BaptistLife.Com Forums.

Your list includes "Baptist Convention, Npvember 10-11" which is the Georgia Baptist Comvention. The meeting is in Macon, home of Neil Heath, Mercer University, and the splendid Ocmulgee Indian Mounds. I may attend this year as a messenger.

The GBC, like other state conventions, is all about reduced budgets, pared-down staff, reduced Cooperative Program giving, and increasing irrelevance in the minds of a growing number of pastors and churches. While I appreciate many of the staff of the GBC and value some of the work they do, our beloved state convention is on a downward trajectory. Still, almost all GBC churches contribute to the CP and there is a considerable sum of money to be divided up, making the GBC relevant for those who wish to influence the spending of money.

Didn't see the Baptist General Association of Virginia which is meeting November 11-12 in Hampton.

Where do the SBCers of Utah and Wyoming meet, and when?

It seems like most of the meetings are in the fall. I wonder how that got chosen as the tradition?

I'm going to Waco meeting in November. Not expecting much out of the ordinary, maybe a resolution about the Houston supenas.

I have always had difficulty with the state convention level of the SBC bureaucracy. Ever since a college buddy of mine became a "consultant" in one of the larger state conventions, due to his Dad's prominent presence on the trustee board in charge of his area of service, and spoke openly about how "easy" the job was, how little time he spent in the office, telling his administrative assistant he was "going to a meeting" or a consulting event, and then meeting friends and playing golf, and the use of a rather generous expense account for a lot of personal perks. He was aiming in that direction while in college, got a two-year seminary degree and spent 25 years living off the Cooperative Program at a salary that most pastors in his state wouldn't have dreamed of getting, along with perks like his kids getting free tuition at the convention's colleges, use of a rental car traveling to his "consulting" sessions, usually in churches, and a "required" week of mission service, usually international, at convention expense. He once offered to "help" me get my name in the hat for a similar position in the state office, heading up Men's mission ministries (an almost non-existent field these days) and Disaster Relief.

Other than the colleges and universities, of which most are tuition-driven and receive very little financial support from the convention, and the usual assortment of children's homes, old folks homes, and church planting, what do state conventions really do? I think most could decrease staff by half or more, still have the relationships and governance of the institutions, and let the money go to international missions with little change.

Actually, the name for this thread is a misnomer. No matter how much the states are or are not part of the SBC, each is autonomous in its own right. The SBC is not the legal owner or controlling interest in any state corporate registration.

That's not at true as it used to be. Small states are beholden to the returning CP dollars allocated by NAMB, so they step in line pretty quick on all things SBC. It would probably be more accurate to call them subsidiaries of the SBC at this point.

Small states on the other hand have more clout in running the country. Wyoming and Texas have the same number of senators... oh, you mean small Southern Baptist states...

Makes one, at least this one, wonder why the insistence from SBC that they are not a denomination and all parties are independent?

I am going this year looking for relevance. I don't need the state convention, but support it for extension of missions. Are they still doing missions that matter? Is there a willingness to jettison where needed or is just much of the same, same.

I pastored in New Mexico, it was SBC controlled and if possible, even more so now. When is the last time one of the small conventions didn't do what the SBC wanted? They are a bought lot.

Ed: Sandy I think you just Supported Jerry's Observation.

Thinking the same thing Ed.

I had a sense, a tinge of, "if the SBC isn't doing work, there isn't any work going on". I doubt you believe that, probably just me.

I don't care if the SBC wants to fund work in Timbuktu, but let's not be naive and say this work is independent when all the evidence is to the contrary.

Jerry's observation is negative, contending that the SBC has "bought" smaller conventions. Fact of the matter is that "buying" their support is not the motivation, nor do the NAMB personnel that I've observed ever try to manipulate what goes on in the state convention. I know it is hard for the SBC's critics to admit that they missed their guess on theology, and that the churches and people were much more conservative than they thought, and weren't happy with the direction the oligarchy was going prior to 1979, but they were, including those in the smaller state conventions. You can look at it from a perspective that SBC help in those areas is "buying" the support they get, but that's an insult to the missionary personnel who are committed to ministry. I have the opportunity each summer to work with some of those folks, and "buying support" is the last thing they're interested in doing.

Ed: Sandy where has Jerry suggested that SBC Missionaries with boots on the ground do the buying. Many of them are fine people who have in my experience working with the Home Mission board (old name but 97 % transitioned agency in 1990 ) have been duped into swallowing the Top leadership's blather. Some simply hold their nose and attempt honest ministry. Since the take over of the seminaries was finalized with the retirement of Roy Honeycutt in 92 A generation or more of newly minted seminarians raised on the half truths and huge chunks of downright misinformation regarding SBC history are finding "mission" work in so called unreached or under churched areas subsidized by the convention to pay better than many of the available charges open to newbies in the traditional SBC territory.

Are you suggesting that the SBC uses NAMB and its mission money to buy the support of messengers and leaders of smaller state conventions? If so, then they are sure wasting a lot of money and time on missions and ministry.

I know there is a compelling perspective among those who find themselves on the opposite side of the conservative resurgence and its history in the SBC to find some reason for what they incorrectly term as "the takeover", other than just the simple fact that the people in the pew were tired of patronizing, self-appointed prominents who were leading the SBC down the same path to liberalism that other denominations were already going, but accusing the convention as a whole, and the state conventions, of being "bought" is ridiculous and unproveable.