Blogging to middle school level readers

Please, no gnashing of teeth over this, but most SBC bloggers write at a level suitable for middle school kids.

There are numerous sites for analyzing writing and one that I have checked reveals that most of the popular SBC bloggers generally offer a level of writing on the level of seventh to ninth graders.

Here's a sampling:

SBC Voices: Since they have a number of contributors, the level varies but generally 7th-8th grade with an occasional dip to as low as fifth grade and one contributor that hits high school level.

SBC Today: Egad, ranges from as low as third grade level to an occasional foray into the college grad school level.

Popular individual SBC bloggers: Oh, generally seventh and eighth grade levels, even ex-lawyers.

SBC entity heads: Ranges from 11th grade down to eighth. Seminary presidents generally write at a higher level for which, since we pour a lot of dollars into the schools, I am grateful.

Moderates: Uh oh, the low is around 8th grade and most are 10th and 11th, a bit higher than we conservatives. I'm looking for an elitism and condescension scale to apply to moderates but haven't found one and just have to go with general perceptions. To be fair, I am also in a search for a strutting scale to apply to prominent SBCers and haven't found one of those either.

SBC Plodder: Your humble hacker and plodder generally hits eighth grade through college. If I worked at it I could probably write at a very high level with an elevated obsfucation index which might be a good plan because people would be generally impressed without knowing why. I think I will try an article this week with every obscure polysyllabic word I can think of.

Calvinists: As one might expect, preschool level...just kidding. The more prominent Calvinists are about the same as normal people.

Strident anti-Calvinists: Normal to low.

William Faulkner: Just about off the scale, near incomprehensible, which is why all students cheat and lie about reading his stuff. I find no budding Faulkners among SBC bloggers although I do find a few who write incomprehensibly.

Herman Melville, Moby Dick: Seventh grade...and if it were not a couple of thousand pages long, I would have read the lengthy tome in the seventh grade.

This blog article: About sixth grade but, remember, I have to think about my dear readers and be considerate of them.

Have a good week.

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.

  

Vast numbers of Georgia pastors sign 'Traditionalist' statment!

SBC Today reported, breathlessly, that the state of Georgia  has more pastors who signed the "Statement of the Traditional Southern Baptist Understanding of God’s Plan of Salvation” than any other state.

Wow.

So...how many?

Thirty-two.

Thirty-two? 

Yep.

Out of how many SBC pastors in Georgia?

Oh, five thousand or so, give or take a retired or semi-retired pastor.

Hmmm, that would be 0.64 percent, about one out of every 150.

Impressive, in a manner of blogspeak, I suppose.

What gives the statement heft is this (quote from Baptists Today):

The signers include four members of the committee who penned the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 (plus the President who appointed them to do so). The list includes six former SBC Presidents and seven state Baptist convention executives.

No need to look for your humble hacker and plodder blogger's name on the list. I'm not much of a signer, although I share some of the concerns about aggressive Calvinism and have not a few articles on the same.


I just don't know where this is going or what exactly the traditionalists have in mind. I'm down for the Baptist Faith and Message. That should be sufficient.


Count me as one who is not ready for another Conservative Resurgence type of crusade with candidates for office, trustee appointments based on party, etc.


Let's see what Frank Page has in mind next week.

  

Greatest SBC Challenge? How about Calvinism?

The SBC Today blog did an interview with our Number One Southern Baptist, the titular head of the SBC in the 363 days the convention is not in session - Frank Page, chairman of the SBC's Executive Committee.

The first question asked Page what he thought were the greatest challenges facing the SBC. The first challenge named by Page in his response was...Calvinism.

Here is the relevant part of the interview:

SBC Today: What do you think are the greatest challenges facing the SBC?

Frank Page: I think the challenges confronting the SBC today are different than they have been in decades past. I think one of the issues which is a tremendous challenge for us is the theological divide of Calvinism and non-Calvinism. Everyone is aware of this, but few want to talk about this in public. The reason is obvious. It is deeply divisive in many situations and is disconcerting in others. At some point we are going to see the challenges which are ensuing from this divide become even more problematic for us. I regularly receive communications from churches who are struggling over this issue.

Surprised?

It's not as if Page doesn't have an array of other challenges to the SBC from which to choose: The Cooperative Program is dropping like a rock. The North American Mission Board is undergoing substantial changes. The Great Commission Resurgence has stirred up the convention a good bit.
But Page's mind goes first to the issue of Calvinism in the SBC when asked about challenges.

Interesting.

I have been wary of calvinists for some time because of what I have seen and heard - churches being split and destroyed by agressive calvinist pastors. Here in Georgia one prominent church has even gone as far as defunding SBC institutions that are too calvinist. I recognize some problems.

But is Calvinism at the top of the list of challenges? I don't know. But Page certainly has my attention here. Maybe he ought to be the one to start talking about it.

Is this the Age of Caner?

[Frank Page will have to wait at least a day or so for the rest of my unsolicited advice for him.]

Reports are that Ergun Caner is being demoted by Liberty University, his contract as dean not being renewed but he is staying on as a faculty member.

[Many of the sources and comments thereon may be found in this blog ]

In our beloved SBC I'm afraid we’ve been in the Age of Caner for quite some time, even before Caner. [Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited, Age of Hooper…look it up.] Rectitude, selflessness, truth, and beauty gives way to cheap (and often ugly) efficacy, falsehood, and rationalization. Were I younger, I’d call it the Age of the SBC Rock Stars. God deliver us from either.

Southern Baptists have always been easy marks for mountebanks, charlatans, schemers, and screamers. I don’t know Ergun Caner, haven’t met him, haven’t heard him preach, thought his story was less-than-believable when I first read of him.

Yet to be explained: SBC Today in a brief, unsigned blog on the Caner matter,

“In that vein we at SBC Today will not discuss this issue any further. This matter is behind us and we praise God that Dr. Caner is exonerated as he is retained at Liberty on faculty.”

Can't say that I blame them. Declare victory and then go on vacation. Whatever you guys say but why should anyone pay attention to you? (Tim Guthrie is, by the way, offering further discussion on Caner, just not on SBC Today) I still don’t put Caner in the same category as Gilyard and Warnke but we should be more discerning in representing Christ if we are His followers.

I wish Ergun Caner well as he continues to serve Christ with diminished credibility. Nonetheless, it is beneficial when truth wins.

Perhaps the ubiquity of bloggers will avoid ushering in the Age of Caner. I hope so.