Sunday, August 13 during the Evening Worship Service, the children who participated in Toadally Tuesday over the summer will be presenting the Children’s Musical “We Like Sheep.” There will be a reception following the presentation.

Pastor Doug will be facilitating a brown-bag lunch study and discussion of the book, The Insider: Bringing The Kingdom of God Into Your Everyday World, by Jim Petersen and Mike Shamy. This six-week study will be on Wednesdays from noon to 1 PM beginning on May 10 and running through June 14. The location has not yet been determined. The book and accompanying workbook (both are recommended) can be ordered at www.barnesandnoble.com or www.amazon.com. Reservations are not necessary, but please let us know if you plan to attend so that we can determine the most accessible location. To read Doug’s review of The Insider, see the Book Review section of our church website, http://www.2bc.org/2bc-resources/book-review/.

In keeping with our vision of 2006 as the Acts 1:8 year for 2BC, we will be taking a Vacation Bible School mission trip July 30-August 2.

Saturday, May 6 from 9:00-11:30am. Mackie McCollister from the Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT) has agreed to come to our church that day to show us a new Sunday School emphasis called "Add L.I.F.E. to your Sunday School (A Biblical Approach to Church Health and Growth)." We will provide Child Care, but please notify us in advance so that we can be adequately prepared.

Sunday, April 30 at 9:00am. Join us in the Fellowship Hall for taquitos and other breakfast goodies before going to Sunday School. The entire family is welcome.

SERIES: THE HIDDEN GOSPELS

For Mother’s Day, Pastor Doug will be preaching to men about how to treat women. He could use some female perspective. Please share your thoughts on his myspace blog at blog.myspace.com/evilroysladeridesagain.

Book Review
The Insider: Bringing the Kingdom of God Into Your Everyday World
by Jim Petersen & Mike Shamy

     “Programs begin and end.” William Travis’ belligerent cannon ball from behind the embattled walls of the Alamo may have been a less brazen act of defiance than that sentence from the opening chapter of this powerful little book. Petersen and Shamy have the insolence to suggest that the well-drilled crack troops of the church growth movement may be on the wrong side of the issue of how the Kingdom comes in our world. In fact, they do more than suggest it; they say it in so many words.

In our culture, and unheralded individual is about the last place we’d ever think of looking to find anything of importance. We live in a world where “good” is defined by size, where “big” is good, and bigger is better. We measure the success of anything, whether it’s a business or a church, by its volume, by the amount we amass of whatever it is we’re working at, whether it’s money or people. (p.31)

      Indeed, the authors seem to feel that the distinction between a business and a church is less and less clear these days.

In America the church is a voluntary association that “lives off the willingness of its members to remain in it.” This puts a local church in a position where it will be tempted to compete for its market share. Because our society lives off marketing, we are hardly aware when our church falls into the temptation. As costs for providing church as we know it soar, it becomes harder and harder to be openhanded with people. (p.84)

     And what do Petersen & Shamy propose in place of the high-octane ad campaigns that confuse the Jericho road with Madison Avenue? Relationships, that’s what! The core of their book, after a couple of sections devoted to laying a theological foundation and overcoming objections, consists of describing seven life-patterns which mark the Christian who shares the gospel from “inside” the same world as that inhabited by the unsaved. Only the last couple of steps, “Letting the Scriptures Speak” and “Midwifing the New Birth,” will be familiar to those of us more efficient forms of evangelism. The “insider” approach consists essentially of becoming genuinely interested and involved in the lives of non-Christians, exposing them to the Bible, letting the Word of God do its work, and sticking around to respond to the results.

     The book has its weaknesses, of course. The reader should remember who Petersen and Shamy work for. The Navigators are a very good para-church outfit, but they share the key bias of all such organizations – a slightly superior attitude toward the local church. This comes through in several places. For instance, the authors unleash a lengthy rhapsody on the Elysian wonders of the first century house-church which, they feel, thrived because “The basic unit of society was the household.” (p.126) Well, it was; it was often a unit of oppression for women, cruelty to children, of slavery and institutionalized adultery and a number of other abuses. As the house church movement continues to learn (but seldom admits), architecture is not the key to the kingdom.

     Again, the authors are so eager to legitimize their evangelistic model that they engage in some revisionist exegesis on the life of Paul. We read that getting eighty-sixed out of Damascus was the apostle’s fault for being such an insufferable know-it-all and that, having failed to learn his lesson, he repeated the blunder in Jerusalem. (p.134-135) What Paul should have done, we are told, is host a few cook-outs and cozied up to the locals instead of refuting their theology. By this standard, Stephen is would not be the first martyr of the church, but its first cautionary tale. Fortunately, Paul was not a hard-core recidivist. When he finally blundered into Corinth, “Paul consciously discarded that approach for another, more powerful way. He chose to live under submission to the Holy Spirit.” Petersen & Shamy conveniently forget that Paul’s activity in Corinth led to a riot.

     But for all of this, The Insider remains a valuable book. It puts forth a courageous critique of much that the church has gulped down with no effort at discernment, and it offers a program that is possible for just about anyone.