He begins with, “So you’re upset with the “liberal direction of the SBC?” as if I was actually entertaining such a concern. I have been out of the leadership loop of all state and national conventions to be able to access any liberal drift. I would not be surprised by such a drift. Baptist, because of the autonomy of the local church and the competency of the soul have moved back and forth between a “conservative” and a more “liberal” theology since 1612 but they have largely been centrist for most of those years. This is true for both theological positions and social actions.
At any rate Wolfe implies that the conventions are becoming more and more of the traditional immoral behaviors as OK. He mentions recent convention favorable resolutions dealing with race, namely, Critical Race Theory; sexual moralities, namely homosexuality and the roll of homosexuals in church leadership; and the “Me Too” movement.
I too have concerns about the fact that in addressing those issues we seem to move away from what the Scripture says about these issues. My ministry has spanned the battle for the Bible era of the late 1970's and 1980's where artificial tests of orthodoxy were propounded thus excluding many great truly conservative scholars and pastors (thereby their churches) from the convention membership and leadership. But it did get us back to searching the Scriptures to “see if these things be so.” Unfortunately and needlessly a lot of relationships were irreparably broken.
I am concerned about the liberal approach of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (formerly the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs) on the issue of Church and State as well as other issues. However, the Southern Baptist Convention severed ties and funding to the Baptist Joint on Public Affairs in the 1980's so they don’t affect my thinking on SBC and other Baptist Conventions. I was disappointed that the BGCT. did not do the same. I did not like the direction the then BJCOPA was going on the “Separation of Church and State” issue.
Having thrown all that fat in the fire Wolfe then proceeds to suggest that it is lack of participation in the Conventions by the churches that make it. He rightly describes the organization of both the SBC and the BGCT. as being bottom up organization. However he failed to note that these Conventions only exist while they are in session at their annual meetings. Their respective Executive Committee act on their behalf between Conventions. The only avenue open to rebuking or applauding these committees and agencies is through the vote of the Convention messengers (not delegates) during the annual meeting. Wolfe’s answer is more churches sending more messengers to the conventions than presently attend. He then spends time talking about numbers.
He is right of course. More churches need to send not just their pastors but their full slate of messengers to meetings. Here is the fly in the ointment . . . . attending conventions in distant cities is expensive and most church would have to decide between the funding of their messengers or the implementation of ministry projects.
As long as I can remember, and that is a long time, attendance at the BGCT. and SBC annual meetings have represented a small percentage of the member churches. The exception was during the "Battle for the Bible" era when Paul Pressler and Page Patterson were leading a conservative resurgence movement to seize control of the SBC leadership at all institution levels. Attendance surged during those years to upward of 40K in attendance.
Prior to that movement the only person I ever saw who was able to push the program besides the various Convention committees and Boards was a preacher's wife name Jesse Sappington and they managed to get her sent to the Philippines by giving her husband an appointment. I cannot even begin to recall the number of floor motions that were either tabled by the chair, referred to committee by the chair, or just ruled out of order.
I say that to point out that we actually had two polity levels. Officially, there is the polity (structure) elaborated on in the article and to a lesser degree here. But, there was another, not as public but just as influential if not more so. Pastors who had been around any length of time knew about it and clearly understood it. It was a process whereby Convention business percolated all year long among pastors and denominational leaders and found its way to the Convention agenda. This generally culminated during the meeting of the annual pastors conference.
My point is that just getting more people to attend isn’t a foolproof solution to liberal drift. Very often the churches and the convention were not operating on the same page and that's ok and maybe how it should be. It is a real challenge sometimes. So I want to address the three suggestions for remedying that Wolfe makes.
First he says every church, large and small should participate financially in the support of the various Conventions. In the case of the SBC that would be the Cooperative Program. The number of messengers at the BGCT. and the SBC are based upon such giving. I have no issue here nor should any church. Every church should have skin in the game. However, having "skin in the game" does not mean a church, especially a small church, will have their voice be heard.
Second, he suggests that the church should budget and set aside funding for the maximum number messengers to which they are entitled. I again concur with this point. However, from my experience as a pastor of both small and large churches this is a large financial investment and when done in the 1980's took a significant bite out of our missions and evangelism budgets. The cost of hotels, meals, transportation can be rather hefty. These messengers must also be able to be away from their businesses and jobs on the dates of the Conventions. I believe Southern Baptist of Texas is correct in allowing a minimal number of messengers from churches affiliated but not financially contributing.
Third, he suggested sending a full slate of messengers to every annual meeting and preregister them on the annual meeting website. The larger the attendance, says Wolfe, the better the odds of the Convention leadership hearing what the member churches want and expect. He is correct in that assessment.
Truth is, I agree with all three of these items. However, while I agree with all three assertions I see significant problems with the "mass attendance" concept to finding the will of the member churches.
But as indicated above my heaviest personal involvement in these events on both the tracts I mentioned was 1970 through 2005. There is a built in self-preservation in the leaders of the conventions and its committees and agencies. There is a crusade mentality to those who wish to affect change. Liberal minded people tend to be aggressive across the board while Conservatives have tended to be less aggressive. The Conventions are not political bodies but political activity is built into its structure by the very fact that we vote on issues and as long as that is the case and as long as the institution sets the agenda people like Jesse Sappington will have to be creative to be heard.
I agree that “Until we have more voices speaking into the decision-making processes, we will not have accurate conversations about the decisions being made in our processes.” I can vouch for the fact that what made the “Conservative Resurgence” or the “Fundamentalist Takeover” a success was the overwhelming numbers of people who showed up at the conventions. The 1985 Convention in Dallas makes that clear.
I was at Dallas in 1985 when 45,519 messengers registered compared to 8183 in 2019. I can tell you from personal experience that it does work but there were some negatives to having these pushes to get people to attend besides navigating a large crowd and shortage of bathrooms.
I’ll share a few: First and foremost there was wide spread vote corruption. I personally witnessed a number messengers vote multiple ballots for messengers not present at the meeting. In this case it was for the re-election of Charles Stanley as Convention President.
A second issue was that many of the messengers simply left after that vote. Attendance for the rest of that Convention was demonstrably reduced. People were not there to conduct the business of the convention. They were there to elect a slate of candidates. When that was done, they were gone.
A third tendency is that it gives itself to politically segregated groups. Instead of the family of faith resolving issues it becomes a Machiavellian exercise it political maneuvering and doing whatever it takes to win. I watched as men who had been friends for most of their lives, who had a strong faith in Christ and commitment to Scripture alienated from one another to the point of ostracizing and demonizing each other.
I remember sitting in the office of a friend of mine who at the time was pastor of a church in Knoxville, Tennessee and hearing him really denigrate Winfred Moore who lost the Convention Presidency to Charles Stanley in 1985. I finally interrupted him and asked, "Where did you hear all that." He replied that he heard it from some friend. I replied, "Well, all I can tell you is I have know Winfred Moore for many years and he has conducted revival services in our church and you are certainly not describing the man I know." You see, when feelings on an issue run high enough to marshal forces to get large numbers to attend for purposes of winning the day in a theological struggle you create a ecclesiastical political war in which uninformed people are moved by catch words and cliché phrases to view fellow believers as the enemy.
I suggest that as long as we have the system we have (it is about the only kind available to autonomous churches) apathy regarding annual meetings is going to be an issue. Instead of crusades to get large attendances at annual meetings perhaps a better solution is to require motions and resolutions that deal with moral, ethical and theological issues be introduce at one Convention then debated and voted on at the next. This gives notice and it also gives opportunity for local congregations to debate and formulate their position and determine their response.
Is the SBC headed toward theological liberalism? I don’t know. Impossible to say right now. I fear the publications like the Baptist Standard in Texas are trending toward a more politically correct stance. Of course I have already mentioned the BJCOPA has certainly moved to the left of center. But those are just well founded suspicions.
What I do know is that whatever the issues messengers, from wherever they come, should be shining the light of Scripture on every resolution, motion, proclamation and action by the various Conventions and their respective Boards and institutions as they make their decisions. That done it will not be a matter of is it Conservative or is it Liberal. The question will be, “Is it Biblical?” That is the only question that matters.
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