SBCOutpost

My mentor, Dr. Rick Davis, recently suggested the need to check out information posted on blogs for “verification and authentication.” In my previous post I noted Nathan Finn calling attention to the new dynamics the Internet creates for SBC politics. In today’s edition of The Daily Oklahoman religion reporter Carla Hinton wrote a piece titled, “Blogging boosts dialogue.” (The online version of the article is titled, “Southern Baptists’ access to information a click away.”)

Wade Burleson, Wes Kenney and Debbie Kaufman receive press for their participation in blogging. Burleson noted his interest began while serving on the Board of Trustees of the IMB. Most, if not all, Outpost readers would be familiar with Burleson. Hopeful blogging would bring more information, transparency and accountability Burleson began blogging chiefly regarding policy changes at the IMB. Since that time Wade has posted on a variety of subject.

Kenney is one of the four founders of SBCToday according to the article. He too considers the goal of of SBCToday to provide information and a place to dialogue primarily about Baptist identity issues. Comments are moderated and when the moderators consider a comment unhelpful will delete it informing its author.

Kenney took the occasion to point up the difference between the aims of SBCToday and another blog SBCTooDazed. On the one hand those at SBCToday contend for a focus on issues rather than personalities. Kenney suggested SBCTooDazed makes personality the issue. I checked out SBCTooDazed and find it not too dissimilar from early parody sites of SBCOutpost. Anyone remember “Marty binDuren?” In fact, those parody attempts used satire just the same to draw attention to the authors differing perspectives. The parody sites of SBCOutpost were also offered by anonymous authors. We too, the Outpost Team, may eschew the method but I did find the content of SBCTooDazed to, more often than not, address an issue raised by SBCToday once getting past the name changes.

I, like Kenney, may prefer a different forum for discussion. But, I do recall reading those early parody sites to hone my own understanding and hope to get an idea of the author’s particular nuance of an argument or difference of opinion. If someone takes the time to write, it may even be a compliment, though I may not think so.

Debbie Kaufman finds blogs helpful to her understanding of issues in the SBC. She notes a regular regimen of research she hopes will continue to make her a more informed voter.
Doubtless one could spend inordinate time perusing the innumerable SBC blogs. Some write blogs with a narrow focus on SBC issues/politics. Others write with their local church in mind. Still others write for a combination of audiences. Careful reading may indeed offer information worthy of consideration. Conversation, as noted in the previous post, would be a great outcome.

There is little doubt each of these bloggers intend to shape opinion. Any change that comes will be a result of any number of factors - thoughtful content, welcome diversity in conversation, and the receptivity to other ideas by the reader among a host of others.

Recently Nathan Finn wrote a fine piece alerting the SBC to the realities of the Internet. In an even handed manner Finn noted the mediums used to chart a new course in the SBC by those who used, “computer mailing lists” and the like. Some recall “Town Hall” styled meetings and “Whistle Stop” tours rallying troops to stand with the assertive new leaders to stem the tide of liberalism, rescue the denomination and ensure the authority of the Scriptures. Enter Al Gore’s “Internet” and look out. Conference calls and snail mail fliers cannot compete with the speed of a DSL connection, a chat program and yes, one’s own website.

These developments give anyone, including me, an occasion to opine about something, anything. Occasionally good questions will be asked and, though not often enough, healthy conversation ensues.

Yesterday while listening to KOSU, Sooner fans don’t excoriate me, an opinion piece was aired drawing attention to the influence of the postmodern mood on our culture. The speaker considers the incessant, and petulant, chasing after conspiracy theories to be something of an expression of the loss of truth to “my truth.” Critiques in our quarters, Southern Baptist that is, regarding postmodern philosophy and its influential mood often point up the loss of meaning for a given text. Or, to put it another way, rather than let the text speak we seem to practice the literary theory to have emerged from or within the postmodern shift, namely “Reader-Response Theory.”

The assumed meaning of the text shifted from what the author may have intended to the reader’s interpretive framework - preconceptions, psychological proclivities and long-held biases. Many who read here at the Outpost, and many who say they don’t but do, want very much to rest in the perspicuity of Scripture - that is, there is a plain meaning of the text. Authorial intent and its form hold what is needed. Yet, since words are on the screen you our faithful readers and detractors will decide for yourselves what is said and what is intended. It is always a risk someone will “mis-read” or “mis-interpret” what is being typed.

I recently wrote a piece here describing my thoughts on recent Lifeway research. One interlocutor determined I lay claim to “Kreskin” like skills and wrote a piece asserting I knew the hidden motive of another thereby questioning my motives. Imagine my shock and amazement, not to mention un-mitiaged belief, that same writer who finds the Outpost a great source of material, writes a response to the recent Rodney Hammer letter released by The Biblical Recorder snooping as it were among the paragraphs and sentences for a conspiracy to expose. That’s right, Rodney Hammer looks to bring down the IMB by making his opinion public and asserting the need to re-think policy. Having sought to express himself to the point of reprimand, he wrote to me, to us, to say “I am concerned.” If the best someone can do is come along and look for a conspiracy in accountability then said person has way too much time on their hands. Furthermore, if this is the best kind of defense, we in Okie land call it “mis-direction” recalling the bygone days of the amazing “Wishbone” era of Sooner Football, critics and the like have to offer then “Nashville, we have a problem.”

Let me make my motives clear. I hold no animosity for another who seems given to twist the obvious. I simply believe that when a man stands on his convictions and is willing to take the heat in the public square then we must listen to his words and not to the ruminations or imaginations of another. Yes, yes, dear reader you will comb the archives being sure to note every instance where we here at the Outpost may have done the same. So before you do it, “Shame on us.” If we have attributed motives to another without proper verification we stand under your scrutinizing eye. But, if we have knowledge of another’s motive and for whatever reason determine not to share it - yes, I am invoking the reality of anonymity here - you will have to take extra Rolaids at what will appear to you a contradiction.

My hope, read “motive,” is that we could really engage in honest, healthy conversation. Calling someone’s motive into question, assuming we know the strength of another’s “ecclesiology” based solely on a comment in a post thread, or ramping up our rhetoric charging ecumenism or the loss of inerrancy to hijack an otherwise honest attempt at dialog is in view. No hidden agenda here. No attempt to subvert what it means to be a Baptist.

Oh, and while I am at it, there is little credibility in slamming Ben Cole, or referring to him in dark terms. Your cries and laments fall helplessly on deaf ears when you claim to want to engage in honest conversation. For our dear critics, like a good addict, you return driving site statistics with your curiosity as to who will slam Ben next or what “juicy” post will follow. Posts offering thoughtful ideas and interjections into the future of the SBC, denominations and the like to you are as boring and uneventful as watching paint dry. So, let’s, in the motive of this post, have an honest conversation. We like to read the tabloid stuff. Our leaders were masters of the invective. They could rally the troops with just the right euphemisms whether or not they accurately described the situation and or person or not.

So, the motive of this post - call attention to Rodney Hammer’s words. Read them understanding his concerns only serve as a tip of the proverbial iceberg. Southwestern Alums recently received their fund-raising letters asking for contributions to keep the lights on. Is it increasing or decreasing enrollment? We here at the Outpost often receive communiques from the mission field noting a lack of resources for “evangelism” and matters they are not to speak of but are certainly causing a great deal of discomfit and interruption in service. Let’s not spin this one. No amount of posturing is going to solve our dilemmas. Open and honest conversation will be the way forward.

I hope I have illustrated that. With that, I point you to Hammer’s letter.

The Biblical Recorder posted the full letter from Rodney Hammer which had been leaked in “bits” around the Internet according to the Recorder. We direct your attention to the letter with no commentary on the content.

Barack Obama is ticked. As the inevitability of his garnering the Democratic nomination inches closer toward reality, Obama is learning a thing or two about raw politics.

The Illinois senator launched a media counter offensive today against Tennessee Republicans who have targeted his statuesque and intelligent wife, Michelle, for alleged expressions of unpatriotic sentiment.

“If they think they’re going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful, because that I find unacceptable, the notion that you start attacking my wife or my family.,” Obama told ABC television.

“These folks should lay off my wife.”

I’ve often been amazed at how quickly politicians play the “not my wife or my family” card in an election process. The fact is that a man’s family says as much about him as his record, his speeches, his associations, and his writings. Barack Obama’s son-like relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright is fair game as the country scrutinizes his suitability to occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. His legislative record — albeit thin — is open for discussion. And when a man aspires to lead the free world, his wife and her views are legitimate objects of thorough critique.

The insincerity of running out a chivalrous defense for his poor, helpless wife because attacks against her are tactless or whatever becomes glaringly obvious at first glance. For one, Obama has had no problem criticizing Hillary Clinton’s husband throughout the course of his campaign. If spouses are fair game, then they are all fair game. Something about geese and ganders comes to mind. Turnabout, I seem to recall, is fair play.

But even more insincere is the fact that Barack Obama and his advisers have tossed Michelle out into the public sphere to articulate the agenda, the vision and values of his campaign. She is as much in the front of this Obama phenomena as he is. She is bright and articulate. The engineers of his presidential bid would be foolish not to use her. But please don’t wrap your woman in chain mail, thrust a lance into her hand and point her toward the enemy and then complain that she gets a few scrapes and bruises. Don’t send her to the front lines of your ideological agenda and then cry foul when she comes under fire.

The same thing goes for denominational politics too. I’m unimpressed by convention leaders who fire their wives off into the fray and then boohoo and bawl when some of us see through their pseudo-complementarian poo poo.

Readers of SBCOutpost.com who might be interested in hosting ERLC President Richard Land for an event should feel free to contact his booking agent at the All American Talent and Celebrity Network.

Folks, we could not make this stuff up if we tried.

**UPDATE**

As of a few moments ago, the All American Talent and Celebrity Network website will not allow access to Richard Land’s biography or booking information.  In fact, it appears that Richard Land has been removed from their network altogether.

Thank you, Google Cache, for all the memories.

Not sure why, but this was recently posted on YouTube.

Your good, green friends at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission have joined together with historian (no snickering please) David Barton, the ever lovely Janet Parshall, an apparently less family-focused James Dobson, a few organizations supported by oil money, a handful of Southern Baptist theologians like Russell Moore and Daniel Akin, Singer Pat Boone — who apparently got off the the Crazy Train in time to sign — and Oklahoma’s entire Senatorial delegation

Ergun “Butch” Caner apparently did not sign this declaration either.

Go check out the We Get It campaign as it rolls out of Nashville coming to a convention near you.

* On May 11, 2007, I noted that SWBTS was reaching the lowest numbers of graduates in eight years.

* On September 11, 2007, SWBTS noted that the school had reached the highest student enrollment in 5 years.

* On May 14, 2008, Baptist Press noted that SWBTS had conferred 239 degrees, including the first graduates of the College at Southwestern

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming…

**UPDATE**

SBCOutpost.com has just received homemade video footage from the SWBTS graduation ceremonies. I think you could say they had a rootin’ tootin’ Texas time.

[UPDATE]: The Outpost is saddened to learn the wreckage and bodies have been found.

TAMPA - Searchers found the wreckage of the Rev. Forrest Pollock’s plane and the bodies of the popular pastor of Bell Shoals Baptist Church and his 13-year old son, Preston, about 20 miles southwest of Asheville, N.C.

The plane was in rugged terrain more than two hours on foot from the nearest access point.

The Rev. George Thomasson, associate pastor of Bell Shoals, stood inside the sanctuary where Pollock normally delivered sermons and, fighting tears, told about 100 staff and church members the grim news.

More information at Tampa Bay Online.

Additional update from Baptist Press:

Pollock was to have been a featured speaker at the Southern Baptist Convention’s June 10-11 annual meeting in Indianapolis. He also had been appointed to serve on the convention’s Committee on Committees.

In 2006, Pollock nominated Frank Page to serve as SBC president during the annual meeting in Greensboro, N.C., and he was a member of the Resolutions Committee that year.

[/UPDATE]

Be in prayer for the family of Forrest Pollack, pastor of Bell Shoals Baptist Church in Brandon, Florida. He has gone missing while flying his own plane to a conference. From Bell Shoals Baptist Church in Brandon, Florida:

Please be in earnest prayer for Pastor Forrest. On Sunday afternoon, Pastor Forrest left (flying his own plane) for North Carolina, a quick stop before going to a conference in Texas. He reached his destination in North Carolina; however, after leaving from there early Monday morning for Texas, we have learned that Pastor has not yet reached his destination at the time of this writing.

Everything humanly possibly is being done to locate Pastor’s whereabouts. We are, however, appealing to all of our church family to pray earnestly for God’s supernatural intervention. The new Worship Center is open for prayer and will remain so until further notice.

Updates are being provided at the church’s website.

Here are the most recent updates:

5/13/08 7:05 AM Posting
Two additional aircraft have joined the search this morning. Ground teams are being replenished as the search continues. Crews are working on refining the search area based on the radar track. A second command post has been opened closer to the search area. Clear weather is expected as they continue to search.

5/13/08 12:35 AM Posting
A search plane is currently in the air nearing the area of the emergency signal. Weather had prohibited earlier air search attempts. Fourteen crews will be on the ground throughout the night attempting to locate the signal source.
Dawn Pollock is doing well given the circumstances. Please continue to pray for God’s intervention for Pastor and Preston and for Dawn and the children as they await further news.

5/12/08 11:35 PM Posting

Multiple ground search teams are currently investigating an emergency transmitter signal about 30 miles from the Rutherfordton, NC airport where Pastor Pollock departed at around 4:10 AM this morning. The signal was first picked-up around 11:00 AM this morning. The initial timing of his departure and the reception of the signal did not lead authorities to believe it was the pastor’s plane. It is possible, however, that the mountainous terrain could have impeded the emergency signal. Air search crews will begin searching at first light.

Interrupted for breaking news we continue Marty “Carmen Sandiego” Duren’s series we have themed, “Where is the SBC?” Since Marty dropped off the Outpost map some conjectured his displeasure with the Outpost. Instead, Marty has been living out of the reality he now experiences and is writing here in part 2.

We’re Not Who We Thought We Were.

One of the more replayed video clips over the last few years was that of NFL head coach Dennis Green of the Arizona Cardinals. Following a loss to the Chicago Bears in 2006, which his team had led 24-3 in the fourth quarter, came the inevitable press conference. An obviously ticked Green exploded like a man who’d been celebrating Cinco de Mayo for a month. “The Bears are who we thought they were,” has become a favorite line for sports fans ever since. What Green was saying was, “They had nothing on us. They were the team we prepared for and we let them off the hook. We should have won the game.” It was slightly more colorful in the original language.

In thinking through this series, the word “disintegration” was intentionally chosen over the word “collapse.” I do not think that we will wake up one morning in the next year to find that the United Methodists, the Lutherans, Episcopalians (in their various stripes) or SBC will have closed the doors and shuttered the windows. I do think that we will continue to see decreasing viability of meaningful gospel influence in these organizations to the point that, like water against a rock, the slow erosion results in an unstable foundation and eventual cessation of denominational existence.

Linked in Ed Stetzer’s warning shot were two papers by J. Clifford Tharp, Jr. one with the following chart indicating “Total Membership” and “Resident Membership.”

Tharp’s brief analysis included these three points: 1. Trends in Membership (both Total and Resident) are becoming very flat; 2. Total Membership is dangerously close to beginning to decrease; 3. The gap between Total Membership and Resident Membership is widening. Observant readers will notice that if the top line flattens and the gap between the two widens, then necessarily the bottom line is beginning or continuing a downward arc. On this chart, that means that Resident Membership is decreasing. As we know and will soon reconsider, Resident Membership itself is a misleading measure of biblical membership and should not be considered an accurate accounting.

We’re not who we thought we were.

A second chart (below) tracks SBC baptisms from 1950-2004.

As you can see, baptisms have remained virtually static for more than 1/2 a century (there is a minuscule increase of 45 per year). The US population in 1950 was 152,271,417. Non-stop growth brought us to 281,421,906 by the year 2000. In a non-scientific but well thought through series of observations, Nathan Finn suggests that the Southern Baptist Convention is probably reaching no more than 100,000 “unreached Americans” per year while in their book, “Who Will Be Saved?,” Paul House and Greg Thornbury write:

Statistics compiled by the North American Mission Board…reveal that as many as half of all adults baptized in Southern Baptist churches are rebaptisms of persons already baptized by Southern Baptist pastors. Another 40 percent of adults baptized are Christians from other denominations who have never been immersed. Only ten percent of all adults baptized in Southern Baptist churches are making first-time professions of faith.

And this from what is widely considered the most evangelistic denomination in the U.S.

We’re not who we thought we were.

In her new book, The Fall of the Evangelical Nation, Christine Wicker takes both Southern Baptists and evangelicals to task for their faulty reporting of their actual membership totals. She notes, for example, that:

Only 7 percent of members who’ve been in a Southern Baptist church five years of less are true converts, meaning sinners who weren’t raised in the church but came through a profession of faith in Jesus. If you took out the Southern Baptists who married unbelievers and brought them to faith, hardly anybody would be left.

Behind the thesis is that there are not nearly as many committed, Bible believing, Bible following Christians in American as we have all been led to believe, the former Dallas Morning News writer (and former Southern Baptist) pegs SBC active membership at just north of four million. Though Wicker finds herself somewhere between an agnosticism and an reluctant atheisism, her understanding of what genuine church membership should be is decent. She refuses to acknowledge that the SBC consists of 16+ million members, stating, “How many members a church has is a pretty worthless measure of reality…[only] about two-thirds are even residents of the same town as the churches they belong to.”

We’re not who we thought we were.

Not content with exposing the SBC’s lack of clothing, Wicker also points out that the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) does not have its claimed and oft trumpeted 30 million members. There are sixty denominations that make up the membership of the NAE including the Assemblies of God, Church of God, Church of the Nazarene and the Evangelical Free Church of America. According to Wicker’s research, the total membership of the fifty member denominations listed in the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches 2007, the American Religion Statistical Archives and the denominations’ own Web sites the grand total of the members is 7.6 million people. Active membership would be much less–less than half actually. So, what of the elusive 30 million count we’ve all heard. No one, not even NAE president Leith Anderson knows for sure. The 1990 NAE record listed only 4.5 total members.

We’re not who we thought we were.

What does this mean? Is the issue a matter of simple math? No. The issue is that, not only have we been well behind the population growth curve, we didn’t have as great a number in the starting blocks as we had been led to believe. Since every age group of baptisms is decreasing except those who are under five years old and since the number of those graduating from high school and leaving church is increasing and since the ranks of admitted unbelievers is the fastest growing “faith” category in the US, there simply are not going to be enough people to keep denominations, which are dependent on heavy financial investment, afloat. As denominationally oriented church members age and die (and they already are) younger people will not give tithes to churches that insist on supporting failing bureaucracies, thus leading further down the Post Denominational road.

We’re not who we thought we were.

Seeing as how most of us are in Christian ministry one would think that the time to be honest would be…well…just about any and every time, though in these days being honest may get you branded a malevolent spirit being. But I digress.

Friday morning, May 2nd, Dr. Steve Lemke, Provost at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, sent an e-mail encouraging various faculty and staff to consider the Barber/Yarnell Resolution on Integrity in Church Membership. He certainly did not suggest that they should sign their names to it. He simply stated his own support and offered it to them for their own support if they might be so inclined.

Of course, Tom Ascol has proposed a similar resolution for the past two years and it has been rejected both times. The arguments against Ascol’s resolution have been quite stellar. In Greensboro the official stance of the Resolutions Committee was that we should keep unregenerate people on our church rolls for their prospect value. And a majority of the messengers in session said: “Amen.” Undeterred Ascol submitted his resolution again at last year’s meeting in San Antonio. There it was argued before the messengers that to adopt such a resolution would infringe upon the local church’s autonomy. And a majority of the messengers in sessions said: “Amen.” Read the rest of this entry »