{"id":3054,"date":"2012-02-20T04:00:33","date_gmt":"2012-02-20T11:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=3054"},"modified":"2012-02-20T23:45:53","modified_gmt":"2012-02-21T06:45:53","slug":"sbc-nicknames-the-calm-before-the-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=3054","title":{"rendered":"SBC Nicknames & the Calm Before the Storm"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ll be on the road most of the day as my son and I head back home after spending an enjoyable few days in Dallas.\u00a0 Stephen’s doctor’s appointment went well — no surgery anytime soon — and we even managed to see the Mavericks beat the Celtics at the AA Center (American Airlines, not Alcoholics Anonymous — you just gotta keep all those nicknames straight).\u00a0 Monday was also\u00a0a day of finding and eating good Texas BBQ<\/a>, even if it was at the Red, Hot, and Blue<\/em> restaurant chain out of Memphis!<\/p>\n

Of course, the big story of Monday was the announcement by the unofficial “official”<\/em> Name Change Task Force of a new “unofficial”<\/em> nickname for the Southern Baptist Convention.\u00a0 Completely optional, the new nickname will be “Great Commission Baptists”<\/em> (no one saw that coming).\u00a0 Just a few observations (to add to\u00a0the increasing number of diverse voices on this issue — here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>)\u00a0before devoting more extensive analysis later this week.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The only thing surprising about this announcement is the “informal”<\/em> nickname angle.\u00a0 I predicted earlier that the Task Force would not recommend an official name change, which would have required a 2\/3 majority vote of the messengers at two consecutive SBC Annual Meetings.\u00a0I also predicted, wrongly, that a d\/b\/a would be recommended as a way around the supermajority requirements to amend the SBC Constitution and By-Laws.\u00a0 How this is any better than a d\/b\/a\u00a0or how this\u00a0can be characterized as a “win-win”<\/em> situation\u00a0is baffling.<\/li>\n
  2. The “informal”<\/em> nickname angle — totally optional for each church within the Southern Baptist Convention —\u00a0doesn’t even sound good on the surface.\u00a0 When I talked with my wife Monday night on the phone and explained the new\u00a0nickname recommendation, her first thought was about the same as mine.\u00a0 I won’t repeat the word she used (not a bad or vulgar word) because it was less than flattering.\u00a0 I imagine that many folks on both (or all) sides of the Name Change debate had less than flattering initial reactions to the announcement.<\/li>\n
  3. How will this be implemented?\u00a0 As this is an “informal”<\/em> nickname, this should not be given equal, much less preferential, treatment by any officials, officers, or entities of the Convention.\u00a0 Good luck<\/del> providence on that one!<\/li>\n
  4. Much like the GCR before it, this will be touted as a way to bring unity to the Convention and to help strengthen our Great Commission efforts. After all, if you put “Great Commission”<\/em>\u00a0in the title of anything, how can it not bring unity and strength?\u00a0In the end, this will be more divisive than the GCR.\u00a0Much like a “traditional”<\/em> church when a new “contemporary” pastor comes on board, we will see young pitted against old and “traditional”<\/em> pitted against “contemporary.”\u00a0 Questions will inevitably be asked and have to be answered, such as: “Do you have an affinity for churches who go by the nickname “Great Commission Baptists”<\/em> <\/a>or do you\u00a0like those churches who still cling (along with their guns and flags) to the name “Southern Baptist?”<\/em>\u00a0 The questions might be subtle at first (“Which service do you attend?”<\/em>), but they will become more pointed (“Do you want to see the world won for Christ or do you just want to stay stuck in the past?”<\/em>).<\/li>\n
  5. The process that brought us to this point was fundamentally flawed.\u00a0 Unless the Executive Committee votes to reject bringing the Name Change\/Nickname recommendation to the floor of the Convention — which I highly doubt — we will continue to see hardball politics employed at the highest levels of our Convention.\u00a0 Who would have thought that The Great Commission would be used, not to unite us, but to divide us?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

    These are just some of my initial observations.\u00a0 I will flesh out some of these in additional posts throughout the week. I\u00a0will not have access to a computer for most of the day on Tuesday.\u00a0 I will try to interact with those who comment as soon as I can either late Tuesday or Wednesday morning.\u00a0 God bless!<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I’ll be on the road most of the day as my son and I head back home after spending an enjoyable few days in Dallas.\u00a0 Stephen’s doctor’s appointment went well — no surgery anytime soon — and we even managed to see the Mavericks beat the Celtics at the AA Center (American Airlines, not Alcoholics…<\/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":[8,24,35,37],"tags":[3403,1363,1606,868,872,3401,1609,3393,1608],"class_list":["post-3054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-great-commission-resurgence","category-religion","category-southern-baptist-convention","tag-great-commission-baptists","tag-name-change","tag-nicknames","tag-sbc","tag-sbc-executive-committee","tag-sbc-name-change","tag-sbc-name-change-task-force","tag-southern-baptist-convention","tag-texas-bbq"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1LP7G-Ng","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3054","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=3054"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3058,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3054\/revisions\/3058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}