The NAMB controversy concerns mainly smaller, non-south state conventions but the great consumer of Cooperative Program dollars are the large state conventions. If we are to engage in finger pointing over declining statistics, a popular game in the SBC if not a productive one, the fingers should point to the places where we’re spending the most money.
But, for now the conflict is between NAMB and non-south states. Again, take the time to read Joe Westbury’s long, long article here.
One of the statements made in Westbury’s article caught my attention,
Adams, in the Northwest, reports that in February 2020, NAMB’ Ezell said 12 of the non-South conventions shouldn’t even exist.
On another occasion he suggested they should be collapsed into one large Western convention based out of Denver.
This is a secondhand quote of NAMB leader Kevin Ezell through Randy Adams, leader of one of the non-south state conventions, Northwest Baptist Convention, and the most aggressive candidate for SBC president in history.
There are 41 state conventions in the SBC. The largest in numbers of churches is the Baptist General Convention of Texas with 4323 and the smallest is Puerto Rico with 44. These are numbers from the 2019 statistical report of the SBC.
Here is a list of the smaller state conventions and their church count:
Puerto Rico 44
Dakota 82
Alaska 89
Wyoming 90
Iowa 110
Montana 128
Hawaii-Pacific 129
Utah-Idaho 136
I have no issue with any of these places. I presume they are all difficult in regard to church planting.
The SBC is nothing if not organizationally minded and each of these locations is a state convention.
Why?
Why is it a given that eighty or one hundred churches in a geographic area, mostly by US states, should be a state convention.
State conventions have administrative leaders, assistants, staff, offices, and expenses. Why is this considered a necessity for an area that has one hundred churches as it is in an area like my state, Georgia, that has 3,361 churches? It’s not a biblical concept.
If a Southern Baptist leader suggests that fewer smaller state conventions is an idea worth exploring, why is that wrong? Why shouldn’t it be explored? Why should the solution be to go back to the status quo ante where NAMB flung millions into denominational jobs in the places but little church growth occurred.
But, if it is convention policy that we fund jobs in far away places with little population, the convention is certainly entitled to spend it’s CP money in that fashion. If it is received wisdom that we have state conventions everywhere we have a few dozen churches because this was the pattern in the halcyon days of growth in the mid-20th century, then we can certainly return to that.
I can understand HI/Pacific, PR, and AK based on their separation from the continental US, although the distance is only in miles, not communication and participation. Why shouldn’t some of these small conventions be combined into one state structure with 300 churches? Or, just have associations? Just, asking, but folks get whammied for asking unacceptable questions.
Oh, now you’re messing with jobs and titles. Dadgum bloggers.
To go macro on all this. I’m not inclined to buy the argument that state structures are essential and that NAMB will utterly fail in their centralized church planting strategy.
We can have this discussion if we desire. Perhaps there is a solution no one is offering at the moment. Or, we can burn the house down if we don’t get what we want.
This is about money, probably chief among other things, and the big CP money still stays in the states of the old Confederacy. All this controversy with NAMB may be the wrong target altogether.
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I’m slow but Iearned a long time ago that every administrative leader could justify his budget. In the SBC with our vast administrative structures, we do it six ways from Sunday, and twice on the Lord’s Day.
Wyoming, Montana, and Dakotas could combine for “the great plains conv.” Or “Big Sky Conv.”
I agree though – I have often thought that the legacy states could “partner” (cooperate) with these pioneer areas and offer resources and such to reach those states – as more autonomous churches are formed – the states could become more financially independent (solvent) – kinda like church planting concept?
Its a paradiagm shift for sure – but would we need as large of a North American mission board (gasp, if at all) if we did that? Can we then appropiate more “national cooperative program funds” to IMB?
Westburys article covers that. I think it requires more work by the destination state and budget from the sending state, money they are loath to find, since it has to be taken away from something else. The legacy state conventions are victims now, my state only has $20m to spend, not $30-35.
Wyoming, Montana, and the Dakotas used to be together as the Northern Plains Baptist Convention. Wyoming separated first. When Montana decided to become a convention, that left the Dakotas, which did not meet SBC size to be a convention. Montana really wasn’t ready either so the Montana “Fellowship” and the Dakota “Fellowship” were formed.
I remember the HMB told us neither was big enough (members, churches) to be a convention but Montana was pressing on. HMB told us who our new executive director would be and they would pay his salary. If we wanted anyone else, we could pay the salary.
Many years earlier Colorado and maybe another state or two were part of that geographically huge convention.
So Randy Adams is “the most aggressive candidate for SBC president in history?” Perhaps I am not the only one prone to hyperbole. Randy Adams has every quality necessary to be an outstanding President of the Southern Baptist Convention.
He is. I read his stuff. And “aggressive” is not a slam. Name one candidate in SBC history who was such a strong critic and ran such a strident campaign. I agree with great segments of adams platform, but not all. No hyperbole at all.
Your guy, Mike Stone, says Adams has a conflict of interest and shouldn’t be SBC prez.
My guy? I am voting for Randy Adams on the first ballot and either Adams or Stone in the runoff, assuming there is one and one of them makes it.
Thanks for volunteering that. I’ll probably be there. Would love to see you if you’re not in too much demand.
I don’t see Adams making a runoff. Wild conjecture.
Why are not voting for a fellow Alabama pastor named Ed Litton? No slam brother just an honest question and thank you for saying your first ballot choice publicly. I will be there and Ed Litton is my first ballot choice.
Ed Litton is an experienced Alabama Pastor who was supportive of me during the lowest moment of my ministry. I will always be grateful for that and have nothing unkind to say about him. But I’ve known Randy Adams for thirty years. We pastored the same church with tenures only a few years apart. It’s fair to say both Adams and Stone share a denominational outlook that more closely aligns with my own. I don’t usually vote for a candidate simply because he lives in my state, though I did vote for Alabamian Jimmy Jackson in 2010.
What did Stone say the conflict of interest was?
Stone believes entity heads and workers should not also be SBC officers (or at least president). Adams is a head of a state or regional convention, which makes him an entity head, after a fashion. No, he does not lead one of the big entities (seminary, missions, etc), but it is an entity.
Stone said this in an interview with…Baptist Press? I think that was where I read it. He does not target Adams, but seems consistent in his position.
There is a big difference between an entity head, and the leader of a seperate organization. The state conventions are separate from the SBC. The issue with Mohler is that the SBC President is technically a trustee for each SBC entity.
The Entities are: EC, IMB, NAMB, ERLC, LifeWay, Guidestone and the seminaries: SBTS, SWBTS, SEBTS, MBTS, NOBTS, and Golden Gate. The WMU is an auxillary of the SBC.
So Mohler if elected, would become a trustee of SBTS, of which he is currently president.
Adams would not. The NWBC is not an entity of the SBC.
An entity head or denominational employee being SBC prez. It’s a position some take and Stone said he has had that viewmfor some years, not just now that two of his opponents are denominational employees.
Maybe I’m missing the larger point. Have we lost our frontier spirit? Why are we focusing church planting efforts on our most densely populated areas, most of which have existing SBC churches, when there are areas of our country with cities that do not have a single SBC church?
Let’s consider the facts: (1) 60-80% of SBC churches are in need of revitalization (depending on who you read after). (2) It’s harder to revitalize a church than to plant a new one. (3) We’ve forsaken push marketing for pull marketing. (4) We’re creating channel conflict … potentially pulling people from struggling churches to start new churches … thereby making our revitalization efforts more difficult.
I’m suspicious that the smaller areas are harder, slower to grow, not providing CP ROI.
Love the corporate consultant terms. We can’t do everything everywhere, so the urban centers where the people are, sounds like a good strategy to me. No denominational level (state, national) has shown much success with the fuzzy concept of church revitalization. We’ve shown that we can design programs that confer consultant titles. Associations may have the best shot at this.
I have seen two pastors lauded as church planters/revitalizers(a word?) but what they did was in the end combine four churches into one. I am glad that the one remaining seems active and healthy but it does not seem to fall into planting or revitalizing. The revitalization effort is a difficult task and probably does not have the appeal of church planting. The seminaries produce what they promote and planting is the thing.
I took a doctoral seminar at MBTS on revitalization. I checked the Annual Church Profiles of the success examples that were pointed out. Two of the churches had the same or fewer attenders & baptisms than before! The only change obvious in these SBC churches was that both now had elders and followed Presbyterian doctrine (Calvinism minus infant baptism). To be blunt, that ain’t revitalization!
(Full disclosure: we are struggling to keep our church going during the pandemic. Online only for almost a year now doesn’t help. Revitalization is hard.)
Actually one of the strategies in a revitalization effort *may* be to combine/merge a caustically unhealthy church with a healthy one.
This may help you understand better….
https://churchanswers.com/podcasts/revitalize-and-replant/five-major-types-church-revitalization-revitalize-replant-016/
In my mind, the SBC’s Cooperative Program is a three legged stool. The legs are:
#3 is the easiest to overlook because metrics for relationships are difficult to measure. Mega-church pastors function much like CEOs, and our entity heads mostly come from large churches or seminaries. Business culture has a big influence on our denominations leaders. Business is primarily focused on transactions. Discipleship demands personal transformation through a relationship with Chirst accompanied by deep connections within the body of Christ. Efficiency at the expense of relationships is a net loss. I am sad that NAMB and so many state conventions cannot agree on cooperative agreements.
We are not talking about one, two, or three state conventions, but a number in the teens. Given how SBC leaders hate public controversy, the problem is probably larger than we know.
Personal relationships are primarily developed in our local associations.This level of SBC life has been criticized severely. “What is my association doing?” is a common criticism. Building and maintaining relationships is doing plenty… if we take discipleship seriously. Director of Missions DOM have an important job to do. Each pastor should be taken to lunch once a quarter. This enables the DOM to help pastors solve problems and feel heard. What pastor has not been blessed by insights from another pastor? The DOM should preach in every member church once or twice a year. Relationships with laity are important too. A DOM needs solid relationships so that he can give counsel to search committees. If the laity are not touched by the convention,they are more likely to call a nonSBC pastor
. . . and less likely to give toward CP.
My DOM’s expense account would have to be huge with 95 churches in our association
Some AMS/DOMs believe this (Tim Overton’s comment) to be such a vital and necessary part of their ministry that they pay for those lunches out of their own pocket and are glad to do so.
A good starting point is to put a cap on salaries in Alpharetta, and to make them public. Let states/regions be Baptist and autonomous and let NAMB be NAMB. Let those state or regional conventions choose their leaders, and make their decisions. I trust most Baptists to be missional. If NAMB doesn’t provide funding for the most worthy projects, individual churches and associations in other areas will fund them directly. And that is what destroys the Cooperative Program. But that is the track that NAMB has put us on. It seems to me that NAMB’s Ezell and the trustees would have done well to have had a face-to-face meeting with people like the McRaneys, instead of pushing this thing to the courts. But the deed is done. Some of us saw it coming years ago. We do not rejoice in it.
Having served in the NWBC since 1977, currently finishing 30 years as pastor of Community Baptist Church in Winston, OR I can affirm Randy’s passion (I was NWBC President (2011-2013) when Randy was called as Exec. I was on the Exec. Board (Chairman of Finance Commitee) when NAMB financially restructured and pulled much of the funding from smaller regions and focusing on mega-cities (including Portland and Seattle), There have been unforseen consequences that need to be addressed. I hope to attend the SBC this summer – but anywhere is a long way from where I live! I look forward to a healthy discussion of issues this summer.
So it was mentioned that the largest state convention in the SBC is the Baptist General Convention of Texas. I went to their website and discovered that it has three “executive” directors, and a total of 147 staff members, which I am told is a big downsize from something like 250 at its peak. Obviously the executive and associate executive directors manage the staff, and some of the positions are self-explanatory when it comes to their work, such as “Graphic Designer, Communications” or “Accounting Manager, Payroll and Finance” But I wonder what a “Director of Discipleship” does, or a “Childhood Specialist, Discipleship” would do in a state convention or the “Coordinator of Interim Ministry”? And I’m genuinely asking, not being snarky.
Nothin unusual in those positions that I can see. If churches give state conventions a funding stream, the venerable CP, states will keep the money and create jobs. The explanation offered to me was that the churches wanted a state guy to help them with discipleship, children, interims (who fix broken churches), and the like. Questions are: how is success and productivity defined for these positions, and would that money better be spent some other way?
Same issue in my state but featuring a magnificent new HQ building where only one floor is being occupied at the moment. Churches, for many reasons not just these, look at their budgets and decide CP has lower priority. Who can blame them?
I agree that many state conventions are behind the times. However, as a pastor who has been born, raised, and ministered in two Western states, I say this with all due respect to my brothers and sisters who live elsewhere: Bible Belt and Southern thinking and values are not a thing out here. One of my roles was at a local association office which assisted NAMB church planters. Whenever Bible Belt guys came out here with the idea “Build it and they will come” we all had to take a deep breath and explain why that doesn’t guarantee success. All this to say, GOOD state conventions recognize their state or region’s needs and values, and are able to direct their resources and NAMB resources where they’ll flourish most.
. . . and NAMB resources given to state conventions for evangelism are not best directed when used to pay state convention overhead expenses rather than for evangelism purposes are they? No they’re not is the correct answer.