Monday, May 2, 2011

What? No evening sessions at the 2011 SBC in Phoenix?

What is happening to our beloved convention? This year's meeting in Phoenix will have no sessions in the evenings, something unprecedented so far as I know...which raises some serious questions:

Do you mean that messengers don't have to bolt out of the convention hall before the poor guy who is scheduled for the benediction says the final 'Amen' so that you can beat your brethren to a restaurant...only to find the place already packed with rotund reverends and their entourages, folks whose greatest fear seems to be missing a meal on an expense account...wait for a table, bolt down an cholesterol saturated meal in a highly unhealthy manner...and then beat it back to the convention hall? No more of this?

Can we truly say that we are Southern Baptists if we don't have to come back at night and make a 14 hour day of it?

Whatever happened to good old fashioned Baptist self-flagellation?

Bryant Wright, SBC president says the change is designed to "free up time for fellowship, discussions and family."

What a concept!

But isn't part of what it means to be a Southern Baptist is to punish yourself, primarily your backside, by sitting all day through tedious session after session and then come back in the evenings?

Isn't there some credit in heaven for staying for the duration?

And didn't the moderates way back in the 1908s complain loudly about the conservatives skipping sessions, while they sat and suffered? Look what that got them.

Alas, I don't plan to attend the Phoenix convention this year. But the rest of you have a great time, just don't goof off in the wrong places in those free evenings.

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