SBC Annual Meeting '09

I posted my journal from the convention to my Facebook, so even though I promised I'd write something here I think instead I'm just going to direct people to a bunch of blogs and articles about the convention.

Younger ministers flock to Louisville seeking place in SBC
Seminary president calls SBC executive’s comments ‘shameful’
Johnny Hunt & The GCR, Morris Chapman, and Competing Camps in the SBC
SBC motions and Danny Akin, Mark Driscoll, Ed Stetzer, and Book Banning Dominate the Afternoon at the 2009 SBC Annual Meeting
Conflicts of Interests in the SBC and the Great Commission Resurgence Declaration (and Conflict)
My Thoughts on Today’s Southern Baptist Convention Meeting 6:23:09 by IMonk
Random SBC Observations, Part 2
GCR Task Force Motion Passes: What's Next?
Reflections on My First SBC Annual Meeting: 10 Highlights
SBC 2009 Highlights and Further Discussion

Cults and Conventions

It's been a crazy month. I'm still working on posts to come eventually. In the mean time I wanted to draw people's attention to a blog being written by a new friend. He spent several months training to be a "missionary" for GoodNews Mission Church which is based in Korea and lead by a guy named Ock Soo Park. The blog is him essentially whistleblowing that this church is a cult. It's worth a read as it's still far enough below the radar that none of the Christian Apologetics sites have written about it.

In other news, I am planning on attending the Southern Baptist Convention's Annual Meeting in Louisville, KY next week. I'll try and update a few times while I'm there to let people know what is going on. I think I've decided to commit five more years to the Southern Baptist Convention and then I'll reevaluate whether I think I should stay in the convention. The SBC has a lot of political and spiritual issues it needs to deal with. I'm hoping at the meeting in Louisville they will begin taking some steps toward addressing those issues. If after five years I don't feel enough has changed or things have gotten worse I'll probably say good riddance. This isn't something I'd do lightly because there are many things I respect about the heart of the SBC and many I respect within the SBC, but the dark side of the convention is very dark indeed. This wouldn't necessarily mean if I left that I'd stop going to an SBC church, but I'd not be one to support much cooperation above the associational level.

Sometimes I wonder if limiting my denomination is akin to limiting what God can ask me to do. I'm not a fan of church hopping, but I believe that if we identify with Christ first then we should think more geographically about church and mission than doctrinally and theologically. To continue to cover my butt, doctrine, theology and tradition are important, but if you're living in an urban or suburban area in America and have to drive more than thirty minutes to attend a church I suspect you're being way too picky about secondary and tertiary issues.

Sorry...

I know I'm sucking at the regular posting that I've been promising is coming. Stick with me. School is crazy hectic right now and when it's done I will have a wealth of very interesting posts converted from school assignments. ;-) There's also lots of interesting things happening in the SBC and being discussed in the Southern Baptist blogosphere. I highly recommend checking out what's being discussed in the links directly to the right of this post (Southern Baptist Blogs blogroll).

SBC Annual Meeting

This is a call out to all my fellow Millennials (30 and under) and younger minded friends to attend and if at all possible vote at the SBC Annual Meeting this year in Louisville. The over 60 crowd has steadily grown over the last two decades to make up more and more of the demographic at the Annual Meeting while the under 40 crowd has steadily shrunk.* The younger generation needs to be heard if we care about where the Convention is headed. We need to begin to show our care and commitment to God's work through the SBC and one big way we can do this is to be seen and heard at the annual meeting. Local involvement in our congregations is great, but the things that happen at the national level affect our congregations as well. Please seriously consider attending with people in your local church or association. Registration information may be found here.

One interesting event to entice you, B21, a cool SBC team blog, is hosting a panel discussion at a local church during one of the breaks and it will include Ed Stetzer, Daniel Akin, Daniel Montgomery and other yet to be named cool people. If you're not certain you want to go or need more reasons ask away. The value of the SBC and our place in it is very much worth discussing.

Journal

Before we get to that I'll note I added a couple more Southern Baptist blogs to the blogroll that are worth checking out. The first is Alvin Reid's blog. The other one is The 9Marks Blog. I found these through the 2009 SBC Voices Blog Madness competition. BTW, I voted for iMonk. I'd encourage people to go vote if you have a favorite. Currently, iMonk is stomping everyone, so if you vote for someone else I won't be worried. Finally, I found out from the SBC site how going to the annual meeting works and am a little disappointed that the way things are designated, I probably won't be able to go. I'd really like to if my summer class isn't happening at the same time, but they allow only one person per 250 people in your congregation or every $250 given to the Convention. Seeing as all the congregations I've been a part of are less than 250 people it would seem that my area churches will only be able to send a delegate or two each (though I have no idea how much they give to the convention). I would encourage all Millennials that can go to go. It's time we begin to make our voices heard. Now for your irregularly scheduled entry.

3/30/09 5:05PM

In Andrew Kirk's What Is Mission? there are many helpful summaries of things the Church needs to consider in mission. There are also many things that Kirk doesn't do so well or takes for granted. I'd especially like to observe his own interest in the use of democracy.

In his chapter on “Overcoming Violence and Building Peace” Kirk suggests that Christian mission is “more easily realisable in a democratic society.” Kirk appreciates the values and virtues of a democratic society as a means to peace and as something the Church should model in certain ways. While he's a long way from advocating any kind of necessary connections or commitments to democracy, it is worth examining some of the problems that can come up when too much credit is given to political systems even as seemingly benign as democracy.

It's no secret how politically invested in America the SBC has been and continues to be. While this has been a recent phenomenon in its current manifestation, the SBC's involvement in political affairs stretches back to the beginning of the Baptist tradition. One would think the doctrine of Believer's Baptism would be the oldest doctrinal distinctive of the tradition, the baptism of children to the point that the current average age of baptism in SBC churches is eight reveals a serious loss of the ideal that we inherited from the Anabaptists. Actually, the oldest doctrinal distinctive of Baptists and also of our own theological creation is a doctrine of religious liberty. The SBC has as a part of its statement of faith that there should be separation between church and state and the state should provide for all people freedom from religious persecution and freedom to worship according to one's wishes. It is my contention that this very doctrine has inspired the political sidetracking that the SBC has engaged in. When a tradition highly values something like religious liberty or democracy one begins to depend on it. This can lead to conflict when one's view of what “religious liberty” or “democracy” is begins to be transformed in the evolution of the culture. So in America we see from the SBC a reaction to culture based on a particular understanding of religious liberty that is taking precedence over the mission of the Church.

In order to stay on task and maintain integrity the Church needs to completely disengage certain areas of secular culture. Politics evolves along with an ever changing culture and it is too easy to get distracted by all the things that can frustrate ones own conceptions of what ought to be. The Church's ideals can't be made the culture's ideals. The Church's political engagement with the world is wholly embodied in the “other way” that it embodies. The Church should never be seen as conservative or liberal. The Church is not an activist for any agenda. The Church is a wholly different culture that represents the coming kingdom of her Savior. The Church is the rock and stands in stark contrast to the sand the culture builds on.

Every individual believer needs to faithfully represent the broad aims and ideals of the Church as they engage in the missional calling God has given them. Individual believers may engage in politics as called by God, but they do so fully realizing that the Church is their home and not the world. They represent only themselves and the secular world they are engaging with in their duties, but never the Church. They represent the Church in taking the opportunity such connections afford them to illuminate the Church's aims and ideals that they are a part of. In this sense, the individual recognizes the two kingdoms of the world and Church in him/herself. Every individual believer is in the world, but not of it and so the Church is in the world but not of it. The Church is made up of people like the worldly, but they are transformed in their desires, attitudes and manners in their relationship with Jesus. So they look like the world until the world looks at them and sees Jesus in them and more importantly in the Church by extension.