Bullard Journal Blog

Leadership for the New Baptist Covenant in 2020

If the New Baptist Covenant--held recently in Atlanta with 15,000-20,000 people present--is truly a movement rather than a moment, it might be best to view what it might be like in the year 2020.

It is not my purpose in this post to actually describe my view of the New Baptist Covenant in 2020. I will leave that for now to many other Baptist Christian visionaries.

It is my purpose to suggest some leadership implications of taking such a perspective, and how to empower that story.

First, many of the people who will be the leaders of the New Baptist Covenant 12 years from now are already a part of or around the edges of the Covenant. We need to identify them during 2008 and integrate them into the current leadership to begin immediately gaining from their leadership.

Second, many of the people who will be the leaders of the New Baptist Covenant 12 years from now are neither Euro-Americans nor African-Americans. They are Hispanic-Americans and Asian-Americans. [My apologies at this point for using USA-centric terms to describe these Baptist Christians.] They will join key Euro-Americans and African-Americans to form a more diverse leadership inner circle.

Third, many of the people who will be the leaders of the of the New Baptist Covenant 12 years from now will not have their primary convention/union heritage in the Southern Baptist Convention, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, or the American Baptist Churches in the USA. They will come from smaller conventions/unions throughout North America. Among the possibilities are these group connected to the Canadian Baptist Ministries, Lott Carey Foreign Mission Convention, North American Baptist Conference, Russian-Ukrainian Baptist Union, Baptist General Conference, Seventh Day Baptist Conference, and General Association of General Baptists, to name a few. Let's start now being sure they are all in the leadership inner circle.

Fourth, many of the people who will be leaders of the New Baptist Covenant 12 years from now will have been born after February 9, 1964. They will be Baby Busters and younger. But, even the leading edge of Baby Busters will be 56 years old in 2020. The next large group gathering of the New Baptist Covenant needs to focus on speakers from these younger generations to provide them with a platform and give them a voice.

For this to be accomplished, the wonderful Baptist Christian leaders who made the first New Baptist Covenant possible need to be prophetic and empowering, and call to the inner circle leaders with one or more of these four characteristics.

Baptists Push Unity and a Fresh Face | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Link: Baptists Push Unity and a Fresh Face | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction.

Where Were You on 9/11/2001?

Tomorrow is the sixth anniversary of THE 9/11. I had not felt anything particularly unusual about it until today.

I am helping lead two seminars this week in Columbia, SC. One is on Tuesday and the other is on Thursday. All of a sudden this morning we realized why some people who attend our Tuesday seminars have switched to Thursday for this month. And, we realized why people are contacting us this morning to switch to Thursday.

Some 9/11 panic has arisen. It is the first time September 11th has occurred on a Tuesday since THE 9/11.

Also, because of the significance of the anniversary this year we suspect more people are involved in various services of remembrance.

During a brief trip out at lunch time, I also noticed at least one radio entertainment talk show was stirring up people about what might happen tomorrow.

BTW, isn't it interesting this is the week Congress will be embroiled in testimony and debate about the war in Iraq?

Where were you on THE 9/11?

I was in Indianapolis having breakfast with a denominational staff person. We kept meeting as the towers came down because our waiter was giving us updates every two minutes as he kept one eye on the television in the bar.

I was in town meeting with a group of 11 congregations all week. We continued our meetings. None were canceled, but the schedule was shifted somewhat.

By Saturday when I was scheduled to return home, airplanes were still not flying. I had to drive my rental car home to North Carolina from Indiana.

Where were you on THE 9/11? How do you feel about tomorrow?

Don't stop thinking about tomorrow. Our God is about futures filled with great hope.

New Baptist Covenant

Link: New Baptist Covenant.

January 2008 a New Baptist Covenant event will be held in Atlanta, GA. Keep up with the progress of this event at the above web site. Former President Jimmy Carter was the initiator of the movement that will result in this event.

Baptist Today Article Quotes Bullard

Baptist Today, an Atlanta, GA-based independent newspaper among Baptists, quoted George Bullard in a recent article on Baptists scandals and its impact on missions funding from congregations: Download Article

Good Bye to Watches!

Change and shifts happen. Seldom does anyone intentionally create or cause it.

Watches are an endangered species. Increasingly younger people are not wearing them. Too many others things around them tell them the time. Primary among these in their cell telephones. A close second is their computer screen.

On the Clark Howard syndicated radio program today I heard of a report/survey that indicates that only 1 of 9 teenagers wear a watch. It also implied that the 8 of 9 who do not never intend to have a watch.

It appears to be a generation thing. People born in the last thirty years appear to see little need for wearing a watch. People born before that grew up wearing watches. I am 55 and I can still remember getting my first watch at six or seven years old and how proud I was to wear it. Now, I haven't worn a watch for five to seven years. No need. No desire.

What did watch manufacturers do wrong? Nothing. Timekeeping is in the public domain and anyone can develop a piece of technology that tells time.

Life is full of shifts that happen that eliminate proven technology, products, and services.

Let me be among the first to say, "Good bye to watches."

What change or shift if getting ready to happen in your world that you did not create or cause, but that will put you in the category of people who are out of touch with an emerging trend?

Predicting the Future

www.SI.com today deals with the dilemma of how you predict the future in college football. They begin their article with a great, funny, and true statement for the typical American:

"Trying to pick an early No. 1 team for 2006 is a lot like trying to find a decent lunch at the food court in your local mall: None of the choices are particularly appetizing, so you might as well just pick something and go with it."

If you are really interested in their picks for the fall, go to http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/writers/stewart_mandel/04/24/spring.top.25/index.html?cnn=yes.

BTW, how do you predict the future based on past and/or present performance? Can you?

Leonard Sweet at Hollifield

I spent most of this day with Len Sweet and 60 plus of my ministry colleagues at Hollifield Leadership Center near Hickory, NC which you can experience at www.Hollifield.org.

IS THE FOCUS ON A BELL CURVE OR A WELL CURVE?

We no longer live in a bell curve world, but a well curve world. In a bell curve world the best place to be is in the middle. In a well curve world the only thing in the middle is road kill. The extremes are building up fast. It is full of paradoxes. Opposite things are happening at the same time.

We must be able to bring the two extremes together. Bring the extremes into contact with one another. When the extremes are brought together, that is Logos. Jesus connected the extremes and makes us new creatures.

Parker Palmer says we have to bring the positive and negative together as in a battery or we will not get the charge. Our culture is  going in opposite directions at the same time. The more we surf the web, the more the sales of paper goes up.

The church of the future is mega and micro simultaneously.

This Is Not Your Mother's Denomination

Tonight in the meeting with the evangelical denominational leaders of Canada, I was asked to project what types or forms of denominations might exist in the future. As a denominationalist, I believe that we will have denominations for many more decades--if not centuries--but that between now and 2050 denominations will experience significant transformation.

The future existence of denominations is not in question. What is questionable is the future relevance of denominations to the movement of congregations.

So, what types or forms will denominational organizations take in future decades?