This is one of a series of posts about Baptist church polity (governance). I plan to write posts on the advantages and disadvantages of congregational church polity and elder polity. So, stay tuned for those. This post is just a rambling memoir of my personal experiences with the polity of SBC churches. Most of my experiences have been positive, but not all.
I began my paid service in Southern Baptist churches at age nineteen. I served as the Minister of Music and Youth at a church in Northeast Oklahoma. The church presented itself as a traditional congregational SBC church, and the congregation did vote on things. In reality, though, the church was controlled by its deacon chairman. He basically ran the church, and the members were content to let him. One issue that I had with him was about money, specifically money in the bank. All the older members of the church had lived through the Great Depression of the 1930s. They remembered the days when the church could not pay its bills, and bankruptcy was a real possibility. Because of that trauma, this deacon sought to accumulate as much money as possible in the bank. He, and indeed all the older members, feared an economic depression might return. Their response was to save as much money as possible for that rainy day. I argued in vain that the members gave money for ministry, not for savings. My pleas fell on deaf ears. They thought I could not understand because I did not live through the depression.
During my Master of Divinity studies at Southwestern Baptist Seminary, I served on a church staff in the DFW area. This church was run by the deacons. The previous senior pastor had no interest in church administration, and he let the deacons run the church. We had 45 active deacons, and their average age was 63. There was no deacon rotation plan. A deacon served as chairman of every church committee, even the flowers committee. Deacons comprised the majority of members on key church committees like finance and personnel. The senior pastor during my time tried to move the church to a healthier approach. He worked for a deacon rotation system and more non-deacon representation on church committees. As you might expect, there was considerable pushback from the deacons. They did not oppose the pastor much in the deacons’ meetings, but they would stay after and discuss things in the parking lot. The chairman of the deacons during my time was not a strong leader, and the church staff wondered who really exerted influence. Finally, a deacon who supported the pastor enlightened us. He said, “Notice that the men gather around the former chairman in the parking lot” (at the meeting after the meeting). Sure enough, he was right, and that former chairman adamantly opposed the senior pastor. At one point, I pointed out to the deacon chairman that the New Testament teaches that deacons are to serve the church, not rule it. He answered, “Those guys don’t care what the Bible says.” He spoke the truth, and, of course, their attitude was the main problem. The senior pastor won in the end. The church did finally approve a deacon rotation system, but the pastor and his family paid a great price.
Some years later, I served as the interim pastor of a county seat First Baptist Church in Kentucky. To an outside observer, the church practiced congregational polity, and in one way it did. The members voted on everything in the business meetings. However, only items approved by the deacons appeared on the business meeting agenda. Indeed, when the deacon chairman presented the deacons’ recommendations, no one was supposed to ask a question or make any comment. I recall one business meeting in which a new member asked the deacon chairman a question. The chairman was flustered at that and then obviously angry. The new member was surprised and embarrassed. He did not oppose the deacons’ recommendation; he was just curious about one aspect. Afterwards, an older member took the young man aside and explained that he was not supposed to speak in the business meeting. The chairman of the deacons served as chairman of the pastor search committee. Beyond that, when I left the church, the church secretary told me that the deacon chairman would come to the church office each week to inspect and approve the weekly church newsletter before it was mailed.
In my next post, I’ll discuss the pros and cons of elder polity for SBC churches. However, our Voices readers should understand that in many “congregational” SBC churches, the deacons functioned as the elders long before elder polity became popular in the SBC.
