I’ve been involved in one of our interminable discussions of the state of fundamentalism on another blog. The topic of conversation shifted from the original post somewhat and one comment from a pastor in California brought up the idea of ‘vision’.
He suggests that it is easy to summarize in a few short words or a phrases the essential vision of various evangelical ministries, but questions whether that is true of fundamentalist ministries or institutions. I don’t happen to think that he is right, but he seems to think that the ‘visions’ of the evangelicals are more compelling than the lack of vision of fundamentalists.
Another complicating factor in making these comparisons is that the ‘competing’ ministries are represented by ministries strongly identified with a popular individual on the conservative evangelical side as opposed to more institutional or group oriented ministries/organizations on the fundamentalist side. In some ways we aren’t really comparing apples to apples here.
Having said that, the idea of ‘vision’ (or ‘mission statements’) leaves me cold. Too much corporate psycho-babble for me.
I wonder, however, if a few readers would like to chime in on the subject by giving us their brief ‘vision statements’ for the various ministries mentioned. Here is the list:
- 9Marks
- Ligonier
- Grace To You
- Desiring God
- BJU
- FBFI
- Sword of the Lord
I am going to post the complete post I am reacting to after the jump, so I would suggest that it would be best if you write out your vision/mission statements first, without looking at the post or other comments. Then click through to my comments section and post your reaction.
We can discuss various other aspects of this post as well, but let’s start with how well we can define these ministries without looking up their mission statements on their web-sites or doing any research about them. If you aren’t that familiar with a ministry, ‘I don’t know’ is an acceptable response.
More below…
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