Shannon

J Warner Wallace

December 20, 2016 By Shannon
Filed Under: What we've done

When: September 2014

Where: Birmingham, AL

Partnerships: Tactical Faith, Shades Mountain Baptist, Calvary Baptist church

What I remember: It was such an honor hosting the great Jim Wallace here in Birmingham. We worked him hard for the five days he was here. While he worked hard he never failed to move a crowd towards the gospel truths of our faith! We also had a great night for Tactical Faith workers at Hoover Tactical Firearms where Jim gave everyone a short lesson on handgun shooting. Also, I cannot forget to add that we took Jim to a University of Alabama football game. Since coming that week Jim’s work and profile has increased and we pray that he continues to reach the four corners of the earth for Christ!

Nancy Pearcey 2016

December 19, 2016 By Shannon
Filed Under: What we've done

When: April 21st, 2016

Where: Birmingham, Al

Partnerships: Evangel Classical School, Evangel Presbyterian Church, Nancy Pearcey, Tactical Faith

What I remember: We love bringing in talented people like Nancy Pearcey to our area. We were able to get Dr. Pearcey in front of adults and students while she was in town. We also had her talk in front of a special group of leaders for a talk on art and worldview. There was such energy and excitement for her when she was here . Not only did we hear her lecture but we also got to know her personally. I can honestly say that few have blended both personality and intellect.

SALT 2013

December 19, 2016 By Shannon
Filed Under: What we've done

When: January of 2012

Where: Montgomery, AL

Partnerships: First Baptist Montgomery, Faith Radio, Tactical Faith, Stand to Reason, Alabama Baptist Newspaper, B&H Publishing, Alabama Baptist Evangelism Office, Truth Ministries.

What I remember: This was the very first Alabama apologetics Conference put on by the Alabama Baptist. First Baptist Montgomery hosted the event on a cold weekend in January. Stand To Reason’s Greg Koukl guided the whole day and introduced all the speakers. We also had a great treat in having Dave Glander’s full museum of truth in the lower flow of the church.

Southern Baptist Convention — Strategic Answers to Life’s Thoughts

Strategic Answers to Life’s Thoughts

Thorny Renunciations

December 16, 2016 By Shannon
Filed Under: Blog Post, Theology Tagged With: Apostasy, Salvation

a·pos·ta·sy

əˈpästəsē/

noun

the abandonment or renunciation of a religious or political belief.

The nature of apostasy and what it actually looks like, is a source of conflict, division, and confusion within Christianity. To be sure, the idea of whether or not a truly born again believer, a Christian mind you, could even actually commit such an act is prone to controversy. Jesus seems to speak of three different types of soil, and that soil is usually interpreted as a pre-christian convert who is struggling with the issue of truly submitting to God as their Lord and Savior. My perspective is heavily coloured by a southern evangelical tradition, that is butting up against the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. Bring in our latest understandings of Jesus as a Rabbi in a 1st century Jewish context and we could talk for hours.

All this is rolling around in my own head while I’m thinking about the actual people whom I know, who have left Christianity. Once we start to introduce flesh and blood into the equation, the whole issue suddenly gets to be quite a nerve wracking exercise. It begins to come out of an arm chair theology, and starts to argue with you and hits you in the gut. All the while you, as the defender of the faith, are fighting the urge to, A. put on the boxing gloves and show them just how robust the Christian faith is and B. the intense longing to understand your friend and where they are coming from. On the one hand, we feel this urge, in the same way that a man might feel compelled to defend the honor of his wife or sister. This is a natural sentiment, and one that can work in tandem with the movement of the Holy Spirit. It can also go awry in it’s approach and miss the boat completely, while you and your interlocutor are both drowning in a sea of misunderstanding. So, what is the alternative? To simply listen with real concern in your mind and your heart. After all, the possibility of missing something or being blinded by our our own milieu seems to be an honest concern that all thinking men and women have to guard against. So, what is the solution?

Well…I’m not here to propose anything like that. One has to prayerfully and lovingly approach each of these situations carefully. People are not all leaving Christianity for the same reasons nor are they in the same place emotionally, or physiologically. What I am interested in are some of the factors that seem to go into this whole movement. The slippery slide that happens as people inch toward the cliff, until suddenly, they are at the bottom of the ravine.

As a creative type person, I see the tug that many other creative folks have within the world that we typically try to live in. Art, illustration, design are all intensely competitive and time consuming endeavours. Time is always in short supply. It always runs out before you know it, so one has to learn to work hard, fast, and excellently in order to pull of the the job, or you don’t eat. Once family and age get multiplied into this equation, you pretty much lose the crucial component to succeed as an artist, which is time. I would think that most people in a professional type situation can understand where I’m coming from, and maybe where I’m going. In our culture, you have to increasingly become a subject matter expert in whatever field you are in, and many times it’s so niche that you get locked down quickly in a particular stream. To be good at what you do takes time. To excel at what you do takes skill, lots of effort, and a queer kind of obsession that sneaks up on you. It’s this queer obsession with your craft that begins to look and feel like the thorny soil that Jesus spoke of.

The order of this parable in Luke chapter 8 seems to be very important. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the thorny soil is the soil before the good soil, and that the other two soils don’t really seem to have time to allow the seed to really get a hold of them. This person has been living with the seed and with the thorns for quite some time. A year or a decade. Maybe over 20 years. I’ve certainly know friends who, for all intents and purposes, seem to have had strong Christian faiths, and then that thorn that they had been struggling with starts to form a wedge between their goals and purposes in life, and their commitment to God. As I said earlier, time can be a problem with these commitments. It’s quite an unrelenting bully. Unreasonable, pushy, and consuming. And the family aspect is crucial when thinking about the issue of thorns. The family sets in, time is against us, we have our careers to think about, and we desperatly want to be faithful to God. This is to say nothing of the modern quest for health that our western culture seems so obsessed with.

So, something has to give. Or does it? I think it’s easy enough to make an argument for doing all things to the glory of God, which means being excellent in all that we do. But sometimes the excellence that God demands brushes up against the excellence of the world. I said earlier that I was in a creative field. And when a creative person looks out at the world, the are confronted with choices of what to create and what not to create. Or, which jobs to take and which jobs not to take. Here’s another part of the rub. As a Christian, I believe that all things are lawful for me, but not all things are beneficial. Restricting one’s visual diet to what they believe are acceptable topics, could be seen as restrictive. Many times, it is this self imposed restraint that is the first casualty of the creative or professional. Because the Christian who is in a professional atmospher, working hard to be on their game, has to exercise restraint as well. Whether one is a creative type, or the professionally driven type, these restraints do not always bode well for a long term career or multiple projects.

In the midst of the Christian growing within his family and career, sometimes something has to be sacrificed. Sacrifice does seem like the right word. As a believer, we are called to sacrifice everything for the sake of our Lord. In the midst of family and professionalism, and the queer obsession that settles in upon those of us that are driven toward excellence, one can see where the slip begins to happen. In these kind of situations, when we loosen our own restraints, it seems that God will suddenly find himself in the dock. And this is where the intellectual and volitional justifications start to creep in. We seek to justify our own positions continually, thus we find ourselves pushing God a little farther away. All the while, we begin to judge God and the whole religious endeavor as truly unworthy, while we do our best to hold onto the fruit, while losing the root for which the fruit comes. We become like cut flowers, no longer partaking in the spiritual nourishment that we once enjoyed.

Can I lie now?

November 5, 2016 By Shannon
Filed Under: Blog Post Tagged With: Bonhoeffer, Ethics

A lot of ink has been spilled over the subject of lying and whether or not a lie is justified. It’s an important topic, but not one that is as controversial as some folks would like you to think. My thoughts here are after the fashion of Corrie Ten Boom and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I make the argument with a contrite and prayerful spirit all the while using what I view is a very commonsensical approach. I acknowledge first and foremost that this issue is complex and even harder to live out.

I was having a conversation on this very topic at one of our Reasonable Faith meetings here in Birmingham. This has been several years ago now, but at the time, one of the participants was making the argument that lying was explicitly condemned under the Law, and as such, there was never justification for lying to anyone. This struck several people in the group as being unreasonable, as well as unbiblical. As we sipped our coffee we explored this idea in a completely abstract and safe environment. No one was holding a gun to our heads demanding that we give the names of those we were hiding. There were no spies on the rooftop while the city officials questioned us. We were safe, sipping our Americano’s from the local coffee shop. We had nothing to fear.

But fear of death and imprisonment is precisely what many people have had to choose if their little ruse was found out. Corrie Ten Boom is one of many Christians who was willing to lay down their life in order to protect the innocent. She was even willing to lie to the authorities when asked direct questions about who they were aiding and abetting. Christians in the 21st century also have to deal with issues like this. There are underground house churches all over China. Christians in the Middle East who would hide Yazidi girls from thugs and brutes. Christian missionaries in the east, who have to protect those who leave their religion that they were born into. So, while abstract in a coffee shop in Birmingham, this is a very real question at present to many all over the world.

So, on the face of it, I would disagree with my fundamentalist friend about his interpretation of Exodus 20:16. I double checked the King James version to make sure it didn’t flatly say “Thou shalt not lie”, but even the KJV is more nuanced than this. The commandment is “Don’t bear false witness”. Now is “Bearing false witness” the same thing as “Lying”. I think they are for the most part talking about the same thing. Now, to be sure, there is the issue of motive. Maybe this is where someone like Dietrich Bonhoeffer starts to inform my thinking. In his magnum opus “Ethics” Bonhoeffer continually refers to the “will of God” as being preeminent, thus the highest authority in which we as Christians have to answer too. And how do we know what this will is? Well, if we apply the Golden Rule to any one of the situations above, then we find ourselves looking the answer straight in the face. To do unto others as you would have them do unto you seems to answer all my questions about what the will of God is in situations like that. If I am on the other side of the line I would not want myself to be given over to evil men. I would also not quarrel or condemn my protectors, concerning the mode in which they chose to protect me, even if that meant lying about my whereabouts.

Is it a sin though? Whether or not I condemn anyone is not to say the act was sinful or not. I am not the arbiter of righteousness. Speaking plainly, I might retort that even if this is a sin before God, so what? Would God not forgive a person who was honestly trying to protect someone else. This kind of protection is not without its liabilities. Typically the threat of imprisonment or sometimes death is not only multiplied to the individual, but also to their family members. This motive for protection is in line with the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. There is not ill gotten gain achieved when a lie like this is conceived on the lips of the protector. No one becomes pregnant with further evil motives at the behest of safeguarding the innocent. So, even if I believed that lying to protect the innocent was a sin, which I do not, I do believe it would be a pardonable sin and one which would not result in a habitual sinful act being perpetuated for selfish motives in the future. The prohibition to lie is to restrict the individual from using falsehoods for personal gain. And in such a case, there is no personal gain for those risking their own neck for someone else. Hence, my argument for a sinless lie comes to fruition.
For me this is a fairly open and shut case. I would have no problem whatsoever in lying to evil men or even to good magistrates if it meant protecting an innocent person from being imprisoned by an unjust or corrupt law or system. In my mind, some men don’t deserve the truth. And as for biblical examples, Rahab seems like a good place to start.

Our new logo!

September 18, 2016 By Shannon
Filed Under: Latest News

The human brain is a machine for coming to conclusions; if it cannot come to conclusions, it is rusty.
-G.K. Chesterton

Part of the movement and production of art is critique. To open oneself up to outside criticism from peers is not just a method of moving forward, but is practically a virtue. The humbling process of allowing another to deconstruct something that you have spent hours constructing is frustrating, humbling, and insightful all at the same time. Our logo, as a reflection of our ministry, is also open to the same humbling and uplifting critique that can be found in the long history of peer review and examination. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to make any more of a simple critique than needs be. Sometimes it is mean spirited, envious, and annoying. But even in those situations, it can still be productive.

Our old logo has been with TF since it’s inception, over 5 years ago now. It was originally designed by an outside freelancer who works out of Montgomery. Albeit before my own time, it was crafted to emphasize the original intent of the ministry. Symbolic of a specific target, embedded within the cross, this was and is the high mark of all christians, and the goal and purpose of our faith. A Christ centered ministry that focuses on uplifting the Church in ministry, theology, philosophy, and apologetics.

Making no bones about it, we are a ministry aimed at Christian churches in the south, and specifically in Birmingham. Our emphasis is local. We are and have been committed to Christian orthodoxy, in the smallest sense of the “o”. In this way, Tactical Faith has not changed, and God willing, we will not change.

With all that in mind, when we decided to change the logo, it was with the orthodox mindset in the lead. Our old logo, was contemporary, and modern. It was also commonly confused with a medical distribution organization, which as a salve, works. We do wish to heal the church in a way that brings theological renewal. But in the end, we felt that we needed to emphasize the ancientness of the faith that we long to represent. As such, we wish to spread wide the arms of the cross to all christians, regardless of denominations, tertiary theologies, and minor differences in the interpretation of scripture. All these things are important, but as a non-profit, this is not where are emphasis is. It is with anyone willing to align themselves with the Cross of Jesus Christ. The Cross and all its immediate emphasis in salvific history was a first priority in crafting the new logo.
I felt compelled to combine the T and the F into a single typographical element. This is not always meant to be a stand alone symbol, but it is meant to be an independent component when needed. As this cruciform began to take shape, I felt it only natural for the arm of the F to represent the spear that penetrated the side of Jesus. However, this also left me with a graphic issue of empty space on the other side of the F. Wanting to balance out the dead space I set to work on a solution. As most readers of the Gospel know, when the spear did penetrate the side of Jesus, it poured forth both blood and water. The historic implications of this description have validating medical overtures, since the heart will form a sack of fluid when under duress. As the blood of Christ is crucial to the work of the cross as well as the historical significance of this particular point in the narrative, the balanced solution was obvious. A single drop of blood reflected on the opposite side of the spear/arm would give the composition proper weight on both sides. Once that problem was solved I again felt compelled to further the logo into the Cruciform. As such one would have to consider all aspects of the Cross from a historical perspective. That would be the apologist in me coming out. As such, I decided to add an ascender to the logo. One in which would possibly carry the impetus of the crucifixion. “King of the Jews”. It says everything about the work of Jesus. The sign that was hung above Christ’s head. Being labeled an insurrectionist and a blasphemer, it is commonly understood that Pilate saw thru this ruse put on by the Jews. And to make it clear that insurrection would not be tolerated, Pilate placed this sign above Jesus as a tongue in cheek declaration of His “crimes”. What more justification would I need for the ascender? None at all. While not being as overt as the arm for the F, it still serves a symbolic purpose, which I’m happy to point out, since it gives preeminence to the One whom we serve. As for the other components of the logo, it is typeset with the font Kefa Regular. The T in Tactical has been replaced with the cross, without the arm and drop designating the F. The line of red below the TF logo represents the blood that covered the earth when Jesus spilt his blood. The brown and red represent the aforementioned blood, and the earthiness of Christ’s ministry. Lastly, I used a small bullet in the shape of the trinity, to further emphasis the specific type of ancient Christianity that we are seeking to promote.

We are mere christians. We are orthodox. We are ecuminical in the purest form of the Gospel. It’s what we do. Hopefully this will come thru in our messaging and our actions.