I’m looking forward to the final Great Commission Resurgence Task Force (GCRTF) report coming in a few days. If the widespread and differing reactions to their initial progress report were any indication, we Southern Baptists will have a lot to discuss in the next month or two! But I would like to consider a potential red herring in our discussions that I have seen pop up a time or two in the different reactions I have read to the initial report, and that undoubtedly will reappear once the final report comes out.
This “red herring” that appears is the response of some that “Well, the problems of the SBC are primarily spiritual, not structural. Therefore, why is the Task Force recommending all these structural changes?” If allowed to, this line of thinking effectively kills the discussion for several reasons. First, who is going to deny that any problems currently in our convention aren’t primarily spiritual? I doubt there are any people (even the most dedicated to the SBC) who think that everything in our convention is at the right place spiritually and that we have no room for correcting spiritual issues as individuals and churches and in our convention as a whole.
The second reason this line of arguing kills discussion about our convention’s future is that it denies the GCRTF (and those messengers and entities considering their recommendation) the opportunity to do the one thing it actually is able to do. After all, didn’t the messengers in 2009 overwhelmingly authorize a GCRTF to look at the way we operate as a convention and make recommendations regarding how to better work towards obeying the Great Commission together? I believe the actual words were:
“Moved: That the Southern Baptist Convention, meeting June 23-24, 2009 in Louisville, Kentucky, authorize the President of the Southern Baptist Convention to appoint A Great Commission Task Force charged to bring a report and any recommendations to the Southern Baptist Convention, meeting in Orlando, Florida, June 15-16, 2010, concerning how Southern Baptists can work more faithfully and effectively together in serving Christ through the Great Commission.”
And since their work involves items “concerning how Southern Baptists can work…”, haven’t they been asked to concern themselves with structural issues? In effect, this distraction says, “We authorized the GCRTF to look at structural issues in the SBC and make recommendations. But we believe the problems are spiritual, not structural. So basically we wasted the convention’s resources authorizing a task force to do something we don’t think needs to be nor can be done.”
The third reason this line distracts from the importance of the discussions is that we all know that a Task Force cannot solve spiritual problems. Last time, I checked, there was a Holy Spirit responsible for moving in the hearts of God’s people and fixing “spiritual problems.” And as much respect as I have for many of the godly people on the Task Force and in SBC life in general, none of them are the Holy Spirit. The Task Force cannot make Southern Baptists daily pursue the Lord Jesus, care for the lost world around them, or live a sacrificial life that eliminates unnecessary expenses and frees up resources to take the Gospel to the nations. But a Task Force could observe the way we are currently partnering to do these things and see if they could be done better. If we as a convention don’t believe structural elements of our cooperation are important, then why did we ever come together as a convention in 1814, why did we re-structure our work to make the original Cooperative Program in 1925, and why do we constantly praise God for the successes of our “structure” that have freed our missionaries to reach the nations for decades without having to come home and exhaust themselves begging for money?
The fourth reason the “spiritual vs. structural” debate is unhelpful here is that in their initial report, the GCRTF spent a great amount of time addressing “spiritual” problems. In fact, that is one component that found a lot of agreement, even if people differed greatly on the more structural components of the report. To simply end discussion by saying the problem is spiritual not structural is to act as if you noticed something the Task Force overlooked, thus allowing you to dismiss their ideas without thinking through them. And they didn’t overlook it.
The fifth (and final) reason this argument harms our work as a convention in this day and age is that it ignores the fact that however you theologically reconcile God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility, we all believe God uses means to accomplish his purposes. We all shower and brush our teeth, and don’t expect God to just make us smell “purdy.” We believe in verbally sharing the Gospel so God can save people. We believe that reaching the nations involves actual people getting on actual planes aided by some form of actual funding to cross actual oceans and actual rivers and actual mountain passes to learn an actual language to share an actual message about an actual Savior with actual lost people. And since it involves doing these actual, real-world kind of things to see actual spiritual problems addressed, then we can actually consider how the structure we use to send these people with the Gospel might be improved to do these things in greater measure.
So what’s the solution? Don’t allow this red herring (and any others) to distract you from thinking about our convention. View the final GCRTF report coming in a few days for what it is. It is a report on “how Southern Baptists can work more faithfully and effectively together in serving Christ through the Great Commission.” It will involve “structural” recommendations by default. Does that mean you have to agree with them? No! The more penetrating questions that are asked about these recommendations the better we will be in the long run. But don’t opt out of the discussion with the excuse that the problems are primarily spiritual, not structural. To do so is to imitate King Saul sitting under a tree staring at an ephod while his son Jonathan went and used his actual sword to defeat actual Philistines. We have a far greater battle involving the Gospel of Christ winning hearts of sinful men back from the enemies of sin, death, and the devil. Let us consider how we as cooperating churches might engage the battle more effectively.
While I understand your point, don’t you agree that it can be foolhardy to do something just because it is your control to do it? If you are not a good driver, junking your car and buying a new one is not going to make you any better. If the problems are spiritual, then the best way “Southern Baptists can work more faithfully and effectively together in serving Christ through the Great Commission” is to find a way to address the spiritual problems. Not by destroying our missions structure and starting over just because it is in our power to do so.
Robin,
I agree that just because the Task Force can recommend structural changes, that it doesn’t necessarily mean they should (in the case that there are no problems with our cooperation as is) or that necessarily the final recommendations they will give are the correct ones for problems in the cooperation structure we might all agree exist. I think that second area is where most of the discussions following next Monday will lie. Most would agree things could be done better, but they will be weighing whether the proposals will be an improvement. For all I know, I may see the final report and hate it.
The issue I wanted to deal with above is that just because problems are primarily spiritual doesn’t mean they are only spiritual. I want people to evaluate the GCRTF recommendations based on the areas they were authorized to look at (how we cooperate, namely). If it passes or fails, I want it to do so because of good evaluation on what it deals with, which is primarily the structural side of this needed resurgence.
It is not a red herring when the primary problem is spiritual. Just look at the obession some have against Driscoll, and others with Canur. Change it all you want, but basically SBC’ers hate each other.
Jeff,
I disagree with the notion that most SBC’ers “hate” each other, although I agree with you that too often we talk about people rather than about their ideas and beliefs.
I also think the point of the post was not to dispel the existence of a spiritual problem, but to suggest that the spiritual problem not become the focus as we discuss what is basically a conversation about denominational structure and the proper division of money and tasks.
By the way, as long as one accepts the spiritual gift of administration, these stewardship matters can also be considered spiritual, in a sense.
The elephant in the room, for me, is the original “bloated bureaucracy” charge, later withdrawn, but only in the way that an attorney shares something in a courtroom he wants the jury to hear. It may be ruled out of order, but everyone still heard the allegation.
I agree with the main post that this is a conversation about pie charts, tasks and money distribution channels. It is about structure. It is about organization. While I do not accept the premise of a bloated bureaucracy, I do question whether or not the proposals would simply replace one “so-called” bloated bureaucracy with another.
“I also think the point of the post was not to dispel the existence of a spiritual problem, but to suggest that the spiritual problem not become the focus as we discuss what is basically a conversation about denominational structure and the proper division of money and tasks. ”
I think that nails the author’s intent pretty much.
For all,
For those who may wish to discuss the people Jeff mentioned in detail, that in no remote way is the subject for this particular post and discussion board, so let’s not go down that trail!
Thanks!
The SBC requires .. REQUIRES .. a couple of things of churches, to be SBC churches. The cooperation and the CP giving deal. So while it’s still supposed to be a bottom-up kind of organization, there ARE some things the Convention CAN require of local churches.
The SBC and some of its entities continue to boast of 16 million members. Privately, they joke that we can’t find half of them, and attendance probably truly runs about 30% of membership. Any way you slice it, the SBC churches overall have done a lousy job of discipling the people God HAS sent our way.
Unless we are looking at this thing as a pyramid marketing scheme, it’s God’s movement that brings blessing and increase to organization, and hence this is ABOVE ALL a spiritual problem.
It is not a “red herring” in any way, shape, form, etc. And if this terrible discipleship record isn’t corrected, I see no hope for and heavenly favor upon us.
It is ironic that the organization is built on conformance to two standards unrelated to the Great Commission. Friendly cooperation and Money. Yet we require no accountability for discipleship whatsoever. And celebrate “members” we cannot even find.
We’re told to respect and obey our spiritual leaders, as folks who will be called to give an account for our souls. What’s going to happen when those leaders cannot give an account for our being discipled, or even for our whereabouts?
“Unless we are looking at this thing as a pyramid marketing scheme, it’s God’s movement that brings blessing and increase to organization, and hence this is ABOVE ALL a spiritual problem.”
I don’t disagree with that at all, and if you read the very first argument in the post, I think you’ll see the agreement that our convention’s primary problems are spiritual.
The red herring issue is that the things you call for can only be done at a local church level and are not the purpose of the GCR Task Force. We’re not episcopal in government; our denominational leaders can’t go around replacing church leaders that don’t clean their rolls. The SBC has passed resolutions acknowledging the bloated statistic problem (2008, I believe?) and calling for churches to change, but each local church still is autonomous. If we evaluate the TF’s work based on elements that they have no control over, we are being distracted from its purpose.
God will hardly bless our collective efforts if He doesn’t bless our individual efforts, and for the Task Force to make no mention whatsoever of the biggest failure among SBC churches is, to me, unthinkable. And if we don’t take steps to resolve that, then re-arranging the distribution of money, or re-arranging “denominational” responsibilities”, is tantamount to re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
They might have mentioned a call for accountability from churches, for making disciples. Establish some sort of standards. Something.
Again.. the view seems to be that we need to make structural changes to bring about better results, when the truth is if we don’t please God, we cannot expect His blessing on us. And bragging about millions of members who have no real connection to our church MUST be repulsive to God.
And nobody cares.
Sad.
The Task Force does not need to recommend anything regarding “Regenerate Church Membership” as a similar motion was just passed in 2008 by the Convention as a whole. Read http://www.sbc.net/resolutions/amResolution.asp?ID=1189.
To say “nobody cares. sad.” is to ignore what many have said and worked hard to pass as a resolution in 2008.
I like the arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic idea. We don’t have a real , good , Leader in the SBC. Nobody who doesn’t have a phoney title that can do the job, or traded cars thru the ministry or whose Father was really important but the offspring can’t do their jobs. We’re not short of intelligent Godly people we just can’t get them into leadership roles not because of Calvinism or Armineism (spelling) but because they don’t belong to the club and don’t subscribe to “going along to get a long”. A Marine Corp Officer told some people the other day on the web why he respected their right to speak but couldn’t risk his career by listening. Folks, people are leaving our churchs without making a speech for much the same reasons and theirs nobody for them to turn to. They don’t want their children taught by people who are shacking up, or won’t take a background check or say they don,t want to attend church with “niggers”. As the churchs reduce, the pool of qualified leaders is reduced. There is a fix. But it is not the Status Quo.
I’m not really sure how everything in that comment fits with what you are trying along the leadership point you started off with. I think you’re saying that racism is one of the problems if I read you charitably, though your writing is a bit unclear, but (for my sake and for others who might be offended) we don’t need to repeat racial slurs in the comment thread to make our points, even if we’re just trying to show some of the terrible things that do still happen in some of our churches.
Thanks.
They don’t want their children taught by people who are shacking up,
So, you’re saying they shouldn’t have a problem with someone having a leadership position in a church when they are living in open, unrepentant sin? Seriously, you think THAT is not a problem?
Great post! Not only is the structural v. spiritual a false dichotomy, the two are actually linked in some ways. If we are presented with a structural reality (e.g. we spend 37x more to reach the American than the African and we have many more local churches here) that indicates we should make changes to get the gospel to those who have little/no gospel access and we do nothing, our lack of response to the structural issue suddently becomes spiritual. We are to do all things to the glory of God and this must certainly include how/where/why we invest our tithes and offerings.
http://plammer.blogspot.com/2010/02/fabricated-false-dichotomies.html
Josh,
I was there when the motion was passed. I was there when the “corporate repentance amendment” was added. In fact, I was there in 2007 when the motion, made that year by Tom Ascol, did not pass.
I was in line to speak to the motion when time was called.
Two observations about that: one is, where are the big changes? I don’t know of any churches that did what the motion proposed, and the numbers reported certainly don’t reflect that anything changed.
Second, from what I could tell, the motion passed maybe 60/40 .. so I’m guessing that lots of pastors didn’t want to have to do anything about it.
Last point: this is almost like a business, where people formulate and institute plans to produce desired results. That’s certainly not in line with “some plant, some water, but God gives the increase”. And if the SBC is not willing to deal with the failure of discipleship in the churches, how can we expect God to do that?
But I confess I never went to any kind of bible school or seminary .. and in fact, flunked out of my first year of college. Mine are just opinions from a guy in a pew.
-30-
If the deck chairs represent access to the gospel, and the world is the Titanic with a cluster of chairs in one place on the deck (say, the SE US) and virtually zero in many other places, then I desperately wish to see more deck chairs spread across the deck so people of all tribes and tongues and languages can sit and rest in the grace of God – these are mighty important chairs we are talking about.
Bob Cleveland wrote:
‘But I confess I never went to any kind of bible school or seminary .. and in fact, flunked out of my first year of college. Mine are just opinions from a guy in a pew.’
And yet he makes more sense than many ‘in leadership’.
The gifts, when given out, disregard ‘politics’.
When you get someone with the gifts of a Bob Cleveland, hear him.
At least, hear him.
People in the pew are what we are short of and if we can’t voice the reasons for failure as we Witness them because someone might be offended, then how do we plan to cure them? Has anybody talked to medical doctors, college presidents or preachers who are black? They’re not shy and neither am I. I’m sorry if the sight of “blood” offends someone but I can help with the problem.
I didn’t have any problem with your “voicing the reasons for failure as we witness them”. I just politely asked you to find alternative ways to state the problem since this is a public forum. I also worry that because your writing style often lacks clarity, some people might read your previous comment as suggesting you thought racial integration in churches was the problem in the SBC; I charitably assumed that you were referring to those opposed to racial reconciliation as a problem.
on a different note, I don’t think the problem is lack of people in the pew. In my view, the primary purpose of the GCR should not be to bring more people in to the churches, but take more churches out to the peoples (of the world).