In the Town of New Orleans, Part 3

The ghosts of blogging past made some appearances at the SBC Annual Meeting this year:

1. Dave Miller is the first blogger (to my knowledge) to be elected to SBC national office. That's an interesting and significant development, I think. I don't know that it represents a major change in the way that Southern Baptists view bloggers, since factors specific to this year may have played a significant role. Then again, maybe it does represent a change, since…

2. Marty Duren was present at the convention as a paid employee of Lifeway. The outsider blogger has now been assimilated. :-) Maybe a history of blogging doesn't really amount to a roadblock for anything you want to do in the SBC.

3. The (in)famous "Garner motion" made an appearance at the convention, as well. Back in 2007, SBC blogging erupted in interpretive warfare over whether the BF&M was a "maximal" or "minimal" doctrinal statement for Southern Baptists. The "Garner motion" was like a Rorschach test. Some people suggested that it reinforced the "maximal" viewpoint—that the convention was saying thereby that our entities could expect people to adhere to the BF&M, but to no more than the BF&M. Others (including myself) maintained that the motion actually backed up the "minimal" viewpoint—that the convention was saying that our entities must expect their employees to adhere AT LEAST to the BF&M and could have additional doctrinal requirements beyond that minimal standard.

   This year's resolution "ON COOPERATION AND THE DOCTRINE OF SALVATION" made specific reference to the Garner motion:

   WHEREAS, The Southern Baptist Convention in 2007 affirmed The Baptist Faith and Message as a consensus confession, but not a comprehensive confession, seeking to unify Southern Baptists, local churches, and other Baptist bodies that may also hold other confessions of faith. (emphasis mine)

   And so, now the messengers of the SBC are on record affirming the interpretation of the Garner Motion that I supported all along. The BF&M is our "minimal" "consensus confession" upon which we all agree. Our churches and our entities "may also hold other [additional] confessions of faith." Some of our churches or entities may be more Calvinistic and may affirm the Abstract of Principles or the Second London Confession. Other churches or individuals might affirm something like the "Traditional Statement" as an alternative soteriology to Calvinism. I suppose, if an entity can affirm the Abstract of Principles, an entity could also affirm the "Traditional Statement" and make affirmation of it a requirement for employment, although no entity is going to do that. The point is that, the individual variations of our churches and entities notwithstanding, we are unified by the fact that we all affirm the common core of doctrine that is the Baptist Faith & Message and then we have freedom to go beyond that.

   Well, that was precisely what I and others were saying all along about the Garner motion. It was nice to see Southern Baptists owning that view of the Garner motion as their own through the adoption of this resolution.

In the Town of New Orleans, Part 2

At 8:30 am on June 19, 2012, most of the people attending the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting in New Orleans had never heard of R. Richard Tribble. By 9:00 am, everyone attending knew who he was. Mr. Tribble, in the intervening thirty minutes, made four motions from the floor of the convention and successfully overturned a parliamentary ruling by Parliamentarian Barry McCarty.

And a great many of the rest of us SBC messengers descended into snarkiness. Richard Tribble's name became a byword and a punchline among Southern Baptists in the span of a half-hour. And I joined in.

I'm writing this post to repent of that.

Tribble didn't, that I could tell, make any motions that were utterly ridiculous. None of his actions from the floor were self-serving, that I know of. He made no motion that was hateful or dripping with scorn or disdain. Any of his motions, had they come from some duly elected blue-ribbon panel of the convention, would likely have passed and been heralded as important steps forward.

I didn't favor any of his motions and I voted against them all, but they weren't unreasonable. Nor was he.

During the nickname debate, I happened to sit behind and make the acquaintance of two people who knew Tribble (or at least who purported to know more about him than I did). They told me that he was a parliamentarian himself, and that he had been studying the nickname proposal for nine months in order to defeat it. Alas, Tribble doomed his own efforts in a few critical ways.

First, he failed to appreciate the differing roles of parliamentary law and public persuasion in our Southern Baptist system. He needed to have chosen one item as the focus of his efforts. His offering of four motions in the first business session was a political mistake: By the time he got the chance to argue any of his points, people had categorized him and were no longer prepared to take him seriously. If you want to do anything at the SBC, realistically you get one chance every few years to step up to the microphone and actually be heard.

Second, he failed to appreciate the role of history in our decision-making. Wiley Drake has defined a stereotype in Southern Baptist thinking of this era. Many Southern Baptists do not believe that Drake's second-vice-presidency reflected well upon our convention. Tribble's flooding of the first business session with motions put him into the same category as Drake in the minds of many Southern Baptists. Generally speaking, that was not advantageous to him in gaining a hearing for his motions.

I was with a group of fellow Southern Baptists who spotted Tribble on Wednesday and began to discuss him. I got up from the group and walked over to introduce myself to him and meet him. He seemed a reasonable enough fellow, although the strain of his warfare and repeated defeat at microphone 6 had obviously taken its toll on his demeanor a bit. He was a serious man, and I think he meant nothing but good for our convention.

I needed to look into my own heart and consider why I reacted to Tribble the way that I did. He brought no more proposals to us for our consideration, after all, than did the GCR committee two years ago. Could it be that most of us Southern Baptists have descended into a subtle elitism? Could it be that we have in our minds a list of the true leaders of our convention, and that we'll take seriously only their ideas and their motions? When a simple rank-and-file Southern Baptist comes to the microphone with lots of ideas about how our convention might work better, are we annoyed that hoi polloi are stepping out of their place?

Are we really congregationalists? Do we really believe that it all starts at the local church? Do we truly affirm the right of any messenger from any congregation to come to the microphone and make his case? Are we sincere in stating that the headquarters for our mission is in the local congregations and that our denominational grandees are the servants of all?

Our treatment of R. Richard Tribble might give us pause on these matters. I know it did for me.

In the Town of New Orleans, Part 1

I'll react to our SBC 2012 Annual Meeting in New Orleans in several parts. For the first installment, I'll deal with the most significant thing that happened at the meeting: The election of Fred Luter as our President. Below are some random, barely organized thoughts about what we've just seen.

1. Southern Baptists are JUBILANT about this. Fred Luter received a lengthy standing ovation upon his election. This wasn't—not at all—done begrudgingly. The SBC didn't elect Fred Luter as a part of kowtowing to any hostile pressure from any activist group. Southern Baptists have not had to compromise doctrinally in order to take a bold step forward racially. Nobody made Southern Baptists do this; Southern Baptists did this of their own accord.

   And friends, that's the way it ought to happen. If we'd elected a black president a decade ago, but had done so in a half-hearted fashion or under pressure, that would have been progress, but it wouldn't have been as much of an accomplishment as this year was. I'd rather change hearts a decade later than force an insincere change in actions a decade earlier. Southern Baptists have elected a black president, and we have done so in a manner that truly bespeaks our character and that leaves us with a taste for more, I predict.

2. Once again, SBC life and secular politics are moving on parallel tracks. I've argued before that, for much of our history, the Southern Baptist Convention has been in sync with major movements in broader American society. For example, our Conservative Resurgence occurred roughly simultaneously with the "Reagan Revolution" in American secular politics.

   It may strike my readers as strange, considering the (historically bad) nature of President Obama's presidency and the low level of support that President Obama has within the SBC, to encounter a suggestion that Fred Luter's election has anything to do with Barack Obama's election. And yet, I think this is a strange coincidence indeed if it is merely coincidence. Before the 2008 Obama election, I heard people suggesting that they personally were not opposed to having a black president, but that they weren't sure that the country was "ready" to elect one. Was anyone saying the same thing about the SBC presidency? I don't know.

   But I do know this: Nobody could make that argument credibly after the Obama election. I think that President Obama's election was an historic turning-point that changed even the people who don't support his radical left-wing statist politics.

3. The most important audience for this action isn't CNN. I know that a lot of us are secretly hoping somewhere in our inmost being that this action will win us some love and respect from mainstream media and cultural elites. Well, you can forget that. Liberal America hates the Southern Baptist Convention and will do so unless and until we abandon biblical Christianity.

   If the folks at CNN aren't the most important audience, then who needs to know that Southern Baptists have elected Fred Luter? The kids in your youth group, pastor—they need to know. They're going to hear the argument that churches are racist, and those kids absolutely are not racists and will need to know how to respond. They need to know that Southern Baptists are not racists. You need to report back to your congregation with a Powerpoint slideshow and you need to make certain that the people in your congregation see a photograph of the new SBC President. The black children and children of other ethnicities in my congregation need to see that they're not attending somebody else's church but are instead a part of a family that includes them.

   Along those lines, I want to encourage Fred Luter to continue Bryant Wright's tradition of recording video messages addressed to Southern Baptists. In contrast to what happened with Wright's messages, we SBC pastors need to look for opportunities to put Fred Luter's videos in front of our church members with some regularity (email newsletters, show them on the big screen, perhaps?) Especially if we serve in churches where everyone on the platform is white, we need to seize this opportunity to put someone of another color "on the platform" where we can.

4. Where do we go from here, as it concerns racial diversity? The long-term future for Southern Baptists, I hope, does not consist of the recruitment of more black churches into our convention. That's not where we need to be going, long-term. Black churches are welcome in the SBC, but we need a higher vision than that. There ought not to be such a thing as a black church or a white church. In the long run, the black church and the white church alike are dead ends, destined to extinction. We need to find racial unity on Sunday morning by worshipping and witnessing and covenanting together within congregations. When we do that (and the transformation is already underway!) then the makeup of our Southern Baptist institutions will necessarily follow all the more.

Traditionalist Troublemakers? The Truth

On May 30, 2012, Dr. Eric Hankins introduced what he called "A Statement of the Traditional Southern Baptist Understanding of God's Plan of Salvation" in this post. In response, the dormant Southern Baptist blogging world shook itself awake. Hundreds of Southern Baptists signed the document. I did not. I gave my own reasons here.

In conversations online and offline with people from many segments of SBC life, I've heard so many people say, "This timing isn't an accident. They're going to do something at the convention. These people are up to no good. You know they're planning to take some divisive action against Calvinists at the SBC."

Well, the convention is now halfway over, and we've had a chance to see who's being divisive. The proponents and signatories of the "Traditional Statement" have, to my knowledge, done NOTHING with the statement at this convention. They haven't made motions related to it. They haven't submitted resolutions related to it. They haven't made speeches about it from the convention floor. They haven't hosted after-parties to debate it or discuss it or rally support for it.

NOTHING.

That's not to say that the statement hasn't come up. There has been at least one motion AGAINST the statement. It has been mentioned multiple times from the convention platform in philippics decrying division among the brethren. Every side has had its say about the statement—directly or indirectly—except for the people who are actually behind the statement.

I just thought that these facts ought to be entered formally into evidence. Maybe some people owe an apology to Dr. Eric Hankins and a host of other signatories to the statement. They said that they were just putting out a statement to articulate their views. As it turns out, they have been true to their word and will leave New Orleans with their integrity intact.

James MacDonald, Convictional Baptist?

James MacDonald just delivered what I thought was a very good sermon in the SBC 2012 Pastors Conference. In general, I would say that the program has been superb, and I'm very thankful for Grant Ethridge and the entire Pastors Conference team.

MacDonald said that he is a "Baptist by conviction," and immediately after the sermon, Ethridge asked that Kevin Ezell go back to the Green Room and sign MacDonald up into the SBC. I couldn't help but recall, as that conversation was transpiring, MacDonald's declaration last year that "Congregational Government is from Satan." I want to be a man who passes over opportunities to tear down a brother, but I also want to be a man who takes opportunities to teach. In the latter interest, and not in the former, I contribute the following:

1. Being a Congregationalist is a condicio sine qua non of being a "Baptist by Conviction." The Baptist movement is an ecclesiological movement. Congregationalism comes in bewildering variety, but Congregationalism in the broad sense is part of what it means to be a Baptist. Congregationalism is one of the things about which we feel a Bible certainty. That's why the Baptist Faith & Message is direct and clear on the matter.

   It's important to say so, not to hate on James MacDonald, but because we Southern Baptists are great at forgetting what makes us who we are. This episode in his life is a chance to remind all of my Southern Baptist readers that we are congregationalists, and that those who are not congregationalists are not us, even though we may love and appreciate those outside our fold.

2. Although I disagree with MacDonald's argument against Congregationalism, I am actually sympathetic toward it. MacDonald's major motivation throughout the article, it seems to me, is the statement that he made as his fourth reason, "Congregationalism Crushes Pastors."

   Who can argue with that?

   Last week I spent several hours with a young man who claims to be a Christian but is not in church. He began to tell me that he had had some bad experiences in churches. I love it when people tell me that, as though I could not possibly relate, since I'm a pastor. Nobody knows about bad experiences in churches better than pastors do. I sympathize with MacDonald, because I too have seen men who wanted and tried to be a good pastor who have been crushed in congregationalist church processes.

   But maybe churches weren't created primarily for the comfort of pastors. Maybe Jesus' intention was not to put a big red "Easy" button on the desks of pastors. Maybe, as men like Stan Norman have been declaring for years, the congregationalist system has biblical advantages for the task of discipleship, which I think IS the Great Commission purpose of the church.

   If you conclude that congregations exist at the pleasure of pastors, then congregationalism is not going to be your preferred form of church polity. If, however, you believe that pastors exist at the pleasure of Christ's body, then I think that much of MacDonald's argument will be unpersuasive to you. But it is unescapable that all of us who love the Lord and who love His church will mourn over the ways that Satan has wounded pastors (who are disciples, too, after all) and scandalized them. Some of them, perhaps, needed to be pruned out of a ministerial role in which they had no business to begin with, but some of them have been driven out by wicked men, and that's an unavoidable truth. My heart, just like MacDonald's, is grieved over that, and although I think that he has drawn wrongful conclusions about the matter, I am thankful for his sympathetic heart toward struggling pastors.

3. Pastors need accountability. Episcopal and Presbyterial government is used by Satan, as well, and others have already made this point well, so I need not belabor it. Ecclesial dictatorships are not biblical.

By the way, I have not undertaken to rebut MacDonald's unsupported claim that congregationalism is unbiblical, but I will happily direct you to Jonathan Leeman's well-written article, which addresses that question toward the end.

Perhaps MacDonald has changed his mind about congregational church government. If so, then welcome to the SBC, Pastor MacDonald! But I do think it is important that we—as cordially as is possible—remember and reiterate that we are congregationalists.

Developments in the Race for Second Vice President

Since I posted my endorsements previously, two new candidates have entered the race for Second Vice President.

Dave Miller, Iowa blogger and principal at SBC Voices, will be nominated by blogger Alan Cross. Brad Atkins, president of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, will be nominated by Johnny Touchet.

I'll still be voting for Dr. Eric Hankins, for the reasons that I have already mentioned in prior posts.

John Nance Garner would likely be surprised to see what a coveted office the Second Vice Presidency of the SBC has become this year. It's not possible for the Second Vice Presidency to overshadow our historic presidential election this year, but it appears likely that Nathan Lino's election as First Vice President will not attract the attention that the contested 2VP race will draw.

What may be shaping up is an election that is more a referendum on various ongoing questions in the SBC than it is a decision among the men involved. Atkins's candidacy will likely be evaluated in the light of his unprecedented appearance at February's SBC Executive Board meeting in an attempt to take money away from SBC seminaries and give it to the IMB. That this motion was unpopular among seminaries is perhaps unsurprising, but even the IMB recognized this as a bad idea, formally requesting that it not be adopted.

Hankins is a rising young voice in the SBC whose candidacy will probably be taken as a referendum on his very excellent Resolution on the "Sinner's Prayer" and the "Statement on Traditional Southern Baptist Soteriology." The statement has garnered hundreds of signatures from across the SBC but has also raised the hackles of many Calvinists within the convention.

Miller has characterized his candidacy as being representative of Southern Baptists outside the stronger states in the SBC. Also, he has a long tenure of blogging and has built many relationships in that venue.

While we're speaking about elections, I'm pleased to announce that Parliamentarian Barry McCarty has crafted some maneuver within Roberts Rules of Order by which we will all be able to vote or otherwise participate in the election of Fred Luter. Since Luter is unopposed, normal procedure would be for the Recording Secretary simply to cast the convention's ballot without the messengers being able to vote. I'm delighted that I'll be given the chance to affirm Luter's election.

Endorsements, Part 2

Dwight McKissic's Resolution on Mormon Racism

I'm giving an entire post just to this resolution. We need to support this resolution. Here's why.

1. It puts secular politics into its proper place.

   It took me a few years to escape the Democrat upbringing that I received in Northeast Arkansas, but since the Democrats succeeded in convincing me that they were making no place for a pro-life Christian in their party (during the Bill Clinton administration), I have never voted for any kind of presidential candidates other than Republican presidential candidates. I want Mitt Romney to win Barack Obama to lose in November. That really needs to happen.

   But, doggone it, if we won't say something negative about Mormonism just because the Republican presidential hopeful is a Mormon, then we've sold our souls and God help us! This resolution will not affect the electoral outcome in November one tenth of a percentage point. We need to speak the critical truth about this lethal cult right now—precisely when it is embarrassing to a GOP candidate—just to prove to ourselves, to the watching world, and to the GOP that we're committed enough to the truth over politics to do so.

2. It puts denominational politics into its proper place.

   Dwight McKissic and I have squared off against one another in denominational politics. More than once. But, brothers and sisters, Dwight McKissic is not my enemy. He's just wrong in public more than his fair share. ;-) But I manage to wind up in the same situation with some frequency, so I suppose I'm the pot calling the kettle black here.

   And so, it's important to note it, folks, that even if you've generally fallen on the other side of things from Dwight McKissic with some regularity, an idea is not bad just because Dwight McKissic was its originator. Whatever feelings of denominational politics Dwight's resolution might engender in you, his resolution about Mormonism is a good idea. The committee should expand it, I think, and make it a full-fledged resolution against the many offenses and errors of Mormonism. Certainly there is no denominational dust-up we've ever had that is as important as telling the truth about this insidious, damning heresy called Mormonism.

3. McKissic has his facts straight and the resolution is historically solid.

4. Playing kissy-kissy, nice-nice with Mormonism is idiotic as an evangelistic and apologetic strategy. The Mormon strategy is to try to build respectability and to try to keep people from knowing about Mormon racism and Kolob and the fact that Mormonism is built upon a fraudulent book telling tales about a fictional civilization that obviously never inhabited this hemisphere. If one would advance the idea that our apologetic strategy should center around being sure not to be so unkind as to get in the way of the Mormon proselytization strategy, then everybody associated with drafting and implementing that strategy needs to be demoted to some department where the most harm they can do is in the area of teaching children what crayon to use to color Moses' hair.

So, if Dwight's resolution doesn't come out of committee either pretty much intact or strengthened, then I hope that he'll try to bring it out from the floor. Either way, we need to be sure to vote to adopt it or something like it.

SBC 2012 Endorsements, Part 1

President: Fred Luter Fred Luter would be well qualified to serve as SBC President even if he were white. The fact that his election will be historic make it all the more thrilling for me. I hope that he will run unopposed. Indeed, if you, dear reader, are someone who is considering running against Fred Luter, then you're making a horrible mistake. Luter's conservative credentials; his track-record of faithfulness in his pastorate in New Orleans, even in the face of tragic and difficult circumstances; and his strong leadership skills demonstrated across decades of denominational service all commend him as the right choice to lead our convention this year.
First Vice-President: Nathan Lino Fellow Texan Nathan Lino is an exemplary candidate. Warm and gregarious, devout and prayerful, passionate about the gospel and encouraging toward people, Nathan represents what I hope to be when I grow up. His service on the International Mission Board has been valuable to the Southern Baptist Convention, particularly as he served on the search committee who brought Tom Elliff to the helm of the IMB. Nathan serves at Northeast Houston Baptist Church reaching the Humble, Texas, area. The church is, in so many ways, a model for the future of the Southern Baptist Convention. As a bonus, since Nathan is an expatriate of South Africa, when we elect him and Dr. Luter, both of those offices would be occupied by "African-Americans," after a manner of speaking. ;-)
Second Vice-President: Eric Hankins I was thrilled to learn that Clint Pressley will nominate Dr. Eric Hankins for the office of Second Vice President of the Southern Baptist Convention. Dr. Hankins and I were classmates in an Eschatology seminar at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Every student in that seminary was exemplary, but Eric distinguished himself early in the year as a brilliant thinker and a strong young leader. Since that time, I have followed Eric's ministry, first here in Texas and then in Oxford, Mississippi. I have some dear friends who are fervent, lifelong Mississippi State University Bulldog fans. Just on principle, they would have to be suspicious about a church in Oxford. But if you're not one of them, I see a lot for us all to admire about what Eric is doing in Oxford. This is a historic established church in a university town, but they're aggressive and innovative in missions, leading the way in a church-planting network and adopting an international people group. They give 12% through the Cooperative Program—Twelve! Percent! That was a lot even back when churches still gave a lot through the CP. For me, it comes down to this: I think the brightest possible future for the SBC combines a passionate love for Christ, an earnest heart to go with Christ after the lost, a strong re-commitment to CP Missions, a knack for innovation and creativity within the theological framework of our Southern Baptist heritage, and substantive thoughtfulness about the issues of the day. Eric Hankins represents all of those things. A vote for him is a vote for our best future together. If you join me in that sentiment, I hope you'll lift your ballot in New Orleans in favor of his election. Since I first endorsed Eric, he has been prominently associated with "A Statement of the Traditional Southern Baptist Understanding of God’s Plan of Salvation." If you are a Calvinist, then it is possible that you are reluctant to vote for Eric because of his association with that statement. If that's you, then I want to challenge you on that a bit. Dr. Mohler is in affirmation of the "Abstract of Principles," a document much more Calvinistic than our "Baptist Faith & Message." As we all know well, Dr. Mohler is a five-point Calvinist. You probably know that I am not. And yet, I forcefully defended Dr. Mohler in his ill-fated candidacy for the presidency of the SBC a few years ago, as did some people who are signatories to the recent statement. In 2008, many non-Calvinists were big enough to throw their support behind a Calvinistic candidate because he was a good man and the right choice. I think that SBC Calvinists will be put to the test somewhat in this year's 2VP race. Eric Hankins has never done anything to restrict the rights of Calvinists in the SBC. He has merely articulated his own beliefs about soteriology, just as Calvinists in the SBC have done a hundred times over. I hope to see next week that Calvinists are oriented enough toward cooperation to be willing to support a candidate who vocally is not a Calvinist.

Going 'Round Spreading Rumors: Dr. Eric Hankins Running for Second Vice President

I shouldn't spread rumors, but I'm a Southern Baptist, so I find it hard to resist the temptation.

I haven't found out who the nominator will be, but rumor has it that Dr. Eric Hankins, pastor of First Baptist Church, Oxford, MS, will be nominated for Second Vice President at the SBC Annual Meeting in New Orleans.

Eric's Ph.D. is from SWBTS. He and I once had an Eschatology seminar together. Good guy.

I've Thought About Making This Motion

I don't know that I will, but I've contemplated making the following motion at our annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention:

I move that the messengers of the Southern Baptist Convention direct the Executive Committee to acknowledge that the messengers of the Southern Baptist Convention can direct the Executive Committee.

Here's my rationale:

1. I wanted to phrase the motion in a manner not connected with any other controversial topic. The question of the Executive Committee's autonomy or lack thereof arose informally during the Great Commission Resurgence conversation a few years ago. At that moment, it was probably not possible for most Southern Baptists to disconnect any discussion of our polity at this point from whether they supported or opposed the GCR. The motion I've crafted, coming at this particular time, would not wind up being connected with any controversial topic in the SBC, I don't think. The motion is entirely self-referential.

2. It's a disputed question that ought to be answered. When those GCR discussions were ongoing, I spoke with leading experts in Southern Baptist polity who either came down on different sides of this question or confessed that they weren't certain of the correct answer. It seems to me that this is a serious organizational question for our convention and that it ought to be settled outside of the heat of any particular battle. The relationship between the convention and its Executive Committee is a matter with significant implications

3. The Executive Committee is different from the entities affiliated with the SBC. We know that the convention messengers cannot direct the IMB, NAMB, Guidestone, Lifeway, the ERLC, or any of our six seminaries. The messengers select trustees to govern these agencies, but it then cannot send directions to those trustees. This barrier between the SBC and entities probably eventually gets around to frustrating everyone at one time or another, but it exists with good reason.

   It exists for good historical reasons. Consider the case of Southern Seminary. The SBC explicitly wanted nothing to do with starting a seminary. Four private individual Southern Baptists launched Southern, together with some grassroots support. The institutional SBC established a formal relationship with Southern only later. The same is true for Southwestern Seminary. These institutions came into being independently of convention action, and one could imagine hypothetical scenarios in which one or all or our entities could outlast the convention. Separate governance enables these institutions, in dire circumstances (the SBC dissolves?), to exist on their own. We can contemplate that they might do so because the missions of these individual entities can be distinguished from the mission of the convention as a whole.

   It exists for good legal reasons. The legal liability of Lifeway, for example, cannot legally be imputed to the International Mission Board. If a person were successful at securing an enormous plaintiff's judgment against Lifeway, the entire work of the convention could not be sunk thereby. This is an important factor to consider in our increasingly hostile environment.

   And yet, although these are good reasons why the convention should not be able to direct our entities, there are good reasons why our relationship with the Executive Committee should be different.

   1. Unlike the entities, the purpose of the Executive Committee cannot be distinguished from the purpose of the convention. If the SBC were to pass out of existence, there would be no purpose for the Executive Committee to exist.

   2. Unlike the entities, the Executive Committee is empowered to act in the convention's place. The Executive Committee can, in an amazing variety of ways, act AS the convention ad interim. No other entity is able to do this. Accompanying this extraordinary power ought to be extra accountability. If the Executive Committee will be authorized to act in our stead, it must be subject to our direction. Otherwise, as soon as the closing gavel were to fall on one of our annual meetings, the Executive Committee could, if it so desired, act with the authority of the messengers to do precisely the opposite of what the messengers have explicitly stated.

   3. I'm not sure that the convention has any assets that the Executive Committee doesn't have. If that is the case, then it's hard to see how there can be much in the legal structure of the convention that would need drastic legal protection from liabilities that the Executive Committee might incur. The Executive Committee manages the Cooperative Program. The only employees that the convention has are employees of the Executive Committee, as far as I know.

I might not offer this motion. I haven't decided. Part of me would be content for the 2012 annual meeting to focus on the election of Fred Luter and to delve into little else. But whether I offer the motion or not, I am curious to have a discussion with you, my readers, about the concept.

Will the "Great Commission Baptists" Vote Matter?

In my present way of thinking, only a landslide vote one way or the other will have any substantial impact regarding the "descriptor" for the SBC, "Great Commission Baptists":

• If it fails by a landslide, then it will fall away into the dustbin of forgotten history. That kind of a vote would matter.
• If it fails by a narrow margin, what's to keep churches or other autonomous state conventions or local associations from using "Great Commission Baptists" anyway? Nothing. And so, if a lot of Southern Baptists support this name, even if they don't muster a majority in New Orleans, won't they just move forward undeterred with their intention to use this name?
• If it passes by a narrow margin, will any institution, church, or individual be constrained to use the phrase "Great Commission Baptists" ever at all? Not that I can see. Frankly, I don't see our congregation using "Great Commission Baptists" in place of "Southern Baptist Convention" any time within my lifetime. We still send "Adopt an Annuitant" money to "The Annuity Board!"
• If it passes by an enormous margin, then I think that the phrase "Southern Baptist Convention" will only appear again in footnotes and legal pleadings as far as the national convention apparatus is concerned. Such a vote would embolden those who dislike the name "Southern Baptist Convention" to drop it forthwith. That kind of a vote would matter.

I'd be surprised if the vote were to achieve a landslide either direction. For that reason, I'm wondering how much this particular vote will really matter in the long run.

Rename Redux?

This week the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention approved a recommendation from President Bryant Wright and an illustrious task force of his appointment that the Southern Baptist Convention begin to employ the informal tagline "Great Commission Baptists." The recommendation is for neither a legal change of the convention's name nor a legal dba, but simply for Southern Baptists to have the option to begin to refer to ourselves as Great Commission Baptists as we may wish to do so. Presumably, the Executive Committee or interested Southern Baptists would also take legal steps to register this trademark and protect it from encroachment by available legal means.

I'm clearly on the record in opposition to the way that President Wright went about this (see here), and I stand by those objections. Subsequent events have made me only more concerned that the value of a floor vote of the Southern Baptist Convention is waning. I, for one, do not celebrate that.

And yet, those objections have more to do with the process than with the substance. I have previously expressed my skepticism that name changes will accomplish anything substantive for us. Even name-change proponents are already hedging their bets, insisting that name changes alone will not be fruitful unless accompanied by other more substantive changes. Count me among those who've been saying that all along. Furthermore, count me as someone saying that substantive improvements are effective with or without superficial actions like name changes.

All of that having been said and clarified, I think that the recommendation is pretty good. The name is doctrinally substantive. That this is nothing like "Cru" and "Converge" is a gift from God and a breath of fresh air. Furthermore, the idea of an informal name that churches and entities may use or eschew at their own preference is pretty close to the situation that we have now. Churches and entities decide whether to employ the name of the convention or not. Many churches labor hard to find the most meaningless name possible, and we have entities whose common names evoke little idea of a connection with the SBC. It was my recommendation earlier on that churches in pioneer areas, if they are concerned about the effect of the words "Southern Baptist Convention," come up with something else to call themselves as a regional moniker. The effect of this proposal is little more than that, perhaps. I believe that the task force has done a commendable job. I wouldn't campaign against this recommendation. I'm thankful that it makes an accommodation for people who will bring this up every few years until Jesus comes back if we don't do something (not that I'm confident that this accommodation will change that phenomenon). Maybe this is a good peacemaking measure and should be evaluated on those terms rather than on whether it will accomplish anything at all in winning people to Christ. The task force did a good job.

They may fail anyway. It has happened before.

In the late 1960's, the Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention was concerned that "Training Union" might not be the best name for a curriculum, what with the dawning of the Age of Aquarius and all. After careful study, our best and brightest came up with a good name change for Church Training: They would market the materials under the name "Quest." That's a pretty good name. It is short. It describes a journey toward a goal (which is one way to characterize discipleship). It sounds exotic. Slam dunk, right?

Well, there was a problem. You see, in 1969 (when this proposal came to the floor), "Quest" was also the brand name of a feminine hygiene product. The convention's comfort with the old name, coupled with the potential embarrassment associated with the new name, led the messengers to reject the proposal.

People are already using the initials "GCB" to stand for "Great Commission Baptists." Unfortunately, between now and convention time, the ABC network will release one of the most despicable shows in recent memory, ""Good Christian B-----es," under the initialism "GCB." I say that it is one of the most despicable shows in recent memory, because I can hardly imagine ABC releasing "Good Jewish B----es" or "Good Muslim B----es" or "Good Hindu B----es," can you? Christianity: the one faith it's OK to hate. The central theme of the show is that Dallas-area church-going women are a collection of hypocritical, backstabbing, raging misanthropes. Not only is "GCB" not exactly the image that we want to cultivate; it is the very image that we're fleeing, isn't it?

Tweets went out the very first night of the announcement pointing out this unfortunate coincidence. I've been working on my sermon planning retreat and have been unable to respond until now. But I think that this poses a problem for the convention if we adopt this name. Most shows like this one die quick deaths. Maybe this just isn't the right time. In five years, this show will probably be long-forgotten. I do think that "Great Commission Baptists" is too good a name to abandon it (if we have to have any change at all). But I certainly don't want our church associated with this television program any more than is absolutely unavoidable.

In my opinion, it would be far better to be associated with feminine hygiene than to be associated with feminine hypocrisy.

P.S.: The convention meeting that rejected "Quest"? It was in New Orleans. Read all about it here.

The Uphill Climb for a Name Change

The name-change effort in the Southern Baptist Convention faces a long, uphill climb. Allow me to sketch out some of the obstacles it will have to overcome in order to succeed:

1. Voting Requirement

   Any change to the name of the Southern Baptist Convention will necessitate a change to the convention's constitution. To accomplish this, a supermajority of two-thirds of the convention messengers would have to vote in the affirmative for two consecutive annual meetings.

   As recently as 2004, it was not possible to find a simple majority (50% + 1) even willing to have a task force to STUDY having a name change. Has the makeup of the convention changed so dramatically in a mere eight years that two-thirds of the convention will now support what was such a minority position so recently?

   Perhaps it has, but I have seen no evidence yet of such a dramatic sea-change in the convention.

2. Annual Meeting Locations

   If one were interested in accomplishing this political feat, the time to have done it would either be two years ago or two years from now. This is the worst possible time to attempt this simply because of the location schedule for the annual meetings.

   If one had attempted this starting in Orlando, then one would be trying to win a supermajority out of crowds in Orlando and Phoenix. Winning in Orlando might have been slightly touch-and-go (and there was the risk that this divisive issue would have harmed the GCR push), but the odds for this proposal would have been far greater in Phoenix, simply because of depressed messenger count. In general, the less of a voice Southern Baptists have in this process, the better its chances of success.

   Two years from now, the convention will begin a two-year tour through Baltimore (2014) and Columbus (2015). Maryland and Ohio are probably places where convention turnout will be low and where the hurdle of obtaining a two-thirds supermajority will be much, much lower. A serious attempt to push the name-change through would have been wise to delay itself for two years. And, indeed, perhaps some strategy of delay is still possible for proponents to implement.

   But at this time, Bryant Wright's proposal will face messenger bodies in New Orleans (2012) and Houston (2013). Two worse locations could hardly have been imagined. Messenger turnout will be high and will contain large numbers of the same people who have defeated these measures over and over. I'm willing to predict the odds of clearing the 66% threshold in both New Orleans and Houston as being well lower than the odds of President Obama's attending the Collin County Lincoln Day gala.

3. A Poison-Pill Process

   The way that the will of the messengers has been sidestepped in the beginning of this process has been divisive. It divided the Executive Committee, with many EC members not learning about this until the press releases were being distributed in the public meeting, after the story had already gone out on Twitter. It has scandalized some of us to see how this initiative is being railroaded through. As was discussed in the Executive Committee meeting, this comes at a time when many Southern Baptists are still a bit bruised and tender from the way that the GCR report was pushed through with high-pressure political tactics that are still fresh in the memories of Southern Baptists and that are unprecedented in our polity.

   The GCR was not so bad of an idea (with the exception of Great Commission Giving) that it deserved such heavy-handedness from the platform. Good ideas can rise on their own merits. God's people can be trusted to seek God's will. Missing from the process seems to be faith in the action of the Holy Spirit to build consensus among SBC messengers around those things that are His will. Tell the truth and trust the people, I say.

   What President Wright ought to do, instead of bringing a report from this task force in New Orleans, is to backtrack and ask the convention to approve the formation of the task force to begin with. Such a humble, conciliatory, and congregationalist move would do much to counter criticisms and to pour oil on the waters of this process. The inherent delay would also, by the way, cause his proposal to come to more favorable locations for the annual meeting, as outlined above.

   That's not likely to happen. Apart from something like that, the procedural aspects of this initiative will make it less likely to gain a broad and dispassionate hearing. The discourse up to this point has included plenty of people who falsely presume that I got so worked up about this just because I don't favor a name-change. Not so. My previous post on this topic is the kind of post that I produce when we're just exploring the possibility of changing the convention's name. It is the disregard and disrespect for the convention's messengers that bothers me most about President Wright's task force initiative and that catapults me into a more energetic and confrontational mode of writing.

4. The Paucity of Alternatives

   Southern Baptists were eyeing the name "American Baptist Convention" back before the Northern Baptist Convention snapped it up out from under us in 1951. That would have been a good name, but it is no longer available. "Baptist Convention of the Americas" is also gone. Nothing with "Cooperative" in it will be feasible, because of the CBF. A few alternatives remain that still communicate a gathering of Baptists, but not many.

   Of course, a great many Southern Baptists will want to ditch both "Southern" and "Baptist" (and probably even "Convention"). "Convention" speaks of a business meeting, and anti-congregationalists will want something warmer and fuzzier. "Southern" is, of course, the most offensive label, and a strong argument can be made for ditching Southern. After all, our churches that happen to be in the South really aren't Southern any longer, by and large. As I wrote in a post last year:

   As a historian I would assert that the distinctiveness of Southern culture is at its lowest point since the Colonial period. Everything from media to chain restaurants and big box stores have made it more true than ever before that Boston = Atlanta = Houston = Los Angeles. Of course, these equations are not absolutely true, but they are more true than they have ever been before.

   Moving from culture-at-large to church culture, a Cowboy Church movement has arisen largely because the standard Southern Baptist church culture has almost nothing Southern about it. The music is Rock, the marketing is Madison Avenue, the platform dress is Abercrombie & Fitch, and the A-V technology is Times Square.

   What's Southern about that?

   So, with a convention full of churches in the South that are embarrassed of their Southernness, one can see a rationale for eliminating the word "Southern."

   But the word "Baptist" will be examined as well. Just yesterday a Southern Baptist from Idaho reported that, in his state, "Baptist" presents far more of an obstacle than "Southern" does. One cannot ignore the phenomenon that an alarmingly growing number of Southern Baptist churches is removing the word "Baptist" from church signs throughout the nation. Many of the agitators for change are people who have already taken this action in their local churches—not all of them, but many of them.

   Now, what makes all of this interesting is that we probably can't go about changing the name of the denomination every decade (although it seems that we can reorganize it on that timetable). The safe bet is to keep "Baptist" in the name and go for changing only "Southern" (or, at the most, do away with both "Southern" and "Convention"). And perhaps that would be a sufficient change for those who wish to do away with "Baptist" as well, so long as they thought they could easily work incrementally. But multiple changes of the denominational name are likely to weaken it over the long run, and so I think there's going to be an inclination to see this as the one, best opportunity to do this thing all the way.

   Moderation and incrementalism are often successful political strategies, but it remains to be seen whether a moderate, incremental change to the name will really satisfy anybody. A good alternative would need to be a name that enjoyed broader support than the present name enjoys. Maybe such an alternative exists, and we probably won't know until people are finished dreaming up the options, but the selection of the right candidate name remains one of the more difficult obstacles for this process to overcome.

For all of these reasons, I predict that it is going to be very difficult for the task force to succeed at their objective. Certainly, there are members of this task force who have accomplished the improbable before, and we do well not to count them out before the first bell has rung. Nevertheless, if they will change the name of the Southern Baptist Convention, all of these are among the more prominent obstacles that they will have to overcome.

SBC Name Change Proposal

Tonight at a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, President Bryant Wright led the Executive Committee to appoint by fiat a task force to study a name change for the denomination (BP). In a matter of hours, Twitter is already alive with discussion over the proposal. People are likely to take sides on this matter based upon their opinions of the idea of changing the name alone. I'll give my opinion on whether we should change the name of the SBC at the end of this post. For now, I'd like to direct your attention to the procedural intricacies of this proposal.

First, it might be helpful to give a brief review of the history of this concept. The messengers of the Southern Baptist Convention are not as clearly on record in our opposition to Satan and Hell as we are in our opposition to changing the name of our denomination (not necessarily a good thing). It has been voted down and voted down and voted down, starting since long before I realized that I was either Southern or Baptist—since long before anyone discussing this matter today was ever born. In 1974, W. A. Criswell came to the messengers of the Southern Baptist Convention and asked them to appoint a study committee to explore a possible name-change. The messengers approved the committee, the committee chose not to change the name, and Dr. Criswell honored the will of the messengers.

In 1999, an attempt was made by members of the Executive Committee to initiate the name-change process within the EC rather than on the convention floor. The Executive Committee declined to do so. An excellent report by Augie Boto outlined the advantages of retaining the historic name of the convention.

In 2004, SBC President Jack Graham asked the messengers in the convention meeting to appoint a task force to consider a name change. Graham, astute president that he was, noted that by 2004 this question had come to the convention floor "seven or eight times" and opined that our convention needed in 2004 "to stop meeting and just talking about this…We need to either put it to bed forever or get on with it."

The convention chose to "put it to bed forever" by a considerable margin.

Here's hoping that, when we use "forever" in speaking about the promises of the gospel, Southern Baptists mean something longer than eight years!

The question of a name-change arose during the GCR debates of recent memory, but no name change task force arose out of the GCR report.

And now, SBC President Bryant Wright has chosen to lead the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention to take an action that the messenger body of the SBC has explicitly and repeatedly refused to take—to appoint a task force to study a name change. The normal course of affairs is for SBC Presidents who desire the appointment of task forces to ask for the approval of the convention's messengers before doing so, especially on questions of such importance. Why not follow that time-honored process now?

On Twitter, Dr. Albert Mohler reported that Wright had indicated that he followed this process "out of respect for the SBC Executive Committee." I can understand how it would be an indication of respect for the Executive Committee to make them the people from whom Wright sought authorization to take this action. And yet, if it is an action of respect to seek this consent from the Executive Committee, is it not therefore, by Wright's own definition, an action of disrespect of the messengers of the Southern Baptist Convention to decline to seek their consent for this action, especially since the seeking of messenger consent is the standard operating procedure of the convention in matters such as this? Certainly, it may be inadvertent disrespect, but it is disrespect nonetheless.

Southern Baptists on various sides of the issues that we face in this day and time are demonstrating what I believe is a dangerous inclination to belittle and disrespect the messenger body in order to accomplish at all costs the will of the empowered few. This threat was evident during the GCR process when anti-GCR voices were privately expressing the opinion that the messengers of the convention COULD NOT instruct the Executive Committee to do anything—that the Executive Committee was not beholden to the messengers of the convention to follow their instructions. This threat was evident during the GCR debate itself in Orlando when the rules of order were violated and the rights of a messenger were trampled underfoot as he attempted to amend the GCR recommendations. But for the courage of a bold lady standing at a microphone, our convention might have done something possibly illegal that day. This threat is evident tonight, when rather than poll the convention messengers to see whether their opinion has changed on the question of appointing a name-change task force, the action has been taken to short-circuit the expressed will of the SBC and to have this task force after all, messengers be…disrespected.

Let no one supporting such a thing ever breathe a word of criticism about unelected, unaccountable activist judges wresting legislative authority out of the hands of the people where it belongs. Let no one supporting such a thing ever utter the slightest complaint about Presidential Czars and Executive Orders bypassing the will of the Congress. People on all sides of SBC debate have adopted an "ends justifies the means" approach to our denominational polity. We need to repent of it. We need to quit it. We need to start acting in good faith.

Now, I promised to offer my opinion of the name change idea itself. Here it is. If this process goes forward to the messengers of the convention, then I will fully support a name-change so long as it removes the word "Baptist" from the name of our denomination. When the will of the messengers has become an obstacle to get around by any means necessary rather than the sacred core of our polity, then we are no longer Baptists, and we no longer deserve to own that name.