Courier Conversations
This Podcast of Courier Conversations will be a conversation of topics with a variety of guests that concern, inspire and inform Christians about current events Worldwide. We hope you'll find our stories informing and encouraging in your daily walk with Christ.
Courier Conversations
Baptist Convictions: Identity in an Age of Division
What does it mean to be Baptist in today's polarized religious landscape? Can strong theological convictions coexist with genuine kindness toward those who disagree? Nate Akin believes they not only can but must go together.
In this thought-provoking conversation, Nate unpacks the framework of his book "Convictional, Confessional, Cheerful Baptists," revealing how our theological commitments should shape both what we believe and how we engage with others. As executive director of the Pillar Network and founder of Baptist 21, Nate brings unique insights into denominational cooperation and Baptist identity.
The discussion explores how the very doctrines of grace many Baptists cherish should make them the most gracious people in theological discussions. "We should mean what we say (convictional), say what we mean (confessional), and say what we mean without being mean (cheerful)," Nate explains, cutting to the heart of his message.
Particularly compelling is Nate's candid admission that his book partly stems from battling his own tendencies toward theological arrogance. If salvation truly comes by unmerited grace, shouldn't that produce humility rather than haughtiness in our doctrinal positions?
Beyond personal application, the conversation addresses why denominational distinctives matter in an age that often dismisses them as irrelevant. Nate makes a compelling case that understanding Baptist identity isn't just about tradition but about how we understand the church's nature and mission in the world.
Whether you're a lifelong Baptist wondering about your denominational roots or someone curious about how theological conviction and Christian charity can work together, this episode offers refreshing insights for navigating faith in a divided world.
Find Nate's book "Convictional, Confessional, Cheerful Baptists" at courierpublishing.com or on Amazon.
https://baptistcourier.com
https://bobslone.com/home/podcast-production/
I'm Jeff Robinson and this is Courier Conversations. Welcome to this episode. Today we are going to be interviewing and discussing, interviewing one of our, one of our first Baptist Courier authors and Nate Akin, 1821 line, and looking at one of our first books. Nate, you were one of our first authors, so you're always going to be meaningful to us. I have literally known Nate Aiken since he was a teenager and at Southern Seminary. His father, a dear friend, some of you may know him, danny Aiken, you probably know many of our listeners will know your dad, president of Southwestern Theological Seminary, but before that was provost at my alma mater, southern Seminary, and a very dear friend, fellow Georgian, fellow Georgia bulldog, like you.
Speaker 3:So that makes this doubly pleasurable.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Courier Conversations. Yes, for sure. Glad to be here, thankful for you guys and, yeah, excited to talk about the book.
Speaker 1:Well, Nate serves as executive director of the Pillar Network. He's also the founder and director of Baptist 21. He is married to Kelsey. They have two children, Ada and Ryland. Nate has also served as a pastor and church planter in Raleigh, North Carolina. He's a busy man and I believe you're currently pursuing a PhD studies at Southeastern Seminary. That's right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So stay busy. And getting close to the end of seminars there and hopefully in the writing phase by next year, and so, yeah, plugging along with that. So life is busy for sure.
Speaker 1:Well again, I know Nate and his brothers. They're kind of like a theological dynasty. There's a bunch of Dr Akins out there right now. We're working towards that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we say that we are not Renaissance men. We can't sing, we can't paint, we can't fix anything, but we can talk sports and theology. So that's about what we can do.
Speaker 1:Does anything else really matter? That's what we think.
Speaker 2:So I don't know if anybody else agrees with that.
Speaker 1:College football and good theology. And good ecclesiology, really that makes the world go round.
Speaker 2:And so.
Speaker 1:I think our friend Al Mohler might take one of those out of it, but he's outvoted Mary Mohler would agree with us though.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Yeah, your dad was my preaching professor at Southern Seminary, so he taught me how to preach and a lot else and, just like I said, a very dear friend and he wrote the foreword to your book. The book is Convictional, confessional, cheerful Baptists. And first of all, before we do that, before we launch into the book, tell us about the Pillar Network. What is it, what is its primary mission, and also about Baptist 21,.
Speaker 2:Before we start on the book, what is it, what is its primary mission? And also about Baptist 21,. Before we start on the book yeah, so Pillar now is almost 15 years old. Pillar started as a for lack of a better term we would just call it affinity-based rather than geographically-based Baptist association, and so the kind of impetus behind it is we understand that the best way we can be about the Great Commission, the best way we can be about making disciples in all nations, is the starting and strengthening of churches. So we see the local church as not disposable in the mission of God, but primary in the mission of God, and so we think the best way we can kind of run after the Great Commission is, again, the starting and strengthening of churches. We want to do that all over the world and we want to do that around a common DNA. So part of, again, the affinity rather than geographically based association means there are going to be some what we call DNA points and obviously a confession of faith that guides what we're trying to do. One of the things that we just say is, if we're going to do church work together, we need to agree on kind of what the church is and what the church does, and so what we're trying to do is center around six DNA point. Again, this kind of comes out of a reformed Baptist confession. But those 16 points would be we're committed to gospel proclamation, and so we believe that the gospel both is what justifies, centers and sanctifies saints. The gospel forms the church, then the gospel goes out from the church, and so we're committed to gospel proclamation. Second, the authority of the Bible. Again, this is our playbook, this is our authoritative guide for how we basically believe and for life and practice, not just for what we believe but for how we would shape the church. How would our individual lives would look like? So, the authority of the Bible.
Speaker 2:The next one is where we'd start to maybe differ from other groups and that would be that we're committed to live expository preaching. So that's sort of a positive statement rather than a negative statement to what we're committed to. So we believe that we would sort of not be for the video multi-site, but we're for in-person teaching of the Word. You know, we would back that up with some scriptures, particularly places like 1 Peter 5 about the elders need to know the people. The sheep of the congregation need to know the lives of their elders, and so they need to know the man who's feeding them the word, which is one of the primary responsibilities of a pastor. And so live expository preaching. Again. Another one.
Speaker 2:The fourth one that would be maybe different from some, particularly even in the SBC, we're committed to a qualified male plurality, eldership and, with that, congregationalism. So we are elder-led, not elder-ruled. I believe that the office of elder pastor, overseer, is for qualified men only, but also believe, as historic Baptists, in congregationalism. So we believe in meaningful membership and that meaningful membership is exercising that membership through, uh, the congregational governance. The fifth one would be what we're going to talk about some today is that we're going to organize our cooperation around a confession, and that's going to be that. We're confessionally Baptist, so we're unashamedly Baptist, uh, happy to be Baptist, we, we think that it's the most faithful representation of what we see, particularly when it comes to polity, in the New Testament. And so we're going to try to start Baptist churches because we think that's what reflects the ecclesiology of the New Testament, and again, we're going to talk some about that today.
Speaker 2:And then the final one is just kingdom minded and what we mean by that. It's kind of what guides our cooperation. We don't, we certainly want all of our churches to grow. We want them to grow both in the depth of the saints there but also in the number of the saints there. But we want our churches to be open-handed to share their resources with other churches so that they can start to strengthen other you know other works. And so, with Kingdom Minded, we're thinking we're not hoping for every single church and pillar to just get themselves as big as they can, but rather for them to be free-handed with their resources, meaning people and other things in order to help other churches, whether that's churches that are starting or whether that's strengthening churches that exist, and so that's the kind of final one of kingdom-minded. So that's really who pillar is, and, by God's grace, I think, what we aspire to be, we are, and the Lord has seen fit to bless that work.
Speaker 2:When I came on about seven years ago, we were about 70 churches and now we're again, by God's grace, closing in on 600. We'll be probably about 600 churches by the end of the year, and now we've gone international and so we're also in 40-plus countries around the world, and so it's been just really, really enjoyable thing. You know, I don't know how you feel, jeff, in your role, but there's times when you do a job and you know it's hard work, and there's other times when you do a job and it just feels like you were meant to do that. And that's sort of how I've felt with the work that I'm doing here at the Pillar Network.
Speaker 1:Well, and there's, I want to say there's such a strong affinity between the Baptist Courier and Courier Publishing and the Pillar Network because really our task is here in South Carolina and beyond to provide resources that supports everything you just said, literally every piece of that. And that's what makes this book so sweet when it comes to being one of our first books, because I couldn't say amen more than what you're saying in this book about being convictional, confessional and cheerful. We support every bit of that and, of course, we are the Baptist Courier.
Speaker 1:One of the first things I did was put that back in our name when I came here, because I'm a convictional, we're convictional Baptists.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we're happy to be Baptists and we're thankful for it. On Baptist 21, let me just talk about that briefly. So really kind of towards the end of seminary there were several guys both at Southeastern and Southern, who were burdened by a lot of our kind of fellow classmates who were sort of getting education in Southern Baptist seminaries and then just leaving and usually very angry, very critical of the SBC. And it wasn't that we didn't have our own criticisms or that we didn't have a critical eye at times towards things going on at the Southern Baptist Convention. But we felt very grateful also to be connected to the Southern Baptist Convention. So we sort of just started Baptist 21 as a way to say one, to write down why we thought it was beneficial to be part of the Southern Baptist Convention, to sort of try to rally young guys to think through hey, it's actually the best way to be a part of a solution is to be from a solution from within, rather than kind of throwing stones into the glass house from the outside.
Speaker 2:We didn't know. Like we just want to sharpen our own arguments. We didn't know anybody would care at all. Like we thought maybe our mom would read the blog and that would be about the extent of it, and, for whatever reason, it struck a chord and there was a lot of guys who felt similarly to us, and so the Lord saw fit to bless that as well, and so basically that's been both a blog, a podcast, and then we mainly have done a big event every year at the Southern Baptist Convention, trying to get guys connected to cooperation, to showing hey, yeah, this is a business meeting, but this is a business meeting that's going to direct millions of dollars towards missions efforts.
Speaker 2:This is worth being a part of trying to keep people involved, but also, again, similar to the book we were talking about, not just keep people involved but to say, hey, let's be constructive, charitable people from the inside who love what's taking place here, who certainly don't agree with everything that's taking place here. It's a big, big ship, but we see the best for us to give our efforts to the sort of work that actually benefited us. All of us became Christians in Southern Baptist churches, even if some of those churches were unhealthy, and so we just see it as a way for us to say hey from the inside, let's just do this together and let's figure out the best way to do that.
Speaker 1:Well, amen to all that too. I've been up like you. I've been a Southern Baptist my entire life and as the old saying, I think Adrian Rogers used to joke that you know, I'm Baptist born and Baptist bred, and I doubt I'll be Baptist dead, and that's probably going to be the way it is, because we're just committed to the same thing. So we so appreciate both of those groups, the Pillar Network and, of course, baptist 21. I've been an admirer of your work and benefited from it myself for a long time, just in terms of encouraging us to stay in and reform from the inside and to love one another in spite of our differences and see that as a richness in our domination, not always as a detriment, and so I so appreciate that. Well, let's talk about the book now. Convictional, confessional, cheerful, the three Cs. We are Southern Baptists.
Speaker 1:We love alliteration, right, your dad taught me that in preaching class and he is an expert at that, by the way Convictional, confessional, cheerful Baptists. This seems to me to be kind of a manifesto for what just everything you said the Pillar Network seeks to promote in terms of Baptist identity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I would say, you know, part of the impetus to this was a talk I did when I first became the executive director of Pillar, and just kind of looking at the evangelical landscape and just thinking if I could for the first time address this group that I love as the sort of executive director, what would I say? And this is what, at least, was the impetus. The book's much longer than that talk was, but that was what was in my mind when I first came on. And then this was again what led to the book. But it wasn't just looking at the landscape of evangelicalism, it was knowing myself that made me want to write this down.
Speaker 2:I am a guy who is, you know, I'm very convictional. Once I come to believe the things I believe, I'm very convictional about them. I've, hopefully done my research and homework as far as why I believe those things. But I have found in my own heart at times the uh, the tendency to think well, if somebody doesn't agree with me, either they're just uninformed, or to think that they're just, you know, they're off. And I have felt the tendency in my heart to become arrogant about it, to think, well, I'm the enlightened one, they're just not enlightened and I just wanted to fight my own. I wanted to preach to myself to some degree because I don't want to be haughty, and part of that it just goes right along with being reformed.
Speaker 2:You know, I see too many reformed guys who are angry or who are haughty in what they believe, and that strikes against the very thing we say we believe about salvation, that this is unmerited, that we have received our salvation by grace, by undeserved favor that we've received from the Lord.
Speaker 2:And if that's true about our soteriology, that should be true about all the other doctrines, that we believe that the Lord has orchestrated our lives in such a way that we've read the books, we've read, we've had the professors we've had, we've had the preachers that influenced us. It certainly means that we can be convictional about the things we believe. But the doctrines of grace should make us gracious, and so that was part of what was in my mind. It's like in my camp and the one that I would put myself in. There were just the angriness and the haughtiness seemed to strike against the very idea that we hold to the doctrines of grace, and so that was what was really in my heart when I once wrote that sermon based it on 1 Corinthians, 16, 13, and 14, but was really what was the driving force behind that in the book?
Speaker 1:I remember my first week of seminary back in 2000. Now, how old were you in 2000?
Speaker 2:I was actually my first year of college. Okay, so you were. Maybe I'm not as old as I think I am.
Speaker 1:But I remember my first week in Baptist history class with Tom Nettles, who wound up being my PhD supervisor, a very, very dear friend who modeled that ironical spirit very well. He said something I'll never forget. He said a man of grace should be a gracious man and I think this book models that so well in a time we so need it. Now. Let's on that. I want to go further into that in a minute. Let's unpack. I want you to unpack just briefly, each C that's convictional, confessional, and then again it's a surprise to say cheerful, but I love that, and you've just kind of alluded to that, but just kind of. The three Cs, Take me through that, those three adjectives that modify Baptists.
Speaker 2:And I'll give it to you how I've said it in a couple other podcasts, that I didn't put it in the book, which I wish I had. But I think that we should mean what we say, that's convictional. We should say what we, we should say what we mean, that's confessional. And we should say what we mean without being mean, that's cheerful. So that's basically the book in a nutshell. I would still hope you would buy it so that I can, you know, feed my kids.
Speaker 1:Uh, but uh he doesn't pack it a good bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, but I mean that's the gist of it. So convictional Part of the reason that I put that in there is that I grew up in the SBC, where different denominational entities had confessions of faith and yet they had professors at their school who were teaching contrary to those confessions of faith. And so the confessions matter, they mean something, but the confessions won't mean anything unless you actually believe them and they're actually used, and so that's the convictional part of this. Like we have to mean what we say, and that's the convictional part. The confessional part is we should be clear about what we believe, and again, I think that's true in any generation.
Speaker 2:And there's a reason why I love confessions and I write about this and even the history of confessions with Baptists, because that is debated, though I think if any fair reading of the history of it Timothy George has got some work on this, nettles has got work on this, as you mentioned Any fair reading of our history shows that Baptists have been a confessional people. But I do think confessions help guide us, and particularly in an era where reader response hermeneutic and sort of like meaning of a text is in the eye of the beholder rather than the pen of the author. It becomes even more important Because there will be people who can read the Bible and come up with crazy interpretations about things like gender and sexuality and even any number of other things. And so that's why confessions, particularly in our day and age, and kind of post-modernism, post-post-modernism and everything that we've kind of run into now confessions are very vital to our cooperative efforts. And so that's the confessional, and then the cheerful is kind of what I talked about, just kind of looking at my own life and my own heart and even just the stream that I would own as kind of an identifying marker.
Speaker 2:I just I thought, hey, it's become like I had a guy say it like this to me that if somebody gets up at the Southern Baptist Convention and has grace in their name, that you can almost guarantee that they're not going to be gracious. Or they said it like this if they have 1689 for the second Lenten confession in their handle on Twitter, you can almost guarantee they're going to be haughty or, you know, abrasive. And I just thought that's a shame, because that's a great confession of faith and grace is a wonderful aspect of what we believe as Christians. And so I just I wanted to say, hey, these verses in the Bible that talk about how our speech is to be seasoned and talk about the Lord's servant not being quarrelsome and talking about gentleness, those are in there just as much as these other convictions that we're talking about, and those things should go together. Our culture should match our convictions, and that was sort of what was behind the kind of the cheerful part of the book.
Speaker 1:Well, when our publisher first presented this to me, of course I knew you've known you for many years. But seeing the cheerful, the last C after the first two Cs, I said we'll take the book. I don't have to read it because I don't think anyone's talking about this like we should be, especially with the culture the way it is now. The broader culture, the church culture, should not be mimicking the culture and sadly, on social media, twitter and other places it is. But I love what your dad said. Your dad, of course, wrote the foreword to the book. He said what you say is most important, but how you say it has never been more important. And now Moeller wrote no two, either convictional or confessional, will survive the absence of the third. So why is tone so vital among Christians and why do you consider that such a key part of this whole argument? The cheerful part.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean the first part of it is that. It kind of, as I alluded to, I think it's a recognition and I say this in the conclusion, it's a recognition that we've come to believe the things that we believe in a similar way that we came to be saved. So it's like so, for instance, I use the we when it comes to being reformed, I'm drinking deeply from wells I did not dig, and that is a humbling recognition. And so if somebody else doesn't believe the same way I believe, there are usually good reasons why they don't believe the same way I believe, and so for me to be haughty one is just a violation of Philippians 2 and other places we see in the Scripture, but it also is a violation of the very thing we believe about how we came to know the Lord in the first place, and so there's something to the medium, how we communicate our message being shaped in the way that we became saved in the first place, and so I just think that we live in a world where this is a place where we can show that we are distinct, right.
Speaker 2:We should not back up. So what I want to say is and I say this in the book this is not at all an argument for us backing up on any of these convictions. We should hold to these convictions. We should be happy to debate these convictions in a Christlike way with other people and we should not change them because somebody thinks that they're either, you know, neanderthal or too narrow minded or whatever they might say. We don't back up on those.
Speaker 2:But because we are who we say we are and dwelt by the spirit, living out the fruit of the spirit, we can be those who can be direct but at the same time be kind.
Speaker 2:We can be the kind of people who hold to a conviction strongly and also have the right culture that surround that, because it's the very culture that shows that our life's been changed by the gospel in the first place. And for us it just seemed odd to live in a world where things that should be Christian virtue are seen as weaknesses. That just seems odd to me. At the same time, I agree that there are guys and gals who have the label Christian, who are compromising on all matters of doctrine, and I think that's wrong too, and so I know that the term the kind of third way Keller third way is kind of gets beaten around, and I think there's good reasons at times where it gets beaten around, but on some of these things it's not a third way, it's two things together that should run on the same track and show us that we are living out the sort of life that the Lord Jesus has called us to, and so I think we can be convictional and be cheerful and kind at the same time.
Speaker 1:Well, last year we actually, here at the Baptist Courier, we committed one of our issues to the issue of Christian civility. Basically, can we get along with those of whom we disagree, and this has been a burden for me. I'm a little bit older, so it's been a burden for me for a long time. I do remember a time in our country when we could Democrats and Republicans could disagree but still, you know, have coffee with each other and love each other and appreciate each other. I mean, believe it or not, there was a time Wow, not long ago, and your dad knows all about it.
Speaker 1:But, and a few years ago when I worked, I was an editor of the Gospel Coalition Colin Hanson had asked me for years about writing an article.
Speaker 1:I'd made a remark in a meeting once about how I really appreciated my childhood church that led me to Jesus, but it wasn't.
Speaker 1:It was the furthest from reform as you could possibly get, and now I'm totally reformed. But I still appreciate so much about that pastor. In fact, he died about three weeks ago and I went to his funeral, attended his funeral and so much about that church and he said you need to write that up because we reformed Christians need to hear that, that you don't just cancel everything that happened in your life before you embrace the doctrines of grace. And of course that was my point and I wrote that and I was amazed at how many emails I got that were positive, saying boy, really, thank you for saying that. Of course I got a few people saying we would compromise and of course, the civility issue I heard a lot about that too from the negative side of tone doesn't matter, but it most certainly does. I think it matters to Jesus and it shouldn't matter to us. So I love that, the cheerfulness, because, as you said, we should be joyful more than all Christians.
Speaker 2:And I think that again so. So If what we believe about salvation, about soteriology, is true as reformed men, that this again was an act of the Lord, that we can't earn our own salvation, we can't do this by works, that's a humbling thing, right, and the Bible uses this language all along about the ways that we should be humble. I mean again Philippians 2 comes to mind, but also even just as pastors, and even 2 Corinthians, 3 and 4, jars of clay. The imagery is a humbling imagery.
Speaker 2:I think an exercise in being one charitable, even in disagreement with people you disagree with, is an exercise in humility. It is an exercise in saying, hey, look, I have come to the convictions I've come to, I think they're right. But to engage in a charitable way with somebody I disagree with is an exercise in showing, hey, I may not have the corner on this, I am still a simple, frail human who is doing the best I can to love the Lord, to follow the Bible, to live faithfully. And I think even cooperation and partnership at times with people you don't have full agreement with is an exercise in humility. And I think that's so baked into what the New Testament is saying, that to somehow push back against. That means you have to throw out a lot of what we read in those 27 books in the New Testament.
Speaker 1:Well, I love to remind some of our younger Southern Baptists who may not have grown up in the same era that I did. It was the era you breathed, growing up, the SBC conservative resurgence. I used to remind people when I was at Southern that if it weren't for men like Adrian Rogers and Paige Patterson, we wouldn't be sitting here right now in these classrooms at Southern. And these guys weren't. I mean, they in some cases were opposed to some of the things that I cherish. But, boy, we should love those men, appreciate those men, because they were giants on the landscape of our denominational history.
Speaker 2:My dad was showing some guys around his library yesterday and they're they're not SBC guys, so they they weren't. They weren't around during this time, so they don't have a ton of background to this, but they're they're reformed guys. And he just said, if it wasn't for Adrian Rogers, you would not be standing here right now. And that's true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So I think we need to keep that in mind. And the SBC, I mean it is the big tent you talked about, and so I don't know. I'm happy. I have friends who have left, but I'm happy with that. I'd love to work. Just considered a pleasure to come to work for an SBC entity every single day. What a privilege it is yeah Amen.
Speaker 1:Well, now you talk about the five Baptist distinctives. You outline those in the book. Do you think most Southern Baptists we're actually doing our magazine on why I'm a Baptist next month and just a little preview there in October for Reformation Month Do you think most Southern Baptists could explain why they were a Baptist beyond? You know, my daddy was a Baptist, my grandpa was a Baptist, and why is it so important that we know what we believe as Baptists?
Speaker 2:I mean, part of the reason I write this book is is I don't think that they can. I think that most Baptists believe to be a Baptist means you immerse and you wanna combine resources to send missionaries. I don't think it's any deeper than that, and part of what was a journey for me when I sort of became an adult and wrestled through am I actually a Baptist? Is what I've grown up in. But am I actually that? And I go back to the scriptures there's a whole set of beliefs that come together for what it means to be Baptist. It's not just believer's baptism, and so part of this was it's not nothing. This book is more of a primer. It's not groundbreaking, but it is hopefully something. I've had several guys say hey, I've used it to teach Baptist distinctives in my church because it is a simple way to do that and I just don't think most Baptists have that sort of fully formed idea for what it means to be Baptist. And it is funny I make this joke in there you get two Baptists together, you get three opinions. Even in searching out what are the Baptist distinctives there's not an agreement on. These are the ones. I sort of just distilled it down to the ones that most of those lists agreed were ones and the ones I think are primary in kind of how we understand the church, and particularly, it's not just how we understand the church Again, this gets back to salvation so often it's how we understand the reformational principles of the solas.
Speaker 2:What Baptists have done, in my opinion a humble opinion, hopefully is that they have taken the solas to the right ends and practices.
Speaker 2:And so when you start to believe in the solas, particularly like sola scriptura and justification by faith alone, I think that regenerate church membership and believers baptism is an exercise in we actually believe in justification by faith, that the sign of the Christian covenant should only be given to people who are actually Christian and that we are not going to rely on history and other things to dictate practices that our church will be performing, particularly as it pertains to the ordinances, and so these things are deep within who we are and they're held together. Even things like religious liberty, which I get to in the book, are an understanding of what we believe about salvation and how salvation is not connected to the state and how salvation is not even connected to something like infant baptism, and so, again, there are plenty of infant baptism groups that would agree with us on that. So I'm not trying to cast them in that light. I'm just saying there's a reason why we hold these five together and they make this distinct from other certainly reformational streams and denominations.
Speaker 1:Well, we live in a decidedly anti-denominational age, you know, and people say, well, denominations don't matter. I had a Christian tell me this last week, actually said there's not going to be denominations in heaven. And that sounds really that's got to, you know, that's got to as a cliche. That sounds wise and all that. But how can we convince our fellow Baptists that these things are vitally important for church health and to help those individual Christians.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think obviously it's true that the denominations will not last in heaven, but one of the things that we again, if we get back to the reason Pillar exists, that we think that the local church is primary in the mission of God, that this is how he's chosen, this is his chosen means by which he's going to make disciples of all nations, then I think that the thing that we can best give our lives to is starting and strengthening churches, because if the church is central, then starting and strengthening churches is central, and to do that you have to agree on what the church is and what denominations are. Most often, particularly in the post-Reformation, is a disagreement about those second level issues, which are ecclesiological church issues. And so it's a good thought that, yes, we're going to be unified in the blood of the Lamb on the last day, but the best way we're going to actually see other people come to faith in Christ and to build up the saints that are under our care is by starting really sturdy churches that will be discipling those sinners and discipling those saints, and so that's why these things are not unimportant. So it actually bothers me when people can just jump from one tradition to the other tradition and back and forth, and have no real solid thoughts on these different issues.
Speaker 2:Because, again, if the church is as important to the mission as it is, if you understand places like Acts 20, 28, that the Lord has purchased this bride by his blood, then you shouldn't just have anemic thoughts about the church.
Speaker 2:It is not one and the same with those first-tier issues of salvation, but it's not unimportant either. And so these distinctions that draw up the different denominations, they draw up the different denominations for good reason, and so I think what I want people in my church to understand is that these ecclesiological matters are not first tier issues, but they are second tier issues that touch on first tier issues Again, getting back to some of the things I said about the solace coming out of the Reformation, and so you want to help them, and I hope the book does that, and obviously there's other resources as well that would help Baptists understand. This is not just a trivial way for us to disagree with somebody down the street that might want to sprinkle babies. This has everything to do with what we think makes for a healthy church that will then make the most of the name of the Lord Jesus both here and around the world.
Speaker 1:Well, Nate, this is a great discussion and boy, I don't want to end it. My heart is so deeply involved in this as a leader of a Southern Baptist entity and a lifelong Southern Baptist, and like you, but we must end.
Speaker 1:The book is Convictional, confessional, cheerful Baptist, by Nate Akin from Baptist Career. Career Publishing, available at our website, careerpublishingcom, or from Amazon and some of your finer theological bookstores, or from Amazon and some of your finer theological bookstores. Nate, we appreciate your work on this. This is going to help a lot of people. For a long time we think when we pray and it already is We've already had a good return. So don't miss this book. If you're a Baptist, especially if you don't know why you're a Baptist, get this book and it will give you some expert help. Nate. Thank you, brother. We appreciate you, love you and you guys at the Pillar Network and Baptist 20 will keep up the good work.
Speaker 2:I'm grateful for you guys as well. Thank you guys so much.
Speaker 3:We're glad you joined us for Courier Conversations, where we are informing and inspiring South Carolina Baptists and beyond. For more information about these topics and more, subscribe to our e-edition or go to our website at baptistcouriercom. The Courier is located in Greenville, south Carolina. As a multimedia ministry partner of the South Carolina Baptist Convention. To comment about today's podcast, email us at conversations at baptistcouriercom. This podcast, produced by Bob Sloan Audio Production,
