by Sandy » Tue Dec 01, 2015 9:45 am
I've known some individuals whose understanding of the Baptist concept of the independent, autonomous, local church is such that they objected to associational directors of missions keeping files of resumes to distribute to churches, and state conventions using their offices of "Church-Minister relations" to provide personnel information on available pastors and staff members to churches. Personally, my preference would be for a more formal system of keeping track of ordained and licensed ministers, simply to prevent the "good ole boy" mentality, where good friends in influential places move buddy's resumes to the head of the line, or make sure good friend Bubba's resume gets in front of the search committee at El Prominente Baptist Church. And that's not a slam of conservatives, BTW, because that kind of thing was going on long before Pressler and Patterson came around.
When I was involved with CBF, I saw this coming. Don't know how far back posts here go, but I've mentioned things with CBF before that I thought they needed to do differently. When CBF was birthed, it did not represent, or contain, enough of the "power" of moderate Baptist leadership to become the organization around which those opposed to the direction of the SBC could coalesce. It was dwarfed by the Baptist General Convention of Texas, whose leadership took steps to protect its interests and while in agreement on the SBC, wasn't necessary as far to the left theologically. To a lesser degree, even the BGAV and the BSCNC were poles around which moderates gathered, and since they already had institutions to protect, CBF was a smaller player. What needed to happen was for CBF to put together leaders who could aggressively define the organization, pull together and unify the various scattered elements of opposition to the SBC, and define themselves that way. There would have been some cost to that, including losing fence sitting churches, and splintering and splitting of the state convention organizations, but there would have been a core of support, and what was lost in the individual states could have been unified by those churches from states without a convention leaning in a more moderate direction. But they were more interested in putting something together as a job and salary saving program for ex-SBC prominents, and the state conventions embarked on a "preserve and protect" mission. Ironically, the Texas and Virginia state conventions split anyway, and the day that the conservatives in both states have the majority of churches and finances is not too far in the future.
Though CBF keeps statistics either closely guarded, or doesn't publish anything, it is pretty clear from the budget reductions and dollar amounts over the course of its existence that about half of the churches that started out with it are gone, probably most of the fence sitters that leaned more toward the SBC. The box score has been 1,800 CBF affiliated churches for a long time, but if you look at their internet list, and their receipts, and divide them by 1,800, it's pretty clear that the current number of supporting congregations is probably about half of what it was at the peak, I'd guess fewer than 1,000. But that's not a bad thing, nor has the splitting of the two moderate state conventions been, either.
CBF now has an executive officer who was very much an insider in the BGCT which, despite its massive losses of churches and revenue, is still a strong, viable state convention. I would think that a central denominational structure, with the balance of a BGCT on the right, and a BGAV on the left, with room for the struggling, tiny Alliance, and the various elements that have been attracted to CBF would be an ideal Moderate Baptist denomination, with a very clear identity. In pulling it together, there would still be some shakeout of local churches, and some splinters here and there, but taking the risks seems to me to be better than sitting around, waiting for the remaining leadership to hit retirement, collect pensions, and watch the organizations and institutions continue to decline, with the main occupation being how to shuffle the cards, and reorganize and restructure every few years to accommodate the losses of church membership and revenue.