Looking For A Host?

June 28, 2005 @ 2:49 pm by Pressed

We just signed up one more website to join the long list of others who are now using bluehost. I have not mentioned it in awhile but due to some recent changes in bluehost I figured I would remind you all once again. If you are looking for a good domain then might I suggest bluehost.com. All of the cranium leakage websites are hosted on bluehost. I’ve also had several friends and my church sign up with blue host as well because of the service they provide. It used to be 2 gigs, but they have now upped it to 4 gigs of space. This is perfect for large amounts of storage, for pictures, and even for storing pod casts. We use ours to host 7 different blogs.

The other thing about Bluehost is they are efficient and helpful. Our other service provider went down all the time, but we have had very little down time with bluehost. They also have phone support that is extremely helpful. If you are looking to make a switch and you just have not made any decisions yet as to where you are going then make sure you check out bluehost.com.

While I am an affiliate of bluehost.com I am honestly not just trying to sell you on a webhost, I am letting you know that this is a good one to use and one you can trust. If you have any questions about it then feel free to e-mail me or leave a comment.

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The Hoagie Burger

@ 12:07 am by Pressed

When I went to Nashville for the Southern Baptist Convention I met up with a friend who moved to Nashville. He doesn’t get many visitors and so he was excited that we were coming down. We decided to leave the convention slightly early and go out to catch dinner with him. After walking about 5 blocks, uphill, in 85 degree weather we finally made it to his car which he had parked in front of the building where he works out so that he didn’t have to pay for parking. When we were getting into the car a guy approached asking for $1.75. My friend, being the kind hearted soul that he is, wanted to help this homeless man out and so he asked him what he wanted. The homeless guy said he just wanted to buy a couple hot dogs and some smokes. My friend told the guy that he would go to the gas station and buy him a couple hot dogs, but he wouldn’t buy him smokes and he wasn’t going to just give him money.

We piled into the car and drove to the gas station while the homeless guy sat down where we had met him and waited for us to come back with his hot dogs. I sat in the car as my friend went inside to get the hot dogs. When he returned he jumped back into the car and handed me the item that he had purchased. It was not a hot dog.

I said, “What is this.”
My friend responded, “It’s a deli sandwich.”
To which I said, “This is not a deli sandwich!”
“It says hoagie on it, so it has to be a deli sandwich.”
To which I said, “NO! It says hoagie burger. It’s a hoagie bun with a hamburger patty and cheese. This is something you have to heat up in the microwave, its not a deli sandwich.”
My friend replied, “It is a deli sandwich.”

This whole thing went on for about 3 minutes before my friend, ignoring my pleas, drove back to the place where we left the homeless guy and handed him an ice cold hamburger.

While I respect my friends heart, and his desire to want to help this guy, I have to say that his descision making ability is quite skewed. The poor homeless guy surely doesn’t have a microwave so that he can just heat it up. This guy had icey cold hamburger patty with cheese for dinner. Maybe he sold it for $1.75…

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Sole Membership: For it or Against it?

June 27, 2005 @ 12:25 am by Pressed

I made a post about sole membership a few days ago, but never gave my opinion on the whole issue. To be honest I had some major reservations about much of what Dr. Kelly had to say in regards to sole membership of NOBTS. I wrote a comment about this on Locust and Wild Honey which I am including here:

Well I fear I am the odd duck in the pond here but I would have to say that I was not convinced at all by Kelly and his presentation. I heard his side of the story both last year and this year. I have several very serious key issues with the way Kelly handled the situation. Both last year and this year Kelly said he wanted to come up with an alternate plan, but did he? Where is this plan? The convention has been working on this for 10 years and Kelly continually said sole membership is bad for NOBTS but never offered an alternate solution. They had no problem printing thousands of pages of information about sole membership and why it is wrong for NOBTS, why didn’t they also take that opportunity to print some alternatives? Don’t just say you are going to come up with alternatives; come up with them, show them to us, and get the ball rolling to change the issue instead of just standing up to say no to the SBC proposed plan. If NOBTS could come up with a valid alternative I think the convention would have seriously considered it.

It also seemed fishy to me that NOBTS sited a couple other entities that did not adopt sole membership due to legal council in Louisiana and the SBC lawyers pointed out that after first hand discussion with that council they found out that they didn’t adopt sole membership because they were not a legal corporation, not because of the law NOBTS is worried about. Kelly tried to compare apples and oranges all the while accusing the SBC of doing the same.

I would also disagree with Kelly’s assessment of the MoBap entities being an “apples to oranges” comparison. Being a staff member of a church in the MoBap convention and being someone who has witnessed the entities being taken over in our convention first hand, one of them being the school that I am an Alumni from, you can well imagine my reservations about this whole issue in the first place. While a huge chunk of NOBTS operating budget depends upon cooperative program dollars, I personally don’t think it is that far fetched to believe that they could still survive without it. Using private donations and raised tuition, just like MoBap University did, I think the seminary could survive and thrive. There are plenty of conventions that have split from the SBC that would jump in to its aid as well, such as the General Baptist Convention of Missouri that split from the Missouri Baptist Convention. I think NOBTS would in fact survive outside of SBC funding. In Missouri we thought it to be impossible and within a year we lost five agencies due to rouge trustees elected by our convention. I say it’s a smart move to recognize what could happen.

You mention the SBC using scare tactics, but what about the scare tactics Kelly used? Making the claim that the SBC executive committee is making a step towards centralized hierarchy is a big time scare tactic used by Kelly. Let us not forget who elects the president of the convention and who has ultimate control. This whole notion of taking a step towards a centralized power is a bit unfounded and if we are seriously worried about this then we need to change the way we elect and control the executive committee, not just say no to sole membership and expect that to protect us. Seriously, if the issue is really centralized control then why don’t we deal with that issue instead of just not voting for sole membership to “protect” our entities?

Some other things that I have found to be quite fishy on the part of NOBTS and Kelly’s arguments is first off the fact that over the past several years their opposition has changed. The reasons that they are declaring now are not the same reasons they started off with when rejecting the notion of sole membership for NOBTS. I personally think if NOBTS could have come up with a real clear reason to not do this and if it could be backed up by Louisiana law undoubtedly then the convention and the executive committee would have most definitely done something different.

They also pulled the liability card, which was the number one stated reason for all of the Missouri Baptist Convention agencies to pull out. They didn’t want the SBC to be sued and fund to be taken from the cooperative program. While this is a valid concern, the SBC lawyers have confirmed that the charter helps to protect the Convention instead of opening it up to liability. You can get further explanation of this on baptist2baptist.net.

I also find it fishy that there is a lack of written legal opinions coming from the seminary dealing with this issue. We hear only what Kelly says his legal council says and see very little of actual data or facts written by the legal council. The SBC has numerous written documents and data coming from legal council in and out of Louisiana.

I also think this whole centralized control thing is just an alarm to sound in order to make SBC messengers shudder in fear. I believe that the SBC consists of churches who elect messengers who attend the convention and make the votes. The Executive Committee has no power beyond what we as messengers give them. The executive committee is planning to also make itself a sole member of the Southern Baptist Convention, the same thing they ask of NOBTS.

You can get some more information about this issue and a response to these reservations about sole membership from baptist2baptist.net.

In a nutshell I found Dr. Kelly and the arguments given by NOBTS to be insufficient and full of unanswered questions that made me uneasy about their end game. Call me crazy, but I trust the president and the executive committee and the lawyers the convention has in place. I believe they have spent the last 10 years dealing with these very issues and that they are making the right decisions.

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Count Your Many Blessings, Name Them One By One

June 24, 2005 @ 11:49 pm by Pressed

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but life is passing by faster than I ever had imagined it would. I remember when I was a kid the summer months went by so slow. Time eeked along and it seemed like summer break was an eternity long. Now at the prime age of 26 life is moving so fast that I am just trying to hold on as tight as I can to try and keep everything together. Summer, winter, fall, and spring are all just small segments of time that I have to categorize things into so that I can get everything done that needs to be done. In the summer I am balancing the Youth mission trip, youth activities, seminary summer classes, vacation bible school, Southern Baptist Convention, and weekly church responsibilities with actually getting any type of personal life outside of the hustle and bustle of the summer schedule. Once I squeeze work, school, and a dating life into the mix I have very little time for just me. I have found that this is not just a pattern that I have developed, but adults, teens, and children alike have taken on too much this summer. We are all going and doing too much, too fast. As I pondered this today I realized that things happen so fast that I have very little time to just sit and think and very little time to realize what God is doing in my life. I am too busy to notice the blessings that God has given me. So I have decided to take a moment to think about some of the blessings that God has given me this summer.

First off I believe that the church I am currently serving in is part of God’s greater plan for my life. The people I work with and the people in our church are wonderful, good hearted people who I love dearly. While our church has its issues like any other church it actually deals with fairly little conflict and lots of grace and mercy. Even in the midst of busy schedules and poor attendance the youth program is doing great this summer. We are preparing to leave exactly one week from today on our youth mission trip with 45 people. I believe God is preparing my heart and the hearts of others on this trip to do some pretty awesome things and I look forward to that. I realized this year that our church is very blessed. We have enough money and support each year to send our teenagers on mission trips and there are many churches that can barely scrounge up enough money to send their students to a cheap camp, much less a mission trip out of state. I decided that I would reserve extra space this year, more than I normally get, and then invite other churches that I know don’t send their teens on mission trips. I prayed that God would fill those spaces and as of right now we almost have all 45 spaces filled. About 7 teens from other churches are getting to go on their first mission trip. I believe God gives us blessings and resources so that we are not just helping ourselves, but so that we can bless those around us. I believe God has great things in store and I can’t wait.

Secondly I would have to say that God has really blessed me in my personal relationships. I have strong Christian friends who stand by me and support me and even take large portions of their own time to help me out in ministry at church. Just this evening I had several friends over for a fish fry and we just sat around and talked. It is good to have people to confide in and to have fellowship with, especially Godly people who continue to help build me up. I also have to say that I have a wonderful girlfriend who far surpasses anyone I have dated. I did come to a point in my life that I became fed up with dating and told God I was done with it. I asked God to not let me date anyone else, unless it was someone special and a year later that happened. I’ve never been happier in a relationship and to be honest I have never had a more Godly, Christ-centered relationship than the one I have now. To have Godly friends and a Godly relationship is so beyond me that I believe it is only in the hands of God that I could be where I am today. I look at myself and know that I don’t deserve any of it.

Thirdly I would have to say that God has really blessed me in giving me the ability to do things and to be a part of things that I never would have experienced on my own. This year will be my 10th mission trip since I graduated high school, I’ve got to go to the MoBap convention, the Southern Baptist Convention, I’ve got to travel all over the U.S. and I’ve got to experience and meet some of the greatest minds, theologians, and pastors in our day and I get to be influenced and mentored by my own pastor. By the time I was 19 I had preached sermons, made hospital visits, led worship, and experienced many of the things that take place in ministry and since that time I have had excellent opportunities to do so much. I think I take a lot of that for granted and I shouldn’t. God has really blessed.

I think the fourth and last thing I will share tonight is that God has blessed my life in struggle and pain. Now that may not sound like it is very good because no one really wants to experience strife, persecution, struggles, and painful experiences and yet it is through these trials that I have grown beyond what I once was. My family is far from being what anyone would consider a Christian family and I grew up farther away from the church and Godly things than most people. While I knew very little about church as a kid, it wasn’t until my Jr. year in high school that I really started to go to church and understand anything. My family didn’t and still doesn’t go to church and the influences and friends I have had through the years have never led me down a very spiritual path, at least until I met a couple people in band. They talked me into going to church and from that time on I took a very different path than the rest of my family. God changed my heart and who I was, and yet it wasn’t easy to stand up against everything I had become. I gave up my friends, my job, and the respect of others to follow a path that seemed distant from the rest of the world and yet I never felt so full of life. But I found out that even in the midst of spiritual things, darkness lurks around every corner. Even people who seem to be spiritual and people who seem like they have it all together can actually be living in darkness. Unfortuanly I found that there are those who can hurt you so deeply that you want to give up. Even in ministry, even people you trust so fully can betray you and everything you ever knew for their own perverted, godless paths and leave you stranded and alone and confused. Instead of giving up though I turned to another path and began to read and read and read and the more I read God’s word the more I understood that it is not in man that I place my trust but in God alone. Man fails and will fail, but God will never fail. This of course was not the last painful lesson I learned, but over the years it probably was one of the most painful. Through struggle and pain God shapes us into the people he wants us to be. That is a tough lesson to learn, but it is a blessing none the less.

Think about how God has blessed your life and feel free to share in the comments.

Thank you Lord Jesus for the blessing you give in life and I pray that you would open my eyes to see all those things that you are doing in my life that I miss or ignore.

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Sole Membership

June 21, 2005 @ 9:14 pm by Pressed

During the buisness session of the Southern Baptist Convention today one of the main issues was over sole membership. All of the seminaries of the SBC have adopted the sole membership policy except for New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Last year the convention voted to tell NOBTS that we wanted them to adopt sole membership. The president of the seminary said that if the convention told them to do it, they would do it. This year NOBTS decided that the convention did not have enough information on this issue and they passed out a full page sheet giving 10 freqently asked questions on Sole Membership. The convention responded by also passing out a full page sheet with answers or responses to the 10 questions. For your convenience I am going to list NOBTS’s questions and response and then the SBC Counsel response to each question.

1. What is the issue about sole membership?

NOBTS: The central issue: What is the best way for an SBC entity in Louisiana to protect its relationship with the Southern Baptist Convention? The discussion is about finding the best strategy to achieve this end for a Louisiana-based institution.

SBC: There is no issue about it except from this Seminary.

2. Is there any danger of the relationship between the Seminary and the SBC changing?

NOBTS: No. Both the legal counsel of the Seminary and an independent legal consultant have reviewed the Seminary’s charter and Louisiana law, and have concluded it is not possible for the Trustees of the Seminary to change the school charter without prior approval from the SBC.

SBC: We hear this question asked more often, more ominously and more to the point: “Could the Seminary leave the control of the Southern Baptist Convention?” The answer to that question is, “We want to make certain that it cannot.” It is a waste of energy to speculate about the level of that danger; let’s just fix it for certain. Litigation in Missouri and Georgia has swirled in part around whether the state convention is the sole member of its entity corporations. Except for NOBTS, the SBC entities each declare up front and boldly in their charters that the SBC is indeed the member and the only member of the entity corporation.

3. What is sole membership?

NOBTS: Sole membership is a legal approach to the organization of a non-profit corporation making one person or organized body the only member of that corporation, giving the sole member authority to control completely the affairs of the corporation.

SBC: It is a widely used nonprofit corporate structure by which a parent corporation is the only member of a subsidiary corporation. The SBC is a corporation; there are twelve corporations subsidiary to the SBC. By being the sole member of these subsidiary corporations, the Convention corporation shares in explicit ways in the governance of the subsidiary corporations which are otherwise governed by their boards of trustees. There are no ifs, ands or buts about the Convention’s rights; nor is there any ambiguity about the responsibilities of the boards of trustees. Good fences make good neighbors. When legal instruments are clear, courts will more likely understand them.

4. Who proposed the sole membership strategy?

NOBTS: The staff of the SBC Exucutive Committee made the original recommendation to the Seminary. It was suggested to the Executive Committee staff by the Tennessee-based law firm representing the SBC.

SBC: Our law firm proposed it. The creation of the North American Mission Board in 1995 offered us the first opportunity in recent history to state in a subsidiary charter, in modern statutory language, the Southern Baptist way by which governance over an institution is shared between the messengers and the institution’s board. The sole member structure was (and remains) the hands-down best way to declare that division in the SBC tradition.

5. What is the legal basis of the sole membership strategy?

NOBTS: The sole membership proposal was crafted specifically on the basis of a law known as the Revised Model Non-profit Corporation Act (Model Act) which allows the sole member to share some of its control and authority with the directors or Trustees of a corporation. Louisiana is one of 41 states that never adopted the Model Act.

SBC: The legal basis is the nonprofit acts in the nine states in which our subsidiaries are incorporated. The legal basis is not the Model Act, as the Seminary suggests. The Model Act is a document of the American Bar Association. Dwelling on the Model Act, and fretting that it has not been adopted in Louisiana, leads to confusion. The better question is, “Does the Louisiana nonprofit corporation act provide a basis for the sole membership structure in that state?” The answer is, “Yes.”

6. What benefits does sole membership appear to offer in Model Act states?

NOBTS: Under the Model Act the rights of SBC ownership and the rights of Trustee operational control can each be protected. This legal seperation of rights and responsibilities also seperates liability, so that the sole member cannot be held liable for the actions of the entity.

SBC: This is an irrelevant question. Sole membership offers the same benefits in every state in which our subsidiaries are incorporated, including Louisiana.

7. Why do the benefits of sole membership under the Model Act not apply to NOBTS?

NOBTS: The Model Act is a state law, not a federal law. Since Louisiana does not have the Model Act, the benefits it offers in other states do not apply in the case of NOBTS.

SBC: The benefits of sole membership do most certainly apply to NOBTS. Worrying about the Model Act obfuscates that fact.

8. What are the legal problems with sole membership in Louisiana?

NOBTS: Unlike states with the Model Act, Louisiana law does not specifically give the sole member the power to transfer some of its controls and liabilities to the Trustees of the entity. In the opinion of numerous Louisiana attorneys we have consulted, under Louisiana law the sole member always has complete control and therefore may assume the risk of liability for entity actions. The Trustees of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary are concerned that in our litigious society, if the sole membership strategy were adopted, the Cooperative Program could be held hostage to lawsuits involving the seminary.

SBC: We believe there are none. That is our opinion and it is the opinion of the Louisiana law firm we retained to consult with us on this subject. Before the Seminary began to say it was worried about the Model Act which Louisiana did not have, the Seminary said it was worried about the Napoleonic Code which Louisiana used to have. Sole-member nonprofit corporations exist in Louisiana. NAMB created one there last year.

9. What are the polity problems with sole membership?

NOBTS: Sole membership is a step toward the centralization of control in Southern Baptist life. It is not the size of the step, but the direction of the step that conserns us. Historically Southern Baptists have embraced the principle of cooperation and rejected the principle of centralized denominational control. We believe that authority over Convention entities belongs to local Southern Baptst churches alone. These churches exercise this authority by sending messengers to the Convention, who elect Trustees to represent them in directing the entities. These Trustees are accountable to the messengers of the Convention. This is the Baptist way of doing the work of the Convention. This is the process used in the Conservative Resurgence.

SBC: There are none. The Seminary sounds the alarm of “centralization of control.” That is an alarm guaranteed to frighten Southern Baptists. It is a false alarm.

10. What about the action of the other SBC entities to adopt sole membership?

NOBTS: Ten of the other entities that have adopted sole membership are in states that have the Model Act. Sole membership thus functions differently in these states than in Louisiana. Also, some of the other entity heads have had second thoughts about sole membership.

SBC: They all adopted sole member charters and did so with little commotion. The structure passed muster with every law firm of every entity. It has worked for ten years. No “centralization of control” has occurred, no polity has been violated, no legal problems have been encoutered, and the Convention has not paid one cent for the liabilities of its entities.

The SBC responses came from the firm of Guenther, Jordan & Prince, General Counsel to the SBC and i’m not sure about where the responses came from on the NOBTS side of things.

What are your thoughts on Sole Membership? Leave your comments below.

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