No problems with a quorum at this SBC meeting

While the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention had its lowest registration when meeting in a southern city since the youngest Baby Boomer was a toddler, and while some lower level SBC business was conducted with far less than a 25% quorum, there was one SBC event that had no problem with a quorum but had a decidedly gaudy attendance in comparison.

That would be the North American Mission Board's Send North America luncheon held during the SBC Pastor's Conference (BP photo above).

The attendance was an estimated 3,500.

Hmmm, we scratch and scrape to find a few hundred for some business sessions of the SBC's annual meeting but are bulging for a special interest luncheon where the focus is planting churches in North America.

There may be something of a lesson here.

SNA is the only big new thing in the SBC's playbook. It is a year old and although the metrics thus far are only things like attendance at conferences, numbers of churches involved, and church planters who have signed on, there is reason to be optimistic. The enthusiasm factor is evidence of that.

Quorum schmorum. 

It is good to see something that generates some positive numbers in the SBC.

What's missing in this Baptist Press story?

A Southern Baptist megachurch pastor nominates another Southern Baptist megachurch pastor for a high profile position. This generally qualifies as newsworthy among us and I am not surprised the our denominational news outfit, Baptist Press, an arm of the Executive Committee writes the story.

Bruce Frank announced as Pastors' nominee

HOUSTON (BP) -- Bruce Frank, lead pastor of the Asheville-area Biltmore Baptist Church in Arden, N.C., will be nominated for president of the Southern Baptist Pastors' Conference, according to an announcement by Arkansas pastor Ronnie Floyd.

Nothing new about this. Nothing unusual about this. One presumes, hopefully, that if some micropastor nominates another micropastor for President of the Pastor's Conference and sends an announcement of the same to BP that Art Toalston will write a similar article.

The president of the Pastor's Conference has been in the past a springboard to the SBC presidency. If this election was inconsequential then I doubt Ronnie Floyd would have thought it necessary to notify Baptist Press. So Baptist Press is interested in a bit more than who is nominated for the preaching event that precedes the SBC Annual Meeting.

But there is something missing in the boilerplate announcement. Read this and see if you can 'find' it:

According to Southern Baptists' Annual Church Profile database, Biltmore Baptist Church had a weekly attendance of 4,839 in 2011 (2012 statistics for the church have not yet been posted) and 4,070 in 2010. The church recorded 460 baptisms in 2011 and 445 in 2010. The overall membership of the church stood at 7,196 in 2011 and offerings/gifts to the church that year totaled $8,837,438.

Let's see, we've got relevant statistics including baptisms, attendance, membership, and total receipts. We do not have Cooperative Program giving.

Sure, the Pastor's Conference is a private entity, not an SBC entity but is the nominee's Cooperative Program giving relevant to the story?

I think so. Perhaps Art Toalston is investigating this and will put it in a subsequent story, or, perhaps some blogger will dig it up. I would have but could not access any statistics on short notice.

Notice something that is said, parenthetically, in the story:

(2012 statistics for the church have not yet been posted)

Not been posted...by the church? By LifeWay? By the Baptist Convention of North Carolina?

The nominee is obviously an outstanding pastor and the church is thriving and doing a great job for the Lord. Perhaps they give generously to the Cooperative Program. Perhaps they are above average.

Just observing, brethren.

Since we pay for the SBC Pastor's Conference, how about an accounting of it?

My fellow Georgian, blogger friend Peter Lumpkins of SBCTomorrow blogs about something of which I was not aware - not a difficult thing to do.

SBC Pastors' Conference: Who Pays and How? by Peter Lumpkins

His article (above) of 3/14 is about the funding for the Southern Baptist Pastor’s Conference, the pre-convention affair that showcases people the SBC elite want to be elected to office. Back in the day (I attend the SBC annual meeting about once in every three years or so and haven’t been to a Pastor’s Conference in many years) the PC was helpful in the Conservative Resurgence, Adrian Rogers always having a prominent preaching slot. I enjoyed it then.

I thought that the PC was funded by the offering received from attendees, plus some sponsorships from LifeWay or other businesses that wanted some exposure to a large gathering of SBC pastors.

Peter reports that the PC receives substantial funding from the SBC Executive Committee, $150,000 annually with the PC reimbursing $50,000 of that – net funding of $100,000.

Since ordinary SBCers are paying for a good chunk of the PC through the Cooperative Program, how about a little transparency on it? Frank Page, XComm CEO, thinks the same way and the XComm, according to Peter has “this year…passed a motion which requested the Pastors' Conference reimburse a larger amount of money to the EC including a detailed accounting of the gifts and expenditures for the Pastors' Conference.”

Peter’s understanding is that “no record to date has been given to the EC for monies received/dispersed at the Pastors' Conference.”

Huh? I can think of 100,000 reasons that the Pastor’s Conference treasurer ought to send, post haste, a full accounting of their revenues and expenses, line-by-line.

If Plodder may be presumptuous enough to offer Frank Page some assistance here, how about the following:

Memo to the SBC Pastor’s Conference:

Brethren, please send me a complete accounting of revenues and expenses of the 2010 Pastor's Conference and a proposed budget for the 2011 Pastor's Conference. If I do not receive this within seven days, you get no check from the Executive Committee.

Love in Christ,
Frank Page, President
SBC Executive Committee