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While I doubt anyone would confuse the humidity at an SBC meeting in Houston with humility, the former obvious from one's first morning breath, the latter always in short supply amongst our struttin', backslappin', gregarious brethren, I am optimistic that the annual meeting will be good.

Here are a few things I read in the tea leaves from afar, no benefactor having offered to pay my expenses to attend the meeting (second consecutive year this has happened).

Elections

Fred Luter will be reelected as president and will deliver a stem-winding, corn-shucking, rip-roaring sermon.
Bart Barber will be elected 1st VP. He is a sensible, reasonable, quality pastor.
Jared Moore, whom I know from SBC Voices, will not be elected 2nd VP but will continue to grow in knowledge and grace as he ages and works toward an advanced degree. He is a serious minded young man. Try again.

The Calvinist Report

It will pass easily but there is really nothing controversial in it and it requires no action.
Various SBC luminaries will offer comments filled with sweetness and light.
An outlier messenger or two may get to a mic and ask a dumb question, but that's the SBC.

Peter Lumpkins' resolution on Sex Abuse (look for my article later today on the subject)

Will be buried in the resolution committee and not reported out to the floor with the reason offered that the SBC has addressed the issue in previous resolutions.
An attempt to put it on the floor for a vote will fail.
The SBC will have missed a good opportunity to get ahead of a scandal that will embarrass some of our prominent leaders.

The statistical report

There will be hand-wringing, weeping, and gnashing of teeth over the sharply lower baptism total for 2012.
God will be blamed for this in that He hasn't sent revival.
Pastors will be blamed for this for not witnessing.
Jerry Drace, president of the SBC Evangelists group, will blame pastors for not using vocational evangelists.
No one but Kevin Ezell will be able to say they are doing something that might change the downward trend.

Boy Scouts

Boy Scouts will be beaten up.
The near defunct and moribund SBC Boy Scout alternative, Royal Ambassadors, will be touted.

People-watching

Look for the mega pastors and mega wannabees to be wearing suits or at least dress shirts with cufflinks. See how they strut (you could strut like that with some practice, get a full length mirror).
Observe carefully how many of the Reverends are embarrassingly rotund. Follow one to lunch and find out why.
Be sure and not miss the miscellaneous business sessions because that is where you will be entertained by a few oddball messengers offering oddball motions. Hey, it's their right.
Lament the lack of tonsorial enhancement, toupees. Thirty years ago there were no shaved heads and hundreds of toupees. Now, scarcely a toupee to be spotted and shiny pates everywhere.

I regret not being able to attend but, Lord willing, I will make Baltimore next year.

Have fun, after all, you are on an expense account.

Your analysis, William, is probably more on target than most of the journalistic ones. One comment, the SBC may have been so busy getting out of the world, it doesn't know lost people by name any more. After all, if you send your kids to a church school (segregated of course), where are they going to encounter lost people? If you work out in the church's wellness center, when do you meet real sinners at the Y? If Baptists don't even speak to each other in the ABC store, how are they going to reach the world? If you can't go to Disney, how will you know the common language of those who go? If SBC folks can't spend money in Starbucks, when will they interact with their neighbors? (tic)

I appreciate your report William! (and the good humor with which you make it.)

I will be setting up a donation system to send po' ol' William to next year"s convention.

So it's in Baltimore next year, huh? That's just a hop skip and jump down the road. I may go just for old time's sake.

Ed: Sandy just what sort of "specific public school curriculum objectives which are contrary to Biblical Christian values and teaching" did you have to re-educate on when you moved to Pennsylvania?

While we are here would you explain just what you mean by "I had to re-educate on" . And where you re-educating yourself or someone else?

Sandy, the only national initiative that has potential to increase baptisms is NAMB's church planting effort.

In the past the simultaneous revivals would bump up baptisms but theses seem to be a thing of the past.

Sorry, Ed. You're right, I guessed what you meant, and shouldn't have drawn attention to your typo.

It seems to me that the purpose of many Christian schools is to isolate children from actually learning about the culture they live in. I believe it creates persons who are ill prepared to deal with reality when they actually get out into the secular world via work or college.

Sandy, I think it depends on which students and which Christian schools. The independent evangelical schools in this area seem to exist to keep people from studying evolution, to teach young earth creationism, etc.

My wife briefly attended one in N. Little Rock as a young person funded by the Churches of Christ who tried to tell her that she wasn't saved because she wasn't Church of Christ. I've heard reports of others who attended a school I'm aware of in this area that told Catholics that they weren't Christians.

As person whose wife has taught in public schools I take offense at your characterization and broad sweeping generalizations about entire systems of schools in different states, locations, etc. The public school here in Iowa has over the years been of very high caliber. We are in danger of losing that because of cuts to education by a Republican governor. But that is another story.