SBCOutpost

SBCOutpost.com receives countless inquiries, emails, and suggestions about site content. We regret that our editorial board is unable to respond to every inquiry, but we have considered the best way to let our readers know that their ideas, concerns, and questions are meritorious. For this reason, we have secured the assistance of Mrs. Dottie Louise Harridan, an eminently qualified yet untapped resource of conventional wisdom in Southern Baptist life to host an occasional advice column on the Outpost.

Dear Dottie:

I have been terminated from my job at a Lifeway Christian Bookstore for no apparent reason that I can tell except that I am a woman. It seems that my gender precludes me from working outside the home, and I’m really struggling with it because I don’t see that the Baptist Faith & Message says anything at all about women serving as booksellers.

So here’s how it all happened. For the past three years, I’ve been an assistant manager at the Lifeway Christian Store in Effingham, IL. Recently, I was promoted to store manager, until one day a Lifeway trustee from Texas was visiting our store. He asked to meet with the manager, and was introduced to me. Immediately, his expression dropped. For a moment, I couldn’t tell if he was trying to read my nametag to see if it was a woman’s name, or if he was checking out the area where my nametag was located to see if it was a woman’s bust. Either way, he was convinced of my womanhood within a few seconds.

He asked me a few questions about the store, and if there were any men who served as assistant managers under me. All our assistant managers and key holders are males, I told him, and watched as his face got red. He then asked me if I ever helped men purchase theology texts, or offered recommendations of books to men. He then asked me if I ever read Scripture or led devotionals for my store employees. Again, I have done all of those things. Read the rest of this entry »

Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, filed his first full response to Sheri Klouda in federal court yesterday, using the word “deny” at least 78 times. Among his more absurd claims of First Amendment protection, Patterson alleges that Klouda’s status at Southwestern was that of a “minister” and the seminary is a “church.” We are wondering, of course, if Professor Dorothy Patterson is a “minister” at the “church” of Southwestern.

The seminary, which is represented by a different attorney than the one provided to Patterson at convention expense, also filed a response. Both documents are available below.

Paige Patterson’s response to Klouda suit

SWBTS’ response to Klouda suit

For another fun and completely unrelated instance of presidential denial, click here.

1 seminary president + 2 trustee factions = Time for another GCC prayer meeting.

Read the Kansas City Star’s latest article on Phil Roberts and the growing concerns about a careless, crumbling administration.

On Page One of today’s Wall Street Journal, Andrew Higgins’ column on the Evangelical confusion and conflict about global warming goes to the South for a Texas-sized battle about greenhouse gases, coal-burning power plants, and Prestonwood Baptist Church.

Read the rest of this entry »

Alrighty, then.  For the most part Division I teams have dispensed with padding the budgets of really bad football programs and move into conference play.  This should make for more interesting match-ups, not that Arkansas-Alabama or Georgia-Alabama haven’t already been entertaining games (would someone hand C B Scott a hanky right about now?).

We’ll begin with match-ups between top 25 teams.  Tonight, the West Virginia Mountaineers will face the Bulls of South Florida.  Could South Florida really be the second-best team in that state?  I heard one prognosticator on the radio today guarantee a South Florida win.  What think ye?  The only other ranked teams to meet are Cal and Oregon.  Which one is for real?

Other match-ups between at least two decent teams are: Oklahoma at Colorado.  The Sooners should roll, but they have to go to where the air is thin and Colorado has one of the better defenses in what is appearing to be a largely defenseless Big XII.  In other Big XII action  Kansas State visits Texas.  Did Texas finally turn a corner at halftime of the TCU game or will they struggle against a team that will be much better than last week’s Rice game?

Moving to the east, Clemson will face a suddenly struggling Georgia Tech in ACC action.  Later in the afternoon 3-1 Alabama will take on 2-1 Florida State.  Will the Seminoles, who’ve only lost to ranked Clemson, be drowned in the Rolling Tide, or will they prove Nick Saban, who’s only lost to a ranked Georgia team, to be a mere mortal?  In other action, USC is at Washington and a struggling Auburn is at Florida.  And while the game will not be at all interesting, Rhett Bomar will return to the state of Oklahoma as Sam Houston State faces the Oklahoma State Cowboys.  Will Mike Gundy have another post-game meltdown?  Will Jenni Carlson be writing about an OSU player in Saturday’s Oklahoman?

Get your predictions in now or forever be considered a stodgy, boring contrarian who is only interested in denominational controversy!

The Outpost has been excoriated for re-posting an anonymous letter from an SBC seminary professor. Dr. Boyd Luter has been run through the ringer over the matter. Dr. Hershael York took the standing offer to write for the Outpost to set aside any notions of leadership issues with Dr. Mohler. Countless bloggers pontificated about what real journalism looked like and called for everyone to dismiss the Outpost. Spurgeon was quoted. Seems like a small oversight that he (Spurgeon) printed Robert Schindler’s two pieces anonymously in The Sword and the Trowel. He did not write them but he printed them.

The Outpost noted stories have been investigated and written based on anonymous sources. Recently the Christian Index piece on NAMB was referenced as a case in point. Those early in that investigation noted nothing was wrong and attacked those responsible for the story. Taking the challenge to find a way to investigate the recent anonymous letter revealed an uneasy silence by those once in the “Cabinet” at SBTS.

Today, the Outpost has learned Dr. Mohler acknowledged criticism over the years and that he has handled most of it well. However, he notes recent criticism has been mostly true. Dr. Mohler informed the faculty that he indeed did have an anger problem and repented of such.

Funny, Don Hinkle said he would not look into such things. He must have seen them without merit even though 5 former employees refused to defend.

I wonder if there would have ever been repentance if some of us did not care about telling the truth. As noted in previous posts, no one is above accountability. It seems many willing to ignore such calls and deflect them as attacks. It seems those inside the Patterson-Mohler cabal are above questioning, which might explain the situation in our convention right now.

My encouragement is that Dr. Patterson stay home and quit preaching against lawsuits when his actions have caused one, stop attacking Jerry Rankin for a difference in missiological perspective, and then getting Rankin to pray for strength for him when the one he (Jerry) is praying for is his attacker-in-chief, and work on getting those enrollment numbers up at SWBTS without the benefit of a “college.”

Dr. Mohler might consider staying at home and work through the issues that became apparent in his angry SBC Seminary Report defiance of the passage of the Garner motion, became public in blogs, and now led to semi-public repentance. Our convention will be better, not if the Patterson-Mohler cabal left, but if they focused on their growth and ministry.

The issue indeed is not one of ascending power but of expecting more of those who have been given much to reflect an ethic consistent with the authority and sufficiency of Scripture.

[Edit. Reader Kyle Barrett suggested an edit noting the Outpost does not intend this piece to sound the petulant noise of an, “I told you so.” We do not wish that to be the case. Further, we do not want that to obscure the value of the reported action. At the same time, the comment thread will not be a place to obfuscate the point of this post either.}

In 1997 Barry Levinson directed, Wag the Dog. The plot-line followed a President accused of infidelity who with the help of a spin-doctor and a Hollywood producer created a war as a diversion. It seemed then an implication of former President Clinton. We all do this. When pressed with our own failings and frailty it is easier to seek a diversion to avoid the necessary accountability required of great leadership. Especially for those leaders considered “statesmen.”

For some time some have trolled the Outpost looking for opportunities to subvert the point of a given post. A couple of recent tactics include obfuscation and revision. Evidence? One recent commenter noted how reform minded the originator of the Outpost was. It goes something like, “When Marty was in charge of the Outpost ….” How soon we forget that it was Marty who broke a number of stories and offered some of the most precise critique of the current direction of the SBC. In the first post-Marty iteration of the Outpost, it was Marty who offered a post titled, “Liar, Liar Pants on Fire.” Revising the intent of the Outpost to make it anything but the call for accountability and asking for an ethic that matches the rhetoric and use Marty in the process is revisionist history meets blog-town.

Obfuscation? Calls for accountability now fall under the heading of attack. A recent post noting the prayer meeting offered for Dr. Patterson prompted by the GCC at the last Executive Committee meeting included a reference to the well documented criticism of Jerry Rankin by Paige Patterson in satirical form,

And in turn Paige Patterson, who did not set any precedents himself in criticizing Jerry Rankin, led in a time of Prayer for Jerry. Or maybe not.

The strike-through introduced an edit noting the reason for the comment. Here is the text re-posted,

[Edit: OK. Sarcasm aside. I genuinely hope this is a move in the right direction. I know that in the past Paige Patterson has done things that have resulted in the straining of his relationship with Jerry Rankin. His criticisms have not been public, though the private nature of those criticisms have, in my opinion, been even worse because I doubt he would have done in public what he has done in private. It has been credibly alleged that Dr. Patterson has gone so far as to attempt to undermine the leadership of Jerry Rankin through the IMB board of trustees. Just read about a year’s worth of Wade Burleson’s blog starting in November or December of 2005.

I would also contend that their appeals for civility are selective. When it was Russell Dilday in 1992 I didn’t hear Al Mohler or Paige Patterson gathering entity heads to rally support and call for prayer. If they are right to do this now, were they wrong not to do so then? It gives the appearance (at least to me) of protecting one’s self and one’s own interests. In mail correspondence I had with Dr. Patterson a couple of years ago he even forwarded to me copies of his personal correspondence with Dr. Dilday leaving me the distinct impression that it was his way of saying, “See, I really am the good guy in all of this and he is the bad guy.” I still have those letters, by the way.

Now, I’d be more than happy for Dr. Patterson to just come right out and say that he thinks it is wrong for anyone to criticize Jerry Rankin. I would be thrilled to see him call for the Great Commission Council, or the Executive Committee, or the faculty and student body of SWBTS, to gather around Jerry Rankin and pray for him and profess to the world his unqualified support for him. But I’m not holding my breath. I think it is telling that SWBTS has such a noted emphasis on foreign missions, yet according to their own chapel archives the head of the worlds largest missions-sending agency, our own International Missions Board, has not spoken in a single chapel service at Southwestern Seminary at least since the Fall of 2005. That may not be rock-solid proof to anyone, but isn’t it at the very least odd, if not tragic? Al Mohler has spoken at SWBTS, multiple times. Chuck Kelly has. Danny Aiken has. Richard Land has. Jeff Iorg has. But the president of the IMB has not.

I’m really not trying to make too big a deal out of this, but if I declared that associational missions was going to be one of the driving forces in our church and I never had our own DOM come speak I can tell you that our congregation would get the hint real fast and I can assure you many of them would be asking why I didn’t have him come and if there was a problem between us.

So of all the people asked to pray over Dr. Patterson the one asked was Jerry Rankin. Now I do see two really good things in that. One is that if that relationship is, in fact, strained there is nothing more than that sort of submission that will really go straight to the heart. Perhaps the GCC wanted Dr. Rankin to say the prayer as a way to get them to “kiss and make up.” I don’t know. But I think it would have also spoken volumes had they in turn asked Dr. Patterson to publicly pray over Dr. Rankin, who has taken his own measure of criticism, much of it directly or indirectly from Dr. Patterson himself. Instead it comes across to this observer as a way of “teaching Jerry a lesson.” I grant that many will have a different take on that. Fine.

At the end of the day my hope is that an event like this will not end up being form over substance. If Al Mohler and the GCC want people to lay off of Dr. Patterson then they should also expect Dr. Patterson to lay off of others, whether the words are coming from Dr. Patterson’s own mouth or from the mouth or pen of a subordinate. Malcolm Yarnell is permitted to speak negatively of LifeWay research and by implication the researchers. Keith Eitel is allowed to write a paper critical of the IMB and by extension its leader and distribute it to the IMB trustees. If the expectation is that we all sit back and declare that all is well in Zion then we must all sit back and declare that all is well in Zion.

And I expect that to mean that our entity heads will not speak negatively about SBC Outpost either.]

Noting documented incidents calling for accountability cannot be termed an attack unless of course one wants to play Wittgensteinian word games. It is interesting to note at this point that it seems using the bully pulpit still plays. Listen in to Dr. Patterson at SBTS in chapel on Tuesday. Interestingly when looking for illustrations for actions appearing to stem from an unregenerate church member, he cites suing a brother in civil court. Since this is so rampant in churches it is little wonder this rose to the level worthy of illustration. (Dr. Patterson does note rampant divorce, child abuse, abuse of women, and upheaval in churches over insignifianct matters.) No mention of gossip. No mention of a lack of love. No mention of abuse of power. No mention of child sexual abuse. No mention of gluttony. No mention of the rampant consumerism runamuck in the Church. No mention of leaders sniping at leaders. No mention of the kinds of things noted in nearly every list of works of the flesh in the Scripture.

Obfuscation? Dr. Luter has been ripped from comment threads to blogs for posting an anonymous letter from an SBC seminary professor. The Outpost castigated for poor journalism. Yet, in a post wherein this author reported the response of five upper level administrators to the question of the substantive truth of the professor’s contentions no one dared comment (save the reference to the Paul Debusman event at SBTS). Charge the Outpost with tabloid journalism but when given the opportunity to defend Al Mohler these men did not. Attacks or clarification? Attacks or an attempt to ascertain whether it would be good for Trustees to investigate? Attacks or an attempt to discredit anonymity?

One commenter interjects the Outpost intends for its contributors and those like-minded to gain power. Read this carefully, this author simply longs for those in whom he trusted the issue was the Scripture in the CR would acknowledge a failed pragmatic ethic. Anything less is “wagging the dog.”

The New York Times has an article about the Clarkston International Bible Church, in Clarkston, Georgia (metro Atlanta). Clarkston International Bible Church used to be known as the Clarkston Baptist Church.  It’s still Southern Baptist.  By around 2001 the church had gone from an attendance of 600 to just around 100. The community was changing. Nearly one-third to one-half of the residents of Clarkston were immigrants. Facing a changing community one church member was noted as saying, “If you think black folks are going to come in here and take our church away from us you got another thing coming.”

Today Clarkston International Bible Church has among its members immigrants from the Philippines, Liberia, Sudan and even Afghanistan, among other countries. In a culture in which 11:00 on Sundays continues to be one of the most segregated hours in America, Clarkston International Bible Church stands out as an example of “exegeting the culture” and reflecting heaven. It hasn’t all been smooth. Some long-time members have left. Others, like William Perrin, believe they have no other Biblical choice. The NY Times states, “With his church failing, Mr. Perrin and other longtime members looked to the Scriptures for guidance and found what they believed was a mandate from Jesus to diversify their church.

‘We realized that what the Lord had in store for that old Clarkston Baptist Church was to transition into a truly international church and to help minister to all these ethnic groups moving into the county,’ Mr. Perrin said.”

David Phillips encourages us all to think outside of our own southern culture to find where and how God is moving. Commenter Greg Hicks makes a great observation that the south itself is changing and those of us who minister in places where the SBC is firmly established might need to re-examine our own cultural surroundings as well. The article Ben posted suggests we rethink both our preaching and our historic Enlightenment concepts of God and the relationship between the physical and spiritual worlds.

What challenges are your churches facing in terms of cultural transition? Theological re-thinking? How are you approaching those challenges?

Yesterday I read a quote on Emily Hunter McGowin’s blog. Her trip to Starbuck’s left her with a bit of wisdom for the ages. She read the quote on the back of her cup,

The Way I See It #280
“You can learn a lot more from listening than you can from talking. Find someone with whom you don’t agree in the slightest and ask them to explain themselves at length. Then take a seat, shut your mouth, and don’t argue back. It’s physically impossible to listen with your mouth open.”
- John Moe, Radio host and author of Conservatize Me.

Sean McKenzie writes for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In a piece published yesterday McKenzie suggests immigration reform needs the collective voice and weight of the Southern Bapitst Convention. Should you read this and get to the credit noting McKenzie a Methodist and decide to take swipes at he or his tradition, do not bother commenting. Instead, re-read the quote. Read carefully what is written and see if you do not get the sense someone has identified the SBC as a potentially helpful force in the public square on matters of immigration reform. You may want to note what your local congregation is doing in the wake of this “hot button” issue.

Quotes to stir you to go over and read,

It is undeniable that Baptists are committed people who do good works and take the Biblical injunction to love their neighbor literally. They form the backbone of many, perhaps even most, Southern communities. They coach Little League, visit shut-ins, and pray for the sick.

On the immigration issue, they have an opportunity to extend the open arms of Christ to souls who are more unwanted in the United States than any group in quite some time. Baptists do not have the luxury of some worldly rationalization for not helping the needy. The Bible says what it says. Baptists claim to believe it, so that must settle it.

Now is the time for them to act. They could truly be the “tipping point” that comprehensive immigration reform needs. They could change the direction of the political wind. It is time for Baptists to take a long, hard look in the mirror and do what they have always done: act in good faith.

Read the piece here.

Rev. Wm. Dwight McKissic, Sr., is the pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, TX, and has served as the president of the SBTC Pastor’s Conference and, until recently, as a trustee at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Pastor McKissic has offered a copy of an article entitled “The Future of Colored Preaching” for the general interest of SBCOutpost readers who seek greater understanding of different trends and traditions of preaching in the United States. The article, written by Princeton theologian Dr. Cleo LaRue, is available in PDF format below.

The Money Quote:

“From all indications, the colored preaching of the future will be quite different from the traditional preaching of the West, and more particularly the preaching of white, western males. Although white males continue to set the homiletical agenda in American preaching circles, from all indications, their ways of preaching and their ways of thinking through the foundational components of preaching are already being viewed as narrow, confining, and in some instances out of touch with the preaching done by people of color in the southern hemisphere and among certain groups in the United States. This is especially true of American mainline white preaching. If, in fact, the twentieth century was the Christian century, the twenty-first century could well be the colored Christian century.”

Access the full article below:

“The Future of Colored Preaching” by Dr. Cleo LaRue