Odds and Ends, People

Doing Your Best

67 Comments

I wonder, have you done your best for Jesus? I know that we live under all that grace nonsense now (my, how I miss a good old-fashioned stoning!) but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a good guilt trip now and again about your works or lack thereof. Jesus is keeping score.

Did you waste a precious minute today? Did you spend ten minutes goofing off when you could have been praying? Did you need to eat at that restaurant (and leave no tract with your tip!) instead of giving the money to faith-promise missions? Obsess, my friend, obsess.

Never forget that God only values you for what you can do for Him. And by “Him” I mean me, of course. Do you have any experience driving a bus? No? What about using a toilet scrubber? Be careful or your wood, hay, and stubble will make quite the bonfire on judgment day.

You’ll never be good enough no matter how hard you try — so try harder! Have you done your best? The answer is always no. Now get back to work.

Outreach

Mission Boards

41 Comments

There are approximately 8,853 Independent Fundamental Baptist mission boards in the United States. These organizations play a dual role of providing essential support and assistance to fundamentalist missionaries and giving sinecures to an army of vice presidents, and board representatives who would otherwise have to get actual jobs.

IFB mission boards actually support a wide range of missions-minded folks including the following:

Fundy missionaries actually serving on the foreign field: 406
Fundy missionaries serving in US cities that have “no gospel witness” (but more importantly do have a McDonalds): 5,284
Fundy wannabe missionaries who will spend eight years on ‘deputation’ and then take a job as a traveling salesman for a tract printing company: 14,836

Mission boards ostensibly create accountability for their missionaries while on the field, which is a rather tricky thing to do given the notion that each New Testament church is not answerable to anybody but God — including the one that the missionary just started five minutes ago. Very few people are as free to do whatever they want as a fundy missionary in his foreign church. Time would fail to tell the tales.

In addition to its other vital functions, the fundy mission board also serves as a way of identifying which ‘camp’ the missionary is in. This is very important since Hyles churches won’t support BJU missionaries and vice versa. To make sure that the missionary remains pure, the mission board does the work of setting standards on things like which English Bible translation their missionaries can use in countries that don’t even speak English and what color spouses their children can marry. Where would missionaries be without such guidance?

Go ye into all the world and raise money for missions. Somewhere, a vice president’s salary is depending on you.

A silly blog dedicated to Independent Fundamental Baptists, their standards, their beliefs, and their craziness.