{"id":776,"date":"2010-09-21T05:00:33","date_gmt":"2010-09-21T11:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=776"},"modified":"2010-09-21T05:00:33","modified_gmt":"2010-09-21T11:00:33","slug":"sbc-establishment-misreads-its-mandate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=776","title":{"rendered":"SBC Establishment Misreads Its\u00a0Mandate!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>After the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States, the Democrat Party and their leaders in Congress, including Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, just knew that the voters had given them a mandate for change.\u00a0 After eight years of George W. Bush, the electorate was indeed ready to go in a new direction.\u00a0 Little did they know that\u00a0Obama and Company, in less than two years, would not only turn the country in a different direction, but\u00a0would attempt one of the most radical transformations of American life that we have witnessed in the modern era.<\/p>\n

In less than two months, the American people will go to the ballot box to either affirm or repudiate the radical agenda that has been implemented by\u00a0power-hungry politicians\u00a0who have over played their hand and over stayed their welcome.\u00a0 If what happened in the Delaware Republican primary\u00a0last week is any indication, then the establishment elites — both Democrats and Republicans — will be in for the shock of their lives when the American people rise up and let their voices be heard loud and clear.<\/p>\n

In the same way, many within the Southern Baptist Convention establishment may also be shocked to find that more and more\u00a0Southern Baptists are letting their voices be heard loud and clear.\u00a0 From\u00a0Morris Chapman (see here <\/a>and here<\/a>), soon to be retired\u00a0President of the SBC Executive Committee, to State Baptist Executive Directors David Hankins of Louisiana and Emil Turner of Arkansas<\/a> to rank and file Southern Baptists (see here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>), the divide between grass-roots Southern Baptists and those in the ruling establishment continues to grow.\u00a0 With the\u00a0nomination and election of Kevin Ezell to lead the North American Mission Board, a\u00a0mission agency that he led his church to minimally support in the last ten years,\u00a0coupled with the Search Committee’s deaf ear toward the concerns of\u00a0State Baptist Executives over Ezell’s\u00a0nomination, the divide has increased.\u00a0 Depending on who is nominated as President of the International Mission Board, there could be\u00a0further division.\u00a0 If one of the members of the Great Commission Task Force or someone closely aligned with someone from that group is nominated, the SBC establishment should be prepared to field tough questions from the churches that they ostensibly represent.<\/p>\n

However, if\u00a0the “leaders”\u00a0continue to play from the same playbook, no one should be surprised when those within the ruling class do not answer any questions.\u00a0 And why should they?\u00a0 When you can unilaterally seal your own Task Force’s records for 15 years and\u00a0brazenly tell rank and file Southern Baptists that this is necessary; when you can hold\u00a0closed-door meetings and vote for new Presidents of the Executive Committee and NAMB in secret; when you can say that you support the Cooperative Program, but all the while take actions that, if followed to their logical conclusion, would eviscerate CP and the State Conventions while radically redefining what it means to be a cooperating Southern Baptist<\/a>; when you can, with a straight face,\u00a0tell small and medium-sized churches, that sending money to CP isn’t enough if you don’t plant your own churches or satellites, then you can do anything you want without having to fear the unwashed masses.\u00a0 If it were not so frustrating and sad, the similarities between the political maneuvering of\u00a0the\u00a0ruling elites\u00a0in Washington, D.C. and the ruling elites in the SBC would be amusing.\u00a0 Unfortunately, neither is.<\/p>\n

Two years after President Obama’s historic election, the supposed mandate that he rode into office on has evaporated.\u00a0 That’s what happens when you mistakenly\u00a0believe that you were given a mandate by the American people for radical change.\u00a0 The SBC establishment, with\u00a0about 10% of Convention churches represented at the Annual Meeting in Orlando<\/a>, thought that they were given a mandate for radical change when 75% of the messengers voted to approve the GCR Task Force Report.\u00a0 I’m no math whiz, but that was less than the 95% (including me) who voted for the\u00a0formation of\u00a0a GREAT COMMISSION\u00a0Task Force\u00a0in Louisville last year.\u00a0\u00a0If the SBC establishment keeps\u00a0misreading their\u00a0mandate,\u00a0they may\u00a0discover in Phoenix next year\u00a0that they really are in the minority when the majority of grass-roots Southern Baptists rise up and let their voices be heard loud and clear!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States, the Democrat Party and their leaders in Congress, including Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, just knew that the voters had given them a mandate for change.\u00a0 After eight years of George W. Bush, the electorate was indeed ready to go in a new…<\/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":[10,24,37,1],"tags":[129,289,345,347,454,583,691,728,858,3393],"class_list":["post-776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cooperative-program","category-great-commission-resurgence","category-southern-baptist-convention","category-uncategorized","tag-barack-obama","tag-david-hankins","tag-elites","tag-emil-turner","tag-grassroots","tag-kevin-ezell","tag-namb","tag-north-american-mission-board","tag-ruling-class","tag-southern-baptist-convention"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1LP7G-cw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776","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=776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}