Who’ll pick next SBC leaders? [Southern Baptist post-convention coverage]

Last week’s Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Louisville, Ky., offered a glimpse into the future — the not-so-distant future. The aging leadership of the SBC, including the Executive Committee and the various entity heads, are acknowledging that their days until retirement are numbered. Some statistics suggest they perhaps should be concerned about leaving the convention in worse shape than they found it.

For the most part, these are the same leaders that came onto the scene after self-described conservatives swept aside an old guard of denominational leaders in the years following 1979. They signed inerrancy statements testifying to their commitment to the Bible and required their staffs and trustees to do the same. Overseas missionaries were given the chance to sign, resign or face dismissal.

Finally, many claimed, Southern Baptists were back on the right track and soon the wisdom of a “conservative resurgence” would be evident in accelerated baptism numbers and missions efforts and support. Bloated bureaucracies would be streamlined and made more efficient, and a newer, better Southern Baptist train would pull out of the denominational station. It would be so much better that everyone would want to get on board.

Agencies were merged, and seminaries purged liberal professors and replaced them with inerrantists. Women on faculties were relieved of teaching male students, lest they exercise authority over them. Some were assigned to teach seminars and courses to female spouses. Relieved of their class loads, others were no longer needed.

Some of these formerly bloated seminaries then began to expand, adding college-level programs with degrees. That suited many of the faithful, whose mistrust of Baptist colleges automatically labeled their graduates — especially seminary-bound ministers — as theologically suspect.

Before long, though, it became clear that not every seminary was on the same page. The rank-and-file learned that students didn’t go to seminary simply to understand the Bible better; they were learning theology. And theology comes in different flavors, one of which is Reformed theology, or Calvinism. The theology of John Calvin became the theology of choice at some seminaries, certainly not in others. After awhile, it became obvious that seminary presidents and other top leaders were no longer in lockstep.

This year in Louisville, president Johnny Hunt, senior pastor of First Baptist Church, Woodstock, Ga., a mega-church, criticized the waning baptism statistics in the convention. He actually started last year when he was first elected in Indianapolis. He called for another resurgence and gave it a biblical name — the Great Commission Resurgence — this one to evaluate the performance of SBC entities under conservative management. Once the notion was overwhelmingly approved, he appointed a task force to begin the study.

Along the way, Hunt took issue with the SBC Executive Committee, suggesting it was taking a larger piece of the Cooperative Program pie than wise stewardship might suggest. He had been criticized himself a year ago because his church gave only 2 percent of its undesignated gifts to the 84-year-old SBC cooperative giving plan, making him in the eyes of many less than a perfect model for SBC president. He cited what his congregation spends to do missions and support missionaries directly. He suggested the convention should take its lead from the churches and not the other way around.

What ensued was a recent public exchange between Hunt and Executive Committee president and CEO Morris Chapman, who defended the Cooperative Program and raised concerns about efforts that might affect it negatively.

Chapman, in a message to messengers last week, decried what he described as one of the most divisive forces in Southern Baptist life — Calvinism. Across town sat Southern Seminary, probably the most prominent of those new bastions of Calvinism in the SBC. It was Southern’s president, Al Mohler, who made the motion recommending the Great Commission Resurgence task force.

Whatever else a person might make of the verbal jockeying at the annual meeting, it is clear that the transition to a new generation of leaders may be a rocky path. The old guard that battled for control of the convention during the past 30 years would like a say about the future, but they can’t agree on it themselves. Tolerating diversity within the body has not been a strong suit of the conservative resurgence. Nor has resolving differences between leaders who don’t agree on either theology or methodology.

So who will get to pick the next generation of Southern Baptist leaders? Stay tuned.

This article distorts what happened at the Annual Meeting. In fact, it is so uninformed that I doubt that author even attended.

The big story was that Akin was put on the defensive in a major way because he has gotten too close to Acts 29 and the emerging church. Moreover, his showcasing of Mark Driscoll at Southeastern is becoming more widely known and made for an “interesting” Q&A during his report on Southeastern at the end of the Annual Meeting. It also lead to a series of motions relating to these matters, including a call for investigation.

Hunt appears to be just another megachurch blowhard who latched onto the GCR because, like every president, he wants to have a “legacy”. In any event, Hunt will be gone in less than a year. The GCR will probably prove to be as effective as Bobby Welch’s “Anyone Can” campaign, which is to say that it will accomplish little.

I think the real story is that people are figuring out that Ed Stetzer (LifeWay) and his faction are trying to push the SBC into the arms of Acts 29 and the more conservative wing of the emerging church movement. This would in effect send the SBC on a trajectory toward mainline Protestantism. Ask the PCUSA and UMC how that has been working for them.

Any analysis that relies on “age” of the leadership as the issue in the SBC is not merely shallow, but useless. What is needed is vision. Ironically, Morris Chapman’s recent recommendation that the SBC rapidly expand k-12 education by planting schools in inner cities and by getting local churches to cooperate in establishing schools is a major departure from conventional SBC and evangelical thinking.

In 2005 Mohler recognized the education problem and called for the development of an exit strategy from the government schools. This year Chapman offered the beginning steps of that strategy. Akin, on the other hand, has been silent on the issue and has presided as chairman over a resolutions committee that has been suppressing resolutions addressing the education issue for as long as he has been chairman of the Resolutions Committee. Hunt is opposed to expanding Christian education. So, leaving aside the insubstantial GCR, on the vital matter of Christian education Chapman, the Arminian, and Mohler, the Calvinist, are aligned.

The next president doesn’t need to to be young or old. He needs to have vision and be able to articulate that vision, not merely within the SBC, but to the broader church and the national media as well. Issues of Christian education, family integration in churches, expanding teaching in apologetics, expanding teaching on how the Bible applies to all of life, more Biblically based community involvement, and beginning to rid the SBC of pietism would all be components of a compelling vision for the next president.

If I could choose the next SBC President, it would be someone like Voddie Baucham. Unfortunately, Ted Traylor, yet another megachurch pastor, seems to be beginning a run for 2010. If it is Traylor, the odds are that the SBC will continue to stagnate.

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