BaptistLife.Com Forums.

Is it known yet where the 2011 Biennial will be? I am hoping to get the Esperanto-USA convention to Seattle that year, which probably means I won't have time or budget to go to a Biennial, but you never know, and if I could I would certainly like to.

Our pastor was one of the 12 missing votes, she had a Triathlon scheduled for the same weekend as the Biennial. (Yes, our pastor is a Triathlete, or Triathalete as she pronounces it, and came in second in her age class.)

Too bad, I'm hoping to be in Cuba in 2010 but really don't see how I can return to the Caribbean the next year.

I just got back from a vacation, couldn't do the biennial due to family commitments and the fact I am resigning from our church at the end of the month.

I am STUNNED that the reorganization didn't pass. Truth be told, part of the reason I didn't go is that I considered it a fait d'accompli. I thought churches that stood to lose in this simply didn't have the finances or the will to get delegates to Pasadena. I would be very curious to know what the demographics of the vote were, though i'm sure that information isn't to be released (and probably isn't even known).

I am taking a step back from AB life for a while, while this denom figures out what it wants to be or become (good turn of a phrase, Dr. Stinnett). I just am really surprised and don't know whether to be hopeful or demoralized!

Mike

Anyone else who was there care to share a bit of the sense of the decision-making process? On the general board, Tim said the discussion was mainly related not to concern over the statements of concern, etc., but to an ill-informed group of voters who felt unsure of what they were really voting for. Yet the ABNS piece from the other day mentions five speakers--one pro and four con. Three of the four cons were members of AWAB churches, a disproportionate number by anyone's reckoning, and even by ABNS's reporting, each one of those speakers mentioned that one of the problems with the change was that it threatened the nature of our denomination, diversity, freedom to disagree, etc. (three guesses on what that means and the first two don't count.)

It looks to me that the differences were more ideological than they seemed to Tim. Anyone else there who could chime in?

MJ

Thanks for posting, Haruo--I didn't know about the speaker from Evergreen--you would, I guess! Maybe no other BLers were there, I don't know. I just was curious as the article reflected more disagreements from an ideological perspective than I expected given Tim's notes on the meeting.

Who was the non-AWAB con-speaker by your reckoning?

BTW Curtis is not AWAB at least in the sense you actually wrote, i.e. "from AWAB churches", if by AWAB you mean actually "churches that have formally joined, and financially support, AWAB". (I'm not "from an AWAB church", either, though I think I'm AWAB in my own right.) Presumably most AWAB member churches also have members who are not, themselves, particularly AWAB-aligned. Heck, I think most ABC churches have many members who aren't even particularly ABC-aligned, and even some who aren't especially Baptist.

In a Baptist context I don't think an expressed concern about the potential endangering of congregational polity rises to the level of ideology. So as reported I really think Grant Ward and Michael Harvey are the only speakers who, from ABNS's obviously very "thumbnail" report, sound to me like they may have been "ideologically driven", and even there it sounds to me like they may have been concerned that the proposed structure would make it harder to discuss issues of concern.

The whole thing doesn't sound as ideological as you are making it out to be, to me.

Haruo, Dr. Hancock-Stefan is the one "con" speaker I would expect not to be welcoming and affirming, just based on a link to Dr. Totten's and Dr. H-S's church in the ABP report. I realize these folks may be different than the expressed positions of their churches--I was just hypothesizing. ABNS reports that Dr. Totten's concern was for undermining the diversity created by the current structure; I took that to be ideological and I guess it may not be, although it still sounds that way to me.

My expressed reason for asking is I just wondered if there was anyone else actually at the biennial to give me a perspective other than Tim's, because I was surprised at the ABNS report given Tim's account of the meeting.

Sorry if I struck a nerve--not my intent.