THE FUTURE COURSE OF THE SBC

The Southern Baptist Convention recently held in San Antonio, TX had one significant motion that may affect SBC practice and policy for years to come. The motion was made by Rick Garner, messenger from Liberty Heights Baptist Church in Liberty Heights, Ohio and read “I move that this convention adopts the statement of the Executive Committee issued in February of this year, and included in the Executive ’s report found in the 2007 Book of Reports, Page 17, which reads ‘The Baptist Faith and Message is neither a creed, nor a complete statement of our faith, nor final and infallible; nevertheless, we further acknowledge that it is the only consensus statement of doctrinal beliefs approved by the Southern Baptist Convention and such is sufficient in its current form to guide trustees in their establishment of policies and practices of entities of the Convention.’”

For those who have not been closely following convention politics for the last couple of years, some history is needed to fully understand the significance of this motion. As I briefly recap the historical setting I understand that my personal prejudices will color my interpretation of events.  That is the price of being human.

In 1979 the conservative resurgence began in earnest. Some of the young (40’ish) conservative leaders led a movement to redirect the SBC on a more conservative path. Over a period of years a new generation of leaders took control of the convention and the Baptist Faith and Message (BFM) statement of 2000 was their theological capstone.

Gradually employees of convention entities were asked to sign the BFM. A number of missionaries and seminary professors resigned rather than sign. Some felt we had adopted a creedal statement and they were opposed to any creed other than the Bible. Others had objections to some part of the statement. However the BFM has now been accepted as the “only consensus statement of doctrinal beliefs approved by the Southern Baptist Convention.” As such most denominational employees are required to sign it as a statement of their beliefs.

Some of the SBC entities recently began requiring agreement to additional theological beliefs or practices that have not been approved by the Southern Baptist Convention. Among these are the International Mission Board (IMB), North American Mission Board (NAMB) and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SWBTS).

In November of 2005 the Board of Trustees of the IMB voted that future missionaries would not be appointed if they practiced a private prayer language of if they had not been baptized by proper church authority. This set off a firestorm of protest. The board voted to ask the SBC to dismiss one of the protesting trustees and later rescinded that vote because of pressure put on the board from around the SBC.

For the past year and a half resistance to what has been called “a narrowing of the theological parameters” of the convention has been building. Last year the convention surprisingly elected someone who was not backed by the group of leaders that has for thirty years directed the convention. A group of younger leaders who are set on reform backed Frank Page and he was elected on the first ballot.

The fight is not now over theology. Conservativism won the battle with the BFM 2000. Now the battle is over whether or not the BFM is a sufficient guide for our agencies in setting polices and practices. Some of those who now hold the reigns of power at these institutions believe they have responsibility to further define who can serve Southern Baptists through these institutions. Their position is that the BFM is a “sufficient” guide but not the only guide. Most of those who backed the above motion feel that if an agency of the SBC wants to define theologically who can serve in that agency beyond the BFM they must bring the additional theological statements to the SBC for approval. Both sides feel that theirs is a correct interpretation of the motion.

I am sure that next year someone will seek to clarify the intent of the motion. The new motion will probably be to require the agencies of the SBC to restrict their theological requirements for service to the BFM unless otherwise pre-approved by the convention. It will probably require all SBC agencies to bring to the convention for approval all such statements already in use.

If I may prophesy a little more, the battle will continue at least for a while. Those who have recently controlled the direction of the convention insisted that all SBC agencies be solely owned by the convention. This helped them maintain control over the agencies. They are now arguing that the trustees independently operate the agencies (which is true). I’m sure the reformers will argue that the agencies are solely owned by the SBC (which is true) and therefore the SBC can instruct them to change their policies.

I believe the outcome will be that those who led the conservative resurgence and are now fighting to hold on to their influence are going to lose. A new group of younger leaders are getting ready to take over the reigns of leadership. They will be conservative but more inclusive. They will not insist on complete theological agreement in order to work with someone for the evangelization of the lost.

The ramifications of such a change in leadership are many and significant. It will affect our missions programs and our seminaries as well as most of our other agencies. What do you think?

Accountable Christians

When I was a student pastor in seminary, I read through the minutes of the country church I pastored. A couple of things caught my eye. In the mid 1800s the church paid the pastor with a bushel of potatoes and two gallons of whiskey. Wow! It must not have been a Southern Baptist Church at that time.

The second thing that caught my eye was the practice of church discipline. I remember reading of one gentleman who was caught drunk and using bad language. He was brought before the congregation in their monthly Saturday business meeting, charged with his sins and “churched”. That means he was voted out of the membership.

Three months later he came back before the congregation, publicly repented of his sins and gave evidence of his reformation. The church forgave him and reinstated his membership in the church.

We don’t practice church discipline any more in a public fashion and it is my impression that few churches have any means of practicing church discipline privately. As pastor of a church I once became aware of a male member making inappropriate remarks to a female staff member. I took two deacons with me and confronted the man with his sin. He immediately confessed and agreed to apologize to the staff member and also promised never to do such a thing again. Later he came to me and thanked me for handling the situation as we did. As far as I know he never repeated his sin.

There are a number of people in the convention today who are concerned that our life styles as Christians are hurting our ability to reach the lost with the Gospel. They refer to the declining number of baptism and the fact that surveys show that Southern Baptists have a life style similar to the lost world. In fact some surveys have shown that in spite of our proclaimed family values, Southern Baptist divorce rates exceed the general population.

Do we need to do more as churches to uphold our stated values in the lives of our members? Should churches have minimum standards of behavior to which they hold their members accountable? Is it important to expect certain levels of moral behavior from our members? How should we enforce accountability to the church? Are there certain sins in the lives of it members with which a church should always deal? Should members be held accountable for attendance, giving and otherwise participating in the work of the church?

What do you think?

God’s Call to …

All of those involved in ministry (should be all Christians) know the importance of being called by God. We often speak of being called to a church or being called as a pastor, deacon, teacher, etc. We know from experience that an assurance of our calling is sometimes the only thing that keeps us going.

Reading Ed Stetzer’s book Breaking the Missional Code helped me gain a new insight on our calling from God. Always the source of our calling must be God. It is he who calls us. Through the Holy Spirit we are gifted for ministry. Through the lordship of Jesus Christ we are directed to our ministry. Through God the Father we are empowered for our ministry (See 1 Cor. 12:4-6).

But under the lordship of Christ, what do we understand as the object of our calling? Are we called to a church, or to a position of ministry (pastor, deacon, etc.) or as Stetzer suggests, are we called to a people? Our sense of calling will greatly affect how we seek to fulfill our calling.

If our primary sense of calling is to a particular church then to be successful we can be tempted to be competitive rather than cooperative and can be tempted to seek out programs and methods rather than seeking out an intimate relationship with the Father. If our primary sense of calling is to a position then to be successful we can be tempted to depend upon skills and techniques rather than upon God’s enabling.

Our primary call is to an intimate relationship with the Father. It is out of the intimacy of that relationship that he will begin to reveal his plan for our ministry. Yes, we serve in a ministry role through a local church. But, do we serve the institution, the members or are we called to serve the community?

Scripture tells us that God loves the world. He sent his Son to seek and to save those outside a relationship with him (the lost). Jesus wept over the lost of Jerusalem. Have we spent enough time with him to gain his heart for our lost community? Do we have a weeping spirit for the lost of our community?

Missionaries know that to reach a tribe they must have a call from God to reach them. Then they must develop a love for the people to whom God has called them. That love for the people to whom God is calling us will help overcome the temptation for easy and cheap success through programs and methods borrowed from others.

Only when we know whom God is calling us to reach will we be able to begin figuring out how to reach them. Maybe we need to begin to pray, “Lord, who is it you have called me to reach?” When we know the answer to that prayer, the ministry journey is just beginning for real.

What do you think?

Becoming Missionaries

I am concerned that our baptism rates keep dropping while our population keeps going up. We are becoming less and less effective at reaching the lost people in our communities. One of the problems seems to be that our culture is changing rapidly and the church is becoming irrelevant to most of the people in our communities. Our culture no longer sees the value in the Christian faith that it once saw.

How do we cross the growing cultural gap while remaining faithful to our Biblical faith? I believe we must now view our communities as being non-Christian. We must also see ourselves as missionaries being sent into a non-Christian culture. This change in thinking can help us adjust our approach to our communities.

What would we expect a missionary to do when leaving their cultural context and going to a strange and lost culture? If we can learn what missionaries do to reach different cultural settings then maybe we could adapt their methods to our church’s outreach to our communities.

I would expect a missionary to identify with the people where he was going. That means learning their language, their values, their social structures, their taboos, their life-styles and then adopting these everywhere they do not conflict with the gospel.

Next I would expect the missionary to begin developing relationships with individuals within the culture. He could begin with meeting needs of individuals and helping them solve problems in their society. Working shoulder to shoulder with the people to help others and make their community better will break down many barriers.

As God gives opportunity the missionary should share his faith and lead others to faith in Christ. These first converts should then be taught that their responsibility is to reach their family and friends. Those who are “native” to the culture are best able to reach other “natives”. What we are looking for is an indigenous church planting movement within a lost culture.

Let’s face it; most of us are no longer native to our community’s lost culture. We are part of the Christian sub-culture. We no longer have the language, values or life-styles of our lost neighbors. We must learn to be missionaries to our own communities if we expect to be effective in reaching them for Christ.

We must begin to plan how to get ourselves outside our churches rather than planning how to get the lost inside our churches. We must find more ways to serve God in the world where the lost are rather than in the church where the saved are. As much as we can we must learn to love and serve the lost in our communities so they can learn to love and serve our God rather than the gods of this world. Let’s become missionaries! What do you think?