"Thom Rainer, a Southern Baptist who has written extensively on church growth"
My intention on posting was to simply highlight this too-often used critique of house churches.
Chris Turner from LifeWay added this comment to the post, and I agree that it is important that Dr. Rainer's feelings about this subject are noted.
Chris Turner said...
I did want to provide a point of clarification. I arranged the interview for Dr. Rainer with Time. The reporter was looking for someone to speak to the contrary perspective, but was approaching deadline. I told her--as media relations manager for LifeWay--that I doubted Dr. Rainer would give her a contrary view, but that his comments would be beneficial. He actually told her that there is the danger for doctrinal problems in house churches, but the part of his comments she didn't publish is that there are also problems in traditional churches when there is poor leadership or poor biblical exegesis. He said he had no problem at all with house churches and said he believes there are many effective methods for reaching people for Christ, but there effectiveness is closely tied to how true to Scripture the methodology stays.
Hope this provides some clarification. I can assure you that Dr. Rainer is a student of reaching people for Christ and will lead LifeWay to be more effective in the resources we provide to assist individuals and churches in that endeavor.
I agree with Dr. Rainer that there are many methods for reaching people for Christ. I believe that we will see God at work in both traditional churches and house churches. I hope that we will learn to respect and acknowledge that possibility.
Thank you Chris for bringing this to our attention.
4 comments:
great job on clarifying. that was awesome of Chris to bring context to Ranier's interview. yes, writers can omit things to get quotes to fit an agenda. This is a great learning lesson for me as I launch into writing.
Wow, someone from LifeWay found you. How did that happen?
David, the eyes of the Lord roam to and fro throughout the earth....naw, just kidding! Technorati is a beautifuul thing. I search the blogosphere every day to see what folks are saying about us. Seldom do I inject myself into the conversation but my comments here had more to do with my frustration with the Time reporter than what was discussed on Grace's blog. It was pretty obvious from talking with her (the reporter) she was looking for a quick quote to prop up a contrary view. In hindsight I should have not asked Dr. Rainer to do the interview. I once was a reporter before going into corp. comm. and it used to grate on me when reporters had their stories written and were looking for quotes to support their conclusions. I wanted to clear that up here for the folks that read this blog because ya'll (as we say in TN) had some great perspectives. I don't disagree with any of them--they are accurate. I just wanted to be sure Dr. Rainer wasn't lumped in because he is all about doing whatever it takes within the bound of biblical fidelity to reach people with the gospel.
Grace, thanks for going the extra mile to draw attention to my clarification. I REALLY appreciate it.
Yes Pam, and I realized that in my scanning, I hadn't even noticed or acknowledged who the quote was from. My bad.
Gee David, I don't know. And here I thought I was invisible.
Chris,
I appreciate that you took the time to post your comments here, and I appreciate the manner in which you did.
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