SBC Issues

The convention in Anaheim this June looks like an important convention: Contested presidential election, though the expected nominations are not in Perhaps contested nominations and reports Sex Abuse Task Force report and recommendations Perhaps other matters will bubble up in the 133 days until the opening gavel. The takeover group is actively touting the meeting and pumping attendance. I ain't gonna make it. Looks too expensive to me. Have you guys budgeted for this? Flight + hotel + food + incidentals for the beloved pastor and his wife looks around $3k to me, more if … [Read more...] about The expensive road to Anaheim

I have been involved in blogging and social media for over 15 years, and have been running SBC Voices for nearly 12 years now. For a while, I was spending way too much time on this site and in the last year, I have largely ignored it, with the exception of two brief times - the SBC Annual Meeting and the unfortunate upheaval surrounding the Executive Committee's refusal to follow the will of the Annual Meeting, leading to the resignation of Ronnie Floyd and several EC members. I haven't looked at the stats, but I'm guessing I posted fewer articles in 2021 than any year since 2009 when I … [Read more...] about The Eternal Conundrum of Social Media Involvement

Okay, before you go ballistic, I admit that the title is a bit of a piece of clickbait. Yes, there are racists among us, and people with doctrinal issues, and those who abuse women and children, and people with moral and ethical failures, as well as some structural, administration, and leadership problems within our entities. Yes, problems abound in our little denomination. Every year when our statistical report is published, the weeping and wailing can be heard throughout the cosmos and to the four corners of the earth. We have problems. I am making a simple point today, one I hope … [Read more...] about The “SBC” Doesn’t Have Problems

At a Turning Point gathering on December 19, 2021, Donald Trump, Jr. drew wild applause from conservates, many of whom would describe themselves as “Christian conservatives” when he said the following. “We’ve turned the other cheek, and I understand, sort of, the biblical reference — I understand the mentality — but it’s gotten us nothing. Okay? It’s gotten us nothing while we’ve ceded ground in every major institution in our country.” If you have any doubt that the modern conservative movement is divorcing itself from any biblical moorings, realize that this conservative crowd cheered when … [Read more...] about Weapons of Our Warfare

[Author's note: this blog is being held hostage until someone comes up with something else to say. Case closed on the SEC but NFL is still open. Until then, I will dribble out one Housing Allowance article daily. There's no shortage of material...and it's interesting.] The Minister's Housing Allowance is our best tax break because it gives the ordained pastor the means to totally exclude substantial sums of his clergy income from income taxes. It lets the pastor exclude all or part of that. No income taxes! The holy grail of American financial life. I have maybe a dozen articles here … [Read more...] about Our Sacred Clergy Tax Break, the Minister’s Housing Allowance; lucrative special treatment for the Few, the Ordained

I love a small church - the building, the people, the setting, the history. The photo is of a small church near me. I've been there, done a funeral there, know or used to know some of the people and pastors there. But, never mind thinking about the future of this church, what, exactly, is going on in the present? This is the church sign (I blocked out the name). The message "come join us" is not exactly a game changer but letting it run down and have letters scattered all over signals that this isn't a church that cares a thing about what people think or say about them. Somebody … [Read more...] about Can (or should) this church be saved?

Every year Amy Whitfield and Jonathan Howe of the excellent SBC This Week podcast post some questions for the coming year as it relates to the Southern Baptist convention. Find their questions for this year here. And then at the end of the year they go back and answer those questions. Sometimes they are right on the money, and sometimes they miss the big stories entirely. In honor of there questions I want to pose a few questions of my own that I have been thinking about. 1. Will someone run against Ed Litton for SBC President? During the Conservative Resurgence it was not … [Read more...] about 5 Questions for the SBC in 2022

[Note: please read through to the end for an important addendum.] It's 2022 and our flagship giving plan, The Cooperative Program, will be one hundred years old in three years, 2025. In my decades as an active and involved Southern Baptist - SBC church member, seminary student, pastor, and now retired - the CP has been variously termed a miracle, an act of God, the envy of other denominations, the fuel for mission work and others. My favorite is that the CP isn't a "sacred cow" but "the sacred how." Notice how proponents acknowledge that a significant proportion of SBCers label the CP as a … [Read more...] about The venerable Cooperative Program, delicate flower that it is, is UP significantly after fiscal Q1