New and question

[ChicagoMel]

As my name implies, I'm a young adult from the Chicago area looking for a place to talk. I attend Sauk Trail Baptist Temple currently.

I don't know where to put this part...does anyone happen to have a baptistboards.com account? I'm desperately trying to register there also but can't see the darn verification image. Is there a way to contact the administrator about it?

[Haruo]

[ChicagoMel]

oh ok...maybe I'll stick here and check out thinkingbaptists....thanks. And sorry I didn't post more sooner, work often gets the better of me.

[Haruo]

ThinkingBaptists.com was founded by and for a bunch of us who got the boot from BaptistBoard.com several years ago because we were out of sync with BB.com's pet position on gays. So the average position there is a bit left of center. BaptistLife.com here was founded by and for a bunch of people who got the boot from the Southern Baptist Convention some years back and so while not "liberal" the way TB.com is, BL.com is definitely to the left of BB.com, which is dominated by fundamentalists, KJBO types, IFBs, and Southern Baptists of the sort who think the "Conservative Resurgence" hasn't gone far enough. If you can locate yourself in these spectra, you may be able to figure out which one you want to visit most. All three have their potential attractions and uses.

Haruo

[Ed Pettibone]

[David Flick]

[Haruo]

You're certainly right, Ed (and David), I overstated the extent to which the founders' circle had left the SBC at the time the forum started. I apologize for the inaccuracies. They were not, however, meant so much to define the actual memberships of the people involved as to describe the flavor of the attitudes vis-à-vis the fundamentalist takeover that they embodied. I came to the forum pretty early (from the old SBCnet that was hosted by Smyth & Helwys) and to a large extent the discussion involved firing back at the takeover folks. Those doing the shooting may not yet have left the SBC, but it was clear that they were on their way to something else, and hadn't quite reconciled themselves to the fact.

Haruo

[David Flick]

[Haruo]

[Ed Pettibone]

Ed: Correction !!!!

Above David Flick writes "Anyway (for the umpteenth time) I never had a hint that I was on my way to something else until after I was forced to resign at Chickasha. Of the original BL.Com staff, I was the last one to officially leave the SBC. Ed left first when Trudy became pastor of an ABC church. "

The facts are Trudy and I started attending an ABC Church in 1998 after moving to Cincinnati, Ohio. We did not join Lakewood for about 6 months. And at the time Trudy was still adamantly opposed to women in the pastorate specifically and women preachers in general. At that time she was a Doctoral student at HUC-JIR, Cincinnati, and was planing to teach Hebrew and OT in a state college or university. She was not even comfortable with women teaching ministerial students in Denominational schools. Although that began to change when she became acquainted with Pam Scalise, who later became president, of the national association for professors of Hebrew. After two years at HUC-JIR and attending Lakewood Baptist Church Trudy began to sense a call to ministry in a local church setting and assumed that because she had no formal music training that christian Education was where she was to work. She notified HUC that she was withdrawing from the Doctoral program and they offered to award a Masters of Arts for the work she had completed and she accepted that. She served in a volunteer capacity at Lakewood for a while and the accepted a Position at another ABC church on the other side of Cincinnati. There The pastor assigned her to Preach a couple times despite he protest. It was only after having preached, in opposition to her personal preference, she began to consider the pastorate, after a lengthy self study of her position on the question of women in ministry. By that time we had been in the ABC for about 3 and a half years. Even then there was much about the pastorate that she lacked confidence in her ability to perform. (She had gotten through Southern on the M.Div, track preparing for higher education) So with a large degree of trepidation she applied to the ABC Interim Ministries program and was assigned to the Latham Community Baptist Church in upstate NY. There her confidence grew and a year and a half later she accepted her present parish, here in the Adirondack State Park. She is currently excited about the possibility, presented in a request for her "Candidate package" in regard to another pastorate in our ABC region but in a more populated area.

[Bruce Gourley]

OK, I am late to this thread, the contents of which are masked by the particular forum (Welcome) and thread name (New and question). Just goes to show that you never know what ground these online discussions will traverse.

As to the question of how BL.Com started, David's account is on target. If there is a deeper story therein, it is that when the plug was pulled on SBCNet, I felt a need to try and provide an online space where genuine Baptist dialogue could take place, without having to conform to any party line. But I just provided the space; David and Ed get the credit for making the concept work (although David suffered in the process when he was fired from his DOM position, much to my chagrin). And if this site has made any contribution to Baptist life, the credit goes to the "openness" of the discussion and the dedication of the moderators.

As to my own journey, I taught at a Montana Baptist college (not an SBC affiliated college) while also serving as a Southern Baptist associational employee (campus ministry) in Montana. Montana Baptists have refused (to this day) to automatically toe the SBC party line, of which I am (and remain) grateful and proud. But when we moved South for me to go back to school, I left Southern Baptist life, and since then have not supported SBC causes. Yet the church we attended in Macon, GA, like every other moderate Baptist church in that town that I am aware of, gives token support to the SBC because some older members are still "attached" to the SBC. I yet remain friends and on good terms with Montana Southern Baptists, but we are now attending a nearby American Baptist church.

As to the future, expect to see CBF-related developments in Montana in 2008.

[Ed Pettibone]

[Ed Pettibone]

[Bruce Gourley]

[Haruo]

Somehow "state-supported Southern Baptist college" sounds so unbaptistic, I can just see the Baptists of colonial Danbury rolling over in their mass grave.

Haruo

[David Flick]

[Haruo]

Yeah, i know, but the wording just tickled me.

Haruo

[Ed Pettibone]

[Bruce Gourley]

[Ed Pettibone]

[Bruce Gourley]

[Ed Pettibone]