Canyon: This week I had a reprieve from my travels and spent the week at home being a husband, father, pastor, and president. Robyn and I celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary with an overnight getaway, and reflected on a fast-paced busy life together. Next week, our daughter Lorin will be marrying Phillip Scott of Houston on Saturday. Needless to say love is in the air.
On a light note, a couple of weeks ago while I was on the road our staff met for their weekly meeting. During the meeting our youth minister Jason Atchley quipped, “I think we need to form a pastor search to find our pastor!”
This week I have devoted my presidential inquiries into a couple of national matters. The Southern Baptist Convention will be meeting June 22-24 in Louisville. One matter of old business looms on the horizon related to a BGCT church. The historic Broadway Baptist Church of Fort Worth has been in negotiations and discussions with the Executive Committee of the SBC about their relationship. The issue that has forced these discussions revolves around Broadway’s position on the place of homosexuals within the life of their church. The Executive Committee has worked hard to help Broadway to find a workable solution, but to the point a solution has not been found. I believe both parties have worked in good faith to find a positive solution for the sake of the Kingdom. Pray the Lord will guide our brothers and sisters in this delicate and difficult matter.
Another challenge facing our Southern Baptist churches is the call by SBC President Johnny Hunt for individuals, churches, and institutions to get on board with what has been deemed “The Great Commission Resurgence.” As the SBC annual meeting nears there has been quite a bit of controversy about what signing on to this movement really means. It appears Dr. Hunt and Dr. Akin may be calling for the SBC to take a hard look at how it does its work, and also there is some concern that they want to redefine what “cooperative giving” really looks like. The fear is that we may be moving back to a society approach to mission giving. This is a struggle at all levels of cooperative Baptist life today. Giving to the “budget” has lost much of its appeal to many today, but we must remember what the “budget” does and how important it is for Baptists to find ways to work and give together.
The genius of the Cooperative Program has helped us to do so much more together than we could ever do apart, but we live in a new day with new challenges. Teaching the principles of Kingdom cooperation may sound boring and old school to many who are addicted to the lure of relevance, but I believe the whole theological concept of the “body of Christ” and “the Kingdom of God” call for us working together as “one.”
Concerning the “Great Commission Resurgence” I fear are making things too complicated. I believe we could focus our energy on the Great Commission if we stopped drawing lines in the sand. Cooperation and collaboration demand trust. Trust has been the victim of years of infighting. The simple challenge of the Great Commission (go make disciples of all nations) and the Great Commandment (love one another) ought to be enough to keep us busy for quite sometime.
4 Comments
June 7, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Some of us who are advocates of a return to Great Commission activities are a bit suspicious of Drs. Hunt and Akin’s desire to study not only the SBC, but state coventions and associations. I believe it is entirely possible that the SBC will decide not to accept C.P., dollars from churches or conventions that do not, for instance, sign on to the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, or some other new-fangled issue. I believe the SBC is at a cross-roads and the choice of a wrong turn could mean its end.
June 7, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Dear Ken,
Thanks for your comments. What I am hearing in the circles I move in are more concerns over redefining Cooperative Program gifts to include all gifts (i.e…Annie Armstrong, Lottie Moon, and other special mission gifts to special projects like world hunger, disaster relief, etc…) The fear about this approach would be the undermining of CP gifts to the budget.
Concerning having to sign the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 in order to participate in giving, I believe this would be a terrible mistake. In these days of tightening budgets and lessened denominational ties. For Baptists to be on the front lines of advancing the Great Commission and the Kingdom of God we must stop narrowing the tent, and we must widen the tent to include all those who love the Lord Jesus, trust His Word, and are willing to share the gospel to a world in need.
The last time I checked Jesus did not have his disciples signing documents, but rather living lives of sacrifice as living proof of their orthodoxy and commitment.
June 9, 2009 at 3:43 am
I’m all for the GCR suggestion that the SBC do some self examination and work toward a more efficient operation. And I don’t object to that applying to the state conventions. I don’t think the intention is for the SBC to get involved in some way to push the state conventions to do it, but I think the open suggestion is there for the state conventions to engage in self examination and work toward a more efficient operation along with the SBC.
I’ve served churches in four different state conventions. All four have been similar in that the convention staff represented both those individuals who felt called and gifted to serve the churches, and worked hard with genuine sincerity, and those who got their jobs as a reward for a denominational-political job well done and were enjoying the relative lack of accountability, lack of demand for results and all the perks and benefits of a job with a salary larger than most churches can pay, and with friends in high places who can keep them there. It is the latter who get most of the publicity, and who cause the negative feelings toward Baptist convention structures. Generally, our convention offices are overloaded with executive-level people, and understaffed when it comes to resources and services. One executive in an organization as large as the BGCT should be able to manage an organization which employs fewer than 200 people.
I think an excellent model for state conventions to observe would be the Arizona Southern Baptist Convention. Arizona Southern Baptists have never had the time or inclination for denominational politics, being a small group of fewer than 500 churches in the nation’s fastest growing state. Several years ago, a scandal in their foundation cost them dearly in terms of finances. They lost their university and most of its endowment, their office building, their camp/conference center, a sizeable portion of their investment income, and a huge chunk of their operating funds. In addition, dozens of churches and thousands of their members lost investments as well. A convention with little of the denominational “fat” that larger states have was forced to trim down to the bare bone. It has done so successfully. Many of its staff members, even on the “executive” level are volunteers. The state WMU director is a volunteer, as are the directors of several other convention organizations. A small staff, with main responsibilities in missions, evangelism and church planting, keeps connections with volunteers leading the convention’s programs. It works and there is no bureaucracy.
June 9, 2009 at 7:08 pm
Lee, you wrote, “those who got their jobs as a reward for a denominational-political job well done and were enjoying the relative lack of accountability, lack of demand for results and all the perks and benefits of a job with a salary larger than most churches can pay, and with friends in high places who can keep them there.” That is a pretty broad and sweeping statement. Do you have any hard evidence to back it up or is this just your perception from viewing it from afar? You have written similarly for a long time without being called on to prove what you are writing. I am calling on you to do so at this time.