SBCOutpost

[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.

Sometimes it is better to get scooped so one may offer more than a repeat of what may be found in Baptist Press. We have been busy asking around to find out more about Frank Cox. Here is what we have confirmed from several sources.

1. Frank Cox is a well known insider in the SBC having served on multiple committees in SBC life.
    a. Past President of the Georgia Baptist Convention
    b. Past 1^st VP of the SBC
    c. Member of Exec. Comm. for 9 years
    d. SBC Funding Study Committee
    e. Ad Hoc Cooperative Program Committee
    f. SBC Resolutions Committee
 
2. Frank Cox is well known in Georgia, perhaps best known for preaching revivals for churches across the Southeast. He is willing to preach in churches of all sizes and not only “large” churches.
3. Frank Cox was one of three on the shortlist for President at Lifeway, along with Georgia Exec. Bob White
4. Junior Hill has told people he nominates Frank Cox out of concern for Mohler’s Calvinism. Thus, Cox is the non-Calvinist candidate.
5. Frank Cox is firmly in the old line pre-Frank Page mold. Thus, he and Mohler share much in common.
6. Frank Cox and Al Mohler would seem to have the same agenda, returning to more of a “pre Frank Page” SBC.
7. Frank Cox is considered to be the candidate of choice for the Georgia Baptist Exec position when the need for a replacement arises.
8. Frank Cox seemed to believe the SBC to be moving in the right direction so while President the the Georgia Baptist Convention it has been hard to recall any calls for reform.
 
The best we can tell, is that Frank Cox would be a Mohler without the Calvinism. If you think things were going just fine before Frank Page was elected, and you don’t like Calvinism, and want to see more missions giving and going, Frank Cox is your man.
 
We think Bill Wagner may get our vote.

Our contributor, Benjamin Cole, is attending the New Baptist Covenant Celebration this week in Atlanta. Come back regularly for thoughts, reflections, and sundry digressions from one of the SBC’s most provocative bloggers.

In his recent column over on Arianna Huffington’s blog, New York Times bestselling author and former fundamentalist Frank Schaeffer bemoans Huckabee’s surge in the polls. We reproduce his column here, along with a link to the tersely-worded reply by Don Boys, formerly of the Indiana House of Representatives.

The Huckabee Win is America’s Loss
By Frank Schaeffer

Mike Huckabee wants to be our president. He doesn’t know about foreign policy. But he believes every word of the Southern Baptist interpretation of the Bible. Here is what he believes. God is angry with us and has always been. He was pissed off with us from day one. He was so pissed off that He wrestled with making a choice between killing all of us in a flood or saving just one family — Noah’s — so that later God could sacrifice His only Son to save everyone descended from the one family he didn’t kill and/or send them to hell for eternity. God did this because Adam and Eve, not to mention Noah’s great, great grandchildren-that’s you and me-didn’t live up to God’s pre-creation expectations. Cheerful, huh?

I was raised by fundamentalist missionary parents. My life has been one of all-consuming faith, not my faith, but the faith of others that I seem to have caught like a disease. What does God want? I’m still trying to find out. And having once been a famous “professional Christian” myself (until I cut and ran in 1985) my vision is muddied by the psychological baggage I carry.

The problem is Huckabee is sincere. So are the people who voted for him. I understand where they are coming from all too well. Every action, every thought, every moment is judged by an inner voice. Everything seems to have a moral component.

This election recalls the time I was involved in my own crusade, not for the presidency, but for the hearts and minds of the evangelicals my late father (Francis Schaeffer) and I were succeeding in politicizing, as we turned them into ardent pro-lifers. That crusade involved sell-out crowds in Madison Square Garden and all over the country.

I was a zealous evangelical back in the 1970s. When you are a zealous anything — evangelical, Marxist, feminist, capitalist, Democrat, Republican, whatever-you express your zeal by lying. The lie is always the same lie: to say that you’re certain about things, that you are right, and others wrong. They are so wrong that they are evil! This is a lie because truth is elusive. Nothing is as simple as any zealot, of any persuasion, thinks it is.

I’ve lived to bitterly regret the part I played in galvanizing the political energies of the evangelicals who soon morphed into the so-called religious right, the same people we just saw holding hands and beseeching Jesus to help their candidate save America from the rest of us. Looking back it seems to me that it was something like unlocking the doors to a slow-motion civil war, actually more like the doors to an insane asylum.

I’ve quit believing in ideological, let alone theological, purity. We guess. We hope. We muddle along. But there are no theological ideas worth hating anyone over. And if you understand vengeful Southern Baptist theology you won’t want anyone near the White House who takes it seriously.

We’ve been here before. (Remember Pat Robertson?) Mike Huckabee will fade, because most Americans are more or less sane. But as he fades he’ll take a little more of our self-respect with him.

The way to destroy harmony is to be too sure. I know. I understand how destructive it is to have a message you just have to impose on people even when you know it might ruin friendships, even when it might help rip a country apart. Been-there-done-that.

Nevertheless… in one dark little corner of my brain I still wish all the “lost” would get “saved.” And there are lots of other religious Americans like me. We might say we theoretically want to all get along, but on the way there we’d also like to sandbag everyone with our message.

But wanting to “convert” each other is not the way to build any sort of a sense of all being Americans together. And the basis of the whole Southern Baptist raison d’etre is aggressive evangelization.

Huckabee represents the half of us who are waiting for Jesus to “rapture” us and believe that the other half are second class citizens that God is just biding His time to gleefully destroy and torture for eternity. Thanks but no thanks Iowa.

______

Read Don Boys response here.

Pastor Dwight McKissic of the Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, TX, has requested that SBCOutpost publish an open response he has written to questions raised about Wade Burleson and the perceived need for an apology. With appreciation to Pastor Dwight for his candor, balance, and charity, we gladly reproduce his letter. We are unable, however, to alter the formatting that Pastor McKissic used in his original letter — sent via email. We apologize for the formatting, and will work to correct it before Monday. Read the rest of this entry »

If you read SBC Outpost through an RSS feed or if you are notified of new posts through such a feed then you may want to update your feed, particularly if you use Feedburner or are subscribed to the Feedburner feed.  One of our feed accounts will soon be deleted which means you may not receive notification of new posts.  To avoid that just update your feed and all will be well.  [We really enjoy typing “feed”].

Thanks,

The admins

It seems the thing to do these days, so SBCOutpost is pleased to publish the final post — a poem — by one of our contributor’s until the New Year comes.

Twas the night before Christmas, and at the Nut House
The Grinch was a-grumbling. The Hat, all a-grouse.
Ten thousand square feet of bourgeois, humble manor,
Was bustling and busy making ready for Santa.

The nativities were strewn ‘round the rooms on the tables.
The only reminder of our Lord’s birthing stable.
The black lab was snoring in canine elation,
While Big Daddy was struggling to write Revelation.

When out on the blogs there arose such a riot
That the master and missus nearly went on a diet.
Away to his laptop, like kudu he ran.
Flipped open the cover, and swallowed an Aspirin.

The shadow of Dottie cast over his shoulder
Like Wylie Coyote when crushed by a boulder.
Then, what did their wondering eyeballs behold?
But this little poem on SBCOutpost.

With a mean, nasty writer, so bitter and bold.
They knew in a moment, it must be Ben Cole.
More rapid than rabbits, he multiplied their pain.
And posted and posted and posted again.

“Now Klouda! Now Prescott!
Now Rankin and Chapman!
On Hempill! On Rainer.
On Tomlin and Schatzmann!”
To the publishers run.
To the editors flee.
And write them all. Write them all.
Each biography!

With no end in sight, he fumed and fomented
Causing many to think that he must be demented.
Undeterred, he blogged on about money and mansions
And firings, and failings and sundry dissensions.

And then, when no end was seen to his plight.
He laid down his sword, and whispered “Good Night.”
A new day is dawning, in our Baptist Zion
With Dock’ry and Akin and Rainer and Hammond.

A Resurgence of Mission, these men call us toward.
To leave behind rancor and all our discord.
Whether baking their cookies or parsing their verbs,
Baptist Blogger will leave them to tend to their herbs.
The Hat, with her self-loathing misogynation
Is free to promote it without satirization.
And Patmos will continue whether wrongly or right.
Or whether seminary trustees provide oversight.

Now some, how they’ll comment with gleeful responses
And assume that yours truly will rest on his haunches.
But détente is the word, not surrender or quit.
If needed, I’ll come back with more fire and spit.

For now, I’m contented to let Christmas truces.
Allow all combatants gather round fir, pine or spruces.
With families singing, glad tidings of joy.
About Bethlehem’s manger, and God’s baby boy.

Let’s focus, each of us, on orphans and Lottie.
Not trustees and censures and stuff in the potty.
So with Christmas blessing imparted, I go:

“Praise to the Savior. In excelsis Deo.”

A team of eminent physicians at Nashville’s Vanderbilt University Hospital have reached consensus in their diagnosis of ERLC President Richard Land.

Quite simply, he suffers from the advanced stages of Potomac Fever.

In the past months, Dick Land has told us that he found Fred Thompson “tantalizing,” even characterizing him as “Reaganesque.” He’s single-handedly legitimized Mitt Romney’s Mormonism by coining the equally marketable and ridiculous appellation, “Fourth Abrahamic Faith.” He’s dismissed outright fellow Southern Baptist Mike Huckabee’s campaign, and he scorns America’s Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, for having ended two marriages. McCain, our pompadoured ethicist tells us, is too “unpredictable” for Evangelical voters.

And now Land gives us this little gem, courtesy of Baptist Press, to guide us in our values voting. All of this leads us at SBCOutpost.com to conduct our next reader poll.

UPDATE: We concluded our reader poll at 3:00 PM CST. We give you, dear readers, the results below. Comments are now open.

SBCOutpost is pleased to announce the inauguration of the annual Tom Hatley Award for Trustee Excellence, to be awarded on December 1, 2007, to the convention trustee whose service has done the most to raise awareness of the great need for competent, intelligent, prudent, and consistent leaders to steward the Great Commission ministries of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Below are listed this years nominees, and while our reader feedback is valuable and influential, the ultimate decision to select the first recipient Tom Hatley Award for Trustee Excellence rests with the editor(s) of SBCOutpost alone. So without further ado, we give you:

Contestant Number One — IMB Chairman John Floyd. For many years, Floyd was a regional leader with the Foreign Mission Board, though the reorganization of the IMB rendered his service unnecessary. Rather than reassign Floyd, the IMB administration provided for his early and irreversable retirement from Southern Baptists mission force. Upon his departure, Floyd accepted a position teaching missions at a non-Southern Baptist seminary in Memphis, TN, where he continues to this day. Floyd’s tenure as an IMB trustee has done more than any other to raise awareness about the need to tighten the guidelines for trustee selection, thus reducing the likelihood that disgruntled former employees are given opportunity to govern the agencies wherein their employment was severed.

Contestant Number Two — SWBTS Chairman Van McClain. Also a professor at Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary, McClain’s trusteeship has been marked by a number of administrative bungles and miscues. McClain is responsible for fueling the Klouda fiasco with his careless public comments in the Dallas Morning News. He is also oversaw the creation of the homemaking program at Southwestern Seminary, the marginalization of fellow trustee Dwight McKissic, the near loss of $90 million dollars in seminary endowment by private management under a federally-cited Presbyterian winebibber, the commissioning of Paige Patterson’s latest $100,000 portrait, and the list goes on and on.

Contestant Number Three — Jerry Corbaley, California trustee for the International Mission Board. Southern Baptists leading proponent for the “most excellent way” of love and grace, Jerry Corbaley has single-handedly arrested the attention of Southern Baptists away from Lottie Moon to take up his cause of denominational wound-licking. A well-known aficionado for all things R.J. Reynolds, Corbaley was recently reappointed to his second and final term as an IMB trustee. Oh, and one more thing. Trustee Corbaley likes to write. A lot.

Contestant Number Four — Terry Fox, NAMB Trustee from Kansas. Fox is the former pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Wichita, KS, a pulpit from which he was released in the face of insurmountable congregational opposition, either because of leadership or family problems, or both. Fox resigned as chairman of the NAMB President Search Committee, though he continues as a trustee of the mission board. Recently, Fox gained national media attention as an heir to the counter-cultural fundamentalist political activism of Rev. Jerry Falwell.

Contestant Number Five — Kathleen Kelley, IMB Trustee and sister-in-love to SWBTS President Paige Patterson. While ordinarily regarded as a rather non-descript and quiet-mannered schoolmarm, Kathleen Kelley’s appointment to the IMB Board has done more to invigorate the impression in the minds of Southern Baptists that Paige Patterson is quite unashamed and unimpeded when stretching his manipulative tentacles into convention business. The second of Patterson’s in-laws to earn appointment to the IMB (not to mention Patterson’s own appointment to the FMB in the late 1980s), Kelley is almost certain to avoid the federal prison sentence imposed on her predecessor, Rev. Russell Kaemmerling of Texas.

Contestant Number Six — Bill Harrell, Chairman of the SBC Executive Committee. Now serving his umpteenth year in a second recycled appointment to the Executive Committee, Harrell flew under radar until his anti-Calvinistic tomfoolery and condemnation of contemporary worship forms drew out the public reproof of NAMB Chairman Bill Curtis. Most recently, Harrell split his own board by forcing through a proposal from Guidestone and disallowing Executive Committee trustees from fully reviewing the proposal. Diminutive but daring, Harrell authored an anti-blogger resolution at the 2007 SBC Annual Meeting. The Georgia trustee can usually be seen at conventions tethered to retired pastor Jerry Vines, and his chairmanship has done almost as much to raise questions about trustee recycling as has the IMB trusteeship of Texas’ right-wing Republican flamethrower, Mrs. Skeet Workman.

Now, dear readers, vote your hearts away.