Dee, I would love to chat with you via email. Couldn’t find it posted on your blog. Would you mind posting it?

I was at the convention and after hearing all of the debates and voted to seal the records. I had been in favor of unsealing them until I heard the explanations given and the floor debate. One thing that also persuaded me was that a guy who attended the convention with me introduced me to one of his friends and we all hung out together during the convention. He worked for a Director of Missions in another state. He was for the GCTF. His Director, boss, was not.

I don’t know who all appeared before the task force when they met. But if it was someone like this, then I can see that he may very well have put his job on the line by sharing with the task force.

One messenger suggested revealing the minutes to a select group with some attorneys who could then type up all of the transcripts and black out what they felt was confidential.

I did not find that persuasive because the person’s identity and what they said would still be revealed, just to a small group, and that is not keeping things confidential, as the committee had promised.

I also found that spending all that time and money to make a complete record, to have it combed over by attorneys and the small group (and the task force committee, presumably), seemed like an awful amount of effort and energy and probably expense. And for what – to get a peak at the internal processes of a committeee that produced an open report that was subject to debate etc.

Also, I did not know that the committee was not required to keep a record or notes anyway.

So, I felt like the energy in the sbc would be better spent by looking at the report, debating it, and then letting the individual entities decide how to implement it.

In the future, I think that this issue could be addressed on the front end.

If I were ever on a committee like this, I would not keep a permanent record. Once the report was finalized, I would destroy all notes, records etc. Because what the convention has to deal with now is the report. The convention could not even do anything about what is in the committee’s report etc., except to change its mind about the report. And if it wants to do that, the text of the report should provide the logic for that.

Oh, and I have one other thing to say.

Dee,

Have you ever noticed the resemblance between Jack of 24 fame and Danny Akin? I meant that as a compliment.

“I wonder how those who were not there will view the secrecy.”

The truth is the vast majority don’t know and don’t care.

The GCRTF promised anonymity to persons who spoke. But they had no right to make such a promise. If they did, a motion not to seal the records would have been out of order.

The reasons behind the decisions in the report, and the ultimate goals of the task force members, are at least as important as the actual content of the report. Intent is always more important than mere words.

I would hope that SBC leaders have learned from this not to make promises to keep secrets, but I suspect that what they have learned instead is to make it known from the start that secrets will be kept, so no one will expect or ask to see any records.

Annonymous

I wanted to add another perspective. The SBC has made some dastardly mistakes in the past. Committee members have behaved in horrible ways as outlined in Wade Burleson’s book “Hardball Religion”. The SBC leadership nor this current committee have done anything that would make me believe that this GCR stuff will be any different from the past.

If there was concern about past mistakes, surely the committee would have gone out of its way to make this an open and transparent process. It did not which leads me to one of two conclusions. They are stupid which means that they did not learn from the past. I don’t think they are. This leads me to the second conclusion. There is more to this than meets the eye. Names can be bleeped. Confidences can be held within the release of records by blacking out identifiers.

As for the fact that they were not required to keep records, I refer you to the above paragraph.They have not learned from the past which means they are poor leaders. Or they have learned from the past and they are playing this one close to the vest.

The once great and declining SBC is unfortunately behaving in the very manner that cause such anguish over the previous decades. I am one who couldn’t take it anymore. The SBC acts more like BP than a gathering of the saints.

Finally, as for the convention vote, do you really think that the folks present represent the general Joe in the church? My guess is that they do not and that the general Joe will leave with so many others if the SBC doesn’t clean up its act.

“Do you have any thoughts, pro or con, about the substance of the report”

Why would long time believers need a Great Commission Resurgance in the first place? Those who have Christ In them are not counting on report. They are in the trenches now. And they do not need the SBC for that, either.

When you get down to the nitty gritty, it was about money.

Where is the Holy Spirit in this? Christians are to be eternity minded. Which is why the secrecy is so silly. What is hidden will be made known. What is the point of waiting?

The bottomline is that the SBC is irrevalent.

BTW Anonymous:

Let us go through each member of the GCR task force and take a look at their church’s CP giving over the last 15 years since they are representative of church leadership and SBC leadership.

As a matter of fact, it was brought out that even Hunt’s church gave ZERO to Annie Armstrong.

That’s ok, anon, sometimes I don’t agree with myself.

You make some very good points, and you do so in a thoughtful and non-argumentative way; I really appreciate that, and I commend you for it. You said:

The convention did not require that the task force keep records of who spoke with them or what was said. With no instruction, the task force could tell people with whom it spoke that they would either keep records or not and whether they would release the records or not.

If I had written the task force or spoken to the task force or a member, it is not unreasonable for them to have told me that what I said or wrote was not going to be broadcast to the entire convention. That seems perfectly reasonable without some contrary charge from the convention.

I suppose it is really a matter of my expectation, or at least my preference. I personally would have preferred that, as a Christian organization, the meetings or records had been open, especially since, as I understand it, public statements were made at the front end that indicated the meetings would be open to a rep from the Baptist Press. But, as you said, the convention did not make such openness a requirement from the start, so I can see that the task force could have considered it within their purview to make decisions about what they would do in that regard. Perhaps they asked the Exec Committee just to be sure, or perhaps they went with the common maxim that it is easier to get forgiveness than permission.

Interestingly, I’m on vacation this week, and I just spent a good part of the day in Constitution Hall in Philadelphia. One of the things I was reminded of was that, when the framers of the US Constitution met and worked out a government to replace the Continental Congress, their meetings and discussions were open only to the delegates. Many assumed they were working on revisions to the Articles of Confederation, and were surprised to learn that instead they had come up with an entirely new system of federal government. Had that information been known from the start, or had it come out before the delegates were finished with their deliberations, it might have been much harder for them to have come to agreement or to have received the support of the states afterward. People might also have focused on the process and the persons involved rather than the content of the end product.

Thus, I recognize that there can be benefits to maintaining confidentiality or anonymity when dealing with sensitive issues, especially when seeking change within a conservative institution, and even more especially when that change includes how money is spent and budgets are prioritized and categorized. So I am not surprised at the decision of the GCRTF (and the majority of the convention’s messengers) to seal the records.

I do think, though, that they could have found ways to maintain a degree of anonymity and confidentiality for the persons involved, if that was the primary concern, without sealing the content of the discussions entirely. (For example, they could have produced transcripts of the proceedings with substitutions of Mr A and Mr B, etc. for the names, or some other form of redaction). Just as a matter of Christian principle, I’d rather see more openness, transparency, and humility in Christian circles that one would expect from the rest of the world.

I am concerned that trying to divine intent of the task force or one or more of its members or those who spoke to it (beyond what the task force eventually recommended to the convention) is like chasing a chimera.

It is my opinion that the primary reason for sealing the records was not so much with who said things, but rather with what was said. Of course, I recognize that my opinion comes from speculation, but my speculation seems to me both logical and consistent with attitudes commonly demonstrated concerning the roles, function, rights and privileges of leadership within the SBC and within SB churches.

By the way, what do you think about the report? Do you like or dislike the recommendations? Were you at the convention to vote on the report?

I don’t have major concerns about the content of the report. I can see where smaller state conventions could be concerned with changing the financing funding formulas, but the changes in that regard seem like a reasonable attempt to reform a complex and unwieldy system. The recommended changes in NAMB and IMB seem to me to move toward a more centralized approach for domestic missions, which concerns me somewhat in terms of granting more power to the national convention within the US (and, by extension, those who run it) — but that appears to have been the trend in the SBC for the last 30 years or so, so it’s really nothing much new. The changes also make me wonder if the ultimate plan is to combine those two agencies — which might not be a bad thing, but, if that is part of the plan, I’d rather they were up fron about it. (It could be, though, that the current plan was a compromise between those who wanted to combine them and those who didn’t. Guess we’ll have to wait 15 years to see if that’s the case.) I felt the concerns raised over the Great Commission Giving category were largely unfounded, but I can understand the concerns of those who worry about it weakening the Cooperative Program. (I’m not convinced that it does weaken the CP, but even if it does, I don’t think that would undermine the basis of the Convention system, as some opponents claimed, given that the Convention predates the CP by 80 years.)

I was not present at the convention. Due to my involvement in many Baptist churches over the years, I like to keep up with trends in the SBC, but the last couple of churches I’ve participated in haven’t been Baptist. So I know I have no say in these matters. But part of me still feels very connected to the SBC, so I still form opinions based on what I see and hear. I probably pay more attention to SBC national politics, etc. than the average member of an SB church. I’m not so sure that’s a good thing — I could probably find better things in the kingdom of God to be focused on.

Be blessed, O Anonymous One!

Junkster,

Curious to know what this type of evangelical cooperation would look like? The SBC is obviously not going to be rejoining the BWA anytime soon and affiliation with NCC is (and has always been) out of the question. I don’t think the SBC has any interest in the historically more centrist-leaning NAE and I doubt that the NAE would have any interest in the SBC.

I think the younger Reformed crowd would tell you that they are already cooperating with non-SBC evangelicals. ACTS 29 and Together 4 the Gospel comes to mind. Dwight McKissic helped found a network of cooperating evangelical churches a couple of years ago. I’m sure there are many examples at the local level of Southern Baptists of cooperation with evangelical groups – more networks, etc.

On social issues, there is certainly a sense of organizational cooperation between the ERLC, Focus and FRC.

I’m just wondering what this cooperation would look like?

Cliff,
I’m not entirely sure what would and wouldn’t work. The examples you gave are good, and individual churches, particularly the large ones, do support missions and ministries not necessarily associated with the SBC. One thing that comes to mind in the international realm is Wycliffe. And on the domestic front, I’d like to see SB churches, associations, and conventions partner with “baptistic” or evangelical congregations, fellowships and denominations that have a strong presence in parts of the US where there are few SB churches. I’ve always found it somewhat arrogant when I hear SB leaders talk certain parts of the country as if they had no Christians at all simply because they have no SB churches there, although they may have a significant number of conservative, Bible-believing, and missions-minded Christians and churches of other denominations.

In all my years as a Baptist, I never attended a Catholic church service. I was always too involved in my own church, and didn’t have any close friends who were Catholic. From what I always heard in Baptist churches, I had an idea in my head of Catholic churches being very lifeless and formal and ritualistic and lacking in biblical teaching and preaching. Yesterday I attended a Catholic church service for the first time. There were some distinct differences from Baptist churches, especially in terms of what is and isn’t included. But two things really struck me — one was how much was similar to a typical Baptist church, particularly a traditional (non-contemporary worship) Baptist church — the layout of the buildings, the order of worship, the songs, the Bible passages, even the sermon. The other was that there was more talk of the gospel — the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ for out sins, and of salvation than I have heard articulated well in many Baptist churches in several years. And the sermon was actually a more expositional approach to Scripture than anything I’ve heard in an evangelical church in quite a while (since so many Baptist and other evangelical churches are practicing more “topical” preaching series these days than verse by verse, book by book exposition.

I know that, doctrinally speaking, many of the things I observed in the Catholic church service that appeared similar to Baptist churches would have a different underlying meaning in the Catholic church, most notably the Eucharist (communion) portion of the service. But I really didn’t expect the Catholic service to be so similar in form and words to a traditional Baptist church service. I think a lot of Baptists who have always been taught, as I have, how very wrong Catholicism is would be surprised at how much the they have in common at least externally.

Dee,
Unfortunately, I don’t think there are many men in our day, in churches or in politics, who match the character, wisdom, and understanding of the founders of our country.

Cliff, you are talking numbers to me. Where is the Holy Spirit? How come such large numbers do not translate into a great move of the Holy Spirit in this country?

I am well versed with numbers. That is a worldly position.

Losing members hand over fist? That’s an interesting description. How would you then describe the bleeding of other Christian denominations? Losing .24 percent as the SBC did in 2009 is really a drop in the bucket compared to steady decreases of 1-3 percent that other major groups have been experiencing over many years now.

The SBC has been involved in much nonsense for many decades. Being involved in nonsense has never made a dent in the organization. Why would it now? The SBC has gone through many controversies over the past 100 years. Yet, Southern Baptists continue to financially support and affiliate with the Convention.

Lydia wants to dismiss numbers. But those numbers represent the tithes and offerings of actual, real live Southern Baptists. The SBC might currently be going through a correction of sorts. This is a post-denomiantional age. There are other factors at play. Yet, Southern Baptists continue support the SBC with their $$.

Clearly more than a few people do not think that SBC is irrelevant.

Lydia asks where is Holy Spirit. How would she know that the Holy Spirit is not moving in those Southern Baptist churches that comprise the SBC? Lydia discounts numbers as a “worldly position” but then seems to suggest numbers are needed to prove the Holy Spirit is actually moving among Southern Baptists? Odd.

Junkster: Thanks for the nice follow up.

Dee and Deb and all – great comments.

I don’t think that a person had to be present and voting to voice and opinion about the GCR. I had just noted that most of the talk had been about the procedure of the task force and not its actual report.

I have looked over the task force membership. I don’t identify many, if any, Baptist identity people on there. Most of the BI people I know were not in favor of this report.

I believe that the report is significant in that it was designed to try and look at ways that the SBC could more effecitvely accomplish the Great Commission. The SBC is just a pot of money, really. So, I never expected the report to contain some novel or moving spiritual insights.

I don’t believe that the report would have passed intact had not the cp language been changed in point 3. I believe that what I will call the cp forces, who wanted no change to the cp structure or emphasis, brought more votes to the convention.

In case you missed it, there was an interesting parliamentary moment when a messenger moved to amend point 3 to take out Great Commission Giving and just reassert CP giving. That motion carried, in my opinion, but it was close. But the task force committee and the messenger got together and proposed sort of a joint motion to add what the messenger wanted and keep the Great Commission giving language in the report. Had the messenger not agreed to do that, I believe that point 3 and Great Commission Giving would have died.

I saw the messenger later and thanked him for his statesman like demeanor and action. Again, I think that he could have refused. Had he done so, I think that point 3 would not have passed with any Great Commission Giving language in it.

That was, in my opinion, the only thing controversial in this report.

On cooperating with other ecumenical bodies, I believe that the churches of the SBC can and will continue to do that. I am concerned about the dollars given to the SBC being used to do that. The SBC has been burned twice in a big way over that kind of thing. The SBC funded the Baptist Joint Committee (about 80% if memory serves me correctly), and the SBC provided most of the funds for the BWA. But the SBC had only a fraction of the representation on those bodies.

I think that type of an arrangement is a recipe for conflict.

Our church is very ecumenical with respect to other evangelicals. I think the SBC can be, too, so long as the SBC doesn’t get in position where it is essential funding another organization, with a disproportionate amount of representation.

I heard one person after the convention say that the adoption of the report doesn’t necessarily mean anything because it has yet to be worked out in meaningful way. But if the convention had failed to adopt the report, that would have been a huge signal.

OK, you have no use for numbers here, that’s fine.

However, how can you make the assertion that the Holy Spirit is not moving in the Southern Baptist Convention? How would you know? You don’t. You couldn’t.

Of course we should encourage people in the pews to read and study the Bible as individuals. We also should encourage believers to read and study the Bible in the context of their local church community. We are, after all, individuals-in-community.

“I have looked over the task force membership. I don’t identify many, if any, Baptist identity people on there. Most of the BI people I know were not in favor of this report.”

I am not sure why this is important or what it has to do with anything? Leadership tactics are the same whether they are the BI folks or the Reformed wing or whoever else.

Do you mean why do I think that, or why is it the case? If the former, it’s just my opinion, but I haven’t seen much character displayed in leadership lately. If the later, I’d say it’s a general decline in our culture, the causes of which are numerous and complex. But I suspect TV has more to do with it than sun spots do. 🙂

Don’t get me wrong – I do care about some issues. I just don’t care what one particular church says they are going to do with money they have yet to raise.

I’m also not necessarily offended by nice cars and well-dressed people. I appreciate the Black church tradition of wearing your Sunday best. Some people at my church own nice cars and nice homes – they are also extremely charitable givers. I just don’t see the use in making such broad generalizations. How many pastors lease jets? 5? 10?

Honestly, the Southern Baptist Convention has not radically changed in recent decades. Sure, there have been real theological shifts. However, it was still a patriotic, America-loving, consumeristic, capitalism-promoting, good-ole-boy-led denomination years ago. Sometimes the past really isn’t as peachy as we tend to think it was. Ultimately, the SBC is comprised of local churches. Some are spiritually dead and dying. But some are thriving and not guilty of any of the charges you have made. It’s a mixed bag like most denominations.

Let me say that I appreciate the way in which you handle commenters who disagree with you. Your humility and graciousness toward commenters is obvious.
As a pastor of a church that is led by elders and governed by the congregation, your criticisms of authoritarian pastors really resinate with me. People being thrown out of their church without Matthew 18 being properly followed is a serious issue. Making major decisions without congregational input is completely wrong.
That being said, if “It is not the end product that is of real value. It is how we treat each other as we get there,” is referring to people with whom you disagree as “Calvinistas” and “the Baptist Mafia” not counterproductive at best? I have noticed a tendency on this blog to paint with a broad brush and to question people’s motives without proper reason. I think that your cause, (with which I have sympathy) would be better served by reporting issues with substantive commentary instead of sarcasm, name calling, and trying to discern ulterior motives.

REPOSTING THIS HERE IN THE APPROPRIATE SPACE

I guess I don’t put too much value in generalizations. In this instance, I think your generalizations present a over-exaggerrated, almost doomsday picture.

You wrote, “The American church places far more values on coffee bars in churches than they do in funding missions.”

That’s an extreme statement, no doubt. In my most recent search for a new church home about 18 months ago, my wife and I visited approximately 10 different Baptist churches and 3 non-Baptist churches. Not one had a coffee bar! In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been to a church with a coffee bar. I’ve visited a few megachurches along the way in places like Atlanta and Dallas. Maybe they had a coffee bar, who knows. As far as the SBC goes, I’m willing to wager that the overwhelming majority of Southern Baptists attend churches that look a bit different than the flashy, hip super-megachurches.

The megachurch guys may swallow up all the media attention but I don’t think the Mac Brunsons and Ed Youngs are representative of the “American church.”

As an aside, I’m not an evangelical, share very little in common with Southern Baptists in terms of theology and politics. SBCers would consider my church very liberal as we are affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the Alliance of Baptists. I just have many friends and family members who are still Southern Baptists and who attend churches that share little in common with the Prestonwoods of the SBC universe and have pastors who don’t live lavish lifestyles and who are servants rather than pulpit-bulldawgs.

“Thanks for your thoughts. Do you know how many pastors and seminary students go to conferences to learn how to be like Ed Young or Mac Brunson? These guys are the current idols and there are many who wish to be like them. ”

And the other side of the ailse with the T4G followers. The reformed wing is catching up with the above in conferences, books, speaking gigs, money, etc. And is even worse when it comes to cult of personality.