New NAMB President Interviews with Al Mohler

[Gene Scarborough]

Here are my immediate impressions:

(1) Can't figure out who has the greatest ego--Mohler or Ezell--Ezell looks a lot like Michael J. Fox = cute / brainy.
(2) Ezell knows he is in deep trouble and it's not getting much better.
(3) He is having a royal tour of the country at SBC expense---is this the best use of mission money?
(4) Tells of couple going weekly to Boston with church planter---Why are churches/individuals spending this money for trips? Would it be wiser to just give to missions in the traditional way AND trust the NAMB to administer it right?
(5) The great big "Church Planter Program" has NO track record of success---WHAT!!!!
(6) Most of the Church Plant "success" is nothing but PR bull--what Ezell essentially says!
(7) Defines "areas of lostness" in the US as places with little or no SBC chrches = total arrogance as if no one else is evangelical!
(8) 37% reduction in staff at Alpharetta headquarters---and the CBF is worried when the "fat cat" is taking a diet!
(9) Now they laude the Cooperative Program, but Ezell admits he "disengaged from the system" as he Pastored his church---part of the Conservative Resurgence format when they thought others owned it they could not work with it autonomously. His "disengagement" was some 20 years after his like-kind actually totally owned it!!!
(10) "Why are we the nerd at the party" = a question as to how he viewed NAMB as "bad" before he drew his nice income from it.

[Gene Scarborough]

[Tom Parker]

Gene:

The truth is not welcome at most SB blogs these days.

I often wonder if the takeover guys will ever realize they lost.

[Gene Scarborough]

Tom--

You are so totally right!!!

I see this clearly in the Mohler/Eliff conversation. They are both in their 40's. They have succeeded greatly, but cannot admit to any failures nor short-comings. Both of them show and arrogance and ego not evident in my era of HMB acquaintance.

Eliff is thinking he is "doing the right thing," but cannot see the money spent going about the country on a grand tour could be better spent keeping some of the old heads at the NAMB. If he could only see how foolish he looks now pumping that which he despised some 6 months ago, it would be interesting.

What I think is happening is what I advocated back in 1979 = you stole the bus so you put the gas in the tank---we have other things to do than support your distorted brand of Christianity / Churchianity. The might of the SBC was in small churches banding together to do what no one of them could--in AUTONOMY.

Their approach is that of the Mega Church where the pastor is King and they only support that which they control. It is a violation of Autonomy which has taken place. That is what made the SBC great in the past. It will be their demise if they don't bring this off. I just doubt they have the self-perception to do so.

For me it is the ressurection of the Pharisees in the 21st Century!

[Ed Pettibone]

[Tom Parker]

Gene:

The good ship SBC has been declining for years, but those that took it over do not want to admit the ship has been sinking since they took it over. It now has so many holes in it, it will sink. I wonder who they will blame?

[Gene Scarborough]

Ed: How deep is the trouble. He seems to think he has begun t win over some of his opposition.

Gene: All he says won't dent the heads of the mega church kings who still must control!

Ed: Do you expect him to sit in Alphreada (sp?)--Alpharetta

Gene: Yep---conference calls can accomplish as much as a trip when money is tight!

Ed: Can't fault him for being honest can you?

Gene: I would have no problem---except such honesty was not part of his pastoral ministry before his job now. Somebody need to get more honest!

Ed: Are you suggesting that SBC should not have made such a reduction?

Gene: Do it without expense to mission field personnel / do some things really ministerial to the needy and hurt. Too much in the last 20 years has been pretense and large expense accounts for Executives rewarded for their dedication to overthrowing the SBC which used to minister far more.

Ed: He actually seems to have accepted the validity of what many missiologist identified several years ago.

Gene: It seems mega church pastors are like teens who won't listen to a parent---they have to have their hand put in the fire before they admit it's unwise to do such! So is this the kind of "God-directed man" who should be leading a major Agency into the future. I think he's not that bright to have been so arrogant for so many years and entertained his way into a "great church." To me, the greatest churches are the ones who cooperate in trusting Autonomy! The men honored with such positions in the past did so for the way their church led in mission gifts---not ministerial gifts of entertainment.

[Dave Roberts]

I read the emphasis on starting churches as being something directed toward mega-church congregations in major metropolitan areas. That may be well and good in some situations, but most of the country is not the ground for that type of ministry. Such a strategy seems to ignore the large parts of the country that are the ground of smaller churches and ministries. No one at the national level is looking at the large numbers of sinking churches in those contexts to help them find ways to reach the people who are their opportunities. It will be interesting to see.

[Ed Pettibone]

[Gene Scarborough]

Ed---

It's gonna get old to have 2 geezers going back and forth point by point until someone just shoots us or prays for our demise!

Both my father and I have been employed as field missionaries / I attended church at FBC Decatur with a majority of the Administrators in the mid-60's most innovative period of HMB work / I was a college-age consultant to several general needs think groups as President of the Emory BSU. The main question was:

Here is what I see in the ways we did missions in the effective days vs. what is going on now:

(1) The main object was the field missionary with administration there to help / now it's high-pay staff not really knowing what is going on nor having any experience in field work.
(2) HMB missionaries were involved in the dirty work with the down and out / now we want to pontificate, have a nice office, and show high numbers in worship when the down and out can't afford shoes to attend church
(3) New Church Starts were an Associational focus in a growing metro area / the HMB was for ministry outside a local church and inside an area of need churches were unable to do because it costs money rather than generates money
(4) Missionaries had no qualms about getting dirty with the dirty / now we just want to pass out tracts to the dirty from a nice air-conditioned auto as we drive by them on the street.

I give a simple example: Dr. Corts Redford insisted on a meager salary / refused to ride the expensive early planes and took the train because the most important function of the HMB was to fund missionaries / programs came into being from actual perceived unmet need rather than good PR to raise money so the building could be moved to Affluent Alpharetta as a showplace from what I see. Missions is never for show. It's about lost people and has no idea of getting money back.

[Ed Pettibone]

Ed: Thanks Gene for your perspective. I will agree that the 1960's and 70's where the the most innovative period of HMB work. In 1963, I was in the very first class of what became the Carver School of Church social Work at SBTS. Unfortunately they had a great program on paper but that fall when classes stated there where no social work classes on the schedule. Dr. William Delemarter came in to head up the program in January of 64. By spring it was obvious that the actual program would still not be in place by the start of classes that fall. I dropped out to supplement my wife's income (She was a nurse and always made more than I did, even when I became a state bureaucrat) . SBTS and Carver did develop a great program but I had settled into being an active layman in a new church plant in my hometown of Fort Wayne Indiana. During that first year of seminary I worked part time at Western Jr. High probably the poorest jr high in Louisville. That experience validated for me that social services was a needed and honorable work. And after I left the seminary and went to work as an old age case worker. Latter the U.S. Labor Department invited me to attend a summer crash course in counseling at Kent State University in preparation to work with the chronically hard core unemployed and the under employed. We earned 12 hours of Graduate school credit in that 8 weeks. So I have seen even participated in a good bit of of the dirty work you refer to, but I and 98% of the folk working in such where always assured of three square meals, a hot shower and clean sheets each day. So I am not inclined to feel sorry for those who did, or those who do get their hands dirty doing what God calls them to do.

But of course as most of us know SBTS no longer has a school of Social Work when I went back to seminary in 1990 The social work program was already under attack. And then Al Mohler and the Trustees determined that "A program of accredited social work is in compatible with the purpose of this Institution (SBTS)." I find it strange that Mohler and the SBTS trustees seem to have had no qualms about selling the assets of the Carver school to a sister Baptist institution, enabling them to continue an accredited social work program .

I also want to thank you for bringing up the name of Corts Redford, Can you believe that Mohler and Ezell say that NAMB has no heroes in its past? But perhaps they mean no preaching heroes, since it seem that in their frame of reference preachers (male of courses) are the only heroes. You noted I am sure that when speaking of honoring foreign missionaries, Mohler nor Ezell could bring themselves to mention Lottie Moon, If they had done so they would have also had to mention Annie Armstrong in line with Home Missions.

[Dave Roberts]

Interesting that the olc HMB had no preaching heroes. Redford could certainly do an acceptable job in the pulpit as could Bill Tanner. They just didn't happen to be from the same side of the street. When Walker Knight edited the old Home Missions Magazine, it was a journal on the cutting edge of where Baptists needed to be, especially in race relations and in ministry to the least of these. It's sad that we have lost those.

Ed, I was at SBTS in the late '60's and early '70's when the Carver School of Social Work was at its height. It did very excellent work preparing those who looked in that direction of ministry and had a dual degree program with U of L to get a double masters in that field. I grieved to see it moved into Campbellsville and Baylor where at least a shadow of the former program is preserved. The personal gospel and the social gospel are two sides of the same coin, not philosophies that are at enmity with one another. Indeed, often effective evangelism is begun in social ministries.

[Ed Pettibone]

Ed: FLICK, This comment by Dave Roberts as posted above deserves a Golden spur

[Gene Scarborough]

Gentlemen---

Like you, I beg to differ with the assessment by Mohler and Ezell. I view the Ezell comment as one coming from only a very limited involvement with Home Missions as a Pastor of a mega church!

Christian Social Ministries is a concept which is essential to a balanced form of Christian ministry, in my view. What has happened with the takeover is thinking that Evangelism in the ONLY thing we should do. In both the FMB and HMB a serious social involvement which produced serious places of ministering to the lost have disappeared. Anyone can pass out gospel tracts and preach sermons, but few have the sacrificial spirit involved in dealing with the down and out to whom Jesus went. Daddy wasn't jerking juveniles to Jesus. He was getting them in touch with a local church and a good family for serious help.

Again, it is the difference between Jesus and the Pharisees. The Pharisees were content with coffers full of money and the ability to make people do their wishes. Jesus noticed how many were on the outside---and those were the ones His Father had sent him to redeem.

I also know that, when the CSM person followed me in Raleigh, the program I had started went away in the difussion. Sometimes we can take on such a big chunk that the real ministry disappears. To the best of my observation, the 60's were times of solid ministry in solid ways---not glorious always---but solid and needed! The weeks I attended Home Missions Week at Ridgecrest were full of dedicated missionaries / chaplains / administrators. In recent years a missionary who dealt with street people and dressed as such was escorted off the campus by the security guards for rummaging through trash cans as attendees walked past and never invited him to the Dining Hall for a meal. My father would never have walked past---nor Corts Redford. They had all experienced the Depression, themselves, and knew what real social needs involved!

Are we getting too fancy in our "worship of God?"

[Ed Pettibone]

Ed: Gene when you ask Are we getting too fancy in our "worship of God?" I have to as a couple question A. What is too fancy? & B. Who are "we"?

And C. What do you mean by, "Are we getting "

In general my answer to the question is NO! Over all churches to day are no more fancy than they where in my childhood 7 decades ago. In fact I believe they are less so. Many preachers dress a lot less fancy as do many in the congregation. I have only worn a tie to church 3 or 4 times in the past year. 20 years ago I would never have attended a Sunday morning service tieless. And if I was on the program i would have worn a tine on both Sunday and Wednesday night . I see a lot less stained glass in today's churches. Nor do I hear much excellence in music, with few exceptions. Most of the new church buildings I see to day are are less ornate than many build in the 1800's and up to W.W. II. Again there are exceptions. We even had some rather fancy chapels in Korea back in 1953-54, although they where built from salvaged materials and stone. On the other hand just how many wide screen TV's do we need in the sanctuary. ?

[Gene Scarborough]

What I am speaking of is wanting to stay in the nice building / build the nice building / have the fancy NAMB building when the real needs are among the down and outs---sometimes within eyesight of us.

I guess another way of saying it is to put feet to our prayers and reach out and touch people who have no sense of joy and peace a right relationship with God provides.

It could apply to Ridgecrest as well. When I went as a child and employee of the HMB it was not nearly as ornate as it is today. In that more simple setting I felt God and would notice a bum rummaging through a trash can. It is unthinkable that in our day such a needy person would be escorted off campus for fear he "doesn't fit in."

"Be in the world and not of the world" makes sense to me. Frankly, I hear more spiritual needs expressed as I do tree work today with chips on my clothes and men plus customers who think they are just talking to a working guy.

[David Flick]

[Dave Roberts]

I appreciate the spur, but I think that I am paraphrasing Tony Campolo in that one.

[Gene Scarborough]

It matters not who said it---it's Gospel and stimulates me to see Jesus among the people holding children on his knee while he smiles.

[William Thornton]

Let's remind folks that we have mostly ex-SBCers and CBFers here.

You can't assail Ezell for not speaking plainly. Not a few have said that NAMB was our dysfunctional agency, an expensive one at ~$140m per year.

Complain about travel expense? He cut the travel budget in half.

Complain about ego? Compared to whom?

Pronounce failure? A bit premature...he's been on the job for about seven months. The old NAMB did some good things but also squandered money (and trust) profligately. My Annie Armstrong offerings went to fund things like VBS training in Arkansas. Ezell rightly addresses the system that gave us that.

And if the Social Gospel is such a great thing, why isn't the CBF rolling in revenues, since they are very big on that? If all of the strident SBC critics sent their dollars to the CBF, why is their survival in doubt?

[Tom Parker]

William:

You said:"Let's remind folks that we have mostly ex-SBCers and CBFers here."

I'm just glad that you did not refer to the folks mentioned above as liberals.

[Tim Dahl]

I took the time today to watch it in it's entirety. I appreciated his frankness concerning NAMB's failings. I appreciated that he mentioned that there were things to learn from the HMB, especially in the area of accountability. There was a lot that I appreciated about it.

If not for the wars of the past, and that which places me towards the side of CBFers; I'm sure I would be behind Ezell 99.9%. I don't care if someone has Calvinistic tendencies, and I'm a proponent of church planting. I can even understand NAMB'S desire for more direct control of monies directed towards church planting.

I wish CBF would plant more churches in my area. I wish we could host a CBF plant out of our facilities. I wish, I wish, I wish.

That which resonated with me the most is that which Ezell is now coming out of. Something that I'm entering into, and that is a time of disengagement. I'm there. Mark the red spot not the floor and place me in the center of it. I'm finding fellowship with local ministers, not the baptist association. We have so much more in common, with the conspicuous absence of competition that I have found in the TBA. I've other networks to engage the world through, some baptistic and some not.

I totally get the pull towards denominational disengagement.

Tim

[Gene Scarborough]

William---

Thanks for the balance! You are totally right about Ezell's frankness. It's the closest to saying "We were on a wrong path" that any SBC Agency Head has come. I know the NAMB now and the HMB as possibly no one else here does. My HMB knowledge is personal to its Spring Street location and it's Administrators starting with Corts Redford and Arthur Rutledge / Oscar Romo / Walker Knight / Jay Durham (my college SS teacher at Decatur First) / etc.

In fact, when they made a filmstrip and covered my father's new Juvenile Rehabilitation work I was on the cover of Home Missions Magazine playing the part of the child saved under Dad's ministry. My sisters were other cover children. So you may call me the "official J.D. of the SBC!" Just chuckle as you do it! Don Rutledge and Walker Knight were kind enough to let me fly from Ridgecrest to Atlanta when I needed to see my Orthodontist during Home Missions Week in 1968. I was an employee then, but the plane was paid out of their joint pockets and not an executive jet Reccord, et al, enjoyed at Agency expense.

I'm not so critical of any individual as I am the outlook on US mission work slowly getting into trouble and becoming a shallow shell of what it used to be. Gone are the Mission Centers where poor neighborhoods were served and Baptists rubbed elbows in the food closet. Gone are all the Chaplains to Juvenile Courts and the Sellers Home for unwed mothers, etc..

In their place are Church Planters who don't even have a record Ezell can find! I saw them, first hand, back in the 80's in the Southern Tier Association centering out of Binghamton, NY. It was as ineffective as anything ever done--to put SBC missions (viewed as equal to Jehovah's Witnesses) around the border of NY/PA. Paul James did a great work in NYC, but over-all our ministry was pertty ineffective in a well-churched area around Binghamton. The Lincoln Avenue strong church primarily gave a "southern home" to IBM employees from the South. The money was coming in, but mega church egos were putting on a good show without real results--in my experience. The Home Missions Magazine which, under Walker Knight, championed race relations now had not one serious purpose other than to do PR for a Mission Offering as the NAMB moved to fancy remote quarters in Alpharetta.

I was, and still am, bitterly disappointed at the show without results in helping real mission needs to the poor and disinfranchised lost people of America. Tell me why I should rejoice or financially support an empty shell? The former leaders in real ministry found a new place in CBF. Any criticism I give is trying to be constructive and prophetic, but fell on totally deaf ears at the SBC Voices blog to the point Dave Miller kicked me out!!!

No real criticism nor questions seem to be welcome at the SBC. Ezell is saying things I have said for years, but still looks at things as a mega church pastor, now tring to plant such all over America. The mega church is hardly "Missions" in my view. That is where I continue to take exceptionn with the SBC! It is almost comical that a man whose church hardly gave is now the head of the Agency he dispised and refused to support! His "honesty" is the first I have heard from an SBC CR "insider." Mohler is still the "contented partner in bombast" for me.

[William Thornton]

[William Thornton]