Baptist Press now has a story, LifeWay awaits study pending Glorieta sale, based on the Christianity Today article linked below.
The CT article makes it very difficult, in my opinion, for LifeWay to go through with this. One notes that Al Mohler and Danny Akin have very recently resigned their affiliation with Jang-related organizations. It makes it complicated that Olivet University is already renting a large chunk of Glorieta even now. What happens to all that if the sale is deep sixed?
Life is complicated for LifeWay...
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I'm five states away and have never been to what I'm told is a very nice facility - Glorieta Baptist Conference Center. You know, the one that has lost money for 24 of the last 25 years and about which LifeWay says that there's just not much demand for the stuff offered at the center.
So, LifeWay puts it on the market for sale with considerable stipulations (details and links in an earlier blog of mine here).
Sounds both reasonable and responsible to me.
The best sale prospect, the Baptist Convention of New Mexico, said the price quoted them, one dollar, was ten to twenty million dollars too high so LifeWay finds another potential buyer, a real buyer who presumably will write a real check to LifeWay - Olivet University in California, who is even now renting Glorieta facilities for about 200 students and faculty.
But it seems there is a question about theological compatibility with Olivet, sufficient for LifeWay to retain, as in spend good money, the National Association of Evangelicals "to conduct a thorough review of their theological views to determine compatibility with ours”, as a LifeWay executive put it in an Associated Baptist Press story. Baptist Press reported in July that a third party investigation was under way but did not name NAE.
Scrutiny on the potential deal may just have increased exponentially as a result of a Christianity Today article, The Second Coming Controversy, which names a Korean pastor and Olivet founder, David Jang, likely unknown to almost all Southern Baptists, as the questionable figure lurking behind the potential sale. The article, co-authored by the considerable Ted Olson, is no superficial treatment of the matter and is rather lengthy. I'm guessing that LifeWay's folks have read every syllable of it.
Jang's critics point to his involvement with the Korean religious figure and organization that most SBCers have heard of, Sun Myung Moon and his Unification Church, the mere mention of which may poison the Glorieta deal. Others have declared Jang to be completely orthodox.
Some of the landed gentry at Glorieta, residents with long term land leases whom LifeWay says they will protect in any sale, are already dropping Jang's name.
One wonders, do not Southern Baptists have people of sufficient erudition and import to conduct such a study, or is a third party needed because some prominent SBCers, Al Mohler and Richard Land and formerly Jimmy Draper and LifeWay's current CEO, Thom Ranier, among others have tangential ties to some of Jang's sprawling organization?
I'm merely a curious Eastern seaboard Southern Baptist who doesn't venture west of the muddy Mississippi, much less the Pecos, who wonders if LifeWay may have roped a tornado on this deal.
I have no reason not to believe that LifeWay trustees, who exhibited some hasty skittishness in pulling the wonderful movie Blind Side from their stores (a predictor of a decision on this matter?), will make the proper decision on this and I trust that the NAE study, when completed and reviewed by LifeWay executives and trustees, will be made public.
Plodder predicts: no deal...but I'm just reading the Korean tea leaves on this. One this is for certain, LifeWay better find a way to get ahead of the publicity on this.
The CT article makes it very difficult, in my opinion, for LifeWay to go through with this. One notes that Al Mohler and Danny Akin have very recently resigned their affiliation with Jang-related organizations. It makes it complicated that Olivet University is already renting a large chunk of Glorieta even now. What happens to all that if the sale is deep sixed?
Life is complicated for LifeWay...
_____________
I'm five states away and have never been to what I'm told is a very nice facility - Glorieta Baptist Conference Center. You know, the one that has lost money for 24 of the last 25 years and about which LifeWay says that there's just not much demand for the stuff offered at the center.
So, LifeWay puts it on the market for sale with considerable stipulations (details and links in an earlier blog of mine here).
Sounds both reasonable and responsible to me.
The best sale prospect, the Baptist Convention of New Mexico, said the price quoted them, one dollar, was ten to twenty million dollars too high so LifeWay finds another potential buyer, a real buyer who presumably will write a real check to LifeWay - Olivet University in California, who is even now renting Glorieta facilities for about 200 students and faculty.
But it seems there is a question about theological compatibility with Olivet, sufficient for LifeWay to retain, as in spend good money, the National Association of Evangelicals "to conduct a thorough review of their theological views to determine compatibility with ours”, as a LifeWay executive put it in an Associated Baptist Press story. Baptist Press reported in July that a third party investigation was under way but did not name NAE.
Scrutiny on the potential deal may just have increased exponentially as a result of a Christianity Today article, The Second Coming Controversy, which names a Korean pastor and Olivet founder, David Jang, likely unknown to almost all Southern Baptists, as the questionable figure lurking behind the potential sale. The article, co-authored by the considerable Ted Olson, is no superficial treatment of the matter and is rather lengthy. I'm guessing that LifeWay's folks have read every syllable of it.
Jang's critics point to his involvement with the Korean religious figure and organization that most SBCers have heard of, Sun Myung Moon and his Unification Church, the mere mention of which may poison the Glorieta deal. Others have declared Jang to be completely orthodox.
Some of the landed gentry at Glorieta, residents with long term land leases whom LifeWay says they will protect in any sale, are already dropping Jang's name.
One wonders, do not Southern Baptists have people of sufficient erudition and import to conduct such a study, or is a third party needed because some prominent SBCers, Al Mohler and Richard Land and formerly Jimmy Draper and LifeWay's current CEO, Thom Ranier, among others have tangential ties to some of Jang's sprawling organization?
I'm merely a curious Eastern seaboard Southern Baptist who doesn't venture west of the muddy Mississippi, much less the Pecos, who wonders if LifeWay may have roped a tornado on this deal.
I have no reason not to believe that LifeWay trustees, who exhibited some hasty skittishness in pulling the wonderful movie Blind Side from their stores (a predictor of a decision on this matter?), will make the proper decision on this and I trust that the NAE study, when completed and reviewed by LifeWay executives and trustees, will be made public.
Plodder predicts: no deal...but I'm just reading the Korean tea leaves on this. One this is for certain, LifeWay better find a way to get ahead of the publicity on this.
