Listen @ 24 minutes: http://www.portermemorial.net/Audio2008/092808am.mp3

Great to hear from you (long time!). Yeah, SBC is currently experiencing hyper-autonomy. We hide behind certain beliefs to justify the others we don’t practice, kind of like trading sinners for others that are easier to hide (lyrics from Derek Webb).

Greg,

According to the CT article, that is what Orman said. I agree that the “powers that be” need to be reminded that they are denominational *servants* who exist for the churches, not vice versa. We have provided so many political pulpits within the bureaucracy that it gives voice to people who, while making an argument for autonomy, are in that very assertion rejecting it in the process. The result is, as you said, no accountability to the churches or the convention which they represent.

Andrew,

I have written a post that I have kept in draft mode about ways to stop the “graying of the SBC” that I might post sometime next week. It was Timothy George who said a couple of decades ago that replace on bureaucracy with another a reformation does nto make. The fundamental problem with the SBC is we have assumed, and quickly forgotten the gospel. The fact that we have severed cooperation on such trivial matters show how far we have strayed from the center, and the splintering we see today is a branch that has been detached from the vine.

Guillaume,

Indeed, it is good to hear from you again. I hope all is well there in Vermont. Do keep in touch my friend.

What do you think will end this graying and factional fundamentalism we have been seeing in the past few years? Please read my latest posts on this subject and then give me your comments.

By the way, I agree that the heart of the matter may lie in the bureaucracy and establishment we have created….

1. Those who worship at “The Alter of Numbers” will never embrace the resolution on regenerate church membership. It is against their religion to do so…

2. Did the chairman of the Resolutions Committee actually say that the Churches “can’t tell us what to do!”?

If so, then that sounds like something John Sullivan told me in an email a few year ago concerning the Baptist Churches of Florida… John told me that “the churches need to remember that the Florida Baptist Convention is Autonomous also.”

Sounds like the Convention Powerbrokers want Autonomy for themselves (no accountability)… yet at the same time they wish to force their personal convictions upon just about everyone else in the Convention.

Please keep ringing the bell Timmy: they are counting on everyone getting tired of talking about these issues and moving on… leaving their “arbitrary requirements” for participation in the Convention in place.

Until these “arbitrary / extra-biblical requirements” for participation are removed we must be willing to continue to speak out against them.

Grace Always,

*Letitia*

Well, the same argumentation was trotted out after Greensboro by the (then) Joshua Convergent guys. Three years and still no validation. Furthermore, I am not sure how this article write up can be considered news. Whoever reported this did not cite a speech or event in which these comments were made; furthermore, it appears that it was written short-hand. But that aside, the merits of Caner’s claims are a perspective he finds on Liberty mountain; so if that it is what he finds, it is under his own nose and not the reality across the SBC. The entitlement mentality would exist if younger Southern Baptists found pulpits and ministries attractive. But they are finding that (and their heroes) elsewhere, and that is why you didn’t find them in Indy.

Great thoughts!

Along these lines is a short news story about Ergun Caner who is said to “Chastise Young Southern Baptists.” I have yet to find the reasoning behind this report or the context. It certainly does show a hierarchical division of sorts in the SBC though.

Kevin G, it’s good to”see” you in the blog-o-sphere. We need to catch up.

Mark