The Plowman

This is the third, and hopefully last, installment of my comments on this year’s TMABC annual meeting, held last Sunday evening, October 7. In the first part I briefly described the great things happening at TMABC, structurally any way. In the second part, I outlined a couple of things that should be a cause for concern. In this third part I intend to point out specifically what concerns me about Dr. Frank Page’s keynote message.

1. The text cited for the message has nothing to do with churches not doing what God has called them to do. This passage is clearly referring to individuals and groups of people, and all of humanity’s need for repentance.
2. Although the vine dresser is identified as Jesus, a great opportunity is lost to show a beautiful picture of our great savior patiently and lovingly saving sinners and interceding for them. The Law says “Cut it down, it’s useless.” while Sovereign grace says “No, I will work a work, and it will bear fruit.” Matthew Henry speaks of the vinedresser in this way: “The dresser’s intercedes for [the fig tree.] Christ is the great Intercessor; he ever lives, interceding. Ministers are intercessors; they that dress the vineyard should intercede for it; those we preach to we should pray for, for we must give ourselves to the word of God and to prayer.”
3. Dr. Page’s unqualified statement that there is no correlation between suffering and sin is exactly the opposite from what our Lord teaches, from this passage and others, and denies the orthodox understanding of original sin and its consequences. From Genesis 3:16-19, to Romans 8:18-23, and all the way to Revelation 21:4, the connection of suffering to sin is evident. If Dr. Page meant by his statement that there is no direct correlation between suffering and sin, I would agree, but he didn’t say it in that way, and he should have for clarity’s sake.
4. The tone of this message betrayed an unhealthy emphasis on church brands. The continued existence of the SBC seems to be the reason to get on the ball. Jesus said in Matthew 16:18 that the gates of hell would not prevail against his kingdom. Paul tells us in Ephesians 1:11 that God has a purpose, and he works all things according to the council of his will. God’s kingdom will not fail. We should be more worried about carrying on kingdom business than whether or not that business has the SBC logo on it.

I am afraid that this kind of preaching is more common from Southern Baptist pulpits than we realize. I listen to a lot of sermons over the internet. I have family and friends throughout Oklahoma who go to Southern Baptist churches. For the most part there appears to be more fluff than meat out there. Most sermons are long on inspirational stories, moralism, and therapy, but very short on sin, hell, and a full, vibrant gospel. I have no doubt that just about all of the pastors mean well, but that won’t cut it when the souls of untold numbers are at stake, here and abroad.

We go from one program to another, thinking a change will cause church growth, baptisms, and the like. After all, numbers is what we want, isn’t it? We even try the un-program approach to programs, such as the “Small Church” and “Missional Model.” It is kind of like a sailor painting his leaky boat a different color, hoping that will fix the problem, yet it keeps on leaking, about to sink. It doesn’t matter what the “color” of your program is, you are going to have to fix the boat itself. God has entrusted the Church with a message to be delivered through the foolishness of preaching, and preaching anything less than that message is disobedience to God. TMABC is strategically positioned to play a vital role in helping member churches regain that message, if we will just bring in the right speakers.

Or the alternative: If the HMS SBC is too leaky to be fixed, then let’s get a new boat. We got real work to do.

This caught my eye as I was reading Spurgeon’s “Morning and Evening” this morning. I sure wish there were more in the SBC that thought this way.

Christians may differ on a variety of points, but they have all one spiritual appetite; and if we cannot all feel alike, we can all feed alike on the bread of life sent down from heaven. At the table of fellowship with Jesus we are one bread and one cup. As the loving cup goes round we pledge one another heartily therein. Get nearer to Jesus, and you will find yourself linked more and more in spirit to all who are like yourself, supported by the same heavenly manna. If we were more near to Jesus we should be more near to one another.

[For the first installment on this subject read Rowing in the Right Direction. It now looks like this will be the second part in a series of three.]

This new associational model is definitely a move in the right direction organizationally, but the Tulsa Metro Association of Baptist Churches has its work cut out. I believe that Art Roger’s description of TMABC as having a “Missional Posture” is well worded. The “Posture” is certainly there in the model. Actually being a “Missional” association will depend on the member churches. Do they have a passionate vision for missions? I’m not sure.

Concerning our new missional-modeled association, I have to say that the annual meeting’s low turnout this last Sunday was less than a vote of confidence from our member churches and their congregations. I would guess that our association of 150-plus churches represented itself with about 150, maybe 200 messengers, or at least attendees. Assuming that churches would let their evening services out to attend, and considering who the keynote speaker was, the turnout was not very impressive.

“We’ve never done it that way before.” is frequently on the lips of Baptists, so the these men with a vision for this need to get out among the member churches and their congregations and sell this idea, educating and informing them on what’s going on. I am sure there are pastors and church leaders in our association who think that because the association has quit administering the various ministries that were once under their umbrella that they don’t oversee anything anymore. Change is always difficult, and education is always the answer. Also keeping in mind the negative pressure from the state convention, this could be a hard sell.

There is another issue related to all of this that is of a much greater concern to me. About that vision I mentioned earlier; I don’t think it is in place yet. What should it be, and where will it come from? We can have all the right structure in place, but if there is no vision we will just be an association with a different model. I fear that we, not just locally, but our whole convention, are laboring with a man-centered philosophy of church ministry, primarily interested in the preservation of our SBC-brand identity; not everybody, but I believe it is a sizable problem. I also fear that our churches, in the main, don’t beat a steady drum beat of the gospel (1 Corinthians 2:2) from their pulpits. When we do proclaim the gospel from the pulpit it is couched in watered-down terms like “Won’t you let Jesus into your heart?”, which is less than a full, biblical gospel.

Can we look to our SBC leadership for that vision? I wonder. I believe Dr. Frank Page’s message to us this last Sunday evening was a classic example of what concerns me so greatly. I mean no disrespect, and I am not calling Dr. Page’s faith, sincerity, or devotion to the SBC into question, but the message he delivered to TMABC last Sunday evening was lacking in a number of ways.

Let me lay out Dr. Page’s message in a very abbreviated four-part outline: the premise, the story, the Scriptures, and the application. These outline headings I’ve used are mine and not Dr. Page’s.

1. The Premise:
   1. The Problem: “Eighty percent of Southern Baptist Churches are either plateaued or in decline. When I came to First Baptist, Taylors eight years ago, they were one of those eighty-percent churches. They had been in a steady decline for a number of years.” Later in the message Dr. Page cites projected figures predicting that forty to fifty percent of SBC churches could cease to exist twenty years from now.
   2. The Solution: “I told the people that we were going to plant a new church every year.” Dr. Page then went on to tell of
      1. his church’s growth: a two and one-half-times increase,
      2.  their large number of baptisms this last year, and
      3.  a number of new ministries they had started, roughly one each year, as promised. All impressive, to be sure.
2. The Story: A golfer rears back and swings at a teed-up ball, numerous times, each time hitting an ant hill instead. Finally, when there are only two ants left alive, one ant says to the other “What are we going to do?” The second ant answers back “I don’t know, but if we don’t get on the ball, we’re going to die.”
3. The Scriptures: There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish [we get on the ball, we're going to die (Dr. Page's insertion, not mine)]. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”
   And he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’ ” Luke 13:1-9 ESV
4. Application: What Does the Passage Say?
   1. What the Passage is Not Saying: Where there is much suffering, there is much sin.
   2. The Point to the Passage: “If we [SBC churches] don’t get on the ball [start planting new churches and baptizing lots of people] we’re going to die [cease to be the leading force in Evangelical Christianity].

I am going to stop there for now and come back with my specific concerns based on this message. In his post outlining Dr. Page’s message, Art Rogers gives a bit more of a natural flow of the message. You might want to go there and read. I’ll be back on this in a day or two.

My wife and I were privileged to attend the annual meeting of our local Baptist association this last Sunday evening, along with our pastor and his wife and another brother from our church. The Tulsa Metro Association of Baptist Churches has done what few, if any Southern Baptist associations around the nation have even thought of doing, much less actually undertaken: we have begun to cease functioning like a “church at large,” doing what the local church is suppose to do.

Typically, most associations administer city-wide ministries such as homeless and battered shelters, food and clothes pantries, and campus ministries, with the member churches sending money to the association so that the association can administer and fund the projects. That is no longer the way things are handled in the Tulsa Metro association. The stewardship of community ministry has been handed back to the churches where it belongs. Consequently, our association now has need for only two full-time paid staffers and two secretaries. The ministries around town were picked up by various churches who now administer them directly, eliminating administrative overhead, while at the same time generating interest among the members of their congregation so that they might be directly involved in real ministry. The association is in the process of selling its building, and when that happens it will operate out of a church somewhere here in Tulsa.

Under the leadership of Director of Missions, Charles Cruce, and Associate Director Bill Rains, this new associational model just focuses on four areas of involvement, all aimed at assisting the local church:

• Church planting
• Church staff support
• Leadership training
• Church strengthening

These four vital areas put the association back in the role of assisting the local churches, thus better equipping the local churches to do what God has called them to do. Pastors interested in these four areas have formed committees or “teams” that oversee the various programs, dispersing funds from a budgeted amount just for that area of involvement.

Now pastoring here in Tulsa, and actively involved in one of the “teams” of this new associational model, Art Rogers describes Tulsa Metro Association of Baptist Churches as “…perhaps the most forward thinking Association in the nation.” He wrote of our local association in greater length last year, and has already written a number (1, 2, 3, 4) of related posts from this years annual meeting. It is because of this forward thinking that we are receiving quite a bit of national attention from the SBC. Maybe that is why we were honored to have SBC president, Frank Page address the Tulsa Metro association this year.

Change is not without its minor setbacks and growing pains. Tulsa Metro association has generated a bit of friction with our state convention. You see, one ministry doesn’t quite fit this new model very well, and that is the Baptist Student Unions. These ministries are a bit of a hybrid, operating on the local, associational level, yet BSU directors are staffed and funded at the state convention level, at least that is how it is here in Oklahoma. What creates the crunch for the new model is that BSU directors are expressly forbidden by the state convention to solicit churches directly for operational funds. Why that is, I’m not sure, and how this difficulty is to be resolved remains to be seen. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Well, that is the positive side, as I see it, of local SBC life. In the next day or so I intend to submit a companion post, pointing to the symptoms of an over-arching problem endemic to much of the SBC, a problem for which the best of associational models cannot ever compensate.

It never fails. Every so often the anti-alcohol issue has to emerge from one of the journalistic organs of the Southern Baptist Convention. This time Oklahoma’s own Baptist Messenger felt the need last week to beat the dead horse one more time. There was nothing really new this time around; not much, really, to comment on. The same tired arguments were drug up on stage: short on scriptural exegesis, well short on scripture, period; long on sophistry. I wouldn’t have bothered with this post on the evils of alcohol except for the on-line comments of a couple of ladies. The fairer sex, on the main, was better represented by sound reasoning and scripture than the men, who, for the most part displayed their more emotional feminine side a bit too much. There were some rational men, but not many. It was pretty impressive, considering one of the ladies was the missus, and the other was one of our three bright offspring. None of them were raised in a Southern Baptist church. That, the grace of God, and home schooling, is why they have a mind and can express themselves without saying “Uh, like, uh, you know.”

Sometimes these anti-alcohol types remind me of a few lines from that immortal classic The Chicken

And intellectually, they’re plumb light headed.
They’re not confused by the facts.
That’s why there’s no guard chickens,
seeing-eye chickens, or trained chicken acts.

You have a very hard time tying them down to plain scripture. They tend to have a penchant for statistics and less-clear scripture which they then “apply” to alcohol. I am not a member of the clergy club, but I know enough about hermeneutics to know that the principle of the analogy of scripture means that you use the clearer passages to see your way through the more unclear passages. With the anti-drink crowd it always seems to be the other way around. What do you do with passages like Deuteronomy 14:22-27, Psalm 104:14, 15, and Amos 9:13? Well, I guess if you don’t like those passages, just skip over them.

Even if you aren’t a country-music fan, and I am not particularly, surely you have heard the popular country song by Craig Morgan, “That’s What I Love About Sunday.” Written by Mark Narmore and Adam Dorsey, this song that connects Sunday with faith, hit the top of the country charts back in early 2005. The big story back in 2005 was that this five-week number-one hit was the product of an independent record label, something virtually unheard of. More recently it turns out there is an interesting Southern Baptist connection to this country song as well. One of the co-authors of the lyrics, Adam Dorsey, is currently a seminary student at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Louisville, Kentucky. Last week Baptist Press published an article on this songwriter turned seminary student. It is an interesting piece. You should read it.

One devilish little detail keeps nagging at me, though. Nope, it’s not the song, per se. Being a secular song and not a church hymn, I can’t really criticize its watered-down theology. It happens to be a fine, warm-fuzzy song about God-fearin’ living; better than most by Nashville standards. It’s a great song if you don’t expect too much out of it.

I can’t really criticize the Baptist Press piece either. BP did a fine job delivering a wonderful human-interest story, full of patient waiting on God, enormous struggles, with eventual resolution and praise to God for His ultimate goodness.

What has kept me up nights is Adam Dorsey himself. I feel like Hercule Poirot in one of those Agatha Christie mysteries, in which the plot hangs on one little, seemingly insignificant detail that won’t cooperate with the other pieces of evidence in the case.

See if you see what I mean. Look at the words in the second half of the first verse of the song to see what I’m driving at:

That’s what I love about Sunday:
Sing along as the choir sways;
Every verse of Amazin’ Grace,
An’ then we shake the Preacher’s hand.

Do you see what I mean? I think this Adam Dorsey character is an impostor, maybe trying to hide something. I think the folks at Southern should investigate him. Dr. Moore is a country-music buff. Maybe he should look into the matter. What I mean by all of this is this Dorsey guy can’t be a Southern Baptist. Why do I say this, you ask? Well by the simple deduction that I’ve never been in a Southern Baptist church that ever sang every verse of anything, at least anything that had more than two verses and was written before 1950.

Well, now that I have had my bit of fun, it’s application time.

1. I am grateful for the Baptist Press article. It’s time we saw more of the same. That kind of article, among other things, informs and makes us acquainted with and better able to pray for those in or preparing to go into the mission field or pastorates. What we don’t need more of from BP are articles on pornography and addiction.
2. Is there any logical reason why we can’t seem to find a way to sing more than the first, third, and last verses of anything in church? I have a theory, and maybe I will share it with you sometime.

There was one largely unnoticed tidbit at the SBC this year in San Antonio that should be a great encouragement to all. Bob Green’s motion concerning LifeWay’s distribution of fables and allegories appeared to have fallen on a collective deaf ear. Maybe we are not a bunch of raving anti-intellectual fundamentalists, after all.

I’m not sure what Brother Green was alluding to. Since he specifically mentioned The Chronicles of Narnia, maybe he was reacting to the popular notion that Lewis was a universalist. More on that possibly in a future post. In the use of fables and allegories, Lewis was in good company. First, here’s just a bit of Bunyan’s apology to his Pilgrim’s Progress:

And thus it was: I, writing of the way
And race of saints in this our gospel day,
Fell suddenly into an allegory
About their journey and the way to glory,

Solidity, indeed, becomes the pen
Of him that writes things Divine to men;
But must I needs want solidness because
By metaphors I speak? Were not God’s laws,
His gospel laws, in olden time held forth
By types, shadows, and metaphors? Yet loth
Will any sober man be to find fault
With them, lest he be found for to assault
The highest wisdom. No, he rather stoops,
And seeks to find out what by pins and loops,
By calves and sheep, by heifers and by rams,
By birds and herbs, and by the blood of lambs,
God speaks to him; and happy is he
That finds the light and grace that in them be.

Be not too forward, therefore, to conclude
That I want solidness–that I am rude.
All things solid in show, not solid be:
All things in parables despise not we;
Lest things most harmful lightly we receive,
And things that good are of our souls bereave.

My dark and cloudy words they do but hold
The truth, as cabinets enclose the gold.
The prophets used much by metaphors
To set forth truth; yea, whoso considers
Christ, his apostles too, shall plainly see
That truths to this day in such mantles be.

Am I afraid to say that Holy Writ,
Which for its style and phrase puts down all wit,
Is everywhere so full of all these things–
Dark figures; allegories; yet there springs
From that same book, that lustre, and those rays
Of light that turn our darkest nights todays?

Art thou for something rare and profitable?
Wouldst thou see a truth within a fable?
Art thou forgetful? Wouldst thou remember
From New Year’s day to the last of December?
Then read my fancies; they will stick like burrs
And may be, to the helpless, comforters.

I can imagine that if one were to mistrust Lewis, then, perhaps one would just as likely view Bunyan with equal suspicion, even though he is considered by most to be a good Baptist boy. If that’s the case, then here is quite a different reference to the use of allegory:

For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. Now this may be interpretedallegorically : these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; shecorresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. Galatians 4:22-26 (ESV)

What does that mean? I’m not really sure, but I think that the church I attend might be doing at least some of it. To get a glimpse of what we did/are doing last week and this, take a gander at my pastor’s weekly address. The one thing he doesn’t mention is the fact that he rode the bus with the group to Arizona, and before that he had just gotten back from a 9-plus hour road trip Thursday evening, from this years Southern Baptist annual convention in San Antonio. And then yesterday he preached the message you will find in my previous post. I tell you, he is a tireless campaigner, who never brings attention to himself.

All Politics is Local.
I believe this phrase applies to the work of God’s kingdom every bit as much as it does to secular politics. In other words, the best, most efficient way to impact your world for Christ is to do something yourself. Partnering with smaller churches unable to man their own VBS (Vacation Bible School) is something some SBC agency can’t even begin to help with. Our little joint VBS project will impact the west side of Tulsa for the glory of God, and we don’t even care which church “benefits” the most. We just want to see children in our community hear the gospel unto salvation. And that didn’t take any Cooperative Program dollars.

Those of you out there who want to change our convention, prayerfully do what you feel like you need to do. Just don’t forget to do what you ought to be doing at home.

Things are beginning to look up for Pastor Tom Ascol, his Founders Ministeries in general, and, more particularly, his resolution on integrity in church membership, which is actually a resolution in support of biblical church discipline. Support is beginning to show up in unexpected places. First, there’s this from Danny Akin. It appears that Dr. Danny Akin, president of SEBTS sees things in a similar light. Thanks to Micah Fries for posting this address from Dr. Akin in its entirety. Here is just an excerpt:

I was delighted we approved a resolution on integrity in ministry but
disappointed we [didn't] do the same for one on regenerate church
membership. Some feared the latter was telling the local church what to
do, but a resolution can never do that. Some may think there was some
political agenda in the works. However, this is a clear biblical and
theological issue all Baptist should be able to affirm. Perhaps the
resolution presented needs to be reworded or adjusted, but an emphasis
on regenerate church membership needs to be recaptured by our churches.
I have personally been saying this for several years now. I will
continue to speak to this in the days ahead.

Here’s a man to have on your team. This past spring semester I began to listen to the chapel podcast from Southeastern, and Dr. Akin was the speaker of a good number of those messages. He is a theologically sound man, a fine preacher, very articulate; I would say about 95-percent Calvinist, although he probably wouldn’t care to be labeled that way. Come to think of it, I’m not that crazy about the moniker, though I believe firmly in the doctrines of sovereign grace. Sorry, Dr. Akin. Back to the point, I believe Dr. Akin is one of the underrated leaders in the SBC. I think he is showing true leadeship by speaking candidly, though probably not popularly among some, on this and other subjects relevant to current SBC life.

And now this from an unexpected corner of Christian blogdom. Michael Spencer has been quite a controversial figure among the more buttoned-down Christian community. I first only heard of this wild, unorthodox iMonk figure, several years back, as I was then mostly reading the more generic Christian blogs. Discussion about him was so scary that I didn’t even dare go and check him out. After all, the blog title Boar’s Head Tavern would evoke all kinds of unsavory images in my head. It was only a few months ago that curiosity pushed me over the edge, and I began listening to his Internet Monk Radio podcast. Although he gives me a couple of areas of concern, I believe he is a sound brother in Christ, in whom I find much common ground, especially in his journey from and back to the SBC. Well, enough of that. Here’s a couple of excerpted paragraphs of what the iMonk had to say about the Founders movement:

The Founders movement in the SBC has emerged as a major player in denominational reformation and rethinking. Despite attempts to blame reformed minded Southern Baptists for problems in evangelism (and that will get worse in the future), the Founders movement has remained pro-SBC, pro-denomination, pro-Cooperative program and pro-missions and evangelism. Good for them and their wise leaders.

The Founders movement has the audacity to suggest that the way forward for the SBC entails a serious look backward at the Baptist past: confessionalism, church discipline, theologically driven preaching, pastoral theologians and Biblical wisdom over pragmatism. As a post-evangelical, I too believe that any evangelical pointing forward in the direction of the megachurches and generic evangelicalism is pointing us over a cliff.

There are good reasons to pray for this old ship. Though I am not a Calvinist and will never be in an innovative church, I can support, encourage and pray for the Founders, the younger leaders, the missionals and those seeking for the SBC to become a movement for the Kingdom. Count on these pages to reflect that positive and hopeful prayer for my denominational home.

A fitting end. There are many good reasons to pray for this old ship called the SBC. Let us just be careful we are not guilty of worshiping the creature “Southern Baptist” rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever, amen. The Founders’ calm, steady, Christ-exhalting position has, and will continue to win over serious and dedicated Christians within the SBC. Slow and steady, slow and steady.

That’s it. One picture, taken across the street while hurriedly walking from my hotel to the convention Tuesday morning. Hardly proper honor rendered. After all, unlike Hank Hill, I am a natural-born Texican.

And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, Colossians 3:17, 23 (ESV)

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going. Ecclesiastes 9:10 (ESV)

I think there is a word here for us concerning Southern Baptist Convention mechanics. Are we giving it our best shot? As it is currently set up, with music, videos, and speeches interspersed between brief blocks of business, business isn’t being done properly. Not a few convention goers have expressed this same concern. Any time messengers are left standing at the microphone when “time expires” something is amiss.

In his lengthy San Antonio Wrap up… Ben Cole, at one point bemoans the low voter turnout, and rightly points the cause at the chopped up schedule. He suggests some modifications to convention business to alieviate the problem:

If I was scheduling the convention, I think I would set up the election of officers for back to back votes. I would continue to allow multiple times to introduce new motions, but I would schedule the bulk of the Tuesday evening session for one block of time for debate on the motions presented during the morning. All of the previously scheduled business times would be rolled into one giant block of time for debate and votes. If we got through the time early, I would let everybody go home early that night. Resolutions would still be on Wednesday morning, followed by all the seminary reports back to back with a time for questions for all the seminaries in one block.

And then I would make sure that all votes were announced 15 minutes before they were to occur via a loudspeaker and an alarm in the exhibit hall. If messengers were given a heads-up about votes over a loudspeaker, I think many of them would make their way into the convention hall with ballots in hand. As it is now, the only thing you hear over loudspeakers in the exhibit halls are the blue light specials at the Lifeway store. I would also think about having “balloting kiosks” throughout the convention hall to enable messengers to vote at those places on all votes requiring a ballot.

I agree with the first paragraph, but not the second. Here’s my modified Cole plan: If you knock off all of the music, videos, and other extraneous stuff - translate “political speeches” - and make a special block for all that on both Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, then those who came to do business can do so both mornings and early afternoons. No need for alarms, anouncements, or voting kiosks, because the exhibit halls wouldn’t be open except during the 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m. lunch break, and after all business is done in the late afternoon, say five-ish. This way, when all of the business is finished, everyone is free to peruse the book stalls at LifeWay, sit in on one big Christian film and music festival, or have a decent block of time in the early evening with family and/or friends to see the sites of the city. Can you guess which option I would choose?