State conventions try to slow the dreaded denominational death march

Amuse yourself with over 28,000 articles on "death of denominations" and then do some sober thinking about the closest thing to a denomination to the average Southern Baptist pastor: his state convention.

Our beloved International Mission Board might be the latest to implement severe cuts in employment levels. Their August bombshell declared that 600-800 personnel would have to leave for the organization to have a viable future, one where the bills could be paid. This is an 11-15 percent cut in staffing.

That level of cutbacks looks pretty attractive to many state conventions. I'll just mention Georgia and Florida. While it's tough to get firm numbers on staff, I'll make a conjecture that 50% cutbacks are closer to the norm for state conventions. None of the SBC level entities have dealt with cutting their staffing in half.

Here in Georgia a "reinvention" is underway in which

• We change our name from the commonly used, "Georgia Baptist Convention" to "Georgia Baptist Mission Board." 
• Our leader declares, "We are a missionary sending agency in Georgia." 

I'm OK with changing the labels, although some may confuse us with NAMB and IMB in our identification as a "sending agency." The new GBMB has staff that serves GBMB churches and our common support "sends" these people around the state. Give me time to grieve the loss of the old "GBC" which rolls easily off the tongue and keyboard. "GBMB" is rather wooden, though just as toothy. I understand the desire to brand the GBC/GBMB as a missions enterprise. 

• We decentralize, sort of.

GBC workers are high-mileage travelers. I have no complaint about any of them. Several have helped me immensely. In the future there will be a centralized staff but one that is supplemented and multiplied by "field based personnel", clergy and church staff who are on a retainer to do stuff for churches. A suggested stipend of $1,000 per month, paid by the GBC, for a year's worth of consulting. Resumes from church staff are now inundating the state convention. 

The last time I needed guidance from a GBC expert on a specific church project I had to retain the employee on his spare time for a couple of thousand dollars. The GBC paid his salary, trained him, and gave him skills in demand of the churches. My church had to pay him to do the job. Maybe the field based people will do tasks like this for the churches without charging. We will see how this works out.  

• We sell the building, maybe.

The last grand hurrah of the showpiece, centralized, first class denominational office building is the Georgia Baptist Missions and Ministry Center in Duluth. No state has a finer one. We're closing it on Fridays and it "could" be sold for the right price to the right customer. The staff could move to more modest headquarters and excess funds put in trust for use in the state. 

• We give the SBC an additional 2%

The GBC had their $25 million building debt paid off, indirectly, through the sale of hospitals we used to own. Half of the savings on debt service will go to SBC ministries. IMB gets about a quarter million additional funds. We use the other half here.

In our sunny neighbor state to the south, Florida, The Florida Baptist State Board of Missions, is downsizing and decentralizing.

• Statewide employees will be reduced from 115 to 61.

This is serious business. The savings from paying staff will raise the...

• SBC share of Cooperative Program revenues will go from 45% to 51%.

I believe this will but the FBSBM ahead of all other legacy state conventions is the CP "split." I'm shocked at the rapid movement to give away CP revenues to the mission boards and seminaries. This is impressive. 

• State staff will no longer take interim pastorates.

The new executive says what should be obvious to every state convention leader: having state staff take interim pastorates keeps them out of other churches. Want to get the average, loyal, supportive SBC pastor riled up? Start a conversation about these interim jobs.  

• "Decentralization, regionalization and personalization" is the concept.

Some staff will live in various regions. The idea is a "new delivery system."

Will changes such as these slow the death of the state convention?

I hope it hastens the death of the centralized state convention. When you can ask pastors what their state convention means to them and immediately get a variety of concrete, positive answers, then perhaps the obituary state conventions can be said to be premature.

The $43.5 million GBC buliding as an icon

Our Georgia Baptist Convention headquarters building is, best I can tell, the nicest state convention administrative office building in the entire Southern Baptist Convention. It is superior in quality and setting to any of the others. 

It is now debt free, the GBC being given a grant of $25 million or so from the Georgia Baptist Health Care Ministry Foundation to retire the debt. Some called the gift a "miracle" though it was not unexpected. The GBHCMF director explained that the Foundation was waiting for the right time to make the gift. We don't manufacture miracles, much less schedule a trigger date for them. 

In addition to being appropriately ecstatic GBC leaders were careful to note that retiring debt is a biblical concept and that the GBC used to give a lot of money to the hospital before it was sold and the proceeds put in the GBCHCMF to be the source of grants for health care needs. In fact, the GBC leader, Robert White, even had a figure, adjusted for inflation, of how much the GBC had given to the hospital over time, $70 million. Toss in the explanation that GBC messengers approved the building and spending a bunch of times by votes and you've got some pretty sophisticated message management by GBC leaders and insiders.

But, why does a mammoth debt retirement bailout become something that needed to be cast with explanations, justifications, and message management? Can't we all just be happy about it?

Here's the answer: Somewhere along the way, the Georgia Baptist Convention headquarters building became an icon representing what many ordinary GBC pastors and laypeople are less than enthusiastic in supporting. 

Did the ground shift under the GBC to cause this? Did we get carried away with ourselves? Did we get caught in the vise grip of declining church metrics and economic travails? Probably some of all of these.

But now we're going to reassess ourselves, so I read.

Let's see how serious we are about that.

 

$25 million Georgia Baptist Convention debt bailout

Georgia Baptists got out of the hospital business some while back, sold the assets to one of the big hospital corporations, and put the money in a foundation which gives grants that support health care needs in Georgia. The initial amount was $125 million. The fund was severely depleted by the economic meltdown in 2008 but total assets were back to about $160 million, meaning that there was a mountain of money that insiders gazed longingly upon and that a few Georgia Baptists were going make decisions about.

It's easily the biggest pot of money around connected to Georgia Baptists. Various significant grants have been made annually to a variety of causes including pregnancy care centers, medical and dental clinics, counseling services and others. This year's grants totaled $3,256,924.

Last week it the Georgia Baptist Health Care Ministry Foundation announced their largest grant ever when they said the Foundation would pay off the $25 million building debt for the Georgia Baptist Convention headquarters building in Duluth. That single item is larger than the sum of all the grants given by the Foundation for the past seven years.

The Christian Index report on the grant is here.

The Foundation has offices in the building and, presumably, Foundation officers and trustees would pass grim-faced GBC leaders and employees in the hallways who understand the burden of a large debt.

Smiling and happy faces abound these days.

I understand money and debt. On a very small scale my last church had a debt wiped out through the sale of a donated property that brought considerably more than expected. I smiled more in church hallways after that.

The $43 million GBC building is a sparkling monument to the halcyon days and optimistic late 20th Century Southern Baptist thinking. It has been a burden. It could not be 'unbuilt' and the large debt loomed over every budget discussion. Even though the GBC had a plan to pay off the massive debt in a time of declining Cooperative Program support, the future looked arduous. The Foundation was the only entity with the sums to fix this. They fixed it. I rejoice with my GBC colleagues in their relief.

It's above my pay grade (actually, my Georgia Baptist pay grade is zero at the moment) to plumb the depths of this massive bailout, but I'll make a few observations:

• The grant was made and praised as a route to revival in the state. I appreciate the well-intentioned reading of such things but I doubt the route to revival is through retiring building debt. The GBC will be able to devote more funds to matters that actually reach souls and start churches with the money saved from debt service. This year's budget shows $2.15 million in debt service. We have budgeted more money to pay debt than to plant churches. 
• How will the GBC spend the money now budgeted and spent on debt service? Will we increase our support of the SBC portion of the Cooperative Program? The GBC keeps sixty cents of every CP dollar in state. Will it be considered that the seminaries and our two mission boards deserve more of the CP dollar?
• Will the GBC create some staff positions put more people on the payroll with the extra money? I appreciate my Georgia Baptist colleagues, but it's tough for this Georgia Baptist to see much of a connection between how many people occupy the Georgia Baptist Building and church health and growth.  
• Earlier offers by GBC leaders to sell the building and move to more modest office accommodations are, presumably, off the table. In a time when a vision for the future is not centralized staff and programming, where should be be spending our money for maximum return? We have a nice centralized HQ building, a testament to the turn of the century vision of baby boomer GBC leadership. What now?
• It is a considerable stretch to explain paying off debt for an administrative building as support for health care needs. I get the indirect connection. Presumably, lawyers have already signed off on using Foundation assets for this purpose. 
• Praise be to the Federal Reserve System whose easy money policy enable the stock market to soar and funds like the GBHCM Foundation to profit with considerable unearned growth. Dare I say that President Obama is indirectly responsible for paying off our building debt?
• Make no mistake about it. The $25 million that goes to lenders to pay off the GBC debt is $25 million that will never be available to earn income to be spent on health clinics, pregnancy centers, or other causes. We all make opportunity cost decisions. This is the Georgia Baptist Health Care Ministry Foundation's decision. 
• We sold our hospitals where patients were healed and put a good chunk of the proceeds in a building where staff has offices. You make the call on the propriety of that.

Opinions from Baptists are free and they are ubiquitous. I'll offer my opinion on how the GBC should spend the millions that they don't have to spend on debt service. 

2014 Top SBC Stories, Part 2

Part 1 is here.

While you were reading the latest on Hobby Lobby, the Affordable Care Act, and the new Pope, these are some things of interest to Southern Baptists. You likely will not see these in any summary of the year's top Baptist stories in regular outlets.

Florida Baptist Convention Settles $12.5 Million Sex Abuse Case  

Background and summary of this game changing sex abuse case may be found here.

The reason this story is a top story is because it establishes a linkage in liability between a local church staff member and the association and state convention. The abuser was a Florida Baptist church planter who abused kids. Although he wasn't an employee of the FBC or local association, a local court held that these were liable due to failing to properly investigate the man's background. A jury awarded a $12.5 million judgment against the FBC which appealed and settled out of court. The terms of the settlement were not made public.

The salient point in all this is that our system of autonomy and non-connectedness is not absolute. The FBC was successfully sued over a sex abuse case involving a non-employee but an individual who was vetted by the FBC and who received some support from the convention. One hopes that our entities are paying attention here.

Baptist Press reports on sex abuse in local churches

Sex abuse by clergy and volunteers in Southern Baptist churches is a problem. If ignored it will not disappear. One can almost look in vain for any reporting by Baptist Press of such crimes among our almost 50,000 churches. One has to look elsewhere, Baptist News Global, and secular outlets for this.
BP finally got around to reporting on a case of sex abuse in one of our churches, here. BP didn't do any reporting on it, merely passed along the Alabama Baptist newspaper account.

Baptist Press may serve as the PR arm for our Executive Committee and do very little journalism; however, thousands of Southern Baptists rely on them for items of interest. BP should do a better job serving our churches and protecting children.

Twenty-three state conventions increase their Cooperative Program allocation

In a year-end story, Baptist Press reported that 23 states "increased the portion of Cooperative Program receipts forwarded to the Southern Baptist Convention missions and ministries in moving towards the goal of a 50/50 allocation between in-state and SBC causes."

The Cooperative Program is a declining funding stream as a percentage of church receipts but the primary beneficiaries of the program, state conventions, are moving towards keeping less in-state and sending more to the SBC's institutions and agencies. Not all states are on board with keeping less. My own state convention here in Georgia has sacrificed greatly but is sending signals that they are already at 50/50, which being translated into normal arithmetic means 60% stays in state and 40% is sent on to the mission boards, seminaries, etc. Contrast that with the...

Iowa Baptist Convention moves to a true 50/50 Cooperative Program split, instantly 

New IBC Executive Director, Tim Lubinius, took a look at the convention's budget and saw that they kept 85% of every CP dollar. He proposed and the convention accepted a move, instantly, to a 50/50 split. Boom! It's done.

Designated Giving is Up, Cooperative Program Giving is Down

Check the figures here. For the second consecutive year, our Executive Committee received more in designated funds from state conventions that they did in Cooperative Program funds. In a few years, the Lottie Moon offering itself will be larger than all Cooperative Program money received by the Executive Committee. In spite of the long term trends, there seems to be little energy devoted to making the CP more attractive to churches.

Baptisms are down...membership is down

But...we had a task force look into the matter. Their report was that we're not baptizing enough, not evangelistic enough, not praying enough...

Cooperative Program continues to decline. Why the steep drop from Georgia?

The end of the SBC Executive Committee's fiscal year on September 31, 2013 saw another year where Cooperative Program receipts declined. The total received by the Executive Committee for distribution to the mission boards, seminaries, and other SBC entities was down about $2.7 million, about 1.9% from the previous year.

The Executive Committee's publication, SBCLife, has the data by state convention in its article The Changing Face of the Cooperative Program: Doing More With Less, by Roger S. Oldham.

It is not news that the CP is declining but the change in CP monies coming from individual state conventions is interesting.

Here's a chart of the top ten CP giving state convention. These states account for about 70% of all CP money received by the Executive Committee.

Notice there is one state that shows a healthy increase and one that shows a serious decrease (sorry about the poor quality bar graph).

The Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma showed a 14.7% increase from 2012 to 2013, about $1.5 million. That's pretty good, although the timing of how money is forwarded to the Executive Committee may modify that figure.

The Georgia Baptist Convention is the big bar below the zero line. The GBC showed a 13.9% decrease in CP gifts forwarded to the Executive Committee. That's a pretty steep one year decline but, again, the timing of how checks are mailed to Nashville may modify that as well. No way to dress up the fact that here in Georgia the Cooperative Program is in serious decline.

Why?

The GBC has a solid leader, has made severe cuts in expenses over the last few years, has indicated a willingness to move towards sending a greater proportion of CP receipts to the Executive Committee, has no conservative/moderate controversy, is not particularly divided, does not have any great issues or conflict raging around the state.

I hear state convention leaders speak of churches sending less money. A few years ago the state convention did a study of the change in CP giving by the largest 100 or so CP giving churches and reported that they did not find any particular reason aside from the stress on our overall economy. When I asked to see the study, I was told it was an internal document. Seems to me that the GBC would want to inform interested pastors and laypeople about any aggregate data or surveys that concern the GBC and Cooperative Program giving trends.

Bloggers are nothing if not filled with a surfeit of opinion. So here are some possibilities for explaining why the GBC is showing a much steeper decline in CP giving:

1. Statistical variation in giving patterns. I've given this a cursory search and don't see it. Giving for the last three months from the GBC all show double digit percentage decreases.
2. Churches are feeling more economic stress. Stressed? Sure, but greater stress this year than last? I don't see this either.
3. GBC churches and pastors are unenthusiastic about the state convention program and ministry. I don't see anyone complaining about any specific budget items for the GBC. We have administrative expenses, support three colleges, and have a number of programs working. One might conclude that the state convention program and vision is simply not capturing the attention and interest of our churches.
4. Permit me a bit of wild conjecture but considerable numbers of younger GBC pastors have an affinity for Reformed theology. They may see the GBC as generally unfriendly to them. One of our GBC colleges, Truett-McConnell, is a leader in Traditionalist movement (others may drop the euphemism and call them anti-Calvinist). The editor of our state paper has made controversial remarks about some facets of Calvinism. I don't see this as being sufficient to explain multi-million dollar,  double digit percentage decreases in the CP, though.
5. GBC churches and pastors are looking closely at their own budgets and evaluating the opportunity cost of the various budgeting alternatives and the Cooperative Program is not comparing well with other uses of the church's money.

I suspect that the last possibility is the one to scrutinize.

Have you ever heard this, "We're cutting our Cooperative Program percentage because we think there is better use for the money"?

Painful as that may be to GBC leadership, I'd want to drill down and find out more. If we are all wonderful folks, doing good ministry, but aren't presenting a vision for the future that engages GBC pastors and churches, we should do the hard work of finding out why.  

Any way you look at it, the CP is not doing well in Georgia. I hate to see it.

Perhaps there are simple reasons that explain this CP decline here in Georgia. I'm all ears and would appreciated being set straight about it. (Perhaps someone in Oklahoma will stumble on my blog and tell mey why the outsized increase in CP giving there as well.)Comment or email me.

Georgia Baptist Convention Cooperative Program Accounting

The GBC has made a welcome and needed change in their Cooperative Program accounting. This is something that is helpful but rather obscure to any but SBC and GBC geeks and insiders.

As a pastor, I seldom had any laypeople ask me about CP percentages except to ask what part of Cooperative Program gifts went to international or North American missions. If you are trying to explain a state convention CP pie chart it is easy to get lost in the high weeks, and that rather quickly.

Here is my simple summary of how GBC Cooperative Program allocations may be presented, in order of increasing complexity:

The Georgia Baptist Convention divides each church's Cooperative Program gifts in this manner:

60% is kept in-state for Georgia Baptist causes.

40% is forwarded for SBC causes mainly IMB, NAMB, seminaries, ERLC, and Executive Committee.

While our oustanding leader, Robert White, said this verbally. This is seldom if ever presented to the public in this fashion. No GBC/CP pie chart will have just two slices, GBC and SBC. There is always a third, shown in the 2014 version below:

The Georgia Baptist Convention divides each church's Cooperative Program gifts in this manner:

40.00% is forwarded for SBC causes.

48.97% is kept in-state for GBC causes.

11.03% is for Georgia Baptist Mission Extension Ministries

Quickly now, what is the "Georgia Baptist Mission Extension Ministries"? Who knows? It is about as generic as any label could be. This is the $4.6 million spent in-state on our three Georgia Baptist colleges, our retirement communities, and a couple of other tiny allocations. All of these are traditional state convention items - schools and ministries to aging. But why the budget carve-out for them?

I see no reason other than to avoid describing the CP allocation budget as 60/40 with the sixty staying in state.

Wouldn't it be more straightforward to put it to Georgia Baptist churches, ministers, and laypeople in this manner. "We do good work in this state with many ministries. In doing that we use 60% of every Cooperative Program dollar for a broad panoply of the Lord's work here in our state."

Here's the final method of explaining CP allocations:

The Georgia Baptist Convention divides each church's Cooperative Program gifts in this manner:

40.00% is forwarded for SBC causes.

48.97% is kept in-state for GBC causes.

11.03% is for Georgia Baptist Mission Extension Ministries

Note: The Southern Baptist Convention has historically requested that a portion of their Cooperative Program funds remain in Georgia to be used for the Promotion, Support, Accounting, and Distribution of Cooperative Program Funds, which equals 9.82% of the 2014 budget. 

Aha, the dreaded footnote further complicating things. Almost a century ago when the SBC and states adopted the wonderful system of fund allocation we have always called the Cooperative Program, it was understood that the states would do the promoting, collecting, and distribution of the money and that they were entitled to keep a portion for this work. Various state conventions handle this differently. The GBC puts a good bit more under this rubric than most, perhaps all, state conventions.

The dollar total of the footnote is about $4.1 million. So how is the CP promoted, collected, and distributed with this $4.1m? You have to ask. It is not shown.

I asked three years ago but haven't updated the information. In the 2011 budget more than half of the money was for debt service, plus the entire budget for the communications department and some other stuff. I believe that GBC decision makers have shuffled budget items in and out of this. If it were easily understood then why not llist one-by-one the budget items that are "counted" as CP promotion, support, accounting, and distribution? Then we would all know. Guess it is not that simple.

But I do commend the GBC for the change they have made in this regard.

Formerly, the GBC presented the CP as sharing CP monies equally with the SBC. The rationale for this was that about 20% of CP spending, all of which was in the GBC portion of the budget and not forwarded to the SBC Executive Committee, was labeled "shared ministries," or "jointly funded causes." CP promotional materials would have a graphic of a dollar bill sectioned into a 40/20/40 portions. The two '40s' were meant to convey that the GBC and SBC share equally, when in fact the GBC kept 60. Good move to drop that. It was completely misleading.

I like my state convention. I like my state convention leader, Robert White. He is an outstanding leader and administrator who has presided over the GBC in the roaring days of CP increases and in the depressing days of the CP's steep decline. He is a wonderful servant of Christ and our churches. He has shown wisdom and insight in his view of and reaction to some of the convention changes, most notably the steep reduction in North American Mission Board kickback funding to legacy southern state conventions.

The changes in budget presentation techniques are an improvement but my view from the GBC hinterlands is that all the caveats, provisos, and footnotes should be eliminated. Give a budget pie chart that has two slices: GBC causes, SBC causes.

We can all understand that.

But I do understand the historical precedents on all this.

Readers are welcome to inform me what I don't understand, what I am seeing incorrectly, or how I am all mixed up on this. Make a comment or feel free to email me. There may well be things I need to know but I don't.

Random Georgia Baptist Convention stuff

The Georgia Baptist Convention annual meeting was yesterday and it was good. I'd say that I enjoyed it as much as I have a state convention meeting in a long while.

There's always some notable things at these things. Here are a few random observations of mine.

"We aren't going to try and be the first people there but will try to be the last ones there."
GBC staff guy in charge of disaster relief speaking of Philippine typhoon relief efforts. The idea is to let the major players, governments (the US has sent an aircraft carrier there) do the initial relief efforts. We have assessment teams going now and when all the headline grabbers are gone because there are no more grand fundraising ploys to be had, Southern Baptists and Georgia Baptists will still be around doing the work of helping those displaced. A great strategy.

The median number of teens that Georgia Baptist churches baptized was zero.
Another of our officials giving a report and a challenge. But hold on a sec bro. The median is the midpoint above and below which there are equal numbers of churches. Plodder is searching assiduously for all those churches that baptized teens in the negative numbers. Somebody oughta do something about that. It's not baptistic at all.

When a scarlet woman meets a wounded warrior.
Cover promo for some of the pulp Christian fiction for sale at the LifeWay tables. Christian romance novels are rather silly but I'd give this one credit for a catchy line.

Courting Miss Amsel
More pulp Christian fiction, this a "Little House on the Prarie" type of period piece. OK, so it ain't Driving Miss Daisy. I'll give it two eyerolls.

Mossy Oak Holy Bible
For the macho hunter type who can carry a Bible in the woods while they shiver in a tree stand waiting for a furry Bambi to saunter by and be blown to bloody bits of hide, bone, and sinew. I always thought that you could hunt or read the Bible in the woods but not both. Or, maybe the crotchety old mossy back deacon that gives you so much trouble would like this Bible.

Mammoth, alliterative sermon
I loved the preacher, the delivery, the content, and the illustrations but the sermon was a mammoth marvel of alliteration - main points, secondary points, tertiary points. It was a magnificent structure, sort of a homiletic GQ work of art. Plodder still doesn't get alliteration. If Adrian didn't do it would it be dispensed with today?

Singing
The music has never been better for a convention. The GBC men's and women's choirs (Sons of Jubal and Jubalheirs) sang jointly. No silly trendiness here. It was outstanding.

Cowboy Church in Jerusalem
Name of one of the new GBC churches started this year. Jesus on a horse with a ten gallon hat, not a donkey?

Open Range Cowboy Church
Another new GBC church. Plodder is unaware of antelope playing on any range near this church.

GBC by the Numbers:
61    Total number of new churches and missions.
34    Number of these new churches that are ethnic or language churches.
27    Number of new anglo, non-Hispanic new churches
19    Number of these new anglo churches that do not have "Baptist" in their name. That would be almost three fourths of them. Get used to it brethren.

Top ten spiffy new, generic church names (not counting cowboy churches):
1. The Verge.  "Get the urge for The Verge!" Plodder is happy to help with promo here.
2. Essence Church. Free perfume and cologne?
3. The River. Also the name of a radio station in Atlanta.
4. RealLife Church.  Perhaps a sharing arrangement with Realtree could be arranged. "Introducing the RealLife Realtree Bible!"
5-9. LifePoint Church, FaithPoint Community Church, Crosspoint Church of NE GA, Grace Point Community Church, Point of Grace Church. What's with all the "points"? Kudos to all for not adding the rather superfluous "e" at the end to make a "pointe".
10. Lifesong Church. Points given for eschewing the mid-word capitalization.

There were some substantive matters. More later.

Good job, GBC.

There's irony in the air here, brethren...

...and some pretty heavy irony at that.

Here in the Peach State (on that, check the photo on our tags but don't let it out that more peaches are grown in a couple of counties in SC than in all of GA) our state convention leaders have agreed to some self-limitations on publication of nominees for state convention offices.

In 2011 the GBC had a hotly, but congenially contested election for the presidency of the convention. While the GBC has had to deal with declining budgets and  serious money shortfalls, there were no  correspondingly hot or controversial issues to be decided. 

Nonetheless, nominations were made by well known GBC personalities. Websites were put up. Endorsements were made. Online lists of endorsees were public for all to see who liked whom. Camps (Baptist talk for ecclesiastical cliques) were formed and energized. And heavy, heavy campaigning was conducted (I heard one of the two candidates say he had over 40 meet-and-greets scheduled around the state).

Good, old fashioned Baptist politicking. 

Everyone was gracious. The election was held. Someone won. Someone lost. I am informed that feelings were hurt and folks began to question the value and propriety of ten month campaigns.

So what has happened is that the GBC Executive Committee voted to call for a moratorium on endorsement of candidates until early September. Our state paper, The Christian Index, agreed to withhold publication of nominations until that date, eschew political ads completely, and only publish simple formulaic stories about candidates that include name, church name, Cooperative Program percentage, baptisms, along with one endorsement limited to 500 words.

All that is fine. Eight weeks is plenty long enough for me to decide who I will vote for. I suspect that the moratorium will hold until something really important is at stake in the GBC. I have no problem with our leaders attempting to dial down the politics.

Irony?

Have we forgotten? Conservatives wrote the book on denominational campaigning, starting back in 1979. We valued it then and never apologized for it. Now, as long as we are in the same general conservative camp, we're against it? 

Ironic.

The Christian Index, though not in recent years, has been a pretty blunt tool wielded in favor of one issue or one candidate or one camp or another. Editors have been told what to print and when to print it. 

Ironic.


Sometimes the word irony has the descriptive adjective "delicious" prefixed to it. This is a good spot for that.

 

Cutting the Baptist campaigning down in Georgia

My state convention, The Georgia Baptist Convention, is solidly conservative. There has not been a contested election between moderates and conservatives in years and years. But in 2011 there was a white hot political campaign for president, only between two very fine conservative pastors.

I wrote about that here.

When asking around about why the lengthy campaigns, the only answer I got was that there were competing insider groups among GBC conservatives, folks who wanted to be in charge or in a position to influence things in Georgia Baptist life.

The two candidates back in 2011 both had websites and extensive campaign events around the state. I attended one where the candidate said that he had over forty such events, meet and greets, planned beginning in the summer and going all the way to the convention in November.

Fact is, Baptists love to say that they really hate politics but the reality is that they love politics. The proof of that may easily be found in watching them.

Be all that as it may, now the GBC Executive Committee has voted to restrict political campaigning for GBC offices until two months prior to the annual meeting, usually in mid-November. No more of this summer campaign business.

Baptist Press reported the Christian Index story:  Ga. Baptists to limit campaigns to 8 weeks

The Executive Committee's unanimous vote Dec. 10 effectively reduces the campaign window, which had grown to 10 months, to eight weeks. The policy was approved by a unanimous vote of the 125-member group.

The new policy calls for a moratorium on the endorsement of any candidate until after the Sept. 10 GBC Executive Committee meeting. The policy also restricts The Christian Index, the convention's newsjournal, from publishing any article about candidates until that time and limits the amount of follow-up story coverage.

One little problem here...the GBC Executive Committee has absolute no power to prevent anyone from announcing his or her candidacy, to quash any campaign website, or even to prevent the Christian Index from printing such announcements or reporting on campaigns.

They do have a measure of bully pulpit power and they do have some degree of influence over the Christian Index mainly in regard to their budget, but no real power. Does any single Baptist anywhere let any state committee tell them what to do or say and when they can or cannot do it or say it? Nope.

It is a bit ironic, one must conclude, in that many of the heavy campaigners are now voting to restrict campaigns.  Further irony is in the fact that the Christian Index has in the past been the tool of political factions in our state.

I suspect that the Index trustees will go along with the Executive Committee's suggestion. Fact is, the Index and all state papers have been severely diminished in their circulation and thereby in their ability to influence things in the state conventions. Websites and blogs are widely read and may reach more Georgia Baptists who are interested in convention matters than any printed page. Then there are the hallway whisper campaigns, expected to continue unabated.

It is an interesting development. I'm guessing that Baptists are resourceful enough to squeeze a great deal of good, old fashioned Baptist campaigning even into an eight week period. It is one of those things that we just like to do.

We will find out later next year when the office of president in the GBC is up for grabs.

 

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.

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.

  

Will state conventions be helped by undermining the Cooperative Program?

The Consolation Baptist Association here in Georgia has passed a resolution suggesting that churches cut their Cooperative Program giving by 25-35 percent and designate this to "state missions" or, as explained to me, to their state convention.


I learned of the resolution from a comment left on SBC Voices, asked for and received a copy of it, and have had a couple of cordial conversations with Joe McGee, Associational Missionary for the association. A previous blog on the matter may be found here.


I judge this to be a well-intentioned effort by some very dedicated Christian colleagues to help the Georgia Baptist Convention in a time of great budgetary stress; however, any move to do so by encouraging churches to make steep cuts to their Cooperative Program giving is harmful to both the state convention and SBC entities. 

The idea that state conventions should be helped by encouraging churches to decrease their giving to the International Mission Board, the North American Mission Board, the six SBC seminaries, and other SBC entities is far off the mark.


Joe told me that I really needed to read an explanatory article, linked here, that explained the resolution. I read it and found it to be a mixture of misapplied data and opinion. Couple of points...

The title: "THE GEORGIA BAPTIST CONVENTION AND THE COOPERATIVE PROGRAM: GUILTY BY ASSOCIATION" implies that the GBC is suffering because of negative opinions of churches to SBC entities and actions beyond our state. 


I don't think this is the case. A number of state conventions have actually moved to increase the percentage of CP receipts that they send to SBC agencies and institutions, hardly an action they would take if they perceive that their constituent churches disapprove. 

Great Commission Giving: Data is cited that say "cooperative program giving was down by 5.86 percent" while contributions to "Southern Baptists institutions" were "up to [sic] 5-6% over last year's contributions during the same span." 

This is both inaccurate and a mixed up use of data. The source cited for the statement above compared GBC contributions for an entire year (2011) and an Executive Committee report for four months (Oct 2011-Jan 2012), manifestly not the "same span." Monthly receipts by the SBC Executive Committee are variable. You cannot draw a valid conclusion from the comparison used.

But, flawed data aside, might not Great Commission Giving be the culprit behind state convention budgetary woes? 


No. The data do not show this.


The Executive Committee reports direct gifts from churches that bypass their state convention. These gifts are actually down this year from the same period last year. They also report that designated gifts to the mission boards are down from last year. I don't know about direct gifts to the seminaries. If churches are diverting funds from state conventions at a substantially higher rate such doesn't show up in the data reported.

Direct giving by churches to SBC entities is a very small fraction of CP giving. The numbers aren't sufficient to blame state convention woes on churches pouring funds straight into IMB, NAMB, or the seminaries.


The case made for encouraging churches to substantially cut their CP giving in order to help state conventions not only uses flawed data but is  unreasonable. Do the people in the churches of this association really believe that cutting funds to our overseas missionaries so that we can have more state convention employees here in heavily churches Georgia is right and proper? Surely not.

Another issue raised in the article is Calvinism. There are already churches in the GBC that have defunded Southern and Southeastern seminaries over the issue. Fair enough. Let individual churches that their CP giving and defund from it whatever they feel is necessary for their collective conscience. If a church concludes that Southern and Southeastern cannot in good conscience be supported then let them cut 3.5% of their CP giving and apply it elsewhere. That is the approximate amount that the two schools receive of a CP dollar. 


Joe McGee conveys a frustration and dissatisfaction that I hear often on the blogs - the SBC is a megachurch run, top-down organization that ignores the vast majority of churches and pastors. He is concerned that Al Mohler and Danny Akin call the shots in the SBC on major issues. There is some truth in both of these though not to the extent that I would take the action he is taking.

But here my old-school idea for helping our state convention: Ask churches to increase CP giving. The GBC already keeps about 60% of every CP dollar. They will be blessed and appreciative. Suggesting churches defund all of our SBC work to help the GBC is an unwise, unproductive, and uncooperative approach.

So far as I am aware, this resolution is the first by any association or state convention that encourages churches to cut Cooperative Program giving. It is unfortunate but I give allowance for good intentions.

Brethren, let's rethink this thing. Thanks.
_______________

Addendum: Joe McGee has sent me a brief email stating that although we disagree on some thing, he thought my treatment to be fair. He does add that the resolution is partly aimed at a method by which churches who are already cutting CP giving may be kept partly in the SBC giving fold. I don't find that to be a compelling reason for the actions suggested but, again, I give credit for good intentions.

A humbling time for Georgia Baptists

Photo: Joe Westbury, Christian Index

The photo is of our Georgia Baptist Convention building on which edifice I blogged last week because the GBC Executive Committee is exploring its sale.

It is magnificent. I hope the Christian Index doesn't mind my using their photo.

Let me share a personal story on building buildings - a micropastor building story.

In a recent church building program some mistakes were made. No one foresaw some things and we ended up with a few minor details that we wished we had done differently. I recall listening to someone repeatedly complaining about these, ad nauseum, to which I finally said, "Look. It cannot be undone. I'm not going to spend the next decade griping about it. I suggest you find a way to do this as well and we will both be happier."

We have this GBC building. Not a whole lot can be done about it. Maybe it can be sold, though I question the resolve of Georgia Baptists to go through with such a plan. Perhaps some of the 40 acres can be cut off and sold to pay down the debt. Maybe some of the building can be leased (with all the job cuts, surely we are significantly underutilizing the thing).

I'm not going to spend a lot of time griping about it. I cannot be undone.

But, wait a minute. I don't recall a lot of rancor back when it was being built. I don't recall any 'storm the Baptist Bastille' movements to downsize and scale back the building program.

Most all of us were on board. Maybe spending got out of hand with it. If so, odd that no one has said so in all these years since. I don't know.

I do know that a lot of real estate deals in 2006 got out of hand. I've worked in and been around the real estate business all my life (I had a real estate license as a teenager) and have a decent understanding of it.

Lots of people built or bought houses in 2006 that are worth about half what they were back then. There was this meltdown, remember? Attitudes were different prior to it. Grand visions and appreciating values were the rule.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. No doubt things would be done differently today.

I see no profit in bearing ill will towards Dr. White and other GBC leaders who led the effort to build this building and spending the next score of years complaining about it. It's done. He and the Executive Committee have my prayers as they seek solutions.

This has to be a humbling time with staff, budgets, and ministries being cut. And now the showpiece building on the table. It is also, seems to me, a good time to look hard at all we do. Maybe we should make some major changes, changes other than just slicing jobs and budgets.

While there will be a time when the economy improves and the Cooperative Program picks up, I sense that normalcy for Georgia Baptists has changed permanently. That is good and I trust that we have people in place who will respond to the present challenges.

A good place to start would be complete openness and transparency. I think Georgia Baptists are owed that.
___________

As an addendum, while I allow anonymous comments, there are people who ought to speak to this issue and identify themselves when they do. 

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

In a little over one hundred words, Percy Bysshe Shelley captured the inevitability of the decline of empires and leaders. 

"Ozymandias." You should have paid attention in high school. View the poem below.

Should Baptists find room for these incisive words in all of our grand buildings, in our churches, institutions?

Couldn't hurt. 

The Georgia Baptist Convention has a showpiece headquarters building in a high-dollar suburb of Atlanta. I don’t know of any state convention that has one to compare. I think one could describe the GBC building as superior to the Richmond headquarters of our flagship institution, the International Mission Board. Tax assessors agree, the IMB's Monument Avenue property being assessed at about ten million less than the GBC property.

The GBC moved into their building in the heady days of 2006 just a couple of years prior to the meltdown of 2008. The building cost $43.5 million and $26 million is still owed on it. Debt service is $141,000 per month. Ouch.

Here is a headline Southern Baptists aren't used to seeing: Ga. Baptists to explore property sale

How often do Baptists even think about this sort of move?

Uh...never.

The GBC has cut the budget, pared the rolls of dozens of staff but they haven’t done anything about the building. I suppose mortgage holders expect to get their $141k check every month.

Not surprisingly, Baptists being a rather grumbling sort of people, the sparkling HQ building has been a magnet for gripes around the state.

[GBC Executive Director Robert] White said criticism of the building also led him to consider making the request of the Executive Committee, though it was not the driving factor. He said he knew the building had become a hindrance to some and did not want that to be a roadblock toward cooperation. 

He also said:

"We are not bankrupt and we are up to date on all our financial obligations," White emphasized to head off any speculation regarding the recommendation. Since the 2008 recession, the state convention has trimmed its budget by $11.8 million, or 22.56 percent. Staffing levels in the building, which peaked at 133 just three years ago, have been cut to 103. The latest round of cutbacks occurred in late January when 18 positions were eliminated statewide.

When a CEO feels compelled to use the “b” word it is not a good sign for the corporation.The GBC is current on their financial obligations only after some serious budget catch-up work late last year.

Does anyone besides me sense that the halcyon days of building greater buildings is past? Has the landscape changed and we are finally catching up with the change? Perhaps so. 

My generation loves their buildings. I'm not so sure our children's generation feel the same way.

The current fair market value assessment of the GBC's property is about $25 million, close to what is owed on it. I don't know if the tax assessor is lowballing the value here. No one expects the GBC to sell and not have cash to find a new location. We will see how serious a proposal this is.

I commend Dr. White and the Executive Committee for exploring the sale of this building which, as a Georgia Baptist, I had a part in creating. I make no judgment about motives, no charge of arrogance on anyone's part.

We are doing God’s business. We can do it with or without a magnificent edifice and most of us would admit that sometimes it is helpful to be humbled.

________________

              Ozymandias

 I MET a Traveler from an antique land,
    Who said, "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
    Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
    Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
    And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
    Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
    Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
    The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
    And on the pedestal these words appear:
    "My name is OZYMANDIAS, King of Kings."
    Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair!
    No thing beside remains. Round the decay
    Of that Colossal Wreck, boundless and bare,
    The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Things are tough around here

Fifteen months ago I blogged about how the Georgia Baptist Convention reported that they had rolled back staffing levels to those of the year 2000, reducing staff at the magnificent Duluth headquarters building form 168 to 103.

I have heard recently of more cuts, now reported by Baptist Press, of 16 people and two vacant slots.

Things are tough.

Baptist Press says,

The fourth round of staff cuts since 2009 has now reduced the state missionary staffing level from a high of 202 to 150. Staffing at the convention's Atlanta-area headquarters has now fallen from 133 to 103 and field personnel has declined from 69 to 47.

That's the elimination of 72 jobs, more than one-third of the total.

Any way you slice it, this is serious business.

The GBC had a $50+ million budget as recently as 2007-2008. The cuts last month were designed to reduce revenue needs for this budget year to under $40 million, $1.5 million below what was approved at last November’s GBC annual meeting. Going from over fifty to under fourty million dollars in about four years is pretty steep.

And, best I can tell, there is no controversy swirling around the GBC. Churches are just giving less.

Better shelve those plans to get out of the pastorate for a nice denominational job.

Memo to Great Commission Resurgence folks: Don’t expect the state conventions to jack up the percentage forwarded to Nashville anytime soon.

At least here in Georgia the goal is just to stay current on payments.

Things are tough.

When states cannot pay their Cooperative Program 'bills'

The innocuous Baptist Press headline read, "Ga. Baptists reaffirm commitment to forwarding CP gifts to SBC" and, had I not been a Georgia Baptist, I would not have read the article.

The piece was from our state paper The Christian Index and was written by Gerald Harris, editor. What the article explained was that the Georgia Baptist Convention had fallen way behind in sending the Cooperative Program gifts received from GBC churches to the Executive Committee in Nashville.

Last fall, prior to the GBC convention and presidential election, there was an anonymous blog that addressed some GBC internal matters. The blog is defunct now but one of the issues raised on it was that the GBC was not forwarding CP gifts to Nashville.

What's that, we're using gifts intended for the International Mission Board, North American Mission Board, seminaries and other SBC entities to pay local bills?

GBC Cooperative Program revenues dropped significantly the last few years, times are tough, and when receipts dropped below the level needed for the GBC to pay budgeted expenses the temporary solution was to use not just the 60% of CP receipts that by budget were to be used for GBC purposes but also to use the 40% that was to be forwarded, monthly, to Nashville.

This would be robbing Peter to pay Paul...for awhile anyway. The IMB, NAMB, seminaries and other SBC entities that depend on CP revenues from the states would just have to wait.

The article explained it like this:

Due to the budget shortfall and the additional expense of temporary employees for summer missions ventures, the forwarding of gifts to the Southern Baptist Convention was delayed. To make up the shortfall, in October $4,263,182 – with $1.7 million taken from reserve funds – was wired to Nashville to fulfill Georgia Baptists' obligations through July.

By December 15 the GBC had fulfilled its obligations through September and as of January 10, 2012, all 2011 obligations -- which is 40.32 percent of what had been received -- were forwarded to SBC offices in Nashville.

Read between the lines that the GBC was way behind on their CP obligation.

If I am reading the article correctly and have the figures right, before the GBC made the big payment of over $4 million in October they had paid up the CP only through April. That is to be about 6 months and about $8.4 million behind (and I'm averaging here, CP receipts aren't consistent throughout the year). Any way you want to slice it, the GBC was in serious arrears.

I'm speculating that there was serious gnashing of teeth in Duluth over this, particularly over the GBC getting so many millions behind.

The GBC has fixed this, according to the piece. Good.

One might take this unfortunate episode to be reminded that the Cooperative Program is a fragile, cooperative agreement primarily between the state conventions and the SBC Executive Committee. Instead of saying that the GBC "reaffirm[ed] their commitment to forwarding CP gifts to the SBC", the article could have read, "GBC figures out a way to pay their bills without riding the Executive Committee for the money."

But I'm all for saving face and positive spin.

I somewhat sympathize with state executives who in a time when CP revenues are declining, are being pressured not to cut the proportion of them that is kept in their states. The solution to this is (a) get the churches to give more, or, failing there to (b) pare down state convention expenses, personnel, programs, and obligations to a manageable level.

My prediction is that state conventions have yet to settle on the personnel and program levels that will fit the revenues from churches. But, absent formal action by their constituent churches through church messengers, they don't have the option of unilaterally keeping CP money in state until things get better.

Georgia Baptist Convention surprises

A pleasant surprise
John Waters was elected GBC president with about 53% of the votes. I had the feeling that he was the underdog. Waters' opponent, Fred Evers, had some very heavy hitters backing him, including the host pastor. He also had by reason of his position a prominent place on the convention program and platform.

My guess is that Waters gained votes as a result of his extraordinary commitment concerning appointments to key GBC committees. To be candid, most folks attending the meetings are outsiders like me (though the so-called GBCInsider tweeted support for Waters during the meeting) and I couldn't see much difference between the two candidates, other than the appointment business.

The GBC has some difficult days ahead. Waters has my prayers.

An unpleasant surprise
In between the time the GBC staff printed the convention Book of Reports for the meeting and this week, revenue projections for 2012 came in and the GBC had to cut an additional $1.7 million from the proposed budget. Both the SBC and the GBC took a haircut on that. Debt service escaped unscathed, not that there was a choice about that.

A semi-pleasant surprise
I wrote earlier this year about a confusing aspect of GBC accounting. In this state GBC staff likes to state that the GBC "shares each Cooperative Program dollar equally" with the SBC. This is an accurate statement but only because the GBC has created an artificial category they call "Shared Responsibilities" into which a pile of expenses are tossed, sufficient to make up about 20% of the entire GBC budget. After doing that, staff can tout 40% SBC, 40% GBC, 20% shared, even though over 60% of those CP dollars never make it north of the Georgia-Tennessee border.

Let's be frank: We don't "share equally." But there is a new wrinkle, one that says that the GBC recognizes the negative perceptions of this accounting technique.

Part of "Shared Responsibilities" has included debt service on the GBC's sparkling and expensive building, about $1.7 million. I was surprised to see that the GBC gurus create an entirely new budget category called "Capital Debt Service." There's no way to describe it as being in any sense "shared" with the SBC.

However....the gurus made an orphan budget category for the debt service rather than to include this in "Georgia Baptist Convention Causes" which it certainly is.

Memo to my friends at the GBC: I commend you for recognizing a problem here but we still don't "share equally" with the SBC, creative accounting notwithstanding.

An unexpected surprise
Most of the program personalities were younger pastors. Nothing wrong with youth and inexperience.

No surprise at all
Virtually all of the GBC staff who had platform time, almost all of the presenters represented were, uh, middle age or older gray hairs. Nothing wrong with age and, hopefully, wisdom, although I hear that older folks are more likely to...uh...die. Well, you get the idea here.

Another unpleasant surprise, and probably the most salient of all.
Dr. White, GBC leader, stated that churches were giving around 8% of their offering plate dollars through the CP in 2000 but that this had dropped to about 5.5%. That is a staggering 31% decrease in a decade.

There are some challenges. May God guide us as we meet these.

Georgia Baptist 'insider' blog goes kaput

I didn't think it could happen but after about two months of anonymous blogging on the Georgia Baptist Convention, the possibly spuriously named GBCInsider blog has managed to give even anonymous blogging a bad name.

The blog started badly, stumbled often, and ended up an embarrassment. A few interesting points about GBC matters were offered along with a generous helping of out-of-date information, high minded pontifications, and factually challenged assertions. The blog degenerated into a raft of anonymous, unkind hemorrhages that passed for comments.

While I think some anonymity in blogging is reasonable, I'm about cured of this type. If you have something to say. If you would like to write about things you don't like about the GBC, do it with a name affixed, like John Waters, one of the GBC presidential candidates.

My friend and fellow non-anonymous blogger, Peter Lumpkins, has noted the demise of the same yesterday and with greater insight and elan than I. He speculates that the whole thing was a political tactic designed for no good purpose other than to scare up a few votes for one of the two GBC political candidates.

For the record, GBCInsider signs off by absolving itself of any blame for untoward comments and by blithely declaring victory.

What a joke.

There is a need for honest discussion of matter of concern in the Georgia Baptist Convention and a dearth of forums for doing so. The impression of not a few GBCers is that leadership would like for the churches to just trust us and give more money. I suggest that GBC leadership and the new president find a way to schedule sessions around the state where the purpose is listening, where honest feedback is solicited, received, and heard.

...either that or start a blog and welcome questions and provide answers.

Alcohol opposition in Georgia: Not with a bang but a whimper

The state of Georgia held elections yesterday. On the ballot in many counties and municipalities was a referendum on approving Sunday sales of alcohol. I think one can safely conclude that religious opposition to Sunday alcohol sales in my state died a quiet death yesterday. Nary a whimper.

In my area thirty-nine cities and counties had this on the ballot. In thirty-eight of them the voters approved of Sunday sales. In just one did voters vote against the proposal. Results from downstate, more rural and small town areas, may have been somewhat different that here in the metro Atlanta area.

The margin of approval ranged from 57 percent to 91 percent with almost all areas reporting greater than a 20 percentage point margin. Wasn't close.

The Georgia Baptist Convention used to be the big dog in the state but no longer, at least on this question. For the most part the GBC sat out the referenda. I received one perfunctory letter from the GBC. Some pastors may have preached against it.

It looks to me like most churches and pastors considered this a personal freedom matter. If a citizen wants to buy alcohol on Sunday, they should have that choice.

I voted against Sunday sales in my county but the measure passed by 16 percentage points.

The extraordinary actions of John Waters, GBC presidential nominee

I wrote last Thursday that I intended to vote for John Waters for president of the Georgia Baptist Convention. Two good men are campaigning energetically for the top elected position in the GBC. I happen to like Waters in part because of his extraordinary commitment

...I will not personally support any At Large appointment of a person who has recently served.

While GBC committees and appointments are perhaps tediously viewed by many as inside baseball, they are the key to the approximately $44 million budget and the various GBC entities. If the same small group of well-meaning GBC pastors can manage to stay in the positions of leadership of influence then any talk about being more inclusive is just empty talk.

The details and process can be mind numbing and it would be too difficult to restate it here. I merely point to Waters' two articles below.

2011 Committee on Nominations: Another Misssed Opportunity

A Missed Opportunity

The links above are to John Waters' blog, John Waters for GBC. Sure. Any hacker and plodder one can start a blog and fill it with bluff and bluster. What Waters relates on his blog is that he has done more than just type words that represent commitments. He has taken the extraordinary step to actually speak to some nominees and ask them to decline nominations. Well, you read it.

This is quite extraordinary. My hat is off to John Waters.