Why I Find David Rogers's One-Loaf Argument Unconvincing

Five years ago David Rogers penned a blog post entitled The Illustration of the Hypothetical "Common Loaf Denomination". He intended it as an argument in favor of open communion. I stated then, and continue to state now, that it is an equally effective argument in favor of open membership. I can't recall what David's response was to that assertion.

And so, the present public state of things, as far as I can tell, is that both David and I accuse one another of inconsistency (please don't read mutual hostility into the word "accuse"). David accuses me of inconsistency because he believes that I make the smaller details of the biblical witness regarding baptism a test a fellowship while I do not make the smaller details of the biblical witness regarding the Lord's Supper a test of fellowship. I accuse David of inconsistency because I believe that he makes the smaller details of the biblical witness regarding baptism a test of fellowship when it comes to local church membership while he does not make them a test of fellowship when it comes to the Lord's Supper.

For five years, as Baptist blogging has touched upon the relationship between pedobaptists and credobaptists, David has from time to time linked back to this original article and used it in ongoing debate. Others have linked to it and have defended it. By the way, nobody, to my recollection, out of any of the endorsers has ever explained why this wouldn't apply equally to open membership as well as to open communion.

I thought I had already written to refute David's argument, but I cannot find that I have done so. I confess that other people often keep better track of my blogging than I myself do. If this is a repeated post, then I apologize, but I give you the reasons why David's pedagogical attempt does not convince me.

1. Immersion is not really a "mode" of baptism. Yes, I and others have used that terminology for convenience's sake. We have made "mode" a property of "baptism" and have asserted three possible values for that property: "Immersion," "Aspersion," and "Affusion." This is convenient terminology, but it is inaccurate. It does not reflect reality.

   The reality is that there is no such thing as "baptism." There is only "immersion." We know definitively that "baptism" is a made up word, a transliteration of βαπτίζω concocted into the English tongue for the sole purpose of avoiding the accurate translation—the word "immersion"—in the New Testament. The world being as it is, we cannot avoid the use of the word "baptism," it being as firmly established as it is, but linguistic drift does not alter reality: Immersion is not a "mode" of baptism; it is the essence of "baptism."

   For this reason, the credobaptist vs. pedobaptist controversy is not a question of "The New Testament commands that you baptize: How does YOUR church do it?" Rather, it is a question of "The New Testament commands that you immerse: Does your church obey this command or not?"

   Rogers refers to this part of the discussion as the linguistic argument. In an attempt to show the validity of his illustration and his accusation of inconsistency, he states that there is a corresponding linguistic argument regarding the Lord's Supper:

   Linguistically, the term "breaking bread," generally accepted as referring to the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, directly implies the use of a "common loaf."

   This assertion fails for several reasons. First, it fails because any number of loaves of bread can nonetheless be broken and a church can still have accomplished, linguistically, the breaking of bread. Furthermore, the loaf can be broken at any time during the Lord's Supper, or even beforehand, and the breaking of bread can still have been accomplished. In 1 Corinthians 10:16, the phrase, "τὸν ἄρτον ὃν κλῶμεν" simply refers to "the bread which we break into pieces." If you have bread, and if it winds up being broken into pieces, then you've entirely lived up to the linguistics of this phrase. The same cannot be said of βαπτίζω and the sprinkling of water onto a baby.

2. More than "mode" is at stake in the disagreement between pedobaptists and credobaptists. Differences in "mode" followed differences in meaning and differences in sequence and differences in candidate. Sprinkling is merely a symptom of the choice to force baptism upon unwilling, unregenerate babies in the service of the foolish notion that spiritual benefit can accrue to them thereby. Almost everything about baptism is different between these two groups. The only similarities that I can find are that we all use water, we all use human beings, and we all talk about Jesus when we do it.

   Where the "mode" really IS the only thing at stake, we've actually been much more generous. For example, we know that John Smythe and Thomas Helwys merely poured water upon one another. The same is true of Roger Williams. I regard these men as Baptists.

   Of course, these men are an historical anomaly. With the benefit of further light on the subject being disseminated widely, nobody on the planet holds the view of Smythe, Helwys, and Williams today. All those who reject pedobaptism routinely perform their baptisms by immersion. To begin to perform baptism by sprinkling or pouring today is to reject much more than the only scriptural "mode" of baptism.

3. A single common loaf was not necessarily (and I think cannot possibly have been) the eucharistic practice of the New Testament church. The Jerusalem church simply was too large to have celebrated the Lord's Supper by using a single loaf of bread. Yes, if one receives as inerrant truth the hypothesis about house churches in Jerusalem or David's own "city church" notion, then one might make a case for each cell group celebrating with its own single loaf of bread, but I don't believe that even David would assert his theories of New Testament ecclesiology as being so iron-clad that one should build his entire doctrine of an ordinance in a way that would crumble to the ground if "city church" ecclesiology later proved to be untenable. After all, the New Testament explicitly states that the entire Jerusalem church met in one accord at Solomon's Portico (Acts 5:12). The weight of that one statement alone should be enough—even if house church advocates can form some answer to it—to give us pause before we build our entire theology of the Lord's Supper upon the presumption that every celebration of the Lord's Supper in the New Testament used a single common loaf.

   In David's article he makes the assertion flatly:

   Historically, in the examples we read in the New Testament (Matthew 26:26; Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19, 24:30, 35; Acts 2:42, 46; 20:7, 11; 27:35; 1 Corinthians 11:23-24), it is apparent that the Lord’s Supper was celebrated with a "common loaf."

   It is true that "apparent," like "beautiful," can exist in the eye of the beholder, but I believe that I have at least demonstrated that David's assertion here falls far short of being invincible.

   There is some recourse for David's argument. He might assert that it is not necessary that the New Testament share a single common loaf across the entire congregation. Rather, he might say, he is merely asserting that each Christian believer received the Lord's Supper from a loaf that he or she shared in common with at least one other Christian believer. In other words, if the Jerusalem church had to distribute 500 loaves at Solomon's Portico, then even if the congregation did not all share the SAME common loaf, we can presume that groups of ten people or so all shared a loaf with one another within the congregation. The implication would then be that we can only partake the Supper rightly if the bread we consume has come from a loaf that went to feed at least one other person during that celebration of the Supper. I do not see that David can reasonably argue any more than this, but even this, I would assert, is an argument from silence.

   If the average loaf of unleavened bread in Jerusalem in AD 33 was enough to serve 12 people during the Lord's Supper, and if there were a congregation of 1200 people partaking, then the math is simple enough: Just bake 100 loaves of bread and distribute them out to people grouped by the dozen. But what happens when the congregation grows to 1201? Are we suggesting that New Testament churches could never have encountered the situation in which a loaf of bread was completely consumed when the penultimate member of the congregation took her or his piece? Certainly the New Testament speaks nothing to us of any precautions that were taken to prevent this from happening. But that's all it would take for a New Testament congregation to have celebrated the Lord's Supper in such a way that at least one member of the congregation didn't share his particular loaf with anybody else.

   Perhaps a simpler way to understand the New Testament is that the collective amount of bread held by the congregation for the Supper—however many loaves that might have been—was broken up into pieces that were then collectively shared by the congregation such that every member was fed. Such a viewpoint goes no further than what the biblical text asserts, and it requires no extra-textual assertions about maximum numbers of loaves allowed or minimum numbers of people to consume from each particular loaf. Of course, it is also a way of understanding that poses no problems (as far as I can see) for the way that Southern Baptist churches generally celebrate the Lord's Supper.

4. The extent of "sharing in the body of Christ" in 1 Corinthians 10:16 is necessarily neither coterminous with nor dependent upon the number of people who could receive the Lord's Supper from a particular loaf of unleavened bread. David Rogers, above all people I have known, would assert that two believers who have never been in the same hemisphere with one another and who have never partaken from any shared physical loaf together are nevertheless people who join in "a sharing in the body of Christ." I would almost say that this concept strikes at the heart of David's defining contribution to Southern Baptist blogging. I do not think that he will retreat from it now. But if he will assert that we only have a sharing in the body of Christ to the extent that we have a sharing in the same loaf of bread, then he must.

   The "sharing" in this passage refers to our sharing in the collective group of loaves of bread that have symbolized the body of Christ in the Lord's Supper. We might easily descend here into the sixteenth-century Ubiquitarian controversy, but we can surely agree that the partakers of different loaves in the Lord's Supper are nonetheless sharing in the same broken body of Christ (symbolically and memorially, I believe). And it is precisely THIS sharing—what we share with Christ more than what we share with one another—that is the thrust of 1 Corinthians 10, with its warning that we not share Christ with the cup of demons.

   I am not asserting that the common sharing with one another is entirely absent from 1 Corinthians 10. Rather, I am asserting two things: First, I am asserting that our sharing with Christ is primarily in view in this passage and that the sharing among ourselves is decidedly secondary and incidental. Second, I am asserting that the sharing with one another is a consequence not of how many loaves of bread were used in the Supper, but of the fact that we are all sharing in the body of Christ. However many loaves can communicate a sharing in the body of Christ, those are how many loaves can communicate our sharing with one another. The sharing in the body of Christ comes about through regeneration and is, I believe, symbolized equally well by the concept of sharing I articulated in the preceding point as it is by David's idea. David and I would both agree, I think, that it is by conversion that we become sharers in the body of Christ, and that the Lord's Supper, with however many loaves, appropriately symbolizes this spiritual truth.

   In contrast, the sprinkling of unwilling, unregenerate infants and the passing off of this practice as Christian baptism resembles this situation with the Lord's Supper not at all. It explicitly extends a symbol of Christian mortification and regeneration to those to whom it does not apply. It is, ironically, a violation of the very prohibition given in 1 Corinthians 10—it is the profaning of something sacred that believers only should share by dragging it into fellowship with the property of demons. David writes:

   Symbolically, on the basis of 1 Corinthians 10.16-17, the use of a "common loaf" represents physically and visually an important spiritual truth: the essential unity of the Body of Christ ("For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread").

   As I hope I have demonstrated, David himself believes that the "loaf" of the body of Christ extends across many physical loaves of bread. Consequently, the only way that "the essential unity of the Body of Christ" can be illustrated in the Lord's Supper is if the number of loaves employed is of no consequence. As I also hope I have demonstrated, the precise principle asserted and defended in this passage—the importance of protecting from defilement by the profane world of unbelievers those things which are sacredly shared by believers—is a principle that necessarily denounces the practice of pedobaptism.

5. There is a difference between commandment and description in the New Testament. With regard to immersion, we are commanded to immerse. With regard to the Lord's Supper, we are commanded to take, to eat, to share, to remember…but nowhere are we commanded to have a common loaf and to break it out among one another at a particular moment in the observation and in a particular way. The corollary to a refusal to immersion would be if we could find a group of people who passed out the elements of the Lord's Supper, looked them over, prayed a little prayer, and then threw them away without eating them. Or, perhaps, it would be the Quakers, who refuse to observe the Lord's Supper at all. These are people who are clearly in violation of the imperative commands of Christ in the New Testament with regard to the Lord's Supper, and they stand in parallel with those who do not obey the imperative command to immerse.

6. If David WERE right, what would the remedy look like? David begins his post by preemptively stating: "Please understand that what I am writing here is just an illustration to prove a point. I am emphatically NOT suggesting the founding of a new 'Common Loaf Denomination.'" One must ask the question, why not?

   Or, at least, to make allowances for David's (and hopefully all of our) distaste for denominational division, one must wonder why David is not working to encourage local churches to adopt this manner of observing the Lord's Supper. If David's argument is as strong as he says it is ("I believe it forcefully and poignantly drives home a point"), then shouldn't he be urging us all to implement it in our churches without fail? Are those who have quoted and cited David's article changing their own churches' practice of the ordinance?

   Why is it that we use allegations of inconsistency in this day and time always to urge people to be consistently lax and never to urge people to be consistently faithful?

   If we were to find David's argument compelling and if we were to take David's words seriously, what would be the outcome? In that circumstance, in order to be consistent in our treatment of the Lord's Supper and baptism, we would have to require people who were joining our churches to set aside their old way of observing the Lord's Supper and, from this point forward, to adhere to the right way of doing it.

   In other words, even if everything that I have written in this post were somehow set aside and David's "common loaf" theory were 100% vindicated, nothing would change about the way that our church receives members or opens the Lord's Table. That's because baptism is a punctiliar ordinance while the Lord's Supper is an ongoing ordinance. If our church has a conviction about how the Lord's Supper ought to be observed, we need not worry whether those who seek membership in our church or who observe the Supper in our meeting house with our church will observe it rightly. We control that. Everyone who partakes here will partake in the manner of our practice and conviction.

   Baptism, on the other hand, is different. We do not re-baptize. We merely have the awkward duty sometimes of informing people who think they have been baptized that they have not. Alike, in both the case of the baptism and the case of the Lord's Supper, the remedy is simply that those worshipping the Lord in this congregation and having been exposed to the teachings of the Bible must, if they will join with this congregation, observe the ordinances according to the New Testament commandments of Christ from this point forward. There is consistency there.

   It's just that doing so with regard to the Lord's Supper is not controversial at all, while doing so with regard to baptism can generate conflict.

And so, there is my answer to David Rogers. I apologize for waiting so long to post it. As you can see, it is not a brief task, and blogging is not, after all, my primary calling from God. I mean no disrespect to David Rogers in the publication of this post. Indeed, it appears only because of his request that I interact with his ideas. It is actually the case that I post this out of respect for him, not disrespect, for he deserves an answer to a question that he has posed more than once in the past five years: What do we think, we who disagree with him, about his "common loaf denomination" illustration?

Informed Consent?

I pose two questions tonight. One looks backwards and has a definite answer. The other looks forwards and asks for prediction:

1. Since 1925, have Southern Baptists ever elected anyone as President or Vice-President who has, as David Rogers has done, publicly stated and demonstrated that he is not in agreement with The Baptist Faith & Message?
2. Will the nomination speech for David Rogers tomorrow afternoon make it clear to Southern Baptists that this is precisely what they are doing if they elect him as First Vice-President? In other words, will Rogers's nomination speech fairly disclose to the Southern Baptist Convention messengers that Rogers has publicly expressed disagreement with The Baptist Faith & Message, or will the nomination be an attempt to trick Southern Baptists into electing someone without their informed consent?

I'll not be available to interact much with the comments, but you are invited to give your answers to these two questions in the comment thread. Of course, those who would rather spin than answer are invited to do that in the comment stream as well.

Questionnaire Edit Update

For those who have been following this story: See this update.

The Baptist Renaissance

This morning I have this quote from 1VP candidate David Rogers:

…At the same time, it would appear a certain sector within Southern Baptist life has taken on the mission to accentuate everything that distinguishes Baptists from other evangelical Christians to such a degree that our essential unity and spiritual communion with the wider Body of Christ has been downplayed or even resisted.

David's words, coming as they have within the last few hours, provide the perfect starting point for my final pre-convention post on this blog. I appreciate everyone's patience with my silence of late. I'll have to tell you about the funeral sometime.

I Support a Renewal of Baptist Identity

I received a kind comment from OKPreacher (his screen name a reference to geography, I am certain, rather than to homiletical prowess). The comment was on yesterday's post, but it was clearly anticipative of this post. That gives me a chance to reply to a comment in the original post—not something you get to do every day!

Bart, I appreciate your blog and everything you have to say. My concern is that we as Southern Baptists arn't focused on the most important problems facing us. For example, a renewal of baptist identity isn't going to help us reach more people for Christ. I would encourage a renewal of Christian identity amoung Baptists and all who claim to be Christians. From what I have experienced as a pastor is that most Southern Baptist members don't understand what it means to be a Christian. They don't understand the very basics of how to grow as a Christian. Sure they say they believe the Bible is inerrant and they give to the Lottie Moon Offering, but for them being a Christian is going to church on Sundays. Until we have a renewal of Christian identity, who cares about baptist identity. When Jesus raptures His church, it won't just be baptists going. Lets focus on what is really needed, a Christian identity that results in bring billions of people into God's Kingdom.

This brother and I agree more than perhaps either of us recognizes. I support a renewal of Baptist identity because it is precisely what we need in order to focus on the most important problems facing us and to renew our Christian identity. The heart of the Baptist movement is a desire for congregational authenticity and purity, coupled with a belief that the New Testament contains instructions for having just such a church. One key theological basis for Baptist practice is the doctrine of the Holy Spirit—particularly the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the church. The seventeenth century Baptists mostly came to Baptist life from Anglicanism, convinced that the ills of the state church were the result of a church led by lost people who therefore were disconnected from the Holy Spirit. The problems of churches in the seventeenth century were the problems of the world around them. The Baptists saw the solution in the construction of (to quote Roger Williams), a "hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world." In other words, the world ought to be able to see a clear difference between itself and the church. In their quest for authenticity, the Baptists concluded that authentic leadership was not enough to produce an authentic church. Authenticity must extend to the church's membership. The New Testament congregations were fellowships of professed believers only. The very grounds of New Testament unity were devotion to the teaching of the apostles (preserved for us in the Bible), their common immersion, their gathering at the common table, their shared contribution and labor in the common mission, etc. While recognizing and availing themselves of strong pastoral leadership (have you successfully talked your entire congregation into moving to another country together?), they made the work of the church pertain to its every member. I agree with OKPreacher that there are many Southern Baptists who "don't understand what it means to be a Christian." Indeed, I would assert that there are many Southern Baptists who are not Christians. This is precisely why we need a renewal of Baptist identity. Tom Ascol's resolution on Integrity in Church Membership needs to be enhanced to incorporate language about believer's baptism—one indispensible part of maintaining a regenerate church membership—but I think something like Dr. Ascol's resolution exemplifies an important manner in which we need a renewal of Baptist identity. The fact that such a resolution might not receive unanimous support in the SBC is powerful evidence of our problem; however, the fact that so many people would support it is a strong reason for hope in our future. I hope that it passes with some mention of believer's baptism this year. So (forgive me some measure of oversimplification) Baptist identity boils down to a congregation of believers empowered by the Holy Spirit for 100% participation in the church's mission. Nobody on the bench. I believe that it is the God-endorsed, Bible-prescribed tonic for what ails us. I just can't believe that we are considering the election of a First Vice-President who publicly disagrees with The Baptist Faith & Message and whose primary concern is that we might be too Baptist. Why would someone worried about too much emphasis upon being Baptist even want to be an officer of a Baptist organization? Aren't there enough generically evangelical organizations in the world that need a vice president? I love David and have greatly enjoyed our intermittent conversation over the past year, but his quote just befuddles me to no end.

I Support Biblical Christian Unity

...which is something altogether different from ecumenism (even in its evangelical variant). What is biblical Christian unity? I agree with The Baptist Faith & Message.

Christian unity in the New Testament sense is spiritual harmony and voluntary cooperation for common ends by various groups of Christ's people. Cooperation is desirable between the various Christian denominations, when the end to be attained is itself justified, and when such cooperation involves no violation of conscience or compromise of loyalty to Christ and His Word as revealed in the New Testament..

I ask you, dear brothers and sisters, what is it that impedes a people from prevailing spiritually? Does the fact that there is a Methodist church across town keep your church from being what it ought to be? Not at all. Does the fact that brothers and sisters within your congregation bicker and fuss ever get in the way of your church's effectiveness? You bet it does. That's where we see a breach of Christian unity. We need to focus on inter-congregational unity, not neo-ecumenical schemes like the "city church." Running headlong after ecumenical entanglements will only make things worse—every ecumenical movement in history has had as its ultimate result the further fracture of the Body of Christ (Church of Christ, anyone?). Until we are ready to be united in sound biblical doctrine, we are not ready to be united. Our source of cooperative unity has always been doctrine, not missions. Roman Catholics were busy about missions before modern Baptists emerged, but we didn't unify with them. The Anglican Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts was around for nearly a century before Baptists formed the Baptist Missionary Society. Congregationalists had organized for missions in America before the Baptists. If missions is the basis for our unity, then why did we create separate missionary bodies rather than just joining up with these groups? Because they weren't Baptist…that's why. Many Baptists (and put my name at the top of the list) are not going to foot the bill to plant Presbyterian churches, Methodist churches, Anglican churches, or Pentecostal churches. That is our historic position. If the planting of these kinds of churches is a worthwhile effort on our part, then we have sinned and are schismatics for forming anything like the Southern Baptist Convention to begin with. If we should be unified with them today, we should have been unified with them all along. Indeed, many of them were far closer to orthodoxy then in 1845 they are right now. I agree with the BF&M—let us cooperate with other Christians on any and all things that do not compromise our convictions. If that is why David means by "our essential unity and spiritual communion with the wider Body of Christ", then I do not see how any renewal of our Baptist identity could ever endanger this kind of cooperation. If David means something else thereby, I would like to know exactly what he means, and how it fits in with what the BF&M has to say on the subject.

Convention News

As the convention unfolds, you'll have several options for keeping up with events.

1. The Florida Baptist Witness already has special convention-related news on their site. I expect that they will be publishing updates as the convention progresses. BREAKING NEWS: The Baptist Witness has an interesting breaking story on their site that you won't want to miss.
2. The Southern Baptist Texan also has already posted a special convention edition. I recommend it as a helpful resource.
3. Baptist Press's new Instant News Blog is a great idea. You can turn there for some of the most rapid reporting available anywhere.
4. I plan to be pretty busy, but I'll be posting my own observations as time permits. So check here every day or so.

Horserace

For the first time in my recollection, the election of First Vice-President will be the big event, far overshadowing the Presidential election at the 2007 Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting. Nobody will want to miss being there at 5:00 pm on Tuesday. Today, I'm wearing my political analyst hat. The 1VP election does have tremendous personal significance for me. Never before has anyone I have known personally ever run for any office in the SBC. Now, this particular race features not one but TWO men with whom I have become personally acquainted and whom I personally like. That's a little mind-blowing for me. But the historical significance of this election is equally staggering. Privately I had predicted that the Burleson Blogger Coalition would secure the nomination of a Southern Baptist who has cautiously steered away from the controversies of the past two years, much like E. Y. Mullins was snatched out of New England obscurity in the midst of the Whitsett Controversy to lead Southern Seminary. Instead, they have selected a nominee who is very publicly and vocally aligned with one side of the partisan divide currently plaguing the convention. Not that David Rogers is monolithic…not at all, but he certainly is not a fence-straddler. And so, now we have a 1VP election in which each candidate's colors are clear. Two partisan candidates. Frank Page's re-election is a non-event, making this the vote-to-end-all-votes in San Antonio. Setting aside my obvious advocacy role of late, the analyst in me salivates to witness this historic election. Some fascinating observations:

1. Jim Richards is certainly the Cooperative Program candidate. In addition to attending a church with exemplary Cooperative Program support, Dr. Richards has been responsible for re-defining what state conventions can do in supporting national and international missions causes. Twenty years ago, who could have imagined a state convention being so generous as to pass along for missions more money than it keeps for itself? Jim Richards, that's who—he not only imagined it, but he also brought it to pass. Analysis of last year's Presidential election grappled with the question of what caused Frank Page to win so handily. Was it his support of the Cooperative Program? Given the events of the intervening year, that seems likely. This 1VP election may help us to answer the question, as one of the CP's greatest friends stands for election in the person of Jim Richards. If you like the Cooperative Program, you're going to like Jim Richards. (NOTE: Bellevue Baptist Church, David Rogers's home church for obvious reasons, gives 1.02% through CP, although I doubt David had anything at all to do with that decision)
2. It is delicious irony that the self-proclaimed anti-nepotism squad is nominating Dr. Adrian Rogers's son. One of the earlier salvos fired against Dr. Richards came from Marty Duren (see here), who derided Richards's candidacy based upon the fact that Jim Richards is being nominated by Mac Brunson who is married to Debbie Brunson who was selected by the Committee on Nominations (sorry for the convoluted sentence structure…it takes a few phrases to describe such remote connections!) to serve on a board from the state of Florida, even though she has served on the board before and has not lived in Florida, apparently, long enough. Marty has edited away the comment after I objected, and I thank him for that. I opposed to the overreaching connection, but not to his objections to cronyism, nepotism, and recycling of appointments. I agree wholeheartedly with this concern (see #3 on this post). I'm just not as caustic about it as some are. I think David Rogers ought to be able to run for First Vice-President no matter who his daddy was—let him be evaluated on his positions and his exemplary service in a difficult missions field. But you've got to love the irony of the Burleson Coalition asking the SBC to indulge in a little nepotism.
3. The differences between the two candidates extend beyond politics into theology. David Rogers has some publicly expressed disagreement with The Baptist Faith & Message (see here for a reference to that fact with a link to sources); Jim Richards is fully in support of The Baptist Faith & Message. David is, obviously, the pro-Pentecostal/Charismatic/Third-Wave practices candidate, and has blogged extensively (his blog is here). Jim Richards just as obviously is not. David favors a very minimalist ecclesiology, relating warmly to a "city church" concept merging (although not quite formally consolidating) Baptist churches with other non-Baptist churches. Dr. Richards is a firm supporter of Baptist distinctives in ecclesiology. Anyone who has read my blog for more than a week knows that I agree with Dr. Richards, but any objective observer would have to note that this election has become something of a referendum on Baptist theology.
4. The big winner in all of this may be none other than Dr. Patterson. The First-Vice-Presidential election takes place immediately after the Southwestern Seminary report. I have fully expected the SWBTS report to be the key moment when Ben Cole will attempt to make our Annual Meeting his personal vehicle for advancing his personal vendetta against Dr. Patterson. But, with such a critical election for his party coming up immediately afterwards, Ben may find that it is not politically astute to spew too much venom and reflect poorly upon his candidate. I'm not sure whether that will stop Ben, but it is a factor worth considering. Which will win out: vengeance or calculation?

In any event, we have not seen an election at the Southern Baptist Convention genuinely contested on clearly-defined issues since the 19980s. This is truly historic. My biggest regret at getting so involved in it personally is that I have disqualified myself from ever being able to write about it as a historian. Whoever gets that assignment in the future someday—I envy you. Have fun.

Appendix to the Lottie Moon Week of Prayer

I've decided as a part of the Week of Prayer for International Missions to add to my prayer guide the name of David Rogers. I'm praying especially for David this week for a number of reasons:

1. Wierdo that I am, nothing endears someone to me like a good, old fashioned, good-natured, argumentative debate. This year I've had one or two of those with David, and I've enjoyed each one of them. He is articulate and gentlemanly, even if he is dead wrong at a point or two! :-) In a John Wayne, The Quiet Man, sort of way, I've developed a fondness for him. (If you don't know about John Wayne in The Quiet Man, then you have been shortchanged in your education)
2. David has lost his father in the not-too-distant past. In some very poignant way, the death of Adrian Rogers was a loss for many of us. Nevertheless, my loss in no way compares to David's. It leaves a gaping hole in your life to send your father on to Heaven. This will be David's second Christmas without his father, and I will commit to praying for him and his family this season.
3. David is serving in a difficult assignment for which few of us would volunteer. Spain is post-Christian. It is possible that the Spanish spiritual climate would have been more welcoming to Baptist missionaries and the true gospel in the days of Torquemada than it is today (only slight hyperbole indicated there). David's calling is a difficult one, and he deserves our prayers.
4. Besides, I have to keep praying that David will kow-tow to my arguments in a few subjects. :-)

I'm sure that David would welcome the prayers of any and all. You can join me in praying for David, or perhaps you would substitute someone else. David's not the only one I'm adding to my LMCO prayer guide. Others I could not mention for security reasons.

But I invite you to do at least this: Commit this week to praying for International Missions, and personalize your praying by letting God put on your heart the specific names of missionaries that you might either know or at least know about. Even those of you who are missionaries, pray for one another this week.

And finally, in your praying for missionaries, don't forget to pray for more missionaries—for the one's who aren't there yet—to the Lord of the harvest. Who knows? You just might wind up praying for yourself.