Young, male, restless conservative SBCers: Sniveling Wimps

[William Thornton]

This is a recent blog article of mine that deals with one of our IMB's short term overseas programs in which the participation is disproportionately female. As is often the case, I employ some provocative language in addressing one of the SBC's less known issues.
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Perhaps there is a more polite way to describe our bright, highly committed, single Southern Baptist young men but I humbly offer 'sniveling wimps' as one possibility of an apt description in the light of a startling statistic:

Two-thirds of the personnel who serve in the International Mission Board's Journeyman program are females.

Let's see. Southern Baptist churches give over $300 million to our International Board to reach the world for Christ. An important and significant part of their mission force is a two year program for single college graduates and married couples without children. The IMB describes it thusly:

For the past 40+ years, more than 5,500 adventurous young college graduates have served all around the world as Journeyman missionaries. These Southern Baptist, twenty-something, single or married with no children college graduates wanted to do something more after graduation than just jump into a secular career ... they wanted to be on mission with God.

Apparently, far fewer of our finest male college grads are very adventurous. Two-thirds of those serving in the Journeyman program are females.

It gets worse.

Many of the priority locations for these personnel are in countries where males are culturally dominant and females highly restricted. So, God must have willing males to bridge this cultural divide? No doubt God does. Apparently, just not among Southern Baptists. It's the "willing males" who are deficient in the SBC not God.

Hey! You! Yeah, you. Young, restless, single, educated, reformed or not reformed. You! We will pay your way. We will give you a
salary. We will train you. We will help you learn a language. We will stand behind you with vast resources. All you have to do is to be
willing to go.

Oh, you're busy on the warm and nurturing campus among encouraging friends and erudite professors. OK.

Most of us, and few others, are aware that Southern Baptists are mainly responsible for The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. It is probably unfair, but the CBMW makes news primarily in the area of pronouncing what females cannot do in ministry positions or reacting to such things.

There are things to be explored here but I would recommend that the CBMW refocus at least some of their energy on Biblical Manhood and relax on the Womanhood business. Perhaps they could get funding to supply spiritual testosterone to the young, restless, educated males in the SBC so that they would step up to the task of The Great Commission somewhere other than church saturated Ft. Worth, Texas, reformed hotbed Louisville, Kentucky and elsewhere.

Perhaps our young, single, male seminarians, white hot for Christ, would lay aside plumbing the depths of supralapsarianism or the joys of the hypostatic union long enough to offer themselves to the Lord for service in some place where the name of Christ is seldom heard.

I ask: Is God calling only females to these places overseas? Surely not. If He were, it would be the Almighty's joke on Southern Baptists who disallow females as Senior Pastors but use them for the more significant service overseas.

Surely, a young man entering the SBC pastoral ministry where he will likely serve single-staff, mostly rural churches for his career and where he will be dealing with a people group who are Gospel-saturated could at least consider that God may call him to one of the many people groups elsewhere virtually without the Gospel.

And shouldn't every complementarian enthusiast, those who may be sitting behind a desk or standing behind a comfortable pulpit pontificating about women in ministry, begin by apologizing to every woman who has answered the call of God and has or is serving in these places where men were needed but who were unwilling to answer the call?

At the very least the IMB should rename the Journeyman program to the Journeywoman program or just the Journey program.

Lottie Moon, could you send us some more strident and pointed letters from the foreign fields...and address them to the young men of the SBC.
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Addendum: The IMB does not release gender statistics for their mission personnel but I have heard SBC leaders address this issue of the female-dominated Journeyman force. Danny Akin in particular, I understand, minces no words with the young men at Southeastern seminary. I have also heard SBC presidents on the same subject.

As always, I welcome some more informed SBCer persuading me that a nomenclature other than "sniveling wimps" would be more appropriate.

[Dave Roberts]

William, you are a perceptive Baptist in this. I do have a couple of observations.

First, during my growing up years in the SBC, the heroes of the SBC were missionaries. They were the people honored in the local churches. Heroes were made of people like Bill Wallace and others. Churches were honored for being senders of missionaries and for their percentage levels in the mission offerings and to the Cooperative Program. The more recent honorees have been megachurch pastors. That may make a difference.

Second, the closing of SBC pastorates to women by the BFM2K has sent the signal that the only acceptable place for women is in missions. This trend may also reflect this trend which gives women a place still in missions.

Third, it is still the WMU that promotes missions. Young men are often left out fo the missions loop in many churches.

[William Thornton]

Well put, Dave.

[Blake]

Ed Stetzer and PowerPlant has made church planting the cool thing for the young men to do. They all want to be the next Driscoll.

[Tim Bonney]

[Sandy]

The missions education component of the curriculum of most SBC churches has been weakened by Awana programs, scouting, and other activities which take up the time slots once devoted to it. The WMU has always been successful at missions education and support, and so now that there is no Brotherhood commission, the girls are the ones most actively involved because they are the ones with the most information.

[Ed Pettibone]

[Haruo]

I know at least one church (and I think others) in Evergreen have AWANA, and it is extremely active and engaged in Regional activities.

[Tim Bonney]

[William Thornton]

We did AWANA for the last 13 years or so and it's a good program. They promote their own missions program and do their own fundraising for their local "missionary" (I think GA was divided into two or three areas, each with a "missionary"). I deliberately chose not to support these and we overlayed SBC missions into the program. Still, there was some mild pressure to support the AWANA stuff. Nope, not this church.

AWANA has brand identification, which the SBC knockoff program does not.

[Tim Bonney]

I do think you are right William that they have managed to create a recognizable brand. Their faith statement makes them not the best match for ABC or UMC churches. They believe in inerrancy and verbal and plenary inspiration which doesn't fit most ABC church or the UMC. And their doctrine is basically conservative Baptist or independent Baptist in orientation so they believe in "ordinances" and not "sacraments" and in local "church autonomy" and not "connectionalism" and in "once saved always saved." So that makes it less of a good fit for Methodists than Baptists I think.

I had the odd experience of being contacted in Cedar Falls by AWANA wanting us to start a program at our church. I explained that our doctrinal differences with them and the UMC were too great for us to be a part of their program. The representative basically tried to encourage us to do the program anyway even if it didn't fit UMC doctrine using the sales pitch "we believe in local autonomy so you ought to be able to do what you want" with the implication that we should be open to violating our own Church doctrine. I informed the representative that United Methodists also don't believe in local church autonomy either. That pretty much ended our conversation.

[Stephen Fox]

Thornton will be reading Manzel on the founding of the Episcopalian Church.

[Stephen Fox]

I hope to be reading this one by February.

Is there a similarity to the SBC dilemma with Women

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/b ... ntPage=all

[William Thornton]

[Stephen Fox]

I think I may have some interim work for you on Sundays here in Bama. Right now I'm trying to work my BBQ plans in the schedule but can't say too much publicly about travel plans over the holidays. There is a ringer that could make the conversation interesting indeed from Gaffney days, but you will have to take an oath if it takes traction.

Was tellin Billy Ferguson about Billy Sunday Birt just Saturday. You will have to come over and meet Ferguson some Saturday. Can get her from the outskirts of Cave Spring Ga in 40 minutes.

And there is a new twist on Marshall Frady.

[Sandy]