Our annual sweatfest, the SBC Annual Meeting, is only a couple of weeks off. With the Greear/Hemphill presidential contest and the Patterson messes having consumed all the pre-convention publicity, you could be forgiven for forgetting that other things will take place. One of these is the Southern Baptist Conference of Associational Leaders (SBCAL) which meets in […]
The Role of SBC President: Does This Year Matter More?
This is the most highly contested SBC presidential contest since the end of the Conservative Resurgence. I think the 1990 election in New Orleans where Morris Chapman defeated Dan Vestal by 15 percentage points was the last white hot election. We’ve had contested elections since but none like this year’s. One group casts this election […]
2018 may be the SBC’s annus horribilis
My apologies to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, from whose 1992 speech I borrowed the Latin phrase. The royal family had a number of personal difficulties that year…and Windsor Castle caught fire. Sometimes royalty, even in the SBC, has difficulty. In the Grand Old Southern Baptist Convention we’d like to catch a different kind of […]
Some pre-convention voices
Twenty-four days to our Grand Confab, the Annual Meeting in Dallas. Here are some things rumbling around: On B21, megapastor, former SBC president James Merritt endorses J. D. Greear and offers a withering criticism of loud, loutish critics: All of this to say this to that I believe this is the most pivotal SBC presidential election […]
So you want to get a resolution passed? Here’s the process…
There’s a presumption rolling around among SBCers that the Resolutions Committee has what they want to do in mind before the convention and sloughs off or dismisses all resolutions that get submitted from individual SBCers. Not so. Those individuals who properly submit a resolution according to the provisions of By-Law 20 will be properly considered. […]
Someone must say about the avuncular Dave Miller…
…that he is the wittiest person in the SBC. To wit: He also relayed a bit of humor amid the ordeal: May 1: “Had a Christian nurse, a mainline Christian nurse and a Syrian doctor. It was an interesting conversation.” May 1: “Going home [after the biopsy]. Trying to convince Jenni the doctor ordered stop […]
SBC FAQs answers your questions
The First Question asked and answered is: What is the Southern Baptist Convention? I suspect that many Southern Baptists would be unable to give a good answer. But Keith Harper and Amy Whitfield of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary answer this and others in their new book “SBC FAQs, A Ready Reference.” It’s $13.99 at LifeWay. I’m […]
How IMB’s overseas workers could double in number
David Platt, who has announced his resignation but is still CEO of the IMB, had a plan to greatly expand the Board’s overseas workforce. The plan was to meld unpaid overseas secular workers into the IMB’s work. Not a few questions were raised about this but it was a plan to get IMB’s numbers back […]
It’s lost in all the acrimony but the Cooperative Program is UP
National CP 4.45% ahead of projection As of April 30, gifts received by the Executive Committee for distribution through the CP Allocation Budget through the first seven months of the convention’s fiscal year totaled $116,986,524.22. This total is $4,986,524.22 above the $112 million year-to-date budgeted amount to support SBC ministries globally and across North America […]
Our beloved, beleaguered denomination
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after conflict and controversy, for in the Southern Baptist Convention they will eventually be satisfied. – SBC Beatitude “Yet forty days, and Ninevah shall be overthrown” wrote Jonah and our SBC Annual Meeting is forty days hence. While the magnitude of the meeting doesn’t look biblical it has the […]
Brother, prepare to relinquish thy housing allowance
This advice is not from Your Humble Hacker and Plodding Semi-retired Pastor but from LifeWay leader Thom Ranier. In a recent podcast (Will the Minister’s Housing Allowance Go Away?) he states his belief that ” it is going to go away” and advises pastors to rearrange their finances now to prepare for the loss. The part […]
Magical thinking on Cooperative Program percentages
The most bewailed SBC statistic is the average percentage of undesignated receipts given by churches to the Cooperative Program. The figure stands at 5.16% having declined from over 10% back in the days prior to the Conservative Resurgence. The decline has been incremental, steady, and relentless although during Frank Page’s tenure as SBC Executive Committee […]