Back-Porch Theology

Preface
Back Porch theology came about due to my breakfast meetigns with about eight guys, all Baptist, who wanted to do more than eat breakfast and drink coffee. I called them the Baptist Knights of the Long Table, and we met in a restaurant called Jasper’s Porch, right off Exit 21 on I-95 in Ridgeland, SC. They had theological questions and once they found out that I was a preacher they picked my brain, like a hungry man at a buffet.
These are good men, along with one woman who always came with her husband and held her own among the men. On occasion she expressed astonishment at the questions. Once she exclaimed to one of the questioners: “My Lord, what rock have you been hiding under?”
We covered everything from creation to the Second Coming, or Genesis to Revelation. In this book I’ve attempted to cover some of the thoughts that arose from those meetings.
Those breakfast meetings were lively; never boring, and often times a spin-off from the Sunday sermons or discussions at church, or some relevant problem of life. I would hope that more of God’s children would be so interested in the plans of God and His daily workings. Preachers ought to feel glad that something said on Sunday morning comes home to roost on Monday. So all is not lost in the hours of sermon preparations and exhortations on Sundays—many of the comfortable are afflicted while others afflicted are comforted!
I was the hybrid among those Baptist Knights of the Long Table coming from an Anabaptist background and pastoring two United Methodist Churches, one with 177 members and one with 38 members, both eight miles apart.
As I approached the table each morning I was almost always asked: “What are you preaching on Sunday?” My usual response was: “Sin, I’m preaching on sin!”
Invariably they’d respond with—“You’ve come to the right table!”
So this book has come about after weeks and months of discussions of our theological wanderings. Sometimes we might have been like the young dreamer, Joseph, wandering in the field looking for his brothers. Regardless, I can tell you that those morning discussions were as lively and profound and thorough as any I experienced in seminary classrooms. Fact is, the light they brought to those breakfast meetings would enlighten any dull seminary theology class.
And that brings me to my final introductory point: Theology, which is the study of God, was never meant to be shut up in seminary class rooms, but rather to be lived in the market place. It’s been my pleasure and joy to see it expounded not on a classroom blackboard, but around a table in a restaurant over a hot cup of coffee. I can say with certainty that the phrase, “Emmanuel,” or God with us, became reality in the daily breakfast meetings at the Jasper’s Porch Restaurant.
January 24, 2014 –Al Shifflett