SBC Issues

Contributors here at SBC Voices have a couple of articles this week on the SBC and gender. These looked to me to be among the most irenic and amicable approaches possible to an issue that is important to the SBC. Elsewhere, teeth have been set on edge with more vicious and forceful discussions. Brent Hobbs, for whom the title of this article is not written, wrote about Cooperation and Complexity on the Question of Women Preaching. His final paragraph: This is a big, complex question. And it deserves better than the simplistic treatment it’s received recently. As Southern Baptists we are … [Read more...] about Can we avoid an SBC Hobbesian nightmare on gender issues?

Editor's Note: we are going to be including regular features of interest to Southern Baptists. There is a fine new blog called "Small Church Shepherds " and I invited them to share their posts here.  I was ordained into the gospel ministry six year ago, and have been on staff as either a pastor or youth pastor for the better part of 12 years. To this day I will quickly and without hesitation say that there is nothing I would rather do than shepherd the flock of God. From time to time, however, there are things that make me think “I wish I had known that before I went into the … [Read more...] about Things I Wish I Knew Before Going Into Ministry (Lee Faler)

Much has been written about what Al Mohler has called theological triage. I guess that Mohler first used the term in print in a 2005 article at albertmohler.com. At least that's the earliest reference that my quick Google search turned up. In his article, Mohler identifies what he calls "three different levels of theological urgency." He argues that there are first-level, second-level, and third-level theological issues. Mohler defines first-level theological issues as those doctrines most central and essential to the Christian faith. Examples include doctrines such as the Trinity, the full … [Read more...] about Complementarianism: Prioritizing our doctrinal disagreement

Being on sabbatical has brought me blissful isolation from most things ongoing in the SBC. If it is big enough to hit my Google News feed, however, then it pops up into my field of view in the morning. Some of the news that comes my way is encouraging. Some of it is downright dismal. Most of the dismal news has been baseball-related, but for this unsavory tidbit ("Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Displays Stained-Glass Windows Recently Removed from Southwestern Seminary") the only connection to baseball I could discern was my imagination of what a Paul Goldschmidt line drive would do … [Read more...] about Stained Glass and Shoddy History

I am sitting in the Omaha airport waiting on my first flight of  the day. Will head to Minneapolis then JFK, where I will meet up with a team from Bart's church (Bart remains in the Witness Protection Program). We fly overnight to Dakar then will make connections to Ziguinchor, Senegal before heading out to villages for a week of ministry with UUPGs. If all goes well we return on Thursday the 23rd. We have some posts set and the guys will manage things here. We have some new features.  I asked Tony Jones to post "Prayer for IMB" snippets several times a week and the men from "Small … [Read more...] about Senegal Bound

STORE CLOSING! EVERYTHING ON SALE! EVERYTHING MUST GO! I hate the street-walking placard-bearers but they must work because even my LifeWay store uses some. When I first moved back to Georgia in 1997, the closest LifeWay was inside the Atlanta perimeter. If I wanted to visit the store I'd have to have a plan for assaulting the gates of highway and traffic hell to get to the store. I'd just as soon stick a shard of glass in my eye as drive inside Atlanta. Then they opened a new store in the Atlanta exurbs, near the largest mall in the state. It was much easier to get to the store and I … [Read more...] about Alas, my closest LifeWay store is indeed closing

From our "Tempest in a Teapot" News Division, the SBC narrowly averted disaster today when a minuscule percentage of SBC churches decided to have women address their congregations on Mother's Day. Some Twitter pundits opined that this would cause a chain reaction that would bring an imbalance to the force, align the SBC squarely with egalitarians, cause us to completely abandon any biblical moorings, and embrace women pastors immediately. However, like Y2K and the 12 predictions of Snowmageddon that didn't come to fruition in Sioux City this year, this seems to have been what Uncle Willie … [Read more...] about BREAKING NEWS: SBC Narrowly Survives Mother’s Day

It's less than a month to the convention in Birmingham. Southern Baptists will show up by the thousands and mix and mingle with all the construction crews tearing up downtown. One hopes that there is no reverend road rage. These guys are just working stiffs, doing their job. Here's a list of SBC meetings for the past 52 years, courtesy of the Baptist Courier (I added the 2018 figure). This is for registered messengers, not guests, press, or Secret Service personnel. 1967 Miami Beach – 14,794 1968 Houston – 15,071 1969 New Orleans – 16,678 1970 Denver – 13,692 1971 St. Louis – … [Read more...] about What will attendance be at the SBC Annual Meeting in beautiful, if messy, Birmingham?

A small church down the road from me had a tent revival (they called it a "crusade") this week. I intended to go but, well, missed it. The church that hosted it is a very small SBC church. I think the tent evangelist was an independent Baptist. The tent is bright yellow and screams 'Waffle House'. Advertisements said they would have 'concessions' every night which I took to mean that they were selling hot dogs and the like. Waffle House caters. That would have been a better fit, though expensive. The church next door (I didn't put it in the picture) is about as strong a contrast to the … [Read more...] about Ye Olde Waffle House Tent Revival