by johnfariss » Wed Jun 13, 2012 11:50 am
Tim,
That strategy is not new with the SBC or what is now NAMB. My best friend from seminary took a position as a church planter with them, I think when it was still the Home Mission Board. Since he was from Maryland and his wife from Pennsylvania, they sent him to some little town in western Pennsylvania where he was told, "there is no evangelical witness." He got there and found not only a Catholic church but plenty of ABC, Methodist, Presbyterian, Brethren, and various other churchs, maybe some Menonites too. The population was heavily churched--just not churched with SBC churches, so they considered it to have "no evangelical witness." After a few months of butting his head against various walls, he resigned; and since he had been "unsuccessful" at starting a Southern Baptist church there, had he not resigned, he thinks they would have terminated him. After all, it's all about numbers--isn't it?
John