Consider This My *Resignation (There’s a NEW Sheriff in Town)

*Sorry, guys, just temporary. I know, I shouldn’t have gotten your hopes up!!

I am finding the demands of the Pastors’ Conference to be overwhelming. Wonderful. A blessing. Fun. I’ve got the greatest group of guys helping me – well, a couple of knuckleheads, but God loves knuckleheads, doesn’t he? When I ran for this position, I knew there would be a lot of work. I did not realize how time-consuming it would be. I have this other gig here in Sioux City – a church that gives me a paycheck periodically and expects my time, effort, heart and soul.

I love blogging. Frankly, if you guys can come up with a salary package that matches, or comes anywhere near matching my church’s compensation and benefits package, I might do it full time. Any takers? Buehler?…Buehler?

Something has to give.

I have been ignoring SBC Voices and the site has not been prospering. When I put my heart and soul into this site it grew. I had a vision for a place that was not devoted to just one point-of-view. We have Calvinists and non-Calvinists who write here. We have dispensationalists and historic premills and on my weak days, I’ll even let an amil or a partial preterist opine. But it takes a lot of work to build a place like this and frankly, it’s suffering because I’m doing a really poor job as editor.

I’ve been considering my options. At times I want to just walk away. I get tired of having my Christian faith and integrity questioned and insulted on a regular basis. I’ve grown a thicker skin (not just a bigger gut) which is good, but I’ve also lost my patience with people. I find myself with less and less patience to deal with the difficult people who want to take advantage of our open commenting policies here.

But I actually do not want to walk away. In my heart I want to do more. I believe the SBC, a place I love, is threatened by people who want to shatter our unity and splinter us into destruction. In what I know is a giant irony, we have to stand up and fight for unity against the purveyors of hate, disunity, and destruction. I want to do it. I want to help change the culture of conspiracy, of anger, of us against them, and of good guys against bad guys. I want to fight for peace. I want to fight for unity. I know that sounds strange, but I believe there is much in the SBC worth fighting for.

I just can’t do it now. I’m working with the brain trust behind the scenes to plan something going forward. In the future I want SBC Voices to be more, do more.

One of the things I genuinely believe is that it needs to be more of a true group site. SBC Voices is identified far too much with me. It needs to be “us” not “me” around here. We are looking at setting up a leadership board, Board of Directors, or, if those cursed Calvinizers have their way, the SBC Voices Elder Board (those guys never stop!).

But for the time being, I’ve got to change. This site needs some change. It’s going to change. So, I’d like to introduce the new sheriff in Town, through June, at least. Who knows, maybe you guys will like him so much you will prevail on him to refuse to give up the reins of power.

Adam Blosser is the New Sheriff at SBC Voices. 

He’s the Editor now. Temporary editor. Interim editor.

Want to hear a funny story? Adam was pastor of Drakes Branch Baptist Church (he’s in the pulpit there in the picture). I was the pastor of that church from 1987 to 1991 back before the young whippersnapper was born.

A few years ago, my son was a candidate for a staff position at Drakes Branch – youth and children’s ministry. It came down to him and some other guy. One of my wife’s closest friends was on the committee and she really wanted to hire my son, but they had to admit that thisA other guy had a better resume.

The other guy, who beat out my son for the ministry job, was Adam Blosser. I met him after he’d become the pastor of the church a few years later and we came to church to visit old friends. Adam is cursed to be my friend now. Had he not, he might have been able to make his way into the slate of preachers for the PC this summer! Actually, I asked him to run the selection process. He did an excellent job.

I have given Adam only two or three instructions. I will make them public here.

1. We do not moderate on the basis of point-of-view. No one in my nearly 7 years as editor here has ever thought they earned moderation – every single time I moderated a comment it was because I was a biased, such-and-such, so-and-so. But we want to have a wide variety of people with a wide variety of views. Not all views, perhaps, but a wide variety.

2. I told him that in his tenure, he was not to attempt to run Voices in a WWDD manner. He should be himself and run things his way. If he does something incredibly stupid, he will join the ranks of Svoboda and me who both embarrassed ourselves repeatedly (Matt more than I, of course). I plan to give him advice and such, but he doesn’t have to worry about whether he’s doing it my way. If I wanted it to run my way, I’d run it. If I turn it over to Adam, things will be done the Blosser way.

3. I warned him that he would have to develop thick skin. He’s a skinny whippersnapper, so it will be a change for him! He’s also probably a nicer guy than I am, so he might not provoke as many people as I have.

I plan to continue writing, as time allows. We plan to use the site to promote the Pastors’ Conference. But I’m hoping that things will be better run here than have been in the last few months.

Frankly, it would be hard to do it worse than I have since last June. If Voices were a minor, I’d be in trouble for neglect.