http://www.uu.edu/audio/Detail.cfm?ID=288

I live-blogged this event, and you can find my notes/outline from his message here:

http://timmybrister.com/2007/02/15/baptist-id-dr-mike-day-on-the-future-of-baptist-associations-and-state-conventions/

That’s really encouraging to hear. I am planning to revisit Mike Day’s presentation at the Baptist Identity II Conference held at Union University. His message was and still is perhaps the most important to date regarding associations and denominational redundancy.

The SBC is a convention of small churches pastored primarily by bi-vocational pastors. These pastors are called by God for the equipping of the saints for ministry. As thus, I think it makes sense that the SBC equip the pastors (including financially when appropriate) so that they can better equip the people. Ultimately, it should be that every church is self-supporting and self-reproducing, but that is not the case for most SBC churches. At the current rate, there are almost twice as many churches closing and dying as there are churches being planted. If that is the case, then that is a microcosm of the big picture of a dying convention. We need new life in the SBC, and I think it starts with taking a fresh look at why and how we do what we do.

I think you “spot on” with the need to support or bivocational pastors as many of them are struggling to “revitalize” small churches or “plant” new churches… the bivocational pastors are our “home missionaries” and should be recognized and supported as such.

Timmy, you and John Mark might be interested to know that “Homes Baptist Association” in Florida (my association) has dropped the DOM position and has replaced it with an Associational Missionary… we have said that we do not need a Director… we need a Missionary… We have just called our very first Associational Missionary who was serving as a Missionary in South America before we called him… Housing is provide by one of our churches and his salary is about half what some of the DOM’s from surrounding associations… I say all this because I think this is a model for the future of our associations.

Grace Always,

I have wondered for some time who came up with the idea of state conventions being the first to decide how much money they want to keep. It is not theirs to begin with! And they can arbitrarily decide to keep as much as they want?! I think a good idea might be to have a regional director of the IMB designated to the top 10 states in giving to the CP and let them decide how much should go directly to the mission field. For instance, Georgia (Pacific Rim), Alabama (Southeast Asia), Florida (Central Asia), North Carolina (Northern Africa and the Middle East), and so on. Imagine on average 61% instead going to world evangelization!

The deflating of the dollar is a big deal, and I don’t think we have paid enough attention to the recent consequences to that.

Also, I do think we need to remember there still is a great need here stateside. Our ability to send missionaries and support them will be dependent upon the health and growth of churches stateside. We need to continue to plant healthy, multiplying churches in North America that are more about building the kingdom of God than their own civic center.

What about those churches who, like mine, simply can’t afford to pay their pastor a decent salary? What about those churches consisting primarily of retirees with little or no pension? What about those churches consisting primarily of low- or no-income people?

If a pastor is forced to spend the majority of his time, whether by circumstance or by choice, in a second job in order to provide for his family, we can’t be judging his effectiveness in the “regular” ways. Not all bivocational pastors are blessed to be working directly with their target groups or church members.

If instead our state conventions were willing to use funding to support these pastors somewhat, so that some of the financial burden was removed, how much more ministry could these guys do? How much more time could they spend with their families? How much more time would they have for the personal spiritual growth from which they would teach their congregations?

I think a lot of pastors take convention jobs to try to make up for the 20-30 years of low pay from churches.

I think individual churches would need to be the ones to fund other pastors salaries. There is just not enough accountability for pastors built into a congregational system. It’s impossible to decide whether a pastor is doing a good job from a distance. That’s why conventions use pragmatic measurements.

Local pastors can say, hey we know this guy isn’t going to sit on his duff reading theology books all the time, but he’s going to do the hard work shepherding and missions, so we feel like we should support him. We’ve seen him at work and we know this about him.

The excuse you always hear when this subject is brought up is that because of the “autonomous” nature of SBC Churches we can’t have a real group insurance policy.

I know some pastors who are serving in remote areas whose families are not covered by any kind of health insurance. That should never happen in a convention of churches with the kind of CP resources we have.

It is sad that so much of our “missions” money stays right here in the US, the most evangelized country on earth. Meanwhil approx. 1.6 billion people have no access to the gospel. I agree that the problem is not that we do not have the money, we are ineffective in what we do have. The state convention keep way too much money and it is unfortunate. BTW, Tim you do have the best blog out there, IMO. You have relevant topipcs in addition to great pics. Thanks for all you do to keep it going !

Perhaps pastors are lazy. Perhaps missionaries overseas are lazy. But it is also possible that pastors here encounter the same difficulty in some contexts (say Northeast or Pacific Northwest) as missionaries do in frontier regions of the world. To determine whether a pastor is worthy of being funded on a pragmatic scale would seem harsh (assuming that is the only criteria). How much money are we spending on agenda’s and projects that have little to no kingdom impact? God is building His church. God has appointed men to lead, pastor, shepherd these churches. If we can financially support them and empower them, then I think we should make that our #1 priority, not sophisticated church growth strategies, tangential conferences, or other forms of unnecessary overhead.

Regarding SBTS, you would be surprised how little I know. In fact, I can say that I have virtually no “insider knowledge.”

The bottom line for me is that I am looking seriously at the CP and what we are doing with it for the first time in my life. I am asking myself hard questions and want to know what we are doing with “God’s money.” I publicly share my thoughts assuming that others might be asking the same questions. I mean, if the future generations of the SBC are going to remain, it must be convictional and no longer superficial. I want to be a supporter of the CP with full conviction and a clear conscience. Right now, my conscience is pricked. Knowing that many Southern Baptists give sacrificially to support the cause of missions and the propagation of the gospel, I think it is important to get a better understanding of what $537 million a year does for the kingdom of God.