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.

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.

Unenumerated Categories of SBC Messengers

Baptist Press reports today the official messenger counts for SBC 2011 in Phoenix. They are, pretty much, what was reported back during the actual event, but demographic breakdowns now appear with the numbers, giving age categorizations and state-by-state analysis of the attendance.

The state bringing the most messengers to Phoenix was Tennessee. Perhaps that puzzles you. Why would a state so far away from Phoenix be the state contributing the largest number of messengers to the meeting? Are Tennesseans just the most loyal, faithful, and trustworthy Southern Baptists?

Well, maybe they are, but a more likely explanation is the fact that the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, one office of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, and Lifeway Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention are all headquartered in Tennessee. Tennessee accounted for a whopping 1 in 12 messengers in part because of the fact that a large number of employees from these entities—who are also mostly members from Nashville area churches—are required as a part of their jobs to come to the convention. The next three most represented states were Georgia (NAMB), Texas (SWBTS and Guidestone), and North Carolina (SEBTS). Together, these top four states represented 27% of the total messenger count.

Looking at these numbers gives me the opportunity to say something that I always said to my Baptist Heritage classes back when I was teaching. There are three categories of messengers present at each year's SBC Annual Meeting:

1. Those whose job requires them to be there and pays for them to attend. Most of this category are the people who are employed by the denomination. Some number close to 100% of these people will be in attendance every year, many of them registered to vote.
2. Those whose job, while it does not require them to be there, will pay for them to attend. That's me, partially (my church's SBC convention allowance is $500, which comes nowhere near paying for the full cost to attend). Mostly these are the full-time pastors (and their families) of larger SBC churches. A surprising number of these folks actually will not come to the convention, but this category will be amply represented at the meeting. This number will also include those who have been appointed to committees or who are otherwise serving the convention in such a manner that their expenses are being covered by the rest of us rather than by their home churches, and the preponderance of that subcategory will be in attendance.
3. Those who have to pay out of their own pockets to attend. These are the majority of Southern Baptists and they represent an enormous number of Southern Baptist churches too small and too poor (or too penny-wise and pound-foolish) to pay for their pastor to attend. A very small percentage of these folks will attend, and they ought to receive a standing ovation at every year's convention. They love the SBC.

This is why we all ought to make every effort to attend SBC meetings when we can. When numbers dip, they disproportionately come out of categories two and three. The denominational employees of the SBC are fine, wonderful people. An enormous quantity of them were once exactly what you and I are now—faithful members and pastors of SBC churches who love the convention and served it well even before being hired by the SBC. But no matter how noble our denominational employees are, it is a mistake if we ever get to the point where the opinion of the denominational employees is the determining factor choosing the future of our convention. That's not our polity; that's Roman Catholic polity.

The harder it is for you to attend the SBC Annual Meetings, the more you ought to try to go and be a voice for the people like you who can't go every year.

On the Virtues of Closed Doors

It's not every day that I quote Amy Grant favorably (please direct your hate mail to...), but one interview she gave contained a real nugget of wisdom, IMHO. Asked about criticism she had received for something she had done (I think it had to do with her crossover project that she released with Peter Cetera), Grant offered a viewpoint of criticism that struck a good balance, I thought, between the foolish refusal to listen to criticism (which can often help us to grow) on the one hand, and the foolish practice of listening to all criticism immediately (which will paralyze us, robbing us of productivity).

It was Grant's analogy that I thought was truly profound. She compared her entertainment career to the painting of a great work of art. An artist, Grant said, can't set up the easel, squeeze out the paints onto the palette, pull out a brush, paint a single stroke, and then step back and ask the world, "What do you think?" before painting stroke two and repeating the request for criticism. No, Grant observed, sometimes you just have to dive into the canvas and paint. Then, later, when the painting is done, that's the time to request and evaluate criticism of the finished project. The painting of the masterpiece rightly takes place behind closed doors, and then its exhibition and evaluation come publicly when it is finished and ready for showing.

There's a good reason for this—every painting is a mess at some point in the process. I love to watch the PBS show "The Joy of Painting" with the late Bob Ross. He was a bit quirky and odd, but I think his show is entertaining. In a mere thirty minutes (minus network time), Ross paints an oil painting from scratch. There's always a point about ten minutes into the show where I find myself staring at the screen and saying out loud to nobody in particular, "Well, he's messed up! He didn't mean to pull that paint all the way over there. That's not going to look good at all."

Of course, when the end of the show comes, the painting always looks precisely as it should. That's why Bill Clinton would make a horrible painter—you can't build masterpieces with daily opinion polling.

Recently I began to work to build support for the Resolution on Regenerate Church Membership. RCM is a principle that matters a great deal to me. Although I am not the author of the resolution's wording, I am thankful to be able to do my part in carrying it forward. Malcolm Yarnell wrote the original draft of this resolution. When he did, he approached several people and asked them to suggest revisions or indicate whether they could support the resolution. This all took place in 2007, quite some time ago. As I began my efforts to bring the resolution forward this year, my first task was to contact all of the people who had already seen and tentatively affirmed the resolution in order to learn whether they were still in support of the resolution and willing to lend their support as the process went forward.

It is a selective culling of this conversation, carefully trimmed to put forward a false impression, that Wade Burleson released in a recent post. Later, Nathan Finn published a post declaring that there are no more secrets in Southern Baptist life.

I am posting today to say that, if there are no more secrets in Southern Baptist life (presuming that the email exchange I initiated qualifies as a "secret"), then we will be much the worse for it. There's a reason why authors don't publish their first drafts. There's a reason why you pastors out there work on your sermons in the privacy of your study before you proclaim them from the pulpit. There's a reason why Christ's own commanded procedure for the most serious bit of business a church might consider—the exclusion of a member by church discipline—is a process that begins very secretively before it becomes a public spectacle down the line.

The reason for all of these things is quite simply that ideas need to mature, facts need to be checked, proposals need to be vetted, and negotiation needs to take place, in the vast majority of cases, before the whole world gets caught up into some public show about something. I'm a big proponent of congregationalism, but the very worst form of congregationalism takes place when somebody stands up in a public meeting and throws upon the floor some question that neither the congregation, the moderator, nor he himself has ever really pondered before. These moments typify the phrase "the pooling of our ignorance." No, I'll take every time the person who has given careful thought to what he wants to do, has sought the advice of others, and has brought to the congregation a thoroughly considered and well-worded motion for the body's perusal.

Secrecy in the wrong places most certainly can be a problem. Other than exceptional cases, the convention and her entities ought not to be able to act in secrecy and ought not to be able to cover up past actions. Here's a brilliant idea: We ought to arrange to have a free and open meeting where all of our decisions are made in full view of the public with all of our churches having an opportunity to participate. People ought to be free to work privately before that meeting to decide what is the best thing to propose, the best way to explain a proposal, or the best person to advocate for one thing or another. But when the hour arrives and the time comes for Southern Baptists to make their final decisions, those decisions ought to take place in an atmosphere of open discussion and free debate. Now THAT would be a system that would combine the strengths of private preparation with the strengths of open discussion and decision-making. We ought to put together a system like that.

Oh wait a minute…that's the system we ALREADY HAVE.

Or at least it is the system we ought to already have. I'm troubled by rumors I heard in this discussion that, unlike at SWBTS, at some of our entities the salaries of entity heads may be a closely guarded secret kept even from trustees. Our public decision-making process and our past actions (such as the setting of salaries) ought to be made in openness and kept freely available to Southern Baptists, while we preserve the freedom of individual Southern Baptists to seek counsel, negotiate with one another, and develop proposals in whatever level of privacy they desire and wish to attempt to have.

As a final note on this topic, allow me to say that the most curious and comical aspect of this entire latest melodrama in Southern Baptist life is the fact that the three principals involved—Tom Ascol, Malcolm Yarnell, and myself—have gotten along so swimmingly well throughout it all. Others suggest that we would have a combined resolution rather than two resolutions if everything had played out on a blog from day one. From my perspective, I say au contraire, the very best and most productive collaborations we ever had have been the ones that have taken place with the greatest level of privacy (secrecy, if you wish). The more people who have been involved, and the more melodrama injected into the process by others, the more elusive has been the challenge of coming to a single unity of thought. In my opinion, Wade and Nathan's advice is precisely the way NOT to get anything productive done in the SBC (OK, Nathan's post wasn't precisely in the way of advice).

I think that I speak for both Malcolm and Tom when I say that both of these resolutions are good resolutions, and that we three are cordially and fraternally committed to seeing something good and productive on the topic of Regenerate Church Membership passed at this year's Annual Meeting. Were there nobody else in the Southern Baptist Convention, the three of us would already have something put together. Of course, if we were the only three people in the SBC, there would be neither any need for such a resolution nor any interest from the world in what we wished to say!

So here's the deal: I have in the past and will in the future continue to work "behind the scenes" any time I have anything that I wish to accomplish in the SBC. If you ever hear me offer a resolution, you can be absolutely certain that I had someone else look at it to see whether there was anything stupid in it before I stand up in front of the Jumbotron and start trying to read it through the five-second delay. I may have had fifty people look at it. I may have had five hundred people look at it. To do otherwise is just foolish, as is the expectation that I would have to CC: the sixteen million Southern Baptists on every email I send out in order not to be secretive.

After all, we don't even know where all of those people are.

Where We Need Reform

Today I journeyed to hear Dr. Russ Moore speak about contemporary issues in the SBC. He spoke passionately for nearly three hours. Other than in direct responses to direct questions, he said almost nothing about national issues in the SBC. And yet everything he said was directly connected to every national issue in the SBC. It was a masterful presentation. Dr. Moore realizes, as I myself believe, that the most pressing issues facing us today have to do with the local church. The institutional local congregation was founded by Jesus Christ, and it must adhere to the New Testament pattern to realize the divine genius in its nature. In the process of restoring my older posts, I actually paused to read most of my older posts. In doing so, I realized how much I have allowed other people's agendas to shape my blogging in more recent days. I hope to be more intentional and less reactionary in the coming year. Dr. Moore's lecture reminded me of my sentiments expressed in this post from the early dawning of my blogging enterprise. My agenda is expressed in the Fifth Century Initiative, which I will be posting at the beginning of August. As a postscript, please allow me the personal privilege of expressing how much I dislike Dr. Moore:

1. I don't mind when people are a little bit smarter than I am, but it really bothers me to encounter people who are a whole order of magnitude smarter than I am.
2. On top of all that, Dr. Moore is younger than I am. For a man who is only thirty-five years old to have read so much, written so much, spoken so much, and learned so much is obscene. To think that, at his age, he holds such high position at the second-greatest seminary in the SBC is astounding.
3. Finally, and worst of all, for an Arkansan to be forced to concede such things about a Mississippian is quite nearly a violation of my Eighth-Amendment rights.

At least I can take some consolation in being so much better looking than he is.

What The Statement Says…What It Doesn't Say

It Says: "[…The Baptist Faith & Message] is the only consensus statement of doctrinal beliefs approved by the Southern Baptist Convention."

Of course. This is simple historical fact. The Southern Baptist Convention has never adopted any other statement of faith.

It Doesn't Say: "The Southern Baptist Convention has never reached consensus on any other doctrinal beliefs beyond those contained in the BF&M"

Of course not. This would contradict simple historical fact. Consider, for example, the resolutions that we adopt every year. These often touch upon points of doctrine. Their adoption adds up to the Southern Baptist Convention expressing a consensus of approval of these resolutions, including the doctrinal beliefs specified therein. These doctrines are not contained within a "statement of doctrinal beliefs", but they are nonetheless items upon which the SBC has expressed doctrinal consensus. Consider, for example, how this resolution goes beyond what the BF&M says about both the doctrine of man (that man has dominion over the earth) and the doctrine of stewardship (that it extends beyond "time, talent, and material possessions" to now include "earth and environment"). Yet the SBC has now expressed a consensus upon these points of doctrine (which is good, because they are clearly biblical). It would be unworkable to have employees required to research and affirm every resolution ever adopted by the SBC. The resolutions are not a part of our "instrument of doctrinal accountability." But they are items of doctrinal consensus for the SBC, and as such, they deserve the notice of our boards of trustees and should guide them in their establishment of policies and practices (as should the BF&M).

It Says: "… is sufficient in its current form to guide trustees in their establishment of policies and practices of entities of the Convention."

Yes, and Amen! Trustees ought never to make any policy or practice apart from the guidance of the BF&M. Furthermore, I would make a stronger statement even than this—Trustees had better not make any policies or practices that contradict the BF&M. Wherever it speaks, I believe that the BF&M's role is even stronger than that of a guide.

It Doesn't Say: "… is sufficient in its current form to regulate trustees in their establishment of policies and practices of entities of the Convention, with the result that trustees ought not to adopt any policies or practices regarding doctrinal matters not explicitly contained within the BF&M unless and until they obtain prior approval from the SBC."

See how easy that was? I just made a motion and statement that says precisely what the folks on the other side wanted us to vote on. Simple. Plainspoken. Specific. So, because of what it says and what it doesn't say, even I endorsed this motion and voted in favor of it. If someone who authored this can endorse and vote for the statement (and I did so before the first word of debate and long before anyone cast a vote), then it doesn't mean what folks are spinning it to mean. By the way, just because I posted this, don't fail to comment on my previous post. I really want to hear your opinions.

Important Things I Support

Because of events that transpired yesterday, this single post really represents the contents of posts two and three of a five-part series, greatly abridged. Part one was I Support the Cooperative Program. It is the purpose of this series, apart from going out of my way to disparage anyone else's views, to provide a heartfelt exposition of the issues that have motivated me for a year of blogging and still motivate me as I go to San Antonio. An outline:

1. I Support the Cooperative Program.
2. I Support Our Southern Baptist Convention Polity
3. I Support the Conservative Resurgence
4. I Support a Renewal of Baptist Identity (next post, later today)
5. I Support Biblical Christian Unity (next post, later today)

I hope you will all appreciate the (very difficult for me) effort made to remain brief. I'm sure that some of the material I left out will show up in the comments eventually.

I Support Our Southern Baptist Convention Polity

Indeed, I wrote a white paper detailing attributes of our convention polity that I appreciate and support (see Why Southern Baptists Need the Trustee System). I depending upon you clicking the link and reading the paper—I won't repeat any of that material in this abridged post. Wade Burleson has hosted a recent debate over whether The Baptist Faith & Message contains so-called "tertiary doctrines." As it regards the topic at hand—to wit, in the sphere of convention operations, fiduciaries, and employees—Wade Burleson's opinion of the matter is entirely irrelevant. Furthermore, Dr. Greg Welty's opinion is irrelevant. So is the opinion of every other person commenting on the blog. So is mine. I'm not saying that each person involved isn't entitled to his opinion—he is. I'm not saying that each person involved hasn't labored hard to reach an opinion. I'm saying that all of these opinions are irrelevant because our polity follows the opinion of the convention messengers duly assembled. The people of the Southern Baptist Convention have already spoken to this issue, identifying The Baptist Faith & Message as "those articles of the Christian faith which are most surely held among us" and as our "instrument of doctrinal accountability." The whole "primary"/"secondary"/"tertiary" question is an anachronism—nobody was discussing Al Mohler's "Theological Triage" when any revision of The Baptist Faith & Message was adopted. Nevertheless, the Southern Baptist people have clearly stated what connects the various doctrines within the BF&M. These are our most surely held doctrines to which we expect our fiduciaries and employees to remain accountable in their service to the convention. To include any doctrine in The Baptist Faith & Message is ipso facto to declare it either a "primary" or a "secondary" doctrine. By including these doctrines in The Baptist Faith & Message, the Southern Baptist people have already proffered their collective opinion that none of them are "tertiary." Wade Burleson disagrees…fine. Some others disagree, too. The question is, who gets to decide? The Southern Baptist people, assembled as messengers at the annual meeting. I have no heart for imposing my opinion upon anyone else. I do, however, have a passion for defending the right of the convention to have an opinion and to expect it to be followed by those who serve on its behalf. That is how our polity works. For this reason, I have offered and fully support my resolution "On the Role of The Baptist Faith & Message." The resolution does nothing more than embody my passion for our polity as expressed in my white paper. My resolution supports this polity; the IMB report on PPL and baptism exemplifies it. We make our decisions not through random samplings determined by someone else, but by considering the opinions of thousands of Southern Baptists in a forum which affords every Southern Baptist church the opportunity for input. Certainly, some of these issues are contentious. All the more reason to arrive at our decisions through a polity that has worked well in dealing with difficult issues for more than 150 years.

I Support the Conservative Resurgence

In 1988 I left home, went to college, and encountered rank academic theological liberalism for the first time. People debate how many actual liberals were in the Southern Baptist Convention before the Conservative Resurgence. Wade Burleson has offered his opinion that there really weren't that many. See his post here for how he would have handled things. To read many of the blogs these days, you could only walk away with the impression that the Conservative Resurgence was, whatever it started out to be, in the long run a colossal mistake. Indeed, Burleson has opined that the whole thing would be much harder to accomplish today:

I regret that blogging was not availiable 30 years ago at the beginning of the conservative resurgence in the SBC. I truly believe that had blogging been available then, some of those who were hurt, disenfranchised and falsely accused of major doctrinal or theological error could have shown through their writing they were in reality theological [sic] conservative.

So, how many liberals were there? Was the Conservative Resurgence an unfair inquisition—a bloodthirsty purging of those "hurt, disenfranchised and falsely accused"? Or was it the providential action of God to rescue our denomination from the oblivion of hetereodoxy? Whatever the frequency of liberals among rank-and-file Baptists (and I think it was relatively small), the frequency of liberals was very high among the employees of our Southern Baptist agencies. They were furthermore hard at work producing even more liberals through our seminaries. I invite you to look at this document, authored by a person very unfriendly to the Conservative Resurgence, and come to your own conclusions about the frequency of liberalism among women training at SBTS pre-CR. Today, things are different in the Southern Baptist Convention. I thank God for that. I will not quietly march back to 1978. Yet support for today's SBC dissent quite demonstrably includes a large contingent of people who would undo the Conservative Resurgence. On Wade Burleson's blog just a few posts ago, he stated in his original post just the kind of language designed to reassure people like me who support the CR—indicating that he has no intention to seek reconciliation with the CBF ("nobody is advocating for the reunion of the CBF and SBC—it shouldn't happen.") However, in the very first rush of comments, two people challenged Burleson for distancing himself from CBFefs. He immediately retracted, saying,

Good point and I agree—I was not clear. Anyone should be welcome back.

Well, I'm sorry, but I have no desire to reverse course and become the pre-CR Southern Baptist Convention. My gratitude to God for the Conservative Resurgence will motivate my voting this year. We need Southern Baptist leadership who remain committed to the direction of the Conservative Resurgence. Not everyone will agree with what I've written here, and I've always made my blog a place where liberty reigns to express contrarian opinions. However, please understand that I have written these things in an honest, transparent effort to demonstrate what is motivating my words and actions these days. Here is an opportunity for the reader, if not to agree, at least to understand. The final installment—later today.

The Demise of the Denominational Stump-Speech

I have said before that blogging is more like conversation than publication. Let me add that, in my estimation, politicking up to this point has been more like publication than conversation. Since (and even before) Paul started raising money to contribute to the Jerusalem church whose blessing he desired for the Gentile mission, churches have always been political and always will be (and "political" is not a bad thing). But the politics of church and church-related institution is changing right before our eyes. Blogging typifies the direction that it all is going—more toward conversation. As a result, I pronounce the following new political realities:

1. The death of the stump-speech. If I read Pressler and Patterson correctly, one block in the foundation of the Conservative Resurgence was a simple, effective stump-speech outlining the problems with the SBC and a proposed solution. Conservatives carried this stump speech throughout the country to groups small and large, building grassroots support for the movement. A good "elevator talk" is still quite helpful, but here's how things have changed: In our world of telecommunication, your stump speech is likely to be promulgated throughout the convention the very first time you give it. On the one hand, that's a good thing, right? I mean, you're getting widespread exposure for your message. On the other hand, in a week (and I'm really stretching it by giving it a week), your stump speech is old news. You can't post the thing over and over online. When you go to deliver it in person, people will yawn. So, one of the changes before us is that the tasks of convention politics are becoming less like the activities of a vocational evangelist and more akin to the work of a pastor in a local church. You need new material on a regular basis. The "sugar sticks" will be depleted in a hurry.
2. The impotence of "declarations" or platforms. When's the last time you read a stirring discussion centered on the Memphis Declaration? The authors of the Memphis Declaration stopped referencing it almost before the housekeeping staff had emptied the Coke cans (and who knows what else) out of the hotel room trash cans in Memphis. And the Joshua Convergence's Principles of Affirmation? Even less effective than the Memphis Declaration. I don't know that static documents are any more helpful than static speeches these days. People come to know what you stand for by interacting with the stream of material that you provide. Over time, the recurring themes and passing inconsistencies of your work become evident to all, and they make an assessment on that basis.
3. The power of listening. Not necessarily agreeing, but listening. The most effective blogging involves fielding questions. Think Fox News, not CBS. The result is not always dialogue—people sometimes just scream their talking points past one another—but the most effective person in this platform is the one who will genuinely listen to those who disagree and then effectively rebut their arguments. I'm not talking about the kind of "listening" where we sit in a circle and hold hands. I'm talking about listening as a polemical weapon. When it becomes clear to the reader that you aren't listening to the arguments of the other side, the reader can only wonder whether you are just incapable of understanding the arguments of the other side (or worse, have no answer for them).
4. The doom of insincerity. The only way that you can produce a steady stream of convincing material and be prepared to engage those who disagree in genuine dialogue is if you sincerely believe what you are saying. At least, that's the only way I can do it. Publication enshrouds; conversation probes. Eventually, inauthenticity will out. You can be riddled with inconsistencies, but they must be your inconsistencies, if that makes sense at all. One underestimated political force today is the compelling value of authenticity and transparency. Of course, there are limits. Admit to some taboos and you will get no credit for your transparency in revealing them. But some willingness to come to grips with your own foibles is almost necessary. There is a fine line somewhere between the tenacity of a bulldog and the stubbornness of a mule. The former is purposive, while the latter is mere disposition.
5. The elevation of writing. Radio and television made writing of much lesser importance than speaking. People wrung their hands about the dawning of illiteracy. Blogging is all about writing. Blogging is not the only force at work in the political world, and speaking is still incredibly important. Nevertheless, blogging provides a more influential medium for writers than they have had in recent years.

Conversation is a warm and fuzzy word, but it ought not to be. Gossip is conversation, too, after all. I'm no futurist, and I do not see these developments as any sort of panacea. Nevertheless, I view these developments as a slightly positive step. Indeed, I think we may be living in a reincarnation of the days of seventeenth-century religious pamphlets or nineteenth-century denominational newspapers. Both were more conversational than the 1970s, although neither was as instantaneously responsive as the new electronic media. Both were occasions of strident denominational dialogue. Both were occasions of significant denominational growth.

But Some of the CP Money Is Ours!

In the present debates over SBC matters and in past debates during the Conservative Resurgence and before, one popular argument against SBC standards-setting has suggested that, since some of the money given through the Cooperative Program comes from people who disagree with SBC decisions, the SBC has an obligation either not to make such decisions, not to abide by its decisions, or not to accept any CP money from those who disagree. I think this will be quite simple to explain: The SBC works exactly the same way that your church works (if it practices Congregationalism). Your church freely receives contributions from any member (and probably some other people) who wish to give it. Your church receives that money with no strings attached. Your church fairly makes decisions regarding how that money will be spent. Every member has an opportunity to voice an opinion in that process of making decisions. Not every member has equal influence in your church (because the congregation gives more credence to the opinions of some), but every member has equal opportunity to influence your church. At the end of that process, the result of the decision-making process solely determines how the money will be spent. The fact that a person contributed part of the money to the budget does not mean that the final decision must accommodate that person's desires. I cannot come to church and say, "Our Sunday School class wanted nine-foot ceilings instead of eight-foot ceilings. Although the majority of the new building may have eight-foot ceilings, some portion of the facility must have nine-foot ceilings to respect our wishes, since, after all, some of that money came from us." No, we don't receive money that way and we don't make decisions that way in our churches. Neither do we do so in our conventions. Your church probably has a lot of members who would not be eligible for the various employed positions of the church. You may even have entire Sunday School classes or Bible study groups without a single qualified member. Yet your church still receives the offerings of those people and does not in the least consider itself to be violating the rights of those members to do so. The SBC is not a church, but in this particular case it operates just as churches do. If it is fair for our churches to operate this way, why not the SBC?

"Traditional" Baptists ???

I have stated that I would not use "Valleygate" as "an occasion to slap at one another." (see here)

I have stated my personal reservations about Daniel David Montoya, including my own doubts about some of his farther-flung allegations. (see all the way back here)

But after reading this, I must side with Montoya and vehemently protest what was done at this year's BGCT annual meeting. To suggest that these matters are beyond the scope of the messengers' authority is tyranny, pure and simple. There is nothing Baptist about this. The self-adopted label of "traditional Baptists" has never rung true, but it has never rung more untrue than now.

The Thorny Problem of Texas Appointments

One of the issues that people will be watching as SBC 2007 approaches is the list of committee appointments from Texas. Much discussion has taken place asking what would be a fair delegation from Texas. Sometimes people act as though the answer to this question is an easy one. It isn't.

The structure of the Southern Baptist Convention simply doesn't anticipate the current situation in Texas. Right now in Texas there are two Southern Baptist state conventions, the Baptist General Convention of Texas and the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention. BGCT's relationship with the SBC is less friendly than SBTC's relationship with the SBC. The SBC has a limited number of options available to it:

1. It can make some effort to distribute appointments evenly between BGCT-affiliated churches and SBTC-affiliated churches. The SBTC is a smaller convention than the BGCT, but it fowards 52% (it will be 53% by the time of SBC 2007) of its CP receipts to the SBC. The SBTC plans eventually to max-out at a 55%-45% split. The BGCT has a much larger budget, but it forwards only 21% of its CP recepts to the SBC (a number that may possibly decline further by the time of SBC 2007). The net effect is that each convention forwards about the same dollar amount to SBC—something in the neighborhood of $10 million. If one uses dollars forwarded in CP as the standard for apportionment of appointments, then an even split would seem to be appropriate. Several problems complicate this approach:
   1. What is a BGCT church? What is an SBTC church? A significant number of churches in Texas are dually-aligned with both the BGCT and the SBTC. If a member from such a church is appointed, does that count as a BGCT appointment or an SBTC appointment? People sympathetic to the BGCT tend to treat such appointments as SBTC appointments, but is that really accurate or fair?
   2. What about equity with other state conventions? The end result of this approach is that both BGCT and SBTC wind up with about half the number of appointments as that of other state conventions that forward fewer dollars to the SBC CP than either of these Texas state conventions. In the case of SBTC, it would have half the appointments of states that underperform it both in the measure of percentages and the measure of dollars. Is that fair? I think not.
   3. Do the BGCT's recent actions vis-a-vis the SBC not have some impact on what is fair? BGCT has locked SBC seminaries out of the exhibits at the BGCT annual meeting. BGCT has started a missions network to compete with the IMB, a literature publisher to compete with Lifeway, a Christian Life Commission to counter the ERLC (although the CLC's creation far predates the present controversy), and multiple seminaries to draw students away from the SBC seminaries. Why is the SBC bound to practice some overly restrictive notion of "fairness" toward the BGCT when the BGCT does not reciprocate with any goodwill toward the SBC?
2. It can ignore the BGCT and appoint people solely from the SBTC. Yet this is not particularly fair, either. Not everyone in the BGCT agrees with what BGCT leadership is doing. Some churches turn a blind eye toward convention politics. Although BGCT keeps all but a trickle of its CP money in Texas, some BGCT churches designate around the BGCT budget and continue to support faithfully the SBC. Some people would gladly join SBTC but are in the minority in their churches and therefore remain in BGCT. Also, the BGCT has not yet consummated its plan to leave the SBC. So, there are faithful Southern Baptists whom conservatives could support who are somehow still within the confines of the BGCT. It would not be fair for BGCT affiliation to be an ipso facto disqualification for appointment to an SBC committee.
3. It could completely re-evaluate the current system of state-by-state apportionment of nominees. This would give the opportunity for a new set of answers to address new questions posed by a new reality in Southern Baptist life, because Texas is not the only state either facing these problems now or soon to face them. Nevertheless, it is difficult to conceive of a solution that would be able to gain sufficient support to move forward. The SBC could apportion nominees to each participating state convention, but such an approach would encourage states to have as many state conventions as possible—not a desirable outcome. The SBC could apportion nominees proportionally either by membership or by contributions to SBC CP causes, but such an approach would kill any idea of meaningful membership reform and would be open to a whole host of abuses. Somebody may be brilliant enough to develop a panacea, but that person is not me.

In conclusion, I have to ask this question: Is the point of appointments and nominations really some sort of a "fair distribution"? Maybe we ought to be focusing on effectiveness rather than fairness. I think that we ought to select people to serve our convention who are in theological agreement with the messengers, are well equipped to serve in the area in question, and whose loyalties are not divided among the SBC and the CBF or other institutions. If we are putting into service people who meet these criteria, I am prepared not to care which state conventions may contain their home churches.

Greensboro Analysis

No...not a summary listing of what all happened. Not even an analysis of any single event. Instead, I want to give an analysis of the overall event.

Headline One: The System Works

The mysterious cabal that we've all been led to believe is pulling everyone's strings obviously doesn't exist. Let me say it loud and clear: Not one thing has happened in the past 27 years that has not been under the control of the messengers to the SBC. Everybody who wanted to make a motion got to make it. Yes, committees canned several of them, but the messengers demonstrated once-and-for-all that it really isn't all that hard for messengers to bring these items right back out of committee if they so desire. The messengers also declined to do so over and over again. Thus, the messengers demonstrated once-and-for-all that these committees usually are right in line with the wishes of the majority. I say "usually" because the committees aren't perfect, but Greensboro has demonstrated that nothing is broken with the system, whiners notwithstanding.

Headline Two: Elections that Defy Analysis

Frank Page, Jimmy Jackson, and Wiley Drake. Do these three men have anything in common? Not that I can identify. Dissenters won the presidential election, but a strong factor in that was the respective CP giving of the three candidates. Were all of those folks trying to purchase a ticket on the Burleson express? Well, from the disposition of all of the other motions at the convention, I really don't think so. The mandate that the people gave was for CP support, not for "broadening the tent."

Headline Three: Cooperative Program Resurgence

We have needed desperately to reemphasize the CP for a long time. Allow me to state clearly and publicly: Any church that gives less than 10% to the CP ought to be ashamed. They ought to give more. We ought to place a priority on winning the world to Christ rather than building our own kingdoms.

The problems with the 10% recommendation as attempted this year are as follows:

1. The recommendation was self-serving to the recommenders. As I stated on the floor, it is no coincidence that state convention executives drafted a report setting new, more agressive standards for everyone else, but ignoring the 81-year-old standard that actually holds their feet to the fire. Someone said that if the CP is a sacred cow, it sure gives good milk. That is a fitting analogy coming from the group of people the most firmly and forcefully attached to the fattest teat. Hear me again: I affirm the independence of the state conventions to set their budgets as they see fit. What I cannot tolerate is their audacity in placing such bold demands upon the local church while they are shirking their own ancient commitments.
2. The recommendation violated Baptist polity This is an implication of the first point. What kind of body offers such bold, aggressive ultimatums to the local church while at the same time beating around the bush with regard to the state conventions? Men formed the state conventions; Jesus established the church. The local church is the pinnacle of Baptist life, and if our convention ought to speak with deference to anyone, it ought to be to the local church.
3. The recommendation ignores the single best method for generating excitement for the Cooperative Program. Lead from the top rather than demanding from the bottom. Let the SBC demonstrate that it is working hard to get as much money as possible to the main tasks and onto the fields of service. I believe that they are—they have to in order to survive on the pittance that the state conventions allow out of their coffers—but they can do more to demonstrate it to us all. Let the state conventions model sacrificial giving to us. They can't find a single argument to justify keeping 70% of their receipts in-state that I can't use just as effectively to justify cutting our CP giving. Let them lead by example. Then let us as local-church pastors rise to the challenge and give sacrificially to the CP. Our example will then serve as a model for the people in our pews.