BaptistLife.Com Forums.

Just noticed this. Doesn't seem like its been that long ago that I served in a church in Kentucky, but I started there in 1992. It was an interesting experience for a Southwestern grad, to be in a state completely dominated by pastors who graduated from Southern during the Roy Honeycutt days. At the Southwestern Alumni dinner during my first state convention meeting there, I got elected as an officer. There were only 6 of us there.

It is surprising that CBF never attracted much of a following in a state where, in the 90's, the pastorates were dominated by Southern grads from the days before the resurgence gained control of their board. Comparatively, that's a small group, 45 churches out of over 2,400 statewide, and only a few of those are uniquely aligned.

This appears to be prompted by the fact that CBF is considering abandoning its restriction on hiring persons of homosexual orientation. The intricacies of Baptist polity will be interesting playing out in this, since there is the pesky issue of local church autonomy, and whether or not a Baptist body can tell a church that it can or can't cooperate based on its other, self-chosen affiliations. This isn't without precedent, either. Other state conventions have already restricted or eliminated churches which choose to affiliate with CBF, so this will just be another in what is becoming a trend.

It may help the CBF if the KBC does this. Cuts out the fence-straddling.

I attended the first clambake of the KBF in 1991 in Winchester, Ky., after falling out with the SBC because of its position on ordaining women. My church is sort of tied to both KBF and SBC, probably as much a generational thing as anything else. A seminary on the campus of Georgetown College (about 15 minutes away) is oriented to the CBF like the one at Richmond, Virginia. The latest concerted effort by the KBF is an almost frantic campaign to get churches to hire more women pastors, thus sort of demeaning them, both women and churches (using the slogan “breaking the stain-glass ceiling”). For this, the KBF partnered with the Baptist Alliance and held special sessions and church services led by women with the predictable hyphenated last names to make sure they are recognized for their individuality. The BA is biblical anathema. The KBF a few years ago joined the Kentucky Council of Churches (micro WCCC) and thus made that organization its spokesman on all matters, putting it in the position of the mainliners regarding marriage, homosexuality and all the rest. In other words, it has started down the slippery slope of the worship of the god Diversity. My prediction is that the CBF and its affiliates will go the way of the mainliners, denominations which are not stagnating but actually entering their death throes, making Christianity as heathen as the world of entertainment. The CBF/KBF should have established its own denomination in the 1990s but its churches were too invested in the SBC going back to the 1800s, again because of the people who actually carried the freight – old codgers now. Pastors are far too invested in their jobs to attempt what would be a virtual bloodletting if they tried that now anyway. Jimmy Carter probably envisioned his NBC in 2008 as a new denomination headed by him, of course. That didn't work out. He was already on the record as favoring legal same-sex unions then so he had an uphill battle on his hands, with his main colleague, Bill Clinton, no help. I'm a relatively poor pensioner with not much to give, but it goes to missions of both Lottie Moon and the CBF as well as to Samaritan's Purse, which in the long run is certainly of more worth than the CBF in pursuing the Great Commission. The inflexibility of the SBC vis-a-vis the unmistakable high principles outlined in scripture makes it more important than any other denomination in the country, though I do not subscribe to its Calvinism. The mainline denominations in the USA are imploding spiritually much as did ancient Greece and Rome and, more recently, Europe governmentally. This is happening as the church strives to become more of the world than in it. The nation is wallowing in decadence now and dragging the church with it...or is it the other way around?

The SBC is in an accelerating attendance and membership decline that is actually steeper than that of many mainline denominations. It's various state conventions coming up with ways to remove remaining CBF affiliated churches won't stop that problem, and in fact, subtracting their membership and money will only add to it.

A Baptist body cannot affiliate with organizations or groups on behalf of its churches. I don't know that the CBF group in Kentucky has joined the Kentucky Council of Churches, or the WCC by proxy, but if it did, that doesn't mean any of its supporting congregations have joined it. And just because the national organization is having a discussion about its policy, which currently restricts employment of persons of homosexual orientation, doesn't mean any of its supporting congregations hold the same position.

I see a lot of fear here voiced by one state exec a few years ago who said that half their churches were one pastor from changing their allegiance. If that is true, then states want to make changes harder to achieve.