The Pastor’s Conference is the largest and easiest target around. Make all SBCers happy? Sort of like making all of your church members happy. Not a snowflake’s chance in Gehenna of that.
Back when Adrian Rogers would always close the Pastor’s Conference it was a thrilling event indeed. Not so much now. Dave Miller and his gang had the last, best PC. It was innovative, focused on the ordinary SBC pastor rather than celebrities, an authentic grassroots enterprise. It was that PC, one should remember, that actually took money and gave it to a number of pastors who couldn’t afford to attend the convention. Contrast that to whatever the megacelebs will be paid, honorarium plus expenses, for coming to Orlando. This is routine and typical. I know how the system works.
But I understand that the PC is partly a platform for introducing (uh, promoting?) personalities for elective SBC offices and those who like to work behind the scenes to give “turns” to up and coming SBC personalities would be loath to see the demise of the PC. It’s also a pretty good time to merchandise stuff.
I skipped about a quarter century’s PCs until Dave Miller’s in 2017. Don’t know that I missed anything. (And it still rankles me that the PC takes sponsorship money from the shoebox ministry so they can promote their competitive alternative to Lottie Moon, and in our own venue. Disgraceful.)
If the pastors want to have a pastor’s conference in conjunction with the SBC Annual Meeting, let them find their own venue and make it a completely separate event.
This year’s PC is officially controversial at this early stage. Too bad. The last thing we need in the SBC is five months of online fulminations. Have you ever seen the announcement of speakers followed so quickly by negative reaction and the PC president having to address the concerns? Well, yes. Last year’s PC had a controversy. Sounds like a pattern. It’s a long time until June. It can’t be good to have this much rancor about it in February.
[I am not opposed to the speaker who seems to be the focus of the controversy. I know nothing of her. It’s Al Mohler who says that his personal opinion is that “pastor” is both office and function, function and office. Many agree with him on this and I’d guess that if he speaks to the PC matter we would be in for some greater difficulty. My view is that the BFM “office of pastor” is senior pastor, not all of the sub-pastors and staff. Many of us disagree with one another here on that. Is this cause for not cooperating? Not in my view.]
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Resolutions? I’m told that “the SBC” needs to speak to this or that and, thus, resolutions at the annual meeting are very important. I’m inclined to think that they do more harm than good, witness 2017 and last year. I expect this year to make it a trifecta. Even if we get it right it still a hot mess and we lose.
The system that crams the time for resolutions into a tiny window, late in the convention, then cuts off debate and pass resolutions en masse with little discussion is ridiculuous. This makes us feel like the actual Convention, those assembled thousands of messengers, are merely an inconvenience to the Resolutions Committee appointed by fiat by the SBC President. Seems like the presidents have been very careful in composing this committee. Still, it hasn’t worked out so well. We might declare that a resolution is merely an expression of opinion of the group assembled at that moment but that’s not what the world sees, nor what most Southern Baptists see. Now, we’ve got state conventions passing resolutions against the SBC’s resolutions. What a mess.
Maybe the moderates have this right. They don’t do resolutions at their annual meeting.
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After all these years, and my first convention was 1982, I’m not optimistic about substantial changes being made. We managed to shorten the convention up to a two-day meeting but don’t know if that has helped anything.
And, we were wondering what could possibly bump CRT/I off of the front burner, even for a short time. Looks like we found what could. Sex abuse and CaringWell? A distant memory.
We can do better.
Bad choice of personalities for PC.
Would prefer not to get into a lot of bashing here. Thanks
Anyone interested in Ms. Wong’s confession of faith can see it at https://eastlake.church/staff/hosanna-wong/. Anyone interested in hearing her “sermons” can hear her on YouTube. What she believes and what she does should give us some idea of what we might expect her to say and do at the PC.
To have a speaker at a conference for pastors in the SBC should give consideration at least to the BFM. I’ve attended two PC in my years and the non-SBC speakers were not from churches heterodox to the BFC. To make claim that she will be more of a “special music” guest than an extemporaneous preacher is a dismissive statement and a cover up to distract the fact that she is a “teaching pastor” at her church. This is a passive endorsement and a risky path.
Would you prefer messages similar to that of Brother Sam Cathey back in the ’80’s ?
Like “…jack up hell and put a stump under it”? Maybe they could work one in like that.
Yes. ….. and ‘ split hell wide open’
I was actually thinking of his most famous and arguably most convicting ” The Sin of Laying out of Church” ‘ Whooof …that’ll blow your doors off’ . Bro Sam said he preached it ….what?…..1700 times around the country.
Back in 1999 I had Sam Cathey for a Revival. I didn’t know him personally before that so to say I was a bit in awe and a bit fearful at the same time would be an understatement! We are going to lunch on Saturday and I asked him, “Bro. Sam are you going to preach tomorrow on “Forsaking the Sin of Church?” He said “Well I am going to preach but not what you just said!” He said, “I am going to preach on “The Sin of Forsaking Church!” We both laughed but I wanted to crawl under my… Read more »
Very close to “bashing”, my dear brothers.
Resolutions. Are. Useless.
Useless? Perhaps. Unimportant…or unrevealing? No.
Res 9 revealed a lot.
I think if I were to try and gather up all of the sources of disagreement in SBC life, I would say that there seems to be a spirit of trying to get our 45k churches and 16M members of SBC churches to agree on too much and to project that unified image to the world that is believed to be a more positive one. It’s all well intentioned, but perhaps it’s doomed to cause strife. It’s one thing when denominational agencies project an image or position on an issue that does not fairly represent the grass roots. Previous examples… Read more »
I believe that 2 days for the Convention is right. We should have opening singing and a time of prayer and all the opening stuff with the host City. Follow that with presentations from the agencies. Each presentation should have a time for questions that are meaningful. With follow ups allowed. Then after hearing these reports we should adopt budgets to fund these agencies. Then after that, motions. As to Resolutions I don’t like them but there are going to be times when we are going to want to speak to things. IMO the Res Com should not be crafting… Read more »
I never thought I would see the day when Southern Baptists would welcome a preacher from a foursquare church to preach at its pastor’s conference. I’ve never had less confidence in the future of our convention than I do now.
This will be one of the final twigs that causes a fracture of the dromedary spine. Individually, some of these recent events would not amount to much. Collectively, they will not be ignored. I was not planning on going to Orlando, but I will now attend and make sure to represent my church in taking a stand against what I believe is antithetical to Baptist beliefs.
I was there in the convention hall when resolution 9 was passed. The resolution should have been tabled period. Instead of leaving the convention unified we left divided. I plan on being in Orlando and hope this year we can leave united.
I’ve been a preacher all these years – and just found out I’m really a “spoken word artist.”
David R. Brumbelow
I don’t know anything about this woman who will speak artistic words. I wonder, though, why the planners would invite trouble and provoke controversy. Aren’t there enough qualified preachers in the SBC?
Drip drip eventually the bucket gets full and the split happens.
I am not a conspiracist, but there certainly seems to be an agenda that is being pushed from top-down.
Looks like she is no longer welcome.
Ooh, seems I heard wrong. =o)
I know the pastors conference is supposed to be a time for preaching. But how bad would it be to have a discussion of issues that the senior pastors would do well to be made aware? For instance, could a woman WMU lead or children’s ministry lead share their heart for ministry at a pastors conference? Could a youth pastor share theirs? Or do we really need nine more sermons on 2 Timothy 4:2?
Don’t have much on the line here because I don’t go to the conventions and I’m not a pastor, but Matt makes some sense here. Why not have a real conference, where real pastors talk about real pastor-ey stuff? Nothing wrong with sermons, but most of us here have heard thousands of sermons over our lifetime. Do you really need a few more?
I’m sure someone, somewhere has worked out a theologically correct argument citing the BFM2000 regarding why Beth Moore would not be welcomed to speak to a room full of SBC pastors because she is usurping the role of men according to strict and narrow Biblical interpretation, but “spoken word artist” Hannah Wong is welcome and would not somehow authoritatively be preaching to men. I see two speakers on the list whose preaching that I’ve heard and books I’ve read would not pass a test of consistency with the BFM2000. Personally, I don’t have a problem with a gathering that invites… Read more »
It was worse in the old days. “Baptist” pedigree was essential. Since the CR, the Convention has heard from more folks outside the SBC family. Many have been good. During the CR, it was great to hear Criswell, Rogers and others get everyone excited about making sure the seminaries, written materials etc. were sound. I also liked Dave Miller’s line up. I don’t think we should fear having non-Baptists speak. But because so many outspoken people have lost trust, it seems that the non-Baptist speakers are being seen as having been selected to send a signal, to weaken standards etc.… Read more »
The problem is that the SBC leadership has used the pastor’s conference to send signals, make recommendations and lay out personal agendas so much that it’s become the expectation.
Thanks for your thoughts on this William. I have not commented in quite a while, but I wanted to share a few things about this latest controversy. After a five-year hiatus from attending the SBC and Pastor’s Conference, I will be heading to Orlando this year. I have, for the most part, avoided SBC politics over the last few years. It becomes too distracting and unproductive for the most part. I have never heard of some of the speakers/musicians that are scheduled to be part of this year’s Pastor’s Conference. Without wading into the debate over women preaching/teaching in a… Read more »
Thank you Brother. Women are spiritually worth listening to! God forbid they are not considered worthy of many brethren’s critical Hearing theories. Again I say what would the non women speaking SBC sect do with Sister Lottie Moon if she came back for a SBC convention visit. Let us all be diligent in doing good according to our holy giftedness. God bless those who have ears and the courage to listen to our godly ladies.
I don’t know you Scott, but the spirit of your post is music to my ears. More of this spirit would so us all a wealth of good. In a world of some 45,000 SBC churches, there is never going to be a complete consensus this side of the New Jerusalem.
Thanks, Jimmy and Mitchel. I have been out of circulation for the last few years (self-imposed when I was serving at a different church), but I will probably stop by Voices from time-to-time. Might even contribute an article if Dave Miller and company will still allow it 🙂 If anything, the last three years of a tough ministry assignment before moving back to NM has taught me to be more charitable and grace-filled than ever before. Life is too short and souls too precious to be fighting over everything. That doesn’t mean we can’t have differing views within the SBC… Read more »
So it’s relatively new to me, but between all the fighting over whether women could preach at all, or on Sunday mornings, I didn’t realize that some southern Baptists pastors believe women could be pastor (so long as not senior pastor). Am I understanding this correctly? I thought they mostly all went CBF?
When I first started as a Pastor (circa 2005), I was token SBC. From Virginia, I was often at odds with the BGAV and the state newspaper at the time (The Religious Herald) over what I thought was a grave theological shift from moderate to liberal (I am conservative, the BGAV is largely moderate, the leadership continues to follow the path of the CBF). Since 2016 (the last SBC Meeting or PC I personally attended), I have grown more and more disillusioned with SBC life. This past year’s responses to issues such as the second coming of the complementarian/egalitarian debate,… Read more »