I confess that I have a Twitter account — you can follow me @fromlaw2grace\u00a0(shameless promotional plug). The only\u00a0tweets that you will find are the\u00a0ones about my latest From Law to Grace blog posts.\u00a0 Apart from that, I can honestly say that I have never once posted a tweet that I have composed.<\/p>\n
Quite frankly, I don’t get Twitter.\u00a0Yes, it is another means of communication in our ever-increasing social media, youth-oriented\u00a0culture (at-large and in the SBC\/GCB).\u00a0 There are pastors and Convention leaders who skillfully use\u00a0Twitter to get out a particular\u00a0 message.\u00a0 But, for every good use of Twitter, there is the temptation to succumb\u00a0to a narcissistic\u00a0personality that cries to be unleashed.<\/p>\n
It seems that most of the SBC’s movers and shakers — from entity heads to megachurch pastors — have a Twitter account. Most of the tweets that emanate from these leaders are rather innocuous, but every now and then you get one that reveals perhaps more than was intended or even realized. I use the word “perhaps”<\/em> because some tweets, while clear on their face, might nevertheless have been misunderstood or not at all what the writer intended.<\/p>\n For instance, Dr. Mohler, President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminay, may not have intended to come across condescendingly <\/a>when he apparently questioned\u00a0the mental acuity of\u00a0a sitting member of the SBC’s Executive Committee or when he apparently agreed with the notion that Southern Baptists are easily confused. If Southern Baptists are easily confused, it might be because some leaders go out of their way to add to the confusion.<\/p>\n Likewise, Ted Traylor, Senior Pastor of megachurch\u00a0Olive Baptist in Pensacola, FL and a member of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force, might not have intended to reveal a complete lack of understanding of the historic Baptist principle of autonomy when he tweeted this<\/a>:<\/p>\n “BP headline-State Execs form NAMB study committee. Since when do Bap St Execs study SBC entities? I thought trustees did that.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Dr. Traylor, and, apparently Dr. Daniel Akin (since he retweeted <\/a>Traylor’s\u00a0above tweet), must also be confused about the Baptist principle of autonomy.\u00a0 Again, this may not be all that surprising, given the fact that some members of the GCRTF\u00a0(of which both Drs. Traylor\u00a0and Akin were a part) apparently had to be schooled in this long-standing and well cherished Baptist principle.\u00a0 According to a 2010\u00a0report in the North Carolina Biblical Recorder by then editor Norman Jameson (former, as in not good to have a dissenting voice if you want to keep your job<\/a>):<\/p>\n \u201cIt (the\u00a0GCRTF’s\u00a0announcement that they would unilaterally seal\u00a0all task force records<\/a>)\u00a0came as word was leaking out just how nebulous the task force\u2019s \u2018unanimous\u2019 agreement on their recommendations was. It came as we further learned of the need for task force members to be educated about the autonomous nature of Baptist state conventions before they realized their recommendations could be only that \u2013 recommendations and not mandates<\/strong>.\u201d (emphasis added<\/strong>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So, we\u00a0had at least some members of the GCRTF\u00a0who did not know that Baptist state conventions are autonomous? Now two of those members — Drs. Traylor and Akin — tweet or retweet a question about a newly formed study committee of the\u00a0Fellowship of State Executive Directors . <\/a>According to Emil Turner, the president of the fellowship for 2011-12 (and the Executive Director for the Arkansas Baptist State\u00a0Convention), the special committee<\/p>\n “was established to evaluate how state conventions and NAMB\u00a0can maximize cooperation during the transition process of implementing the new NAMB initiatives.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n For those who have been living under a rock or\u00a0are members\u00a0of a church in a\u00a0Baptist State Convention in lockstep with the GCR agenda <\/a>(Florida, Kentucky, and NC come to mind), it might come as a shock that the new NAMB has taken about\u00a018 months to implement changes in strategic “partnerships”\u00a0<\/em>— many of them quite radical — that should have taken\u00a0anywhere from four to seven years according to the language of the GCRTF\u00a0report.\u00a0 Of course, at the new NAMB, seven years sure goes by fast!<\/a><\/p>\n With many state conventions — including the one our church partners with, the Baptist Convention of New Mexico — trying to keep up with the rapid and unpredictable changes coming from the new NAMB\u00a0that will ultimately affect real people, real missions, and real ministries in the various states, these Executive Directors\u00a0want to evaluate how they can “maximize cooperation”<\/em> with an increasingly top-down missions agency that apparently does not realize that partnership is a two-way street.\u00a0 When one partner tries to dictate all the terms of the partnership agreement, that’s not true partnership, at least in any meaningful sense of the word.<\/p>\n Now, to answer the question that Dr. Traylor tweeted and Dr. Akin retweeted, “Since when do Bap St Execs study SBC entities? I thought trustees did that.” <\/em>As Willy Wonka <\/a>(the Gene Wilder version, not the horrific Johnny Depp remake) said to Grandpa Joe, who thought that Charlie would get a lifetime supply of chocolate — WRONG, SIR! WRONG! <\/span><\/em>Baptist State Conventions, at least as of now, are AUTONOMOUS!\u00a0 Look up the word.\u00a0 No other ecclesiastical body, including the Southern Baptist Convention\/Great Commission Baptists, can dictate to (try as they might)\u00a0or impose mandates (GCR anyone)\u00a0on autonomous Baptist bodies.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Since we can create unofficial committees within the SBC, then certainly\u00a0Baptist State Conventions\u00a0— at least those who do not see themselves as wholly owned\u00a0subsidiaries of the SBC —\u00a0are free to create a study committee to\u00a0figure out how to deal with the radical changes being dictated by the\u00a0new NAMB.\u00a0\u00a0Since when do\u00a0Baptist State Convention Executive Directors study their relationship with an SBC entity?\u00a0\u00a0When that entity — and by extension its Trustees <\/a>— acts in such a way so as to violate the Baptist principle of autonomy<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The\u00a0tweets of some SBC elites reveals just why this official study committee was formed.\u00a0 Expect more of this in the future.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I confess that I have a Twitter account — you can follow me @fromlaw2grace\u00a0(shameless promotional plug). The only\u00a0tweets that you will find are the\u00a0ones about my latest From Law to Grace blog posts.\u00a0 Apart from that, I can honestly say that I have never once posted a tweet that I have composed. Quite frankly, I…<\/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":[5,8,24,35,37],"tags":[1380,1621,3396,3367,124,1617,347,1620,433,1625,3383,1626,691,728,1619,1623,1622,3393,1618,1560,1613,1011,1624],"class_list":["post-3086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baptist-convention-of-new-mexico","category-christianity","category-great-commission-resurgence","category-religion","category-southern-baptist-convention","tag-albert-mohler","tag-arkansas-baptist-state-convention","tag-autonomy","tag-baptist-convention-of-new-mexico","tag-baptist-state-conventions","tag-daniel-akin","tag-emil-turner","tag-executive-directors","tag-gcr","tag-gene-wilder","tag-great-commission-resurgence","tag-johnny-depp","tag-namb","tag-north-american-mission-board","tag-olive-baptist-church","tag-partners","tag-partnerships","tag-southern-baptist-convention","tag-ted-traylor","tag-trustees","tag-tweets","tag-twitter","tag-willy-wonka"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1LP7G-NM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3086","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=3086"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3101,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3086\/revisions\/3101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}