Timmy Brister did the best job by far of covering the Resolution on Integrity In Church Membership. His typing skills are AMAZING and he got the whole thing. His pastor, Tom Ascol, was the author of this resolution for the past 3 years. Start reading the coverage of the resolution HERE. He gives the full text of the resolutions and also of the amendments. He also gives information on the other resolutions that passed. Here are a few thoughts from that comment stream that stood out strongly and are important for us all to consider:
Timmy Brister: (Before the resolution passed) UNBELIEVABLE. The Resolutions Committee stripped out over half of the resolution from either Tom or Yarnell/Barber. Any kind of amendments will require the insertion of numerous paragraphs–paragraphs with the resolutions committed seem none to resolved about. What this resolution by the committee represents is a proverbial hat tip to the debate and as it stands contributes nothing to the cause of integrity in church membership or the call to repentance or the need for recovering our Baptist distinctives–all of which baptist historians and theologians stand in agreement.
Marty Duren: Timmy-I have to gently disagree. It is completely and thoroughly BELIEVABLE.
Your thoughts about pre-Greensboro and pre-Indy relating to the influence of blogs was interesting. A not insignificant insight is that all the blogging that took place pre-Greensboro had to do with SBC reform. Frank Page’s election (benefiting from whatever blog weight one chooses to assign) was seen as an outgrowth of a growing discontent with the “anointed annual candidate” and the “CP resurrection” being driven by the State execs and the Executive Committee.
This year, there is no reform movement to speak of. The vast majority of the vocal ones have long since given up trying to reform the SBC. The singular place where I disagree with Steve McCoy is that the SBC won’t be changed as our churches change–it will be abandoned. (Well, it will not be changed for the better.) The reason blogs like SBC Today, Peter Lumpkins, et al, do not have the weight needed for change is because they are not offering any. Nobody is motivated by passion to keep the status quo.
Even the Church Membership resolution (and I would have voted for Tom’s each year including this one) speaks much more to how near we are to the end of denominational existence than a hope for renewal. Who could have imagined a baptist denom having to go on record as to what it means to be a church member? And this after 25 years of resurging? It tells a tale that we have to continually define and redefine who we are to smaller and smaller gatherings each year, while not a single resolution thus far (that I’ve read) has anything to do with positively impacting culture, building bridges to those in need of Christ or, of course, repentance.
Timmy Brister: (After the resolution passed) Having now a Convention consensus on the matter, may we all pray for churches and pastors to implement the hard work of practicing regenerate church membership. Remember that no resolution is binding on the churches, but it can be binding on our hearts. May the conversation not end, but begin to translate into action, so that, five years from now, we will not look back and see that it was just a resolution–nothing more, nothing less.
Ben Wright gives these observations about the Pastor's Conference:
Let me close with a few observations, some of which I’ll articulate in words borrowed from the friends with me. First, in the SBC God is a means to an end. We need to seek his presence because he is the source of revival, which is a way for us to get our numbers up. Second, last year Executive Committee President Morris Chapman berated Calvinists. This year he went after sex offenders. Hmmm . . . Third, SBC preaching is pervasively typological. Every character in the Bible is a type . . . of us.
Finally, the public face of the SBC is functionally atheological. The good news is that I was able to observe some very clarifying evidence that theology does matter in the convention. In particular, the issue of women in pastoral ministry has popped up in a couple of different contexts, and when the chips are down people are making decisions to guard the SBC’s cooperative statement of faith, the Baptist Faith and Message. Surely there is backbone encased by all the flab, but I wonder how long it can survive under such unhealthy conditions.
So the SBC is in a precarious position. The preaching put on display is counter-productive to the principles of the Resurgence. It’s not that anyone denies the authority, inerrancy, or sufficiency of Scripture. It’s not that anyone would explicitly reject expository preaching. The problem is that the prevailing majority of the preaching that’s on display reduces biblical authority to (at best) a trite series of mottos and (at worst) a jumping-off point for man-centered theology or a comedy routine.
Just as I’ve argued that fundamentalists who profess allegiance to Scripture are hypocrites when they tolerate (and even elevate) preaching that undermines it, so is a fundamentalistic SBC Conservative Resurgence that tolerates what we’ve seen and heard this week.
There aren’t many young people here. There will be fewer the longer the status quo continues. But some with the will and capacity to change that status quo are energized to do so. Keep your ears peeled for an alternative pastors’ conference in 2009 that features preaching that focuses on the good news about Jesus Christ from the pages of Scripture to the glory of God. To the glory of God ALONE.
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