(from the SBC Plodder) Here is an abstract of one of those Calvinist church situations that caused me to write an earlier piece on being wary of my five-pointer brethren – another place, I know some of the players, passed along to me by one close to the matter. Before anyone accuses me of making this stuff…you CAN’T make this stuff up. And, you can’t survive in the SBC without a sense of humor.
Good church calls Calvinistic pastor who proceeds to implement his vision of what the church should be.
Things don’t go well. Church declines. Pastor encouraged to leave.
He leaves…but not (as if anyone doubts what would come next) without taking a considerable crowd with him to a new work not too far away, demonstrating once again Southern Baptists’ preferred method of planting churches.
His church. His crowd. His thing…which includes a small group of men – the spiritually mature, long-awaited ELDERS. No more fooling around with the neophytes that fill the pews. Let the spiritual grown-ups handle church decisions.
Things are looking pretty good…until…
…the elders, the church sages, fire the pastor. [See the title of this piece.]
It gets better. Pastor has a Damascus Road re-conversion to congregational church governance, goes to the peasantry in the pews. Behold! Elders are fired…and go down the road to start their own work.
No, you can’t make this stuff up.
So, let’s have a hearty guffaw together…and then tell every search committee we can find that they better make a solid assessment of a prospective pastor’s Calvinistic leanings and intentions before he’s given the pulpit and put on the payroll.
Question: A considerable segment of informed SBC life has some degree of reservation about Calvinists? Why?