Will LifeWay connect this man to Glorieta? Updated

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.

Name change committee sez we can continue to be 'Baptists'

Well...good. I was wondering if I could ever be comfortable saying that I was a proud non-southern, non-baptist, generic something-or-other.

SBC name change task force reaches decision

That's a real tickler of a headline by Baptist Press.

What decision?

Well, we're not exactly told but it (them?) was unanimous.

Jimmy Draper did say,

...the task force understands its charge is limited to reporting back to Wright and that no one believed the word "Baptist" should be removed from the convention's name.

Soooo...we will remain Baptists and that puts the matter back to Plodder's SBC Name Change Designer wherein you can mix some denominational terminology together but must keep "Baptist" in the mix.

We will just be guessing what the grand Name Change Committee will report to the SBC Executive Committee on February 20th.

SBC presidents and the Cooperative Program

What shall we say about SBC leadership and their support, or lack thereof, for our grand Cooperative Program?

Here is a summary of the past SBC presidents and their Cooperative Program support over the past 32 years:
Less than 4%: Rogers, Smith, Stanley, Vines, Young, Elliff, Merritt, Graham, Hunt, Wright.
Above the contemporary average: Draper (7%), Chapman (11%), Henry (10%), Welch (15%), Page (12%).

Between 1979 and 1992, the year the Conservative Resurgence was effectively over, seven men were elected president. Only two of those were significant CP supporters, Draper and Chapman, and only Chapman’s church gave greater than what was held out as the standard at the time, 10%. I don’t recall either of them being elected on a platform of cooperation or CP giving, but rather on a platform of continuing the conservative takeover. For the entire period up to 2010, sixteen presidents have served. Only six of those gave average or above to the CP.

Since 1992, the convention has happily elected leaders who are not known for their outstanding CP support. Only Henry, Welch, and Page were above average, while Merritt, Graham, and Hunt were down in the 2% range. I don’t think you can find a greater contrast than in the election of last year where Bryant Wright, in the 3% range, defeated a candidate who was in excess of 10%.

Since the convention elected people whose CP levels were very, very low (Bailey Smith, 1% or so, Ed young the same, Stanley, Vines, Merritt 2% or so), one has to say that the Cooperative Program was clearly not an important factor for the Conservative Resurgence. Even in the years since the CR was completed, the convention has been quite comfortable in electing leaders whose CP levels are way below average.

I summarize these things because I keep seeing people who are dissatisfied with the giving of current leadership incorrectly interpret the SBC’s history of the past three decades. I think an honest view of the past would lead to the conclusion that the CR was not a boon to the concept of cooperation and to support of the Cooperative Program. The most salient of CP statistics, that churches give less and less of undesignated giving through the CP, is partly the result of the success of megachurch pastors like Rogers, Stanley, and Young in being elected to the SBC presidency in spite of low CP giving percentages.

For my part, a presidential candidate who shows strong support for NAMB, the IMB, and whose CP percentage is above the threshold of 3-4 percent is fine by me. In my book Bryant Wright is a very strong supporter of our cooperative work as Southern Baptists even though he may not meet the CP litmus tests of some. If we dismiss pastors like him and churches like his we will be a much weaker convention.

A future question to be considered: Why has the average church CP percentage been dropping for decades when almost all SBC pastors (87% in a 2007 survey) report that they are generally satisfied with the CP?