old deacon’s phone. :) When we were growing up, they wouldn’t play pop music in stores and restaurants… they would do the Muzak versions. :) Today, you can hardly find a public place where they don’t play some version of it. This is the environment we find ourselves in today, and while I don’t think that means we can’t critique it and go against the grain of culture, we have to approach these things differently than we did in the 1980s. The landscape is different. The worship wars are over, and the “traditionals” are surviving in occupied territory.

48 hours since money was paid. No access to online subscription. Thus far, here is the only communication I have received from the FBFI:

Congratulations. You just discovered what every FBFI member under 65 already knew…that the FBFI is John Vaughn and a part-time secretary who have limited technology skills and infrastructure.

Be patient. Call 1-800-379-6856 Monday.

…but it is illustrative of a problem others have highlighted. If you want to communicate and interact on the web, you need to have faster response times. It is certainly not a doctrinal matter, but it is indicative of a generational divide. It’s like stubbornly insisting that you’re going to retain communicating in the language used by telegrams rather than adapting to new protocols…
FBFI OFFICE -(STOP)-
IN NEED OF ACCESSING ARTICLES IN ELECTRONIC FORMAT -(STOP)- HAVE WIRED FUNDS TO HOME OFFICE -(STOP)- AWAITING ACCESS CODES -(STOP)- PLEASE ADVISE
That’s not to say that Tyler’s approach to highlighting this is the best way one could do it. But it is an issue, and one that could easily be solved through automation.

If you want to see an example of antiquated presentation form a similar group, check this out:

http://www.theprojector.org/

I have a Steve Green 8 track for anyone who can read an entire issue.

[Ron Bean]

If you want to see an example of antiquated presentation form a similar group, check this out:

http://www.theprojector.org/

I have a Steve Green 8 track for anyone who can read an entire issue.

I guess we’re a little off topic. I hadn’t seen or heard about this for years. A quick check on some of the authors - interesting - Bean , Bauder, Doran. Who’s Who of Fundamentalism. Will be looking for new articles by these contributors.

Greg wrote:

That’s not to say that Tyler’s approach to highlighting this is the best way one could do it. But it is an issue, and one that could easily be solved through automation.

You are a very nice man, Greg. You take great pains to be firm, but unoffensive. I do appreciate it. I usually am nice, too. Not quite as nice as you, but I’m usually a pleasant sort of guy. Just not on this thread. But, you can’t really fault me - Absalom really wasn’t such a nice guy, either.

Mark - I know the FBFI is probably just two guys in an office (or, maybe three). I expected it to take a while to get access. I’m not offended. This delay only demonstrates the larger point - the organization is outmoded and irrelevant. Their bizarre attacks in this latest Frontline issue have demonstrated their irrelevance to the world. I have nothing against any of the FBFI leadership personally. We’d probably get along great. I just think the organization has made itself useless and irrelevant.

If I were in a more political position I’d consider being more careful to build bridges, seek common ground, and all that other “coalition building” stuff. In other words, I’d consider being “nicer.” I’ve just never cared about fundamentalist politics. I told a VP at Fairhaven in an email once I would never accept one of their students as missionary candidates at my church because their graduates typically know nothing about theology. He was offended. I wasn’t being rude, I was being blunt. I was being forthright. I didn’t cloak my disdain with a flurry of tap-dancing.

So it is with this thread. And, if I can draw a parallel, so it is with criminal investigations. Cut through the nonsense and go to the heart of the issue - everything else is tap-dancing. The FBFI has declared war. That is fine. I will declare war, too.

The rusted jalopy that is the FBFI has risen from the junkyard to sally forth once more in defense of what they hold dear. How cute. I look forward to receiving my online access via carrier pigeon so I can see what they have to say.

72 hours since money was paid. No access to my online subscription.

We shall see what Monday brings. Until then, my friends …

thread with an FBFI Board member this morning. One point he brought up was Mr. Vaughn’s arricle sought o deal with principles and not personalities. I added that was in sharp contrast with the FBF of a generation or so ago when you’d get a list the size of the phone book and the principles.

Tyler,

I get what you are saying. But there is a reason I’m “taking great pains to be nice,” as you said. As I tried to demonstrate with the picture, I do think of many FBFI men as friends. I’ve asked them to speak in venues when I’ve had the opportunity. That picture I took was taken later the same day where Matt Recker and I shared a lovely dinner of steaks cooked outside on a grill with several other pastors. We enjoyed true fellowship. I think of Matt as a friend, and Don too. We’ve shared less face time, but I recruited Don as a moderator way back when we we launched SI… he was one of the originals.
But to answer Rob Fall’s observation, it is about principle, yes… but it is also about personalities for me. Not celebrities and high profile personalities, but I have made it my business to get to know some of the actual people. I have met some of these people being called “convergent’ (and perhaps I’m one of them being labeled), and count them too as friends. I have spent a weekend with Phil Johnson, and still have a pretty good relationship with him as a result (I think). I sat in Mark Dever’s office and watched him prepare a Sunday sermon. I just had dinner at Kevin Bauder’s house a little over a week ago. I’m not trying to name drop here, I’m trying to make the point that it’s hard to keep a war going when you know the people, and you understand what they are and aren’t trying to accomplish.

I don’t have universal agreement probably with any of these people I’ve mentioned. I don’t always agree with myself, for that matter! :) But it saddens me when we have things like this Frontline issue, because I see the impersonal assumptions being made, when it seems a pass is given to friends because “they know (that person’s) heart.” I’m going to say that if some of the critics sat down with some of the people they are criticizing, and they really listened to one another… they might not convince one another on every point, but I suspect there would be far less criticism and much less alarm, and a better sense that though we might not always go about things the same way, we aren’t on different teams, either.

[Mark_Smith]

I was not raised in a fundamentalist church. The fundamental Baptist church that I attended was healthy with love and respect for all (and somehow, the pastor an FBFI man! And a BJU grad to boot! How can that be?).

So help me out. This is a serious question, since I do not know what you are referring to.

1- What is meant when one of you have referred to “extra-biblical trappings” and others implied it? Can you give me 3 examples (If one of them refers to Hyles and his minions… skip that. I couldn’t care less about him).

2-When was it ever to be the goal of a Christian to be “relevant” to the culture around us and to the larger “squishy” Christian community?

Mark

Mark, count me among those who have been blessed by BJU grads and the like. But really, like Steve and Greg have noted, it’s more or less about hot button social issues like beverage alcohol, music with a beat, dancing (to the same), voting for Democrats, going to public schools, homeschooling when the pastor wants the day school filled, day school when the pastor endorses homeschooling, courtship vs. dating, clothing, Bible versions, and the like. And to be fair, you’ll see in the evangelical world parallel rules like no hymns, pushing of dancing, must go to a megachurch, and the like. Lots of us like rules when grace gets too difficult, and applying liberty in Christ seems to be very, very difficult.

The thing I can add is that we ignore Hyles and the like at our peril. They work for cheap, and Christian Book Distributors and others will carry just about anything they think they can sell, including flat out heretics like T.D. Jakes and Joel Osteen. So you will find many of these ideas in the craziest places.

I, too, get what you’re saying. I get along with all sorts of people who aren’t like me:

• I actually think Bro. Kent Brandenburg (for example) is one of the sharper guys around on the blogosphere, even though he and I have very different ideas about the preservation of Scripture.
• I asked he and another man to my right, Bro. Thomas Ross, to read and critique a long paper I wrote about J.R. Graves and Landmarkism a year or so ago. They didn’t like the paper, but they gave me feedback.
• I’ve sat and listened to a senior GARBC guy talk with me about fundamentalism over several long car trips.
• I fellowshipped for a few years with a whole group of GARBC guys in central Illinois who were to my left and much more “evangelical” than I was.
• Some of my Seminary profs were FBFI. Maranatha in general trends more towards that flavor of fundamentalism than the “convergent” side.

I’ve sat with and learned from a lot of folks from all over the place. I like them all. I take on-board some stuff and jettison others. But, here is the difference:

• Bro. Brandenburg never called me an Absalom (at least, not yet!)
• The evangelical Pastors I fellowshipped with never called me a legalist
• The GARBC guy never told me I was a foolish youngster
• It fell to the FBFI to call me an Absalom, to accuse me and others like me of “hidden agendas,” and to paint us as “neo-neo-evangelicals.”
• It also fell to the FBFI to label so-called “convergents” as alleged “moderates,” just like the feckless Baptists who refused to separate over the Gospel during the Northern Convention battles in the early portion of last century.
• It also fell to the FBFI to implicitly smear other fundamentalist leaders who don’t toe the line with them

I see nothing to be gained by polite throat-clearing and regretful head shaking (e.g. “Well, guys, come on now - you know that’s a bit over the top …”). I’m not in fundamentalist politics, and I doubt I ever will be. And, after my candid remarks about the FBFI (“rusted jalopy,” anybody?), I don’t think I’m anybody’s idea of a good candidate for coalition building!

This Frontline issue hearkens back to a pestilential, virulent strain of fundamentalism that deserves to die, die, die. I’ll do everything I can to help dig its grave. Shovel, anyone?