SBC Reelects Bryant Wright With 4,780 Messengers

[Alan Carter]

The lowest turnout at a Southern Baptist Convention since 1944. Sure is a far cry from the days of 20,000 plus. Wonder what happened to us?

http://www.abpnews.com/content/view/6487/53/

[William Thornton]

[Lamar Wadsworth]

Got to admit that the annual meeting of the SBC is not even on my radar any more, this being my 20th consecutive year of not attending the SBC and my 14th year of not being a Southern Baptist. I totally forgot it was happening until I saw this post. Though he's to the right of me theologically and probably politically, I've met Bryant Wright and spoken briefly with him. I like him personally. He impresses me as kind, gracious, and genuine. In the time I've been doing adoptions with Polk County DFCS, I've had two teenage girls from my caseload adopted by families from Johnson Ferry Baptist Church. Bryant Wright has done some good things to promote adoption, and there are a lot of families from JFBC who have become foster and/adoptive parents. One of the adoptive families from JFBC who adopted 17 year old Deanna from my caseload had a 21 year old son who had been battling a rare form of cancer since he was 8 years old. They chose to adopt even though they were dealing with this situation. As time for Deanna's finalization drew near, he took a rapid turn for the worse and died a few days after the adoption was final. Bryant Wright was very personally involved in ministry to this family, and he conducted the memorial service himself rather than delegating it to an associate. He did a superb job with the service. It is always pleasant to encounter a kind and gracious spirit whether the person is conservative, moderate, or liberal.

There are many reasons for the small attendance at the SBC annual meeting. Moderates (not to mention liberals) have long been excluded from any meaningful participation. Nothing is really decided at the meeting any more, everything is pretty much scripted by the Executive Committee, big denominational meetings like the SBC are an anachronism, we are in a post-denominational era, the economy is bad and churches (especially the smaller ones that are the majority) cannot justify the expense of sending anybody to the SBC meeting especially if it is far away. Many Baptists have long since concluded that God may not really care or keep up with who is president of the SBC.

[Alan Carter]

Its really refreshing to hear someone who knows Bryant Wright personally share about his life and ministry. Perhaps the SBC would be in better shape if we all practiced that principle. There are actually some good things happening in the SBC and the Lord really does bless a lot of them. Remember how hard it is to keep a bunch of Baptists happy.

[Jim]

That seems to be a reasonable representation, about one messenger for 3,300 members. In the U.S. House, the figure is one Congressman for 713,000 citizens and one senator for 3,100,000 citizens. Of course the representation might reflect certain biases in all those entities.

[Sandy]

Lots of reasons for the low attendance--some of them posted above are right on target, such as most everything being cut and dried, with little controversy. Phoenix (my hometown) is a great convention city, but among locations where the SBC has met in recent years, probably further away from the higher concentration of churches and church members than any other convention city. It's almost a thousand miles west of Dallas, about 800 miles west of San Antonio and not close to any state convention of size. The convention is going back there again in a few years, probably because in June, when its 110 in the shade, its the off season. The SBC schedule doesn't allow for a lot of golf course time, anyway.

Moderates used to be convention messengers in numbers that were apparently highly disproportionate to their numbers in the convention's churches. Sort of proves my contention that the pre-1979 SBC was a provincial, backward, locked-down elitist network that wasn't representative of either the theology or denominational politics of the vast majority of its churches and members. In the wake of the Conservative Resurgence, and predictions of the displaced and disgruntled former denominational royalty that the convention would split, the predicted moderate exodus amounted to a tiny trickle.

[Alan Carter]

Why don't they ever have the SBC in Hawaii? Its for sure a mission field and I would be more than willing to go early and be sure that everything is in order. Even if we only had 1,000 messengers we could have a great time. Maybe its time for people in the SBC to calm down a bit and just enjoy being saved and part of the same family.

[Ed Pettibone]

[Alan Carter]

I just got back in from buying my new swim suit. You think you can get me an invitation to be a speaker at their convention so they would pay my expenses.

[Ed Pettibone]

[Stephen Fox]

in affirming Lamar's comments on Bryant Wright.

A classmate from Furman, John Brocard, I understand to be on Wright's staff now at JFerry. I hope Wright will have Ginny Brant, Harry Dent's daughter and friend of theirs from Columbia, S.C. to JFerry soon to speak about her father's religious pilgirmage, and if Lamar can make it down hope he will.

Lama and I made a big splash in New Orleans. If Anybody wants to know where we stood on SBC in those days, get the videotape of the Tuesday, maybe Weds afternoon session. I was taking on Jesse Helms and his operative Barry McCarty, while Lamar was reminding the Convention of the foul way it treated Roy Honeycutt.
Jerry Vines was beatific through it all.

The Good Dr. Thornton has good blog roundup today at his plodder site. Wade Burleson made extensive comment there. Hope some of you will take a look at that.
And we all need to monitor The Plodder closely in next few years. Vines dropped by couple days ago and now Burleson.
Plodder is an up and coming player for sure. Establishing itself daily in the varied influential world of SBC bloglife.

[Stephen Fox]

I didn't know any of this till just now.
Think Lamar will like this.

http://www.brocardwilsonlaw.com/who/jpb ... ticle.html

Didn't know Brocard well at Furman, just knew him and some of his friends and spoke in passing as I did at Reunion.

Proud of his and Fair's testimony here.

Both good looking people, she was from Spartanburg. John was on the football team.

[David Montoya]

It looks like the SBC is still in competition with the BGCT/TBC. On group cannot stand to let the other beat them, even if it is a race to irrelevancy.