The Jason Allen Challenge

So, I just posted a podcast on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network responding to this article by Jason Keith Allen, the president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. And this is a mixed bag. It's some good in this article, some bad in this article, but I'm going to give you my full take if you go over to the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network crosspolitic .com and check out my podcast.

It's a 30-minute podcast. I believe it's well worth your time, and I think you should listen to the end on that one for sure. But one thing that I said in the podcast is I addressed this section of the article.

Jason Allen’s Letter-Response Challenge

Here's what Jason Allen says. He says that instead of making public accusations or public inquiries to things that Baptist leaders say, here's how you should handle it instead. He says, for inquirers, the best way to express concerns, especially if you don't personally know the leader, is by writing them a letter.

A letter arrives with a certain degree of formality, which prompts a response. A letter has a name associated with it, a return address, and hopefully a cogent statement of the question or concern. If you write a letter to a ministry leader, especially a Southern Baptist leader, I'm confident you'll receive an answer from them or their office.

Now here's the interesting part. So in the podcast, I'll give you a little bit of a spoiler, I said that a lot of us do this kind of thing already, and we've stopped doing it because we get shut down so often.

We get the runaround. We get non-answers. We get a form letter or we get, you know, weasel words and political answers and stuff like that. When we ask direct questions, we don't get spoken to like a man, we get spoken to like a chump and we're sick of it.

All you got to do is look at Russell Moore's answer to a very good question at last year's Southern Baptist Convention regarding patriarchy and complementarianism. He didn't answer the question. And so we know what happens.

We get people try to do the Jedi mind trick on us. But listen, just because that's always happened in the past, I think Jason Allen's right. That doesn't mean it's always going to happen in the future.

Testing Southern Baptist Leaders With Direct Questions

So I say, let's take Jason Allen up on this one. Let's put this to the test. If any of you have concerns about the direction of the Southern Baptist Convention, and if any of you have concerns about this critical theory stuff, this egalitarianism stuff, anything, I'm not going to tell you what to be concerned about.

You know what you're concerned about. Go ahead and write some leaders, some letters. Let's see if they respond directly to direct questions. Now, I'm not telling you to harass anybody. I completely disavow harassment.

I suggest that if you are concerned about certain things, write Al Mohler a letter, write Jason Allen a letter, write Danny Aiken a letter, write Russell Moore a letter, write Matt Chandler a letter, whoever it is.

You know what I mean? I'm not saying who it is for you, but there are concerns that I have. I have some people in mind that I'm going to be writing a letter to in the coming days. You do the same thing.

I suggest you take Jason Allen up on this, and he's very confident you'll get a response to your direct, cogent question. Don't be rude. Don't make accusations. Just ask questions, direct questions that they can't weasel out of, and let's see if he's right.

Let's see if we get responses. See, because here's the thing. There's one of two things that's going to happen. You're either going to get a response, or you're not going to get a response. So you either prove us right and Jason wrong, or you're going to prove Jason right and us wrong.

And remember, non-responses can come in many forms. It can become in literal crickets or fake answers or weasel words or stuff like that. Let's see how this goes, because I know that everyone that's in this debate that I've talked to has had experiences where they go to the person directly, let's chat about this, and they get shut down.

We know how this game has been played in the past. But let's put Jason Allen to the test. Let's say, you know, I'm not telling you what to do. Go ahead and write to whoever it is you have concerns about.

Ask them a very polite question, a direct question, and let's see this machine operate. I don't think you have to play by these rules necessarily. If someone says something publicly and then you can respond publicly, no problem.

But I'll give Jason Allen the benefit of the doubt. Let's see if we can get some clarity on some of these things. Anyway, I hope this is helpful. God bless. By the way, guys, did you see R. Scott Clark and his Anna's Minions call Bovink's opinion on baptizing babies and covenant membership for children and stuff like that?

Did you see him call that federal vision? Check out Steven Wedgeworth's tweets. Oh, it's classic. It's absolutely classic. Wedgetweets, I think it is, at Wedgetweets. Check them out, man. R. Scott Clark is too much.

He's a little extra. A little extra if you know what I mean.