Lonnie Wilkey
I attended my first annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in Pittsburgh in 1983. The “Conservative Resurgence” was in its infancy. The conflict between “moderates/liberals” and “conservatives” remained throughout the 1980s and most of the 1990s.
Many moderates left the SBC in 1991 and formed the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. One of their parting shots at the SBC was that now that moderates were gone, the conservatives would “turn on one another.” Sadly, time has proven that statement to be true.
I will be attending my final SBC meeting as editor of the Baptist and Reflector in a couple of weeks, and 41 years after my first meeting, conflict still reigns with no apparent end in sight.
I have spent the last few days analyzing why we still have so much discord in the Southern Baptist Convention when everyone states, “We all are conservative. We believe the Bible.” The “battle for the Bible” was the theme of the conservative resurgence.
The conservatives “won,” but battles rage on decades later. Why is there still so much in-fighting instead of a convention focused on the Great Commission as it claims?
While the conservatives rallied 40 years ago around the inerrancy of Scripture, I am convinced the real source of conflict, which is evident today, is that for some Southern Baptists, there always has to be a liberal in the room, regardless of how conservative everyone in the room actually is. Some are determined to find someone else who is standing more to the left than they are.
Of course, the Bible is always the rally point, but I wonder if it is really about the Bible anymore. It seems as if we have male peacocks with arrayed feathers boasting, “I’m more conservative than you.”
In a few weeks, Southern Baptist messengers will vote on what has become known as the “Law Amendment.” Mike Law, senior pastor of Arlington Baptist Church in Virginia, introduced an amendment to the SBC Constitution that was approved on first vote at the SBC annual meeting last year in New Orleans.
The amendment adds a sixth point to the third article of the SBC Constitution and states, “Only churches that affirm, appoint or employ only men as any kind of pastor or elder as qualified by Scripture, would be considered to be in friendly cooperation with the SBC.” It must pass by a two-thirds majority at the SBC annual meeting this year in Indianapolis to become effective. The amendment has divided Southern Baptists.
Law recently responded to a series of questions posed by the Baptist and Reflector, and he responded on the condition his comments were published unedited. We’ve honored his request, and his answers appear HERE.
Yes, I believe the Bible is very clear on who is qualified to be the pastor of a church and it is spelled out in the Baptist Faith and Message 2000. And as a Southern Baptist who adheres to the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, I believe the amendment to the SBC Constitution is unnecessary and would ultimately infringe on local church autonomy.
File photo by Matt Miller / Baptist Press
What’s more, the process we currently employ for determining “friendly cooperation” works. Just last year, SBC messengers voted to exclude churches deemed to not adhere to the BF&M 2000. The determining factor for most of those was the churches that had women in senior pastoral roles which is not in agreement with our confession of faith documents. Just the year before, messengers excluded Saddleback for the same reason.
Messengers proved by their actions that collectively, we as Southern Baptists know what the BF&M 2000 means when it states “pastor” — the man who leads the church and stands in the pulpit week-after-week — and that they are prepared to embrace autonomy of local churches while also embracing a unity under our faith statement as is.
Governing documents should not be changed unless absolutely necessary. In the case of the Law Amendment, this is not absolutely necessary. It is reactive, and it is divisive.
It is a case of the peacocks in the room claiming to be more conservative than the rest of us and attempting to label the rest of us as something less.
SBC churches created this problem decades ago when they began changing titles of ministers of music, worship, education, youth, etc. This was not born out of an attempt to usurp the biblical role of pastor but more because churches began adopting business models of organizational structure.
I thought that migration in titles was a bad idea then, and I still do. However, churches are autonomous and are free to use whatever title they want, and obviously still understand the role of pastor as described in the BF&M fits the biblical definition which is affirmed by Scripture.
The Law Amendment is the crisis du jour being served at this year’s annual Southern Baptist Convention meeting. To be determined is if the outcome will further reduce the pie of cooperation for the global advancement of the gospel. And if it passes, those remaining will be left with the same old question.
“Who’s the liberal in the room now?” B&R
