Anti-calvinist SBC headquarters?

Just asking here, brethren and sistren...but is the obscure Georgia Baptist college, Truett-McConnell College now the headquarters of anti-Calvinism in the Southern Baptist Convention?

It certainly looks that way to this observer.

TMC is local, exactly 55.68 miles north of me, although I have never been on the campus. Maybe I will get an invitation. It is located in a lovely area.

Emir Caner is the president of the college, a Georgia Baptist Convention entity, and he has recently written a piece critical of the new LifeWay curriculum: The Gospel Project: A birdseye view from the Blue Ridge mountains.

The article was posted on the blog SBC Today which is owned by the college. TMC is a Georgia Baptist Convention institution and is in the budget for one million Cooperative Program dollars this year, dollars collected from both Calvinist and non-Calvinist GBC churches.

Certainly SBC Today can legitimately be said to be at least indirectly a GBC blog which makes for an interesting scenario whereby Calvinistic GBC churches are paying for the anti-Calvinist SBC Today blog.

Hmmm...didn't we conservatives object to paying for certain things way back when the Conservative Resurgence was under way?

One wonders if the GBC wants to be tied so closely to one side of an issue where Georgia Baptists are divided.

SBC Today has been the source of a steady stream of anti-Calvinist articles and, as best as I can tell, is the chief blogging source for anti-Calvinism in the SBC. If there is a more prominent blog doing such, I would appreciate one of my readers kindly informing me if I am uninformed and out of touch.

I check SBC Today regularly and like some of their offerings, particularly Joe McKeever's articles. I hope they don't move to all anti-Calvinism, all the time.

I am not a Calvinist and have not a few pieces critical of Calvinists and Calvinism, so don't throw that traditionalist hymnal at me brethren. I'm just asking questions here.

Blogs, independence, control, and content

Here is an observation and one that I make without any hint of disapprobation: the popular SBC blog SBCToday is under new institutional management and ownership.

Steve Lemke, prof at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary has an announcement to that effect.

Emir Caner of Truett-McConnell College has agreed to captain a new editorial team that is being assembled. The transition of SBC Today to TMC direction has been underway for several weeks, and official ownership is being transferred today.

Truett-McConnell College is an institution owned by the Georgia Baptist Convention and supported by our Cooperative Program.

While we recognize advocacy is unavoidable in this business, and there is nothing wrong with any blog pushing any particular position on issues that concern Southern Baptists (SBC Today has been the main proponent and defender of "The Statement of the Traditional Southern Baptist Understanding of God’s Plan of Salvation"), it is important to be aware of the places and occasions where this is present.

It adds a wrinkle to this business of blogging to understand where money out of our common funding plan, the Cooperative Program, might be used in advocacy. One can see the potential for conflict and prudence must be exercised by institutional blog owners.

As for SBC Today, I'd fire them forthwith if they fail to continue to publish the best pastoral helps currently available on blogs - those by Joe McKeever.

I wish SBC Today well under new ownership and content control.

  

Miss the pastoral ministries course? Here's something better.

While I am sure that there are a lot of solid, practical, down-to-earth writers on the internet who are good for pastoral ministries advice and counsel, I am not reading anything, nor anyone, better than Joe McKeever.

Joe McKeever, whose byline says, Preacher, Cartoonist, Pastor, and retired Director of Missions at the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans,

writes an occasional piece for SBC Today and I have found these to be extremely helpful. He makes me want to get back in the pastorate and try all this stuff I didn't know. 


If you check his cartoons, BP carries one each day here, you will immediately recognize that he understands things concerning the SBC pastor and church.  


A sampling of his stuff:
Solve 90% of church problems before they exist

Three Tough Church Situations … and what to do about them.

When I was pastor in South Carolina, I invited him to do a revival at my church and of all the revival preachers (mostly pastors with a few DOMs and vocational evangelists) I hosted,  I enjoyed his being with us more that all the rest. I still have his cartoon of myself as a much younger pastor.