Come on, CBF, pull the trigger on homosexuality.

The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is rather heavily invested in the recently completed [Baptist] Conference on Sexuality and Covenant. Mercer University was the sponsor. Mercer ethics professor David Gushee is the individual most identified with it and despite his assurances otherwise, it looks as if the woolly mammoth in the room was homosexuality.

If I may be permitted:

The immediate past Moderator of the CBF, Colleen Burroughs had already, and notably, said as she was leaving office that the revisioned CBF’s first order of business ought to be to revisit the organization’s policy that prohibits the hiring of gays and lesbians.

In a gushing commentary on the conference, one CBF pastor “wonder[ed] if someday we’ll look on this event as a launching pad from which we were propelled to boldly go where we’ve not gone before.”

One report from the conference said that “those in attendance agreed that the conference, in the least, laid the intellectual foundation necessary for pro-LGBT advocates to gain momentum within the denomination...” a statement not disputed by any observers I have seen.

News reports summarized a keynote speaker’s presentation that “Christians no longer share a consensus that sex outside of marriage is always wrong and must find new ways to deal with that reality besides splitting into smaller and smaller groups over issues like homosexuality and contraception…”.

Sure, it’s not really any of this SBCer’s business what that autonomous Baptist entity does but I find myself asking why there is all this language about dialogue and conversations. Looks to me like the exercise is simply to build up the fortitude to go ahead and do it.

So, come on, CBF, pull the trigger on homosexuality. We know it's going to happen.

As always, happy to help.

A tale of two Baptist schools in Georgia

The two schools:

Mercer University is a top tier private school in Macon, Georgia. It had a long history of affiliation with the Georgia Baptist Convention but is no longer connected to or funded by the GBC.

Shorter University is a Georgia Baptist school, closely held and controlled by the GBC, and that after a failed attempt by earlier trustees to sever ties with the GBC and transfer the school's assets to an entity not controlled by the GBC.

Mercer has just approved a policy granting domestic partner benefits for gays. Mercer is also hosting a Baptist sexuality conference next year.

Shorter has just required all employees to sign a personal lifestyle statement that pledges rejection of unbiblical sexual activity, including homosexual activity.

Mercer is a superior educational institution. Shorter is held in lower regard in academic reputation.

Shorter makes national news with their pointedly conservative, many use the term 'fundamentalist', stance on morality, homosexuality, and Biblical inerrancy.

Mercer makes news, though not national news, by granting gays domestic partner benefits.

Mercer and some connected with the school, including Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (co-sponsor of the conference on Baptist sexuality), may (and please note my partisan speculation rather than fact here) be among the first Baptists to outline a theology of affirmation and acceptance of homosexuality.

No Georgia Baptist Convention church contributes to Mercer through their Cooperative Program gifts but they do contribute to Shorter which receives over one million dollars annually from the GBC.

Mercer is on very solid long term footing and its future looks strong and secure. Enrollment is growing at Shorter and its short to medium future looks strong.

When Southern Baptist life began to splinter thirty years ago, it was probably a good and necessary thing, something these two schools illustrate. My reading of SBC and state convention life is that the experiences of these two schools and their affiliations is typical. Does anyone think that we could all just go along and get along with each other and cooperate with such a contrast in beliefs and practices? Surely not.

Baptists have a clear choice. Let each one choose.

Some genius will have to find a name

I suppose that there are genii in the SBC, though in short supply and we may need some fresh, new thinking if an acceptable name is to be found (or is already found, registered, and lying dormant for just the right moment when the Illustrious Informal Name Committee will bestow it upon a convention of sleepless, hand wringing, nail biting followers who just haven't had any epiphanies of appropriate appelations and dare I suggest that the disciples of alliteration may be lurking about on this prepared for a mighty mammoth alliterative blow?)

My list of possibilities, annotated (and we're keeping 'Baptist' until the bitter end):


Fellowship; as in Cooperative Baptist Fellowship?
Convention; ain't new, ain't sexy.
Association; already have these and they are becoming somewhat dinosaurish.
Body; as in 'deacon body'? A bit of an image to overcome, I think.
Christians; well, it fits some SBCers.
Union; SBCers are mostly GOP and eschew untions.
Confab; like, around the water cooler, or pastor's conferences.
Conference; we certainly do a lot of this.
Churches; allegedly the key part of SBC life.
Federation; a bit too retro CCCP for me.
Alliance; as in Alliance of Extremely Liberal Baptists?
Resource; too LifeWayish.
Global; Well, ok, but doesn't excite me.
American; already have one of these.
North American; maybe, kind of clunky.
International; got an entity with this.
Galactic; ask Bobby Welch on this.
Universal; theological seppuku
General; a bit too martial.
Great Commission; haven't we worn this out?
Evangelical; major baggage here
Conservative; already have one of these.
Biblical; redundant, though a third "B" would be neat: "BBB"
Cooperative; as in Cooperative Baptist Fellowship? (Maybe they're the geniuses)
World; not broad enough to hold all the SBC egos
Worldwide; nah
Kingdom; so...monarchial ('Oligarchy' would be a good fit, though)

Plodder confesses to being seriously flummoxed on the name and yields to his betters.

Before we get too depressed about the Cooperative Program...

...Southern Baptists, both pastors/laypeople in churches and denominational employees in their offices in Nashville, Alpharetta, Richmond and the states, might remind themselves of a few things.

1. The Cooperative Program, though steadily declining as a percentage of church offering plate dollars, and the decline spans a couple of generations, is still an enormous funding engine. Sure, it has dropped some millions or so the last couple of years but is still gigantic. We are the envy of others in this.

2. Nothing on the horizon makes me think that the CP is going the way of the ivory-billed woodpecker, the most famous extinct American bird, last seen in 1944. Churches will continue to give to the CP, although I see nothing on the horizon that will stanch lower percentages from the churches.

3. Consider our moderate brethren, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Their latest round of double digit percentage budget cuts leaves their national organization about the size of a single SBC megachurch. Their survival is a legitimate question. The same cannot be said for the SBC or any of our entities.

4. Some mega-SBCers are making mega CP moves. Johnny Hunt's church, FBC Woodstock, will give nearly a million dollars to the CP this year, almost doubling what they did last year. The thousands of average-sized churches may not be persuaded to follow the example but megachurch critics will at least have to acknowledge Hunt's move as positive for the CP.

5. The cuts made by some SBC entities are real and severe; however, the CP, along with the two major mission offerings, give the SBC an enormous capacity to absorb financial blows. Even the troubled North American Mission Board has survived major debacles along with the recent recession and still has $140+ millions of our dollars to spend.

6. Whatever the flaws, I find no other funding mechanism that makes as good a sense as the CP.

So, Plodder will hold off the CP obituary for awhile.

Old reruns: sbctakeover

Old reruns...Night of the Living Dead, Reefer Madness, The Blob, Rocky Picture Horror Show...and now for those SBCers and ex-SBCers who never tire of the past:

sbctakeover.com

Really?

Yep.

The website is a book, The Fundamentalist Takeover In The Southern Baptist Convention by Robison (Rob) B. James, Barbara Jackson, Robert E. Shepherd, Jr., and Cornelia Showalter and is copyrighted by the CBF of Georgia. It’s not new. The online version is a fourth edition.

Uh...Why?

Brethren…sistren…it’s been 31 years since Adrian Rogers was the first of the long series of conservatives elected president.

It’s been over two decades since the moderates gave up the fight.

Next year the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship will observe a 20th anniversary.

Adrian, Chafin, Sherman, and many of the other prominent names are daid and buried.

They tell me that no one under 50 is even interested.

The SBC has moved on to struggle with another resurgence, the Great Commission Resurgence.

The CBF is more concerned about meeting a budget and keeping its mission people on the field.

???

...but, just to be safe, someone oughta get busy and put Pressler's book online.





.

CBF churches still funding SBC missions?

I don’t think the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the smallish breakaway group out of the SBC that has an undisclosed but rather modest number of churches that aren’t dually affiliated with both the CBF and SBC, occupies a lot of the thinking of Southern Baptists. Who knows, I might be one of the few whose do notice CBF stuff.

A recent Associated Baptist Press article about them did get my attention:

Crumpler, accepting Courage Award, notes CBF churches still funding SBC

With the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship unable to appoint fully funded missionaries for several years and facing the possibility of calling field personnel home unless gifts to its annual Offering for Global Missions increase, CBF churches continue to fund Southern Baptist Convention missionaries by allowing members to designate gifts to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, a former executive director of Woman's Missionary Union said June 25.

You don’t say? And, why not? And isn't that the heart of the problem: there never were 40% of SBC churches that identified with the CBF and were willing to jettison the SBC in favor of the CBF and, in spite of occasional eruptions of SBC nonsense, I don't see the trend being towards more doing that.

We all have our problems. Our own International Mission Board has approved people sitting tight here in the states because funds are not available to send them overseas. Major IMB programs have been cut. On the other hand, the CBF is speaking of recalling some of their few dozen overseas people.

I’d like to think that I would be pleased about whomever is sharing the Gospel, wherever, with whomever paying the bills – even the CBF.

But I do wonder what kind of mission philosophy it is to take dollars from Lottie Moon and redirect them to CBF Global Missions. It’s hard to see a net positive there; but, folks and churches may certainly do what they please with their dollars. Thank God the many of them believe that their dollar to Lottie Moon is well spent and puts committed people in places where they can proclaim Christ to people in places where there isn't already a steady diet if not surfeit of evangelical witness.

If one’s primary love is missions then wouldn’t one expect that even SBC missions, Lottie Moon missions would be praised, commended, and supported? We aren't dealing with a zero sum pool of missions support, are we?

A courage award might be due for those who, whatever their beef with the SBC and whatever their identity with the CBF, continue to support a thriving international missions program.