SBCOutpost

Joy Fenner has been elected president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas in a nail-biting, squeaker of an election.  Fenner received 52% of the vote over David Lowrie.   The Baptist Standard has reported the election:

AMARILLO—Messengers to the Baptist General Convention of Texas annual meeting narrowly elected the first woman president of the state convention—and continued a two-decade string of officers endorsed by the moderate Texas Baptists Committed organization.
Fenner, a former missionary to Japan, executive director emeritus of Woman’s Missionary Union of Texas and incumbent BGCT first vice president, was elected over Panhandle pastor David Lowrie. Fenner received 900 votes (52 percent), compared to 840 (48 percent) for Lowrie.
Fenner’s election marked another in a series of presidential elections demonstrating BGCT diversity. In recent years, the state convention has elected its first Hispanic president and its first African-American president.
Many convention messengers attributed the close margin of Fenner’s election less to her gender and more to dissatisfaction with current BGCT leadership, as well as the other nominee’s West Texas ties.
Lowrie—who would have been the first second-generation BGCT president—had been endorsed by several Baptist bloggers who called for an end to what they saw as the Texas Baptists Committed organization’s control over the BGCT.
They also called for change in BGCT leadership in light of a church-starting fund scandal in the Rio Grande Valley, a recent round of layoffs at the Baptist Building in Dallas and a ruling by the presiding officer at the 2006 BGCT annual meeting that essentially allowed the Executive Board to trump the decision-making authority of convention messengers.

Evangelicalism in general and the SBC in particular may be at a crossroads.  We can already see the rift in our own convention that the blogosphere has exposed.  People who’s theology is not six inches apart are polarized over a variety of lesser things, mostly politics of either a denominational or governmental sort.

The pages here at SBC Outpost reveal that all too often.  The things that divide us can be seen in posts about global warming and presidential portraits.  In a denomination of [ahem] 16 million - give or take nine or ten million - we can see reflections of evangelicalism as a whole.  The question is: where will the future take us?

There are those who advocate a return to the good old days.  Bring back John Dagg.  Resurrect 18th Century Associational church life.  Let us be what we used to be.  Re-establish the old landmarks [snort, snicker - pun intended].

Opponents of this view warn that it will lead to obscurantism.  First we’ll become like Independent Baptists, railing against cultural evils to ever-shrinking crowds as we develop a “remnant” mentality awaiting the second-coming so that God can rescue us from this great big mess.  Then in twenty years we’ll become like the Amish.  Cute.  Odd.  And irrelevant.  Proponents see it as the only way to be faithful.

There are others who advocate a new day.  Recognize that the SBC/evangelicalism has never been as homogeneous as it is being portrayed and rally around those things which are essential and with which we all can agree.

Opponents of this view warn that it will lead to a slippery slope into the well-worn path already cut out by mainline denominations.  First we’ll talk about cooperation, then poverty and AIDS, then we’ll give up on the Bible and adopt an anything-goes ethic.  Proponents see it as recapturing the main thing - the gospel.

Bill Leonard warned that this sort of rift would lead to a splintering of the SBC.  The New York Times suggests evangelicalism as a whole may be right there with it.

Are these our options?  Does anyone care whether we come together or not?

The 2008 SBC presidential poll produced interesting results. Long considered the frontrunner, Al Mohler took a distant second place to Union University President David Dockery. Florida pastor Ted Traylor, talked up with increasing frequency as a potential megachurch contender, showed more strongly than Georgia’s Frank Cox. The California votes were split between former convention veeps Wiley Drake and Bill Wagner. Jerry Corbaley, arch-nemesis of Oklahoma’s Wade Burleson and IMB trustee, finished dead last with four votes out of more than 300 cast.  Comments are now open…

United States District Judge John McBryde has filed his schedule order in the case of Sheri Klouda v. SWBTS and Paige Patterson.  Essentially, the Court has advised all parties of the deadlines to file motions and the dates for pretrial conference and the trial itself.

Judge McBryde has rejected the August trial date requested in the joint status report, and has instead scheduled the trial for the week of June 9, 2008.

The annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention begins in Indianapolis on June 10, 2008.  We at SBCOutpost are curious who will give the SWBTS report this year.

Click here to read the Court Order.

Earlier today I gathered a group of four kindergarteners, supplied them with blank paper and crayola markers, and asked them to reproduce what they saw when I showed them Paige Patterson’s newest portrait, unveiled last week to grace the Southwestern Seminary rotunda. I told the children nothing about the portrait or the person in it, only that the painting probably cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $100K. Most of them didn’t understand the amount, so I told them it was equal to the annual salaries of five Southern Baptist missionaries.

After 15 minutes, I gathered their artwork for publication on this blog. Below, dear readers, are the impressions created in preschool minds when they are shown a $100K portrait of Southwestern’s president.

Mrs. Bobbye Rankin, wife of International Mission Board President Jerry Rankin, is truly a first lady. Dr. and Mrs. Rankin were appointed as Southern Baptist foreign missionaries to Southeast Asia in 1970, where they served in various capacities until 1993, when the Lord called them stateside to lead the International Mission Board. The Rankins have two children, both of whom have been appointed for overseas mission work, and currently reside in Richmond, VA.

Recently, the SBCOutpost team discovered an article about Mrs. Rankin that was written by her son, Russ, and we think it provides an incredibly intimate picture of his mother’s character and commitment to serve the Lord. We’re sure you’ll understand why we decided to reproduce Russ Rankin’s article about his mother when you read it.

She is a model homemaker, a faithful witness, a gentle servant, a godly complement to her husband, and an example to her children. Thank you, Russ, for capturing the remarkable influence your mother has had in your life in a these brief words. And thank you, Mrs. Rankin, for being the kind of woman after whom young ladies — missionaries, pastors’ wives, and laywomen — can pattern their ministries.

**********

RUSS RANKIN’S ARTICLE ABOUT HIS MOTHER: I was about 6 or 7 when the old beggar began coming to our house. To my young eyes, he looked older than Methuselah.

Wrinkles ran craters down his dark, sun scorched face and his sunken cheekbones accentuated a toothless mouth. I would hear him coming down the driveway, leaning heavily on a stick he used for a cane. His eyes, clouded with age, had practically failed him and he tapped his way to our door with his stick, laboriously feeling out the path of his slow trudge.

We were the only foreigners in that town in Indonesia where my family served as missionaries in the early 1970s. Perhaps he thought that by sitting on our doorstep he would receive a sympathetic handout.

He never spoke a word to my mother, who would come out to acknowledge him with a beaming smile and respectful greeting. It was not money that she brought him; it was a cool, wet washcloth that she used as she knelt before him to clean his hands and bare feet, blistered and dirty, covered with sores from exposure and lack of proper attention.

Each time as I watched, she would bring a cold glass of water for him to drink and then she would softly speak to him about how precious he was to the Father, a Redeemer who offered a provision of saving mercy and grace from this world of pain and loneliness.

Later, when our family lived in Bangkok, Thailand, she learned to speak Thai so she could minister to Thai students in Bangkok. It was not uncommon for our home to serve as a meeting place for young men and women who were drawn by my mother’s spirit of hospitality and ministry. Eventually, many of them came to know Christ.

In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus says, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

Scripture says in that day the righteous will plead ignorance, claiming they never saw Christ in those situations. To that, the Lord says, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me.”

Throughout her many years on the mission field, my mother continues to live her life being the hands and feet of Jesus. She used her gifts to teach her children at home, she has led women in countless English classes and introduced them to the Savior, and she ministers tirelessly alongside my dad as they worked together to support missionaries who plant churches among unreached people groups.

Today, my mother is known as a woman of the Word. Scores of missionaries around the world have been encouraged and inspired – as I have – by my mother’s example of committing vast portions of Scripture passages to memory, not as much as a faith-discipline, but as a way of aligning their lives to the heart of the Father.

We’re a little early this week only because on this Sabbath eve eve we get one of the most intriguing games of the week as #2 Boston College rides in to Blacksburg, Virginia to face the Hokies.  The last several weeks the Jesuits have been brushing up on the likes of Army, UMass, Bowling Green and that other Catholic school in Indiana that used to have a football team and has been rumored to have renamed “Touchdown Jesus” to “First Down Jesus.”  Will the Jesuits purge the doctrinally corrupt Hokies or will VTech send the Catholics to football Purgatory?  The road for BC gets rougher from here on out.  Game time is 6:30PM CST.

Tomorrow night the upset boys of Boise travel to Fresno State to admire Pat Hill’s moustache to see who gets the lead in the WAC.

Saturday at 11:00AM CST the West Virginia Mountaineers will try to avoid being the second top 10 team to get bumped by the Scarlet Knights of Rutgers.

At 2PM CST #12 USC travels to #5 Oregon.  Can the Trojans unseat the Ducks from the top of the PAC 10?  Keep your remote handy, because thirty minutes later #23 Connecticut takes on the Bulls of South Florida.  Will the Bulls lose two in a row?  At that same time slot the Florida Gators will take on the Georgia Bulldogs in another match-up between ranked teams and Texas will take on an increasingly rank Nebraska team.  Four words for Bill Callahan: MENE, MENE, TEKEL and PARSIN.

In action Saturday evening you’ll be treated to:  #9 and undefeated Kansas at Texas A&M (6PM CST), #16 South Carolina vs. the pastel orange of Tennessee (6:45PM CST), #1 Ohio State in happy valley playing 25th ranked and surging Penn State (7PM CST), and the reeling #21 Cal Bears against the undefeated spawn of Satan, #4 Arizona State.

Get your picks in early this week and if there’s a game we didn’t highlight it’s because it was a real dud, but if you want to make a prediction for one of those games anyway then by all means, have at it!

Today I will post two more letters — one from Al Mohler and the other from Geoff Hammond — that I received from denominational executives in response to my January 16, 2007, letter requesting information about all executive salaries, expenses, and perquisites.

Letter from Albert Mohler

Letter from Geoffrey Hammond

From the Christian News Wire: If you thought your Guidestone investments were not being used to invest in companies who profit from or support abortion and pornography think again. As of March 31st, Guidestone’s Equity Index Fund had $7.5 million invested in Johnson & Johnson, a company that makes abortifacients, conducts human embryonic stem cell research and contributes to Planned Parenthood. All totaled that fund was investing $113 million in J&J and other companies supporting those same things. According to the report there was an additional $35.5 million in that same fund being invested in companies that either profit from or distribute pornography.

Read the report here.

I contacted Guidestone for a response and got a very speedy reply which follows: Read the rest of this entry »

Today I was asked two great questions in three separate interviews about SBC life. For the heckuvit, I am offering my responses:

Question Number One: “What do you think about the establishment blogs that have cropped up in response to SBCOutpost?”

Response: “I am as concerned about their presence and influence in the blogosphere as Alan Greenspan is about the devaluation of the clamshell currency on the island of Palau.”

Question Number Two: “What is your response to the resolution of support that Paige Patterson received from Southwestern trustees last week?”

Response: “Generally, the statement tickled my funny bone. I had to laugh. If you read the statement at face value, and listen to the whining and complaining that the Pattersons and their loyalists are doing about the criticism they get in the blogs, you’d think they were 2nd century Christian martyrs on the order of Polycarp and Perpetua . I hardly believe that being thrown to the blogs is similar to an afternoon in the Coliseum or an evening in the lion’s den.

Nevertheless, I am confident that the criticism and suspicion about Paige and Dorothy Patterson that is raised on blogs is trifling compared to the frequency and intensity of the criticism that these two Southern Baptist saints have raised about their fellow Kingdom servants in a thirty year history of pirating the denominational fleet.”