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Once moderates left the SBC, they need to fight someone so they are fighting each other. This is clearly aimed at Al Mohler and SBTS.

Some of my ancestors were Primitive Baptists. I know where Calvinism ultimately leads, and it leads exactly to the idea that predestination is absolute so evangelism is useless. It also leads to the idea that nothing we do in response to God is salvific if we are not "elected of God." That is Synod of Dort Calvinism taken to its logical conclusion.

If you guys read my blog you would be up on all this.

Moderates predicted this a generation ago, while exiting the SBC. Of course they were right. It is an issue that has been building for some time. There are churches that have been destroyed by overly agressive Calvinists. Some DOMs see grads of two seminaries (SEBTS and Southern) as arrogant and unacceptable. Some churches are negagively designating around the two schools in the CP giving.

I don't know what can come out of a statement like this. We're not going to change the BFM.

Mean and crazy has to find an outlet somewhere!!!

"...And God created an insane asylum for the planet earth. Over the door he printed Baptist Church!"

There has been some objection to my contention that Autonomy has been abridged in recent years. I stand by this and it is proven in the fact that, in NC, that Article of the old Constitution and By-laws has disappeared as a primary foundational statement. If you are a Philadelphia Lawyer reading the new Articles of Incorporation, you find it buried in a minute corner only the serious will detect. The actions of this particular state convention clearly violate autonomy as churches are kicked out which minister to gays and have female pastors. The strong influence of SEBTS is clearly evident.

The Southern Baptist leaders of the past adopted the BF&M to try and placate the ultra-conservative folks, it was only a few years until BF&M 2000 was formally adopted and is now a litmus test equal to a Creed for missionaries and employees. One of the strong points of my SBC was that we did not believe in Creeds!

Where things were presented to the Convention for formal adoption in the past, they passed over many committees to the point of formal adoption. Even then, contentious things were often modified by majority vote in the final phase----NO LONGER!

Starting pre-1979 there were meetings by a few mega church pastors in airports which came out with things declaring: "Southern Baptists believe . . . ." No one did any formal survey. No one stood up and said, "Nobody speaks for any individual church or member!" Quietly we adopted things which began to reign over formerly Autonomous churches and individuals.

To put is simply: We majored on Missions and minored on Theology. That was my personal experience from joining my Southern Baptist church in the 50's to seeing it change in 1979.

A group of diverse churches cooperated together, despite differences, to give to missions. With the advent of mega churches and mega egos of their controlling pastors, we have launched into an entirely new mind set. That bunch of CR leaders are now in trouble with Richard Land pontificating, and younger leaders wanting to break in. It's their turn to squirm. I think they deserve it and they are certainly losing numbers and baptisms year by year.

A clear case can be made for the Calvinistic beginnings at Southern Seminary. What allowed the SBC to grow with speed and move out of the South was the willingness not to be so narrow as it has become of late. Even more, was the spirit of Autonomy which allowed for cooperation within that diversity. Young ministers full of naive certainty and a Calvinist Manefesto are getting in trouble around Wake Forest, NC. Many churches took these men as student pastors not realizing things had changed. Most went to their new church with a model new Constitution and By-laws in hand which would make the pastor the church ruler with power to control all things in that church.

I have talked with people from many small churches as I did tree work for them. They learned a bitter lesson full of church turmoil and will no longer invite a SEBTS student as their pastor. This is not my invention. It is a simple description from living only 45 minutes from Wake Forest and working for people all around the area as things changed.

It appears to me that this new Calvinist push is just another expression of the control motivated by aggression which was used in spreading the Gospel in the past---rather than destroying one another.

One of the things that fascinates me is that the CR was sold as the cure to declining evangelism with the assurance that the new majority knew how to save souls while moderates did not. What happened to those assurances in the face of declining evangelism????

Sandy---

You are avoiding some serious realities about SBC growth. I was a child in the 50's when the SBC made it's great leap in numbers. It was real---and it certainly did not involve just children joining.

I distinctly remember "A Million More in 54 / Flying High in '55 / . . ." I grew up in Atlanta where my father was Assistant DOM of the Atlanta Baptist Association. Atlanta was growing and so were Baptist churches. Old downtown churches like Atlanta First, Decatur First, Second Ponce de Leon made conscious efforts to start mission churches in the growing suburbs.

Wieuca Road is a prime example. Dr. Roy McClain wrote a letter to encourage his members living in the Wieuca area to help form a new church. Atlanta First and the Atlanta Baptist Association cooperated to purchase a parcel of land and many members of Atlanta First formed the hub of a new church which called it's pastor and grew more than rapidly with new families moving into the area and joining that outstanding church. Second Ponce de Leon had members in the same area who were blessed and encouraged to join. Any number of other new mission churches formed in those years and they, in turn, grew to the point of starting new mission churches as well.

This was the secret of great growth in the 50-60's = COOPERATION and encouragement for new independent churches!

Things changed with Charles Stanley becoming pastor of Atlanta First. He was intent on building back Atlanta First to mega status. Immediately, their budget changed from 50% to missions to a pitance. They went from a "Top 10 CP" giving church to "no mention." The money sent for missions, first, purchased a bus fleet to replicate Jerry Falwell's Thomas Road approach to church building. Massive money was spent to purchase prime time on WTBS, then a new UHF station in Atlanta. Stanley put his service on when no other stations were giving prime time away as they used to. Atlanta First became a media mogul of churches in that growing city. They bought more land ajacent to the church and more than doubled their Education Building capacity. It was all about having the biggest church in town---no matter how many children were picked up in front of other existing churches all over the suburbs. That was the genesis of "child baptism growth!"

Where McClain had been active in denominational work in the SBC and Atlanta Baptist Association, Stanley would never attend the weekly Pastor's Conference unless he was on the program. They could care less now about Associational events nor growth. They certainly had nothing any longer to do with the MIssion Center ministering in the poverty part of Atlanta. The money went almost exclusively to their own church growth---and they were becoming noted in Dallas as Criswell did the same / Orlando where it was the same / Nashville and other places where big cities were growing in the South. The mega church concept was supplanting the Mission Church Planting movement!

The reason Southern Baptists are no longer growing is a Mega Church leadership and concept taking over from a Mission Church Planting locally concept. Now the new churches in growing areas are all Satellite Churches under the umbrella of a Mega Church funding it. The gifts and numbers are counted as part of the Mega. It makes those egotitistical pastors look "mighty and growing." Every leader of the SBC now was a former Mega Church Pastor who gets his "undisclosed salary and benefits" from a Denomination run with iron fist by the Mega Church Pastors getting the Presidency or Agency CEO position!

Here endeth the lesson

Lesson in life, Tim = God doesn't bless a mess!

BDW, I'm guessing that Ascol doesn't feel the need to be agressive because of the success of the New Calvinists in the SBC; hence, he lies low.

Timothy, you offer the familiar old saw about Calvinists and the death of evangelism but the only data in the SBC I am aware of (a LifeWay Research study) showed the opposite. I'll go with the data, not the old saw.

Gene, I would be interested in hearing about any first hand conversation you have with SBC church folks about SEBTS grads. You can email me. I hear some say this kind of stuff but recent SEBTS grads don't tell me the place is a New Calvinist hotbed churning out foaming-at-the-mouth disciples of Johannes Calvin.