{"id":158,"date":"2010-07-15T02:02:35","date_gmt":"2010-07-15T08:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=158"},"modified":"2010-07-15T02:02:35","modified_gmt":"2010-07-15T08:02:35","slug":"radically-reprioritizing-and-redefining-the-sbc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=158","title":{"rendered":"Radically Reprioritizing and Redefining the SBC"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Like my fellow Southern Baptist pastors, I received a message, via email,\u00a0on Tuesday, from the new President of the Southern Baptist Convention, Bryant Wright.\u00a0 Because of ministry priorities, including Vacation Bible School this week, I only skimmed Dr. Wright’s message yesterday.\u00a0 However, I have had time to read and digest the contents of his email and want\u00a0to share my take on the letter.<\/p>\n

Addressed simply, “Dear Friends,” I understand Dr. Wright’s desire to personalize his message to the literally tens of\u00a0thousands of SBC pastors currently serving churches within our convention.\u00a0 However, I do not consider myself to be Dr. Wright’s\u00a0friend.\u00a0 I have never met him nor talked with him.\u00a0 He does not know me from Adam.\u00a0 I am a fellow Southern Baptist pastor and brother-in-Christ in this great convention, but we are not friends in any meaningful sense of the word.\u00a0 I am not offended by Dr. Wright calling me “friend,” but I\u00a0do question when anyone whom I do not know<\/strong>, especially\u00a0in a position of power, tries to presume a relationship\u00a0that simply does not exist.<\/p>\n

I fully believe in God’s total sovereignty in the affairs of this world.\u00a0 God is in control.\u00a0 And yes, Dr. Wright is President of this convention because of God’s sovereignty, but to declare that it is<\/p>\n

only by the Sovereignty of God that Southern Baptists have chosen me to serve Him as President of the Southern Baptist Convention<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

leaves the impression that God, totally on His own without any assistance from anyone else, placed Dr. Wright in the position of SBC President.\u00a0 I highly doubt that he believes in determinism and pre-ordination to that degree.\u00a0 And I don’t believe that\u00a0Wright’s sovereignty language was\u00a0some sign of a giant Calvinist pep rally, as at least one Oklahoma pastor fears.<\/a>\u00a0 However,\u00a0people should\u00a0be careful when using “sovereignty of God” language when describing elections, especially their own.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because if you truly believe that God sovereignly\u00a0ordained you to be President of the SBC or pastor of a church, then anyone who might question your judgment or actions would automatically be on the wrong side, not just of the issues, but on the wrong side of God.\u00a0 And nobody wants to be there.\u00a0 Makes asking hard and inconvenient questions of our\u00a0leaders difficult at best.<\/p>\n

That there will be “great transitions ahead<\/em>” for every aspect of Southern Baptist life is an understatement.\u00a0 The\u00a0Orlando Convention and the passage of the GCR\u00a0Task Force Report was but the start of what many believe will be exciting, and perhaps, tumultuous times within our convention.\u00a0 Dr. Frank Page, newly elected\u00a0President of the Executive Committee, will soon be joined by new presidents for both\u00a0the International Mission Board and the North American Mission Board.\u00a0 Who will\u00a0assume leadership of these two giant agencies within the convention?\u00a0 Will\u00a0one or both of the\u00a0vacancies be filled by members of the GCRTF?\u00a0 I\u00a0will not be surprised if and when\u00a0that happens.\u00a0 Did the Task Force discuss possible replacements coming from within their committee?\u00a0 Oh,\u00a0wait.\u00a0 We won’t know that until another fifteen years because\u00a0ALL\u00a0the records of the\u00a0committee’s work on behalf of the churches of the SBC\u00a0have been sealed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Not only are “great transitions ahead,” but radical ones.\u00a0 In point two of his message,\u00a0Dr. Wright states:<\/p>\n

A radical change in priorities in order to fulfill the Great Commission.<\/span>\u00a0(underlined in the original)<\/strong> This begins with each individual believer seeking to fulfill our role through the local church and continues with pastors and churches recognizing the immense need of getting more and more Cooperative Program dollars to the unreached people groups of the world and into the under-reached areas of North America.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dr. Wright, in his most recent message, does not define “radical.”\u00a0 However, in interviews given to various media outlets, both before and after the Orlando Convention,\u00a0(here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>) one can\u00a0clearly understand what Wright means by “radical change.”\u00a0 If implemented, Wright’s vision of\u00a0“a radical change in priorities”\u00a0— which also is\u00a0the vision of many\u00a0fellow megachurch\u00a0pastors\u00a0—\u00a0will not only effect\u00a0changes in\u00a0leadership and strategy throughout the SBC, but will radically\u00a0redefine what it means to be a “Cooperating” Southern Baptist\u00a0church.\u00a0 Instead of the bottom-up, grass-roots convention that we have been, we will become (if we’re not already there) a top-down, corporate denomination that tells<\/span> suggests\u00a0how autonomous state conventions and local churches should act.\u00a0 That’s not the kind of\u00a0hope and change that this Southern Baptist pastor wants to embrace!<\/p>\n

In the coming week, I will be writing a three-part series of posts on the radical redefinition of the Southern Baptist Convention.\u00a0\u00a0The\u00a0first post, to be published Friday morning, will start at the end of the GCRTF\u00a0process — the\u00a0sealing of the committee’s records for fifteen years.\u00a0\u00a0For, when you begin to critique and analyze\u00a0the reasoning and arguments made by the committee to not only unilaterally seal ALL\u00a0the records of their proceedings, but to vigorously\u00a0oppose the release of ANY records, you\u00a0will begin to comprehend\u00a0the\u00a0first step in the planned radical\u00a0re-prioritizing and radical re-defining of the Southern Baptist Convention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like my fellow Southern Baptist pastors, I received a message, via email,\u00a0on Tuesday, from the new President of the Southern Baptist Convention, Bryant Wright.\u00a0 Because of ministry priorities, including Vacation Bible School this week, I only skimmed Dr. Wright’s message yesterday.\u00a0 However, I have had time to read and digest the contents of his email…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[37],"tags":[183,433,434,3393],"class_list":["post-158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-southern-baptist-convention","tag-bryant-wright","tag-gcr","tag-gcrtf","tag-southern-baptist-convention"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1LP7G-2y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=158"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2652,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions\/2652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}