When will the SBC exhibit oligarchy fatigue?

A contemporary SBC notable once said that in the SBC, we are on the star system. There are highly visible leaders, celebrities or stars if you will, to whom the masses of active SBCers look, whom they generally emulate and follow, and who set the tone, make the decisions, and exercise the influence. A few years ago John Baugh, wealthy Baptist moderate, now deceased, stalwart of the moderates and liberals who once controlled the convention machinery, called the Conservative Resurgence leaders an "oligarchy, comprised of approximately eighty close-knit and well-organized radical Fundamentalists..." Two leaders, one on each side of Southern Baptist life, make observations and find general agreement on Convention leadership, control, and influence. Kumbaya moment? Probably not.

Reminds me of the old pol who said that in the next election "we're going to throw those bums out and put our bums in." The simple meaning there is not lost on most people - you have your crowd, we're going to put our crowd in.

I know of no "bums" in SBC life, now or former. I think the Conservative Resurgence a remarkable accomplishment which I supported and which would not have been possible without the few leaders whose labor helped to bring it about. And I would take any reader's point if they said that the term "oligarchy" generally carries a negative connotation these days (Russian "oligarchs", corrupt, extremely wealthy individuals, et al) but allow me to use the term simply to mean the control of a relative few.

There is nothing sinister about pointing out that the highest level SBC positions, the most coveted trustee appointments, the most powerful committees, are always filled with some of the same people, their associates, their church members if they are pastors, or their mentees or acolytes. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. Such may be good, bad, or neutral.

My first question is this: Has the SBC moved sufficiently past the Conservative Resurgence and the stalwart leaders thereof for the masses of involved pastors and the multitudes of voting messengers at SBC annual meetings to show symptoms of oligarchy fatigue and elect unexpected leaders?

I'd answer this question with a equivocal, "perhaps" and even then be guildty of showing excessive and irrational exuberance. I am well aware that the SBC in annual session has seldom found a mega church pastor they didn't think the best choice for SBC president.

While we respect the accomplishments of people like Paul Pressler, Paige Patterson, Albert Mohler, and the handful of mega church pastors whom we never seem to tire of electing to the SBC presidency in spite of below average, sometimes embarrassingly below average, Cooperative Program giving, has the Convention at large reached a point where they can say, or vote, such that the Convention machinery is safe in the hands of others who are not celebrities, not mega church pastors, or not convention superstars?

I would answer "yes" to this.

A concomitant question is, Would we be better off if we were not on the celebrity star system and moved away from control by the SBC grandees, that small number of oligarchs?

To answer this question, one might look at the SBC of the last decade. Our North American Mission Board is just now recovering from its dysfunctional state that wasted tens of millions of dollars of our mission money and gave us two failed leaders. Our International Mission Board has had turmoil that some would say was caused by excessive meddling which has been harmful to its mission. Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary has had a series of failed leaders and internal turmoil. I would ask if trustee appointments, many of which on the critical organizations rotate among the same small number of large churches and those connected with the same few influential SBC leaders, been such that we have been well-served by the trustee system or would trustees who had more de facto independence have served us better?

It is difficult to conclude that some of our difficulties in the last decade were not a product of the same system of leadership oligarchy. When we have had failures, the perception I have is that the Convention's putative leaders will close ranks around the failed leaders far more quickly than they recognize a problem and move to fix it.

No one asked but I do sense an atmosphere that there is a level of oligarchy fatigue in the Convention. Many younger SBCers have little interest in Convention politics, elections, or appointments (see how many messengers show up in Baltimore next month). Notably and prominently, some who are highly interested in Convention matters have publicly called for more independent entity heads who are free of the perceived influence of some SBC oligarchs.

All of this may be a futile exercise in hand-wringing over matters that are common, typical in any large organization, and to be expected. A few people do have enormous influence. A handful of oligarchs do control much of the machinery. Maybe so, but in SBC life at least we have the mechanism in place to depart from that pattern.

Three good people are announced candidates for the SBC's most visible office, President. One is a young small church pastor. One is a highly-successful mega church pastor, one of the SBC superstars. And one is a large church pastor, generally unknown to the SBC masses, an ethnic pastor with a record of stellar accomplishment.

If there is oligarchy fatigue in the SBC it might manifest itself in the presidential election next month. I don't think it would change much if the highly connected mega church pastor is elected or defeated. This is not criticism of the mega church pastor nominee or mega churches in general, they are highly accomplished Christian leaders and their churches are examples of successful Christian ministry. In my view, however, departing from the usual pattern of electing mega church pastors would be a welcome change.

Think of it. Someone who is not that well known, who is a fresh face, who has labored outside of the spotlight, and who is an example of the considerable inroads the Convention has made in the past decade or two with ethnic churches and a broader appeal, could be the next SBC president. Perhaps he could bring with him a movement to expand the pool of appointments to the vast numbers of qualified people who have labored in obscurity in SBC life.

I like the idea and think it possible.

Luter to check Cooperative Program giving for potential appointees

 

I like Fred Luter our current SBC president (BP photo above). In the customary seminary tour that all SBC presidents take, he spoke of a number of goals.

Baptist Press story:Luter outlines goals during seminary visit

Luter is asking all churches to increase their CP giving by 1 percentage point of their budget.

"You'd be amazed at the number of missionaries we can put on the field, the number of churches we can plant, and the number of students we can train if all of our churches give just 1 more percent to the C.P."

Luter said he also will consider Cooperative Program giving when making appointments.

"You've got to be able to give," he said. "Don't just have your hands out saying, 'What can I get from the association?' We're asking you to give a percentage of your tithes and offerings to the convention, your local associations and your state convention."

The red is mine.


It has been six years or so since the latest in a series of high profile, blue ribbon Cooperative Program study committees shrank back from actually suggesting that SBC leaders come from churches with good Cooperative Program giving records. They originally suggested ten percent, a figure long in the SBC's past, but were (dare I say) bullied out of it.

The average percentage of undesignated church giving that is given to the Cooperative Program used to be over ten percent. It is now under six percent and headed southward.

Someone with some influence has to make an attempt to persuade SBCers of a floor for this, a threshold percentage, below which an individual would not be considered for major SBC office or appointment.


What is the threshold figure? Five percent sounds good to me. That is more than almost all of the megachurches give to the CP. Ten percent would disqualify almost all trustees and leaders. Five is fine and that is five percent to the CP, not five percent combined CP plus the mission offerings and direct gifts.

Seems to me that if state conventions receive three percent (they keep something above 60% of all CP receipts and forward less than half to the mission boards and other SBC entities) of all church undesignated dollars, that is a pretty good sum to have to spend - probably too much.

So, Fred, in addition to asking for the one percent increase that Frank Page has been promoting, think about a floor percentage for all appointees.

Let the megas complain when told, "Sorry, brother, I cannot appoint any of your members. You just don't give enough to the Cooperative Program."

That would be a red letter day indeed.


Sure, this is all persuasion and would take a lot of guts. I doubt Fred will take my suggestion but at some point we have to fall out of love with leaders who give paltry sums to our grand denominational giving program. [Yeah, I voted for Bryant Wright who was under the five percent...]

I'm with you, Fred, one thousand percent with you - check it, check it closely.

The SBC Counter-Reformation

Fred Luter will be the next president of the Southern Baptist Convention and the convention's first black president, a highly notable event. Unfortunately, this isn't looking like the biggest story of the 2012 Annual Meeting...


...and, after some degree of study, rancor, reaction, approval and disgust, the SBC will adopt a non-new name, a "descriptor," in New Orleans this month. This isn't looking like the biggest story of the 2012 Annual Meeting.


It is looking like John Calvin, not elected to anything in the SBC, will be the biggest story out of New Orleans. Or rather, the reaction to what is perceived to be John Calvin's excessive influence in the Southern Baptist Convention is looking like the biggest story.

 I recall a decade or so ago seeing Tom Ascol all over the discussion boards, later the blogs, promoting the Calvinists in SBC history and vigorously defending the theology and the historical contributions of SBC Calvinists. He no longer does this and hasn't in some time. Why should he? Calvinism and Calvinists are doing reasonably well in the SBC for a minority group.


So, is it a measure of having arrived when important SBCers define an SBC sub-group, Calvinists, as non-traditional in their view of soteriology and gather important people in the SBC to affix their names to a document that was produced to counter this form of "aggressive" Calvinism in the SBC?


Guess so.

Is it a measure of having not only arrived but to have exceeded the bounds of influence informally allotted to theological sub-groups in the SBC if the SBC's Chief-Executive-Officer, Frank Page, indicates that he feels it necessary "to assemble a representative group of Southern Baptists" to work on a "consensus 'accord'" to head off further fracturing over Calvinism?

Looks like it. 

Frank Page will propose such a representative group in New Orleans this month at the Annual Meeting and this will be the biggest story out of New Orleans.

So, now our Calvinist SBC colleagues will be the center of attention for yet another Blue Ribbon SBC committee. It was bound to happen sooner or later.
 

This is indeed the SBC Counter-Reformation, formerly nestled among certain bloggers (yours truly has a modest offering of a few articles on Calvinism) but now about to be the focus of their very own SBC examination committee. This is as mainstream as it gets in SBC life.

I'm just not sure where this should go or what should or can be done. 

Do we ghettoize Calvinists at Southern and Southeastern seminaries? 

Do we require Calvinist clergy to wear some scarlet letter or do we set up a Calvinist registry website churches can check?

I have mixed feelings about it all. 

I like some things about Calvinists. I am wary about some Calvinists but I admit to no strongly negative feelings about any of the Calvinist SBCers that I personally know. 

Oh, and speaking of our Annual Meeting - Eric Hankins, whose released the statement by the "traditionalists" is to be nominated for one of the VP positions at the Annual Meeting? 

Quick! When was the last time the election of a second VP was a news item?

It's not looking like I will swelter in New Orleans with the rest of my SBC colleagues but were I to be there, I would apologize to Fred Luter for this stuff overshadowing his election as SBC president. 

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.

One notable, relevant thing about Fred Luter

Fred Luter (image from BP) is expected to be elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention in just a few weeks in New Orleans. If I am there (and it's not looking like I will be) I would be unhesitant in casting my vote in his favor. His election will be notable because he will be the first black president of the SBC.

That's good.

But there is something more notable about Fred Luter that is acutely relevant to the SBC. He is a megachurch pastor and would be the latest in a long string of megapastor elected president of our convention. But he is a megachurch pastor whose church gives an above average percentage to the Cooperative Program. 

This is unusual as these things go.

Fred Luter's church gives about six percent, not a large percentage but quite healthy for a megachurch. His six percent is more than given by our current president, Bryant Wright, whose megachurch is in the 4% range. Previous megachurch pastors who were SBC presidents, Johnny Hunt, Jack Graham, and James Merritt were in the 2% range (although Hunt notably increased his church's CP giving in recent years).

Fred Luter will be the first megachurch SBC president whose CP giving is above the SBC average since Jim Henry back in the mid-1990s.

That is notable.

For all the laments about the decline of the Cooperative Program (we have gone from an average above 10% a generation ago to under 6%) when messengers meet in our annual session they rarely find a megachurch pastor that they are unwilling to elect as president, regardless of the low giving to the Cooperative Program.

Wright was easily elected in 2010 even though alternative candidates far surpassed him in their church's CP giving. That is the usual scenario. I can think of only one megachurch pastor, Ronnie Floyd, whose CP giving was so low (around 0.3%) that it cost him the election (he has since raised it to around 5% last time I checked).

If Southern Baptists are genuinely concerned about falling Cooperative Program giving, one of the ways we ought to express our concern is to consider unelectable any candidate for major denominational office whose church gives less than a threshold percentage. Five percent is a good number, though I made an exception for Bryant Wright who was a little under that.

One of the more ridiculous things regularly heard about the SBC is all the  complaining about megachurches having undue influence, when we regularly elect them to the top SBC office in spite of their low CP giving. 

I hope that Fred Luter's election establishes a precedent in ways other than related to his race. Such would be good for us all.

Feet to the fire: Plodder's 2011 Predictions

Last December, I made some predictions for 2011: Plodders predictions, er, conjectures for 2011

I am hereby holding myself accountable for the rash things I offered then. Here's a look at them one year later.

1. International Mission Board. I predicted that trustees would settle on "a known SBC figure rather than an obscure missions-driven person" to be CEO. I further specified that the individual "will either be a megachurch pastor or have strong mega connections."

I was right by a circuituous route, it turns out. Tom Elliff is a former mega pastor.
I also predicted that there would be continued funding shortfalls. Lottie Moon was down over $3m for 2010.

Plodder hits prediction paydirt on this one (though I wish I had been wrong on the LMCO).

2. North American Mission Board. I predicted that the new CEO would "make some major policy changes, including direct funding to some megachurches." I rate myself as half-right on this, the former true, the latter not true, yet.

I predicted that "the Annie Armstrong offering will yet again fall far short of the goal." Although the totals haven't been released, the goal will almost certainly not be met. I said that "declining Cooperative Program giving will force more staffing cuts." NAMB has stopped funding some positions, mainly as part of the shift in the kickback funds to state conventions.

I give myself a "half-right" on these.

3. Cooperative Program. I predicted that "the decades long decline in the percentage of church offering plate dollars devoted to the CP will continue." Well, the stats aren't in on that. The CP did show the tiniest increase for the fiscal year ending in September which, coupled with an overall decline in church revenues, may actually show an increase in CP church percentages.

I am still not optimistic that the percentage has hit its floor yet.

I rate my prediction "Undetermined."

4. Great Commission Resurgence Recommendations. I predicted that "Even though a number of state conventions declared they would move towards a 50/50 state/national CP split, little movement in this direction will actually occur."

Some state conventions made what I would term major moves in this direction. The South Carolina Baptist Convention made substantial and significant cuts to in-state stuff and even budgeted to send funds directly to the IMB, bypassing the Executive Committee. Overall, state conventions are still in the mode of making declarations. The checks haven’t been written.

I give myself a "undetermined" on this one.

5. Assorted odd stuff.

An SBC megachurch pastor will be involved in a major scandal. Nope. Not that I am aware of. Plodder strikes out on this one.

The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship will continue to eke out an existence but will not find their ‘revisioning’ sufficiently visionary to infuse new life into an organization that still has the identity of being the anti-SBC. I’ll renew this one for 2012. They’re still working on it.

The Southern Baptists of Texas convention will surpass the Baptist General Convention of Texas in revenues. Nope. Didn’t happen. The BGCT has stabilized somewhat and in 11 months has received more than the SBTC’s entire budget. It will happen one day but I'm Texas toast on this one.

GuideStone, recognizing that their health insurance product is struggling, that their pool of insured is older and sicker, and that they will soon to be priced out of the market, will make changes to keep it from total collapse. Premiums will nonetheless go up. Yep. Premiums up. Benefits cut. Same old story.

Frank Page will prove to be less hands-on with Baptist Press than his predecessor, even though he made BP part of his PR office. I don’t know about this prediction although BP has noticeably avoided certain stories.

OK, so I picked the low hanging fruit from last year's predictions. Next week I'll promise to go out on a limb with predictions for 2012.

Christmas on Sunday - This is just crazy

In 2005, the last time Christmas Day fell on a Sunday, a few churches made news by cancelling their Sunday services. How is it looking six years later? Well, let's see.

In 2005 the New York Times story was entitled When Christmas Falls on Sunday, Megachurches Take the Day Off. This year the story by some (this is Ed Stetzer's) is Pastors Plan to Host Christmas Services Despite Busyness of Christmas Day.

See the difference?

I easily achieved irascible curmudgeon status some years ago, so my response is: This is just crazy!

Christian churches worship on Sunday (save for the sabbatarian Adventists, Baptists, and other small groups) and, since Christmas periodically falls on our day of worship, it makes for a special Christmas worship celebration.

Right?

Yep...for most of us, that is. But not for some megachurches and hyper-family-friendly churches for whom Christmas is so special that they cancel Lord's Day worship when December 25th comes on Sunday. I would surmise that any church holding any events on any Sunday is family-unfriendly in our society, think soccer games and letting the little sleepyheads sleep in, but I digress.

Has Christmas become so secularized, so piled with warm family traditions, that the clamor in the 21st century is not that Christians not be distracted by the peripheral Christmas matters but that Christians not be inconvenienced by having to gather for corporate worship on Sunday, December 25th?

Alas, seems the trend. How dare churches be so family-unfriendly? Where will we be in 2016 or 2022, the next two years Christmas lands on a Sunday.

Such a brave new Christian world we live in.

Plodder’s assessments:
This is a megachurch thing and no one tells a megachurch what to do, sometimes not even Jesus.

This is a contrarian thing worn like a badge of honor: 'We don’t wear ties, sing hymns, or do what others do, like worship on Sunday. Deal with it.'

The thinking is, 'Sunday/Schmunday, it’s just a day like any other day. None of this stuff about the day of the resurrection.' We can just do it on the Day of Absence (Saturday).

The thinking is, “We’re relevant, family friendly, sensible and spiritual…and you’re not.”

My thinking is: This is just crazy.

But let's be forward thinking and move ahead to Easter, the Day of the Resurrection. Easter will fall on a Sunday this year. Families will gather. Traditions will be observed. Plodder is looking for the really family-friendly church to cancel worship on Easter Sunday.

In a manner of speaking he will probably not be disappointed.

SBC megas, Lottie, fishing, church bloggers

I blogged the other day about the 177 megachurches in the SBC where about 10% of SBCers are found on a given Sunday. Who will be the clever blogger to analyze the SBC Executive Committee, IMB, NAMB, and seminaries to see what percentage of their trustees worship with the 10% or the other 90%?

I'm looking for a reaction, an official one, from our International Mission Board and Women's Missionary Union on the labeling of the death by starvation story of Lottie Moon as a "myth." Perhaps soon? Surely, folks there are aware.

Went fishing...caught fish...feel better about life.

I just read that some "key leaders" in the SBC said that "they think that the CP faces a massive communication problem. It is so big that it’s difficult to keep people in the pews aware of all that their money goes to, and when they find out it goes to more than just international missions that can be helpful or harmful." Really? Belive that is worth a future article here.

College football started last evening. It is a morass of money and greed, is probably harmful to the academic mission at colleges...so why do I like and look forward to it so much?

Four years ago a church member who felt disenfranchised in his congregation started blogging about it. Since then, the blog has had 1.5 million page views. Pastor, you might want to check the openness and transparency level of your church. The alternative to such may be more harmful than what you perceive to be the harm in your members knowing where their money goes and being able to talk to you and your staff.

SBC Megachurches...

...love them, hate them, or be ambivalent about them. According to Thom Ranier, head of LifeWay there are 177 of them in the SBC. That is, 177 churches that report on the Annual Church Profile an average primary worship attendance of at least 2,000 weekly and who give something to the Cooperative Program. Not all churches reported, so there's probably a few missing from this list. Some that are on the list are probably only nominally SBC.

Some observations on the 177 megachurches:

About 0.4% of SBC churches are megachurches but on an average Lord’s Day of the 6.2 million people that attend worship in an SBC church, about ten percent of these are nestled in a megachurch.

If your worship is in one of the megachurches, you attend church on that given Sunday with about 3,500 other souls. You probably know very few of them and the pastor might but probably doesn't know who you are.

If your worship is in a non-megachurch, you worship with about 120 other people on that Sunday. You probably know most of them, by name. Your pastor almost certainly knows you and calls you by name when you leave church and tell him what a great sermon he preached.

There are as many as or more SBC megachurches in California (9) than in any of these SBC legacy states: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, or Kentucky.

Texas, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee have about 60% of all the megas in the SBC. Texas has by far the most but churches there are known to inflate their members just like ranchers there inflate their acreage and cattle. Georgians, however, are scrupulously honest.

You probably don't recognize some of the top ten megachurches:
1. Second Baptist, Houston
2. Saddleback Valley Community Church, CA
3. Woodlands Church, TX
4. Prestonwood Baptist, TX
5. Thomas Road, VA
6. Potential, Ft. Lauderdale
7. NewSpring Church, SC
8. The Fountain of Praise, Houston
9. Lake Pointe Church, TX
10. Saint Matthews Baptist, NJ

I recognize only half of them.

How many pastors of these churches could you name? Well, Ed Young, Sr. I know; Rick Warren, I recognize, and Falwell the Younger can't be missed. But the rest? Plodder may be deeply out of touch but he has never heard of several of the others.

Two of the top ten seem to be black churches.

Notably, only four of the ten feature ‘Baptist’ in their name.

Suppose you were fresh out of seminary, had a few years of a student pastorate under your belt and got a phone call that started,

"Brother Emdiv, this is Fred Smith. I'm chairman of the pastor search committee for Mud Creek Baptist in Hendersonville, NC. We like your resume and would like to talk to you."

I know what you might think.

'Ain't no way I'm taking my wife to any Mud Creek church. They are probably wonderful folks and a wonderful little church, but I'm edumacated, ordained, and seasoned and am ready for a greater challenge.' ('Greater challenge' is, of course, SBC preacher code language for a bigger church, bigger salary, and greater prestige.)

Better hold your tongue there, hotshot. Mud Creek is a megachurch. There are only three SBC churches in NC are larger than good ol' Mud Creek.

Er, I'd be glad to talk to you.

Then again, you might not be ready for a megachurch.

Check with Joel Gregory first.

Sorry, the SBC isn't one mammoth megachurch...

Ah, there we go again. That old standby often dredged up by Baptists in various contexts, the one of submitting to authority, was recently raised concerning our new North American Mission Board leader. I will not identify the writer but here's the quote:

God has clearly allowed [Kevin] Ezell [new NAMB CEO] the place of authority, and now it is your job (and mine), for your own sanctification in Christ (and mine), to submit to his authority at NAMB so long as he does not violate the Scriptures.

Sorry, not true. He has authority but not over me or any church.

Another:

Ezell has authority over Southern Baptist NAMB missions; and we should submit to his authority over this… OR, at the very least, we should submit to the majority of other Southern Baptist churches that have voted in favor of the GCR.

No, un-huh, nope.

There is no principle of submission to the authority of SBC leaders, or to decisions made at any SBC annual meeting, unless you are an employee. There is no principle that requires us to swallow any new policy or strategy. There is no biblical prohibition of criticism of denominational executives or policies.

Whatever level of support we give to Kevin Ezell and NAMB, Tom Elliff and the International Mission Board, or Frank Page, or Al Mohler or any state convention executive, or any associational leader is given voluntarily.

These people have to persuade us of the value of their work and ask for support. If they create new strategies, plans and policies they cannot demand support for them. They must instead explain why is it better and ask for our support.

SBC life may be driven by megachurch people and SBC leaders may all be former megachurch people but, meganoito, God forbid that we should grant to our leaders what some megachurch members grant to their megapastor – unquestioned authority.

Nope. Things don’t work that way.

Now I have yet to hear Ezell or any of the others ask Southern Baptists to submit to their authority, nor should they. Such would be unthinkable. While SBC entity leaders have authority within their own institutions and agencies and trustees have authority over what is given to their trust, none of this extends to the tiniest SBC church or the most plodding of SBC pastors.

No pastor, church, or layperson has to submit to any SBC resolution or motion passed by any SBC body.

No pastor, church, or layperson has to submit to and therefore forego criticism of any new policy, plan, strategy or vision adopted by any of our denominational employees or entities.

Rather, for the sake of the Lord’s work which we share in common among the tens of thousands of SBC churches and millions of SBC members, we absolutely ought to speak courteously but plainly about these things.

Like the new NAMB or dislike the new NAMB. Support the changes or not. We get to choose. Criticize or praise. It’s up to us.

And concerning Kevin Ezell and the new NAMB – trustees acted in accord with their authority and responsibility in making him CEO. One may like, dislike, or be ambivalent about that decision but it is done.

I don’t see the profit in making that decision an issue going forward, just don't tell me that the Bible somehow prohibits me from making that an issue.