My understanding is that Harold Camping, having endured the fate of every other person who predicted the return of Jesus, is pouting for the year 2012 and that the Mayan end-of-time prediction isn't until December, so I'm going ahead and make some 2012 predictions.
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North American Mission Board: In spite of many changes that left a good number of SBCers disenchanted, NAMB's Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions will be up when the report is made for 2011, and by over a million dollars.
International Mission Board: Sorry, but the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions will show a decrease for 2011. Because 2012 is the centennial of Lottie's death, the IMB will vigorously promote the 2012 offering and will not stint on the dubious assertion that Lottie starved herself to death, even though the latest Lottie bio calls that into question.
Name Change: The Name Change Committee with offer what they see as a more palatable name for the SBC, “Southern” being the main culprit, but the convention in session will choose not to go along with the sanitized name.
SBC Politics: Fred Luter will be nominated for SBC prez and will win.
Calvinism: Calvinism will continue to be a divisive issue in the convention with more churches designating their Cooperative Program giving around Southeastern and Southern seminaries because of their strong Calvinistic bent.
Baptist Press BP will blithely press ahead with sports coverage and other irrelevant subjects and studiously ignore important stories that have real relevance to SBC pastors and churches.
Cooperative Baptist Fellowship The CBF will complete the re-engineering, re-jiggering, re-imagining of their struggling group. The results will be propounded with great enthusiasm but the result will be a moment, not a movement beyond what they have now.
Secular Politics: Barack Obama will be defeated in his re-election bid, in spite of backhanded support from many SBCers who eschew voting for the eventual president, Morman Mitt Romney.
Cooperative Program After a miniscule increase this year the Cooperative Program will show another decrease for fiscal 2011-2012.
Assorted miscellaneous predictions:
In spite of various worthies declaring complementarianism/egalitarianism to be a critical measure of a church or convention's health, a few serious and committed SBCers will begin to wander off the complementarian reservation.
Baptist Associations will continue to make news in their march toward complete irrelevance by dismissing churches for various reasons including Calvinism and female pastors.
Having completed a second term as SBC president, Bryant Wright will continue to be one of the SBC’s best megapastors and will not seek a denominational sinecure, not even a designer one just for him as was the case for some others.
No Southern Baptist of the female persuasion who is not married to or offspring of a prominent SBC pastor, institutional leader, or other figure will be appointed to any significant SBC role in 2012.
4 comments:
Near excellent predictions in my opinion, but I think I see some guys picking up stones out in the .....
Cooperative Baptist Fellowship The CBF will complete the re-engineering, re-jiggering, re-imagining of their struggling group. The results will be propounded with great enthusiasm but the result will be a moment, not a movement beyond what they have now, enjoying about the same amount of success as the SBC with its Great Commission Giving strategy.
I really like your President Obama and CBF predictions.
There is also the possibility that we are drawing near to the time for a visitation from the the Lord, a Third Great Awakening, if you please. I have been praying for one for 38+ years, ever since I spoke to the Pastors' Prayer Meeting of the Sandy Creek Assn. which assn. grew out of the labors of men converted in the First Great Awakening and which experienced the Second Great Awakening. That assn. also helped Luther Rice launch the Great Century of Missions in 1816. The theology of all of this was Sovereign Grace or Calvinism. It will take the better part of a generation or two in order for the new adherents to learn how to preach such a perspective. Back in those days (of the Awakenings and Missions effort), Sovereign Grace led to egalitarianism and a great emphasis on liberty. That is why they could have Eldresses. You might be interested in my address as Chairman of the Historical Committee of the Baptist State Convention of NC at the Jersey Baptist Church's celebration of their 233rd anniversary on the subject, "The Genius of Orthodoxy: Eldresses." The Communications Dept of the BSCNC filmed that address along with a play and addresses of other participants in the celebration.It is the first VCRs in the Visual Historical Collection of the State Convention. Most people fail to realize that freedom arose in the most seemingly incongruous theological situation imaginable, a paradoxical theology that empowered dead sinners to the freest of actions. Just thought you might want to know about it.
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