The More Excellent Way! Paul’s Solution for a Splintered SBC

Amen! I am a layman, retired, with time on my hands to read blogs. It ain’t pretty.

‘AGAINST ‘SUCH THINGS’ THERE IS NO LAW’

Galatians 5
22 ‘But the fruit of the Spirit is…
love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
23 gentleness and self-control.
Against such things there is no law.’

One of the ‘Doctors’ of the Church wrote this:
” . . . to the heart that loves, all is well.”

There is a kind of love that is stronger than death itself. It is written, ‘God is love’ and it was said by a Christian leader, this:
‘At some point, we all come to ask of ourselves ‘why’ Love was nailed to a cross.’ I think Lottie Moon understood the ‘why’, because of this, her great witness of the love of Christ within her soul:
“Unknown to her fellow missionaries, Lottie Moon shared her personal finances and food with anyone in need around her, severely affecting both her physical and mental health. In 1912, she only weighed 50 pounds. Alarmed, fellow missionaries arranged for her to be sent back home to the United States with a missionary companion. However, Moon died en route.”

May we say that ‘all was well with her soul’.

When some have come to see ‘love’ as a weakness, then you know that they cannot understand its great power in this world. The ‘kind’ of love that takes up a cross, or gives away one’s needed food to others, that is not a ‘weakness’ at all.

Impractical? Absolutely.
That’s the point.

Dave , If you think you’re ” hurling an insult ” , then you probably are. Why not just shut up instead. Takes two to argue and here on this blog there is no winner.

Jack,

There’s something that took me a while to learn: “on a blog there is no winner.” This isn’t a contest. We almost never change anybody’s mind. Some people just cannot have a discussion that truly values the opinion of others.

On a blog, it’s all about the information, not the person. I know I’ve taken things personally and I feel foolish afterward because: I’m not a real person and neither is the person I’m conversing with. We are just pixels on a page, and any arguing is wasted time.

I’m trying to find the people that I can actually learn something from, so that should we ever meet, we could perhaps become “real” friends.

I’m also learning what names to avoid. Restraint is much harder for me but I’m committed to doing just that. Feel free to hold me to it.

But this is the bottom line in a nutshell. Calvinists are not leaving, so we have to learn to accept both doctrines under the same roof. If Calvinists were to leave(which as whole they will not and have not for a few centuries now) there will be a loss of 6,000 plus. A few Calvinist churches are big in numbers. Our church for example is big for our area. We are 2,000 plus and growing. Other churches who are Calvinist are much bigger than ours. It would be a hit both in giving and support of the SBC. Just those in our colleges are of a significant number are they not?

“”It would be a hit both in giving and support of the SBC””

I challenge that statement as a gratuitous assertion. My counter-point is that if we lost every mega-church in the Convention the net result of any loss in giving would be negligible compared to the numbers that leave.

We are by and large a “small-church” convention and by and large most typical pastors are less than passionate about debating the 5 points of Calvinism.

And, you mention your church being a “Calvinist” church. Did you all vote on becoming a Calvinist church? Do the members have to sign some kind of Calvinist document? Has your church done some sort of survey to determine you are a “Calvinist” church?

I’ve never heard of an SBC church being self-described as “Being a Calvinist church.”

Unity doesn’t have anything to do with Calvinism or Baptist distinctives.

What strikes me is that we’re commanded to be united, and Jesus Himself said that if we don’t come to Him as little children, we don’t get to see the Kingdom. Hence, the unity He commands must (to me) concern those things that a child can understand. And that sure isn’t the stuff that divides the folks from the people.

Calvinists: they back up their doctrine with scripture.

Baptists: they back up their doctrine with scripture.

So. Ask yourself: which of those two groups shows more love in dealing with the other?

I just try to remember the rule that most men need to remember in arguing with your spouse…

“Even if you win the argument… you lose!”

Victory in one’s position in the SBC is a lose/lose situation if we destroy a fellow believer’s name/character/reputation in the process

Excellent Blog, David. It is one I deeply appreciate. I Cors.13, esp. 12:31b-14:1a, has a special fascination for me. I did two years of research in the Greek text of that pericope, accumulating some 2000 5×8 notecards. Then I took an Honors course and wrote a 50 page exegesis and exposition of the passage with 305 footnotes. One of the things I found is that practically all the scholars I read on the subject, be they liberal (so-called) or Conservative (so-called), agreed that Paul’s model for his comments was the very person of Jesus of Nazareth. After the paper I did my project for the Doctor of Ministry on Christian Love and Race Relations which involved 10 lectures in Black History in the evening services and 10 sermons on I Cors.13 in the morning worhship services. Participants in the project (those who attended both services and were willing to be tested (pre and post test) did not seem to show much change. I did the project without the support of the seminary (My project director stated, “You ought to know better than to select a controversial topic like this. If they fire you, I will be right there behind the church supporting them.”). Interesting enough, the real influence of the project would come 20 years later. A participant in the project, the son of one of the deacons, later married a Black lady and had two sons. That would reveal the change that took place in the years to follow. As the wife of the deacon said to me, when she took her two grandsons on a trip with the other seniors in the church, “Mr. Willingham, they were so well behaved, and I got so many compliments.” I almost weep now as I think of the change in the attitude of the members of that church.

As to the issues you have addressed, I do appreciate your attitude and spirit. I agree with you that we need to keep the tent big and hold these people together. The first enlargement of the tent began in 1787 with the Union of Separate and Regular Baptists who agreed that the preaching that Christ tasted death for every man would be no bar to communion. This in a day when most of both groups were Particular Baptists, holding to limited atonement. The few who preached Christ tasted death for every man were in the Separate Baptists, but even the majority of them held that Christ died for the elect alone. The liberalism grew out of a deeper insight into the nature of the theology of Sovereign Grace, the theology that produced the First and Second Great Awakenings and the launching of the Great Century of Missions. That same theology, a biblical theology, produced George Whitefield and John Welsey who learned eventually to work together. Whitefield was the primary initiator of that effort toward unity. Jonathan Edwards who was the great calvinistic theologian of America would also give an impulse to that liberal spirit by taking Whitefield to task for his attacks upon the unconverted ministry and, I suppose, upon Harvard University (because, later, Whitefield would devote his considerable talents to raising money for Harvard’s library which had burnt up in a fire).

The United Baptists, the precursors of the Southern Baptist Convention, were those Separate and Regular Baptists who agreed to drop the names Separate and Regular and be called United Baptists. Fifty years (1827) later the old Sardis United Baptist Church was founded in Missouri, eventually named the Elston Baptist Church, a result of that union. I pastored that church for about 18 months in 1865-66. I did not then know from whence the church had secure its name of United Baptists. These United Baptists were the beginnings of the Southern Baptist Convention. The Spirit of the Separate Baptists and the Regulars of a charitable and liberal disposition on serious matters of difference continued in the beginning of the launching of the Great Century of Missions. Luther Rice came to Sandy Creek in 1816 and led the Association to enlist in the cause of missions. He also chaired the committee that drew up the Confession of that year, a confession that is clearly calvinistic as it spells out the fact that man is utterly impotent of his own free will or ability to save himself and that God elects and effectually saves those whom He has chosen. One of the churches that I was a member of for a few years, Mt. Pisgah, founded in 1814, the church that sent out Southern Baptists first missionary to China, Matthew T. Yates, did not know of Christ dying for every one. The Articles of Faith speak only of Christ dying for the Church..

On that committee were two men who affected me greatly. The first named member after Chairman Rice was Hezekiah Harmon, a veteran of he American Revolutionary War who was converted near the time of the Second Great Awakening (1798). Elder Harmon would found the Gum Springs Baptist Church in 1829 (3 years before his death) which I would pastor from 1972-1983. Another member of the committee, unnamed, but identified by office, the clerk of the association, was Basil Manly, Sir., born 1-29-1798. He would go on to pastor the FBC of Charleston from about 1825-1836, suggest the founding of the seminary in 1835 in a publication, I think it was called, The Southerner Intelligencer. In 1857,58,59, he would serve as President of the Educational Conventions which would organize and establish Southern Seminary. He served as firt Presidnt of the Board of Trustees, his son, Jr., would draw up the Abstract of Principles with the help of Rev. A.M. Poindexter which express quite clearly at least two of the doctrines of the Sandy Creek Articles of 1816 albeit with somewhat different wording. O yes, on 1-29-1975, I would preach the chapel service at SEBTS on the subject of A Great Awakening, Ephs.5:14, not knowing that I was bringing a Sovereign Grace Message on the 177 anniversary of the founders birth.

By 1888 a minister in North Carolina woul preach a sermon against predestination which would draw a response from (I think it was) the editor of the Biblical Recorder (Rev. Benji Ramsaur (sp?) is the source of my knowledge of this) who suggested the fellow needed to go to Southern and get a better understanding of the truth. I should mention here that Boyce’s theology is clearly Sovereign Grace or Calvinistic. He apparently was quite charitable in spirit and disposition with those who had not yet accepted such views. Indeed, I think I know of at least one I who remained what some would call Arminian all of his life. In any case, I took notes on the biography of one Southern Baptist who was converted under Sovereign Grace ministers and whose funeral many years later was preached by a Sovereign Grace minister, and he remained your typical Southern Baptist minister, knowing little of Sovereign Grace, that we find especially in the 20th century.

But prayers have been going up for many years. I know I have been praying for a Third Great Awakening since 1973, one that will win the whole world and every soul in it and continue for a total of at least a 1000 generations. And when I say win, I mean by gentle persuasion, by truth, by legitimate means of conviction and conversion….not manipulation or force. I know of one pastor who has been praying for such revival since the 1950s. That there has been an increase in Sovereign Grace believers and a renewal in so-called calvinism should come as no surprise, if that is the theology that produced the first two Awakenings and the Great Century of Missions and America with its ideals and freedoms which we now seem to be in the process of losing. People fussed about Calvinism back in the 1700s and all the while the Awakenings were taking place and more.The very Calvinists about which there was so much fussing were the ones who secured Religious Liberty, united the Separate and Regular Baptists, won General Baptists over to Particular Redemption with the result tht 46 years later that group also experienced the Second Great Awakening. Dr. Bill Leonard of Wake Forest Divinity School gave an address on the period in the 1700s and noted the fussing, especially from the angle of an Episcopalian of that day. It was funny, all that fussy and the fussers were out securing religious liberty, uniting groups, converting groups, launching missions, and establishing educational institutions. Could it be that the fussing just indicated that they were alive andthigs were going well with the freedom to fuss?

Last, I must add that there is something about the so-called doctrines of grace that enable people to become balanced, flexible, creative, and magnetic. The tension between Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility produced in the human mind is not an undesirable one, but one that enables the person to be flexible, balanced, creative. It gives a sense of maturity and magnetisim that draws others to the wholesomeness which Sovereign Grace produces in the recovered sinner. It is what John Newton called, Amazing Grace, and he was quite clear about it that he meant Sovereign Grace. As the lady said to a friend of mine named Spurgeon, “O it was so wonderful, I could not resist it.” If we are to have another such Awakening then it follows we need the truths that poduce such a visitation, truths which make people responsible and persevering. Gloria in excelsis Deo!

Great history, Dr. Willingham.

I just began reading J. Gresham Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism. The first paragraph of the first chapter made me think “SBC”. Not sure why.

I was thinking as I reread some of these posts, is unity really possible? My conclusion is: we talk about the kind of unity we should have in a local church and want to transfer that to a national convention.

I don’t see that as leading to anywhere but where we are. We will argue that we are a bottom-up organization but we seem to be run like a top-down corporation.

What if we severely limited the amount of business done at the national level to just one mission agency (IMB) and Disaster Relief. Let everything else be funded and controlled at the Associational level without State Conventions.

The unity issue would be driven down to the church level and might actually have a chance.

There’s simply two many heads on this one body for there to be the kind of unity the Bible speaks about.

Unity is not something we can produce by wishing; it takes prayer, pain (the pain of study of the revealed evidence and the pain of change to conform to the demands of revelation), working through differences in a process fraught with difficulties and dangers. Our history points to the way we can tackle the problems of differences. Consider how so many have so many views. One example has been te hierarchical principle. I have read where there are people who think we are to have a hierarchy, a ruling body of clergy organized in orders or ranks each subordinate to the one above it. Unless I miss my guess that is Roman Catholicism Anglicanism, and/or even Methodism. The Presbyterians have their synods and etc. But the Baptists are supposed to be congregational which means every member is an equal, and the Lord chose to use a term which clearly implies that each member is an equal, namely, the ekklesia, the term for the governing body of a Greek city-state. Every citizen of that particular city-state was a member of the ekklesia, the governing bdy, and each member had a right to participate in te discussions and debates, to propose legislation, to be elected to positions of leadership, and etc. In that day, only the me were the citizens (I suspect this had to do with the fact that they provided for the common defense. The church added females and considered them as members and provided for their participation. Phoebe was elected as a deacon (the term is masculinein the Greek), a servant of the church of Cenchrea (Roms.16:1). Eldresses are mentioned even if they seem limited to ministering to women, and desiring the office of elder is not put in masculine terms but in gender neutral terms just as salvation is. The issue is one of the the sore spots that needs to be worked throuh…not in secrecy but in open debate and discussion, in careful examinations andpresentations of the evidence for and against such practices. The founding pastor of the Pilgrims, John Robinson asked, “Who knows what new light is gettng ready to break forth from God’s word?” Within 20 years the light of religious liberty broke forth in the new world, an the Baptists in Rhode Island began the effort to establish it by law. Religious liberty was heresy with most Christians in that day. The fact that we have succeeded ought to give every reader of this blog pause for thought. If most of he believers 400 years ago could not see religious liberty, what is it in the word of God that we do not see today.

How about the problem of religious differences on salvation by Grace. Each person thinks he or she is right. I can well remembermy pastor saying in response to my request to discuss the issue of Calvinism with him (a Ph.D. from Bob Jones whose Doctoral Dissertation was on the subject “Messianic Expectations Among the Nations” and who had studied Greek for seven years) and his blunt reply, “You don’t know enough to discuss it.” He wouldnot discuss the issue with me, and yet he ordained me we I did not give the standard answer on orignal sin. He asked, “What does the Bible teach about original sin?” I answered, “Which answer do you want? There are six views!” I had in mind the six positions discussed in A.H. Strong’s Systematic theology which I had outlined along with three or four other works before my ordination. Dr. Campbell replied, “Don’t be a smart alec, Jim!” A few minutes later he tripped me up with a question that brought a gasp and then laughter from the assembld ministers of the Fee Fee Baptist Association, the association of St. Louis Baptist in Missouri as it was called at that time. On the ordaining counsel were several leading ministers, including my Bible teacher from St.Louis Baptist College, Dr. W.L. Muncey, Jr., a former professor at Central Baptist Seminary in Kansas City, the author of books on evangelism and stewardhip, and the father of five sons who were also ministers.

Dr. Campbell and the ministers did not feel turned off by my answers. They ordained me at the request of the Pilot Knob Baptist Church of Belle, Mo. Within a year after of my ordination, I had come to believe the doctrine of original sin from the Federal and/or Augustinian position. Pastoring a Baptist church led me to see what a Puritan, David Clarkson, had to say about Original Sin was the truth, namely, that man was fallen and helpless and hopeless in sin. Only a Sovereign God, the Lord Jesus Christ, was equal to the occasion. Only He had the power and the will to save filthy, depraved, and wretched sinners.

There being such a disagreement among ministers, there is bound to be controversy. The easy thing to do is to split, and sometimes that is best. The most difficult thing to do is to try and work through the differences to get at the truth as it is in Christ Jesus in His Holy Word. And that is the rub. I once served as one of the group leaders in a race relations conference designed to implement integration on a massive scale in Orangeburg, SC. That was in the Fall of 1970. One of the tools for helping people to learn to grasp and understand was the Johari Window. Four areas or panes are involved. One section involves wat you want to project and what you want others to perceive. The second is the section which people perceive which is more than you want them to perceive. There is the part of the window tht you don’t want them to perceive. Finally, there is that part which neither you nor they perceie about yourself. Using that we managed to help a group of white and black teenagers get a grip upon understanding one another enough to be able to function in a newly integrated school.

I suggest that we need to use such tools, subject to the agape love, the more excellent way, which Brother David Miller has suggested is needed, to work out the differences so that we can learn to abide with one another. Sacrificial love is the essence of the way, and that means the way will not be cheap or easy. But it will be genuine. And there is a satisfaction in working through things the right way, a sense of accomplishment, of creativity, of success.

We really need to maintain this huge force, the largest in America and perhaps in the world as far as Protestants are concerned. We cn do it, if Separates and Regulars could unite, if General Baptists could be persuaded to adopt a Particular Redemption view point, if calvinistic theology could be the chief factor in two great awakenings, the launching of the Great Century of Missions, in employing educated and uneducated ministers together in God’s service, in beginning one of the early protests against slavery (the Friends of Humanity – which unfortunately did not last very long or accomplish much good), in securing religious liberty, and more, much more. Let us care for one another, pray for one another, be patient with one another, while trying to maintain our beliefs as we understand them, but allowing for the possibility that we can misperceive, misunderstand, and even get many facts wrong. A friend of mine, a Spurgeon no less, took about 40 years to change his mind on the issue of irresistible grace. Better by far to have him take as long as necessary to change his mind. After all, these are eternal matters, and being so they are fraught with the possibilities of great dangers and great delights. Do research, gentlemen. Researc the Bible, first. That is primary and foremost. Next research Baptist History. See how they carried things out, how they learned to work together. It is a great history. Yes, it has its sad moments. Slavery and segregation are two very sore issues in the life of our churches across four centuries. How to deal with those with whom we disagree is another. The South Africans have left us the example of at least trying to reconcile matters in their Reconciliation Commissions. I wept, when I heard them say in programs that were filmedthat they could not forgive in some cases. Hw grea it was to consider that they even tried. But there were those who did and grief turns to joy at the thought, for that is the message of the Christian Faith. God bless David for trying and all who discuss even if you disagree.