Dr. Steve Bass

Dr. Steve Bass is blogging. For those of you who do not know Steve, he is the fearless leader of the Arizona Southern Baptist Convention and an all around good guy.

I have had the pleasure to be a student in one of his classes he teaches at the Arizona Regional Campus of the Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. I'm a member or our Convention Council (kinda like an State Executive Board) in my 2nd year of a 3 year term and have had the opportunity to see Steve in a different light than many have. What has pleased me is that what you see in Steve is what you get. He speaks very plainly and directly to whatever issue he encounters.

I'm glad he is blogging and am looking forward to reading what he has to say.

COTB - Last in a series?

Finished up this past Sunday morning with Church Outside the Box, the series. I have a feeling that this thought will not be far away for a long time, that it will flavor many things before it abates.

We started out talking about the Block Party from the night before. Discussed whether we were the church in the Park or not. We decided that serving other people, helping them have fun, having spiritual conversations, and helping them to see that not all Christians are out to beat them over the head was a good thing - we might have been the church outside the walls afterall.

Then we talked about all the things our past and traditions have forced upon us and decided if they were really required for us to be the church. (If you look real close, you can see the ghost-white legs of the goofy preacher....) I preached for the first time ever in big church dressed in shorts, t-shirt and sandals - or at least I started out with sandals, they came off pretty quickly.



Several of the things written on the wall were torn out and thrown away. About the only thing that was not discarded was the Bible. We even decided that a paid preacher was not a requirement for us to be the church....





Clean walls again.... It remains to be seen if we will continue with our evaluation of who we are as the church. It is my hope that we will get rid of as many things that hold us back from being the church that we can. We can put many things down that we have held dear. Hopefully we can show those who do not know Christ yet who He is and who we truly are - His called out ones.

Off to NM

Headed to Glorieta tomorrow to get rid of Daughter #1..... She worked at the Glorieta Conference Center last year and liked it so much that she decided to do it again this summer. Gotta head out pretty early in the am and we'll be gone for a few days. Will post about the ending of Church Outside the Box later this week.

2006 Block Party

We had our 2nd Annual 1st Southern Block Party in the park here in town yesterday. Had around 100 people register, not including church folks. Had a good time watching the kids play and the youth and adults talk with people, sharing an afternoon together. Kids playin, eatin and talkin..... doesn't get much better than that

Grandpa Rocks

Church Outside the Box

The past couple of weeks we have been talking about the church. Last week, we saw what the Bible had to say about us being the spiritual building that God is building, just as He wants it to be.

If you look real close, there are all kinds of boxes in that wall. Beer boxes, a Fry Daddy box, a speaker box, even a Lifeway box.

The Duct tape is the Bond of Love. A little guy coming out of the service said that our love should sound like Duct tape. I think he caught the idea.


This week, we looked at what history has done to us. In many ways, we are way too concerned with the "stuff" than we are being the church. We like being members of the "Club," but don't necessarily like the work that comes with it.


Here's what the "church" looks like today (as we saw it this morning) Lots of words on the outside of the wall like - Building (everybody knows you have to have a building to have church), Paid Preacher (every church needs a paid preacher to be the dispenser of all knowledge), the correct version of the Word, a choir, etc. Sorry the picture isn't detailed enough to get a good view. Maybe I can post others later with more detail.

One of the deacons told his wife (who was out of town thig morning) "Our traditions got hammered this morning." Her response was "Hallelujah!!" I'm kinda glad for her response because she is on our Worship Team and plays the keyboards for us.

A twist - Questions for Churches

Found this today in Rick Warren's Ministry Toolbox Issue #257 - Questions for Churches

I like it! For those of us who are in small churches, check out this website. There's quite a bit of help there, as well as some humor.

Gotta see the Herding Cats clip.

More From the 12

Another timeless comment from The Training of the Twelve. Again, near the end of the chapter titled "The Intercessory Prayer." Emphasis mine.

Wrangling is not a divine thing, and it needs no divine influence to bring it about. Anybody can quarrel; and the world, knowing that, has little respect for a quarrelling Church. But the world opens its eyes in wonder at a community in which peace and concord prevail, saying, Here is something out of the common course,--selfishness and self-will rooted out of human nature: nothing but a divine influence could thus subdue the centrifugal forces which tend to separate men from each other.

With all the "stuff" that is happening on the political scene in Southern Baptist life, we need to take a good hard look at this quote and do something about it.