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Why does the executive committee of the SBC seem so intransigent?

The simplest answer I can give is that they don't want to admit they mishandled the charges and helped hide the sudden moves of some promising ministers and others. Telling the truth might hurt donations.

It’s a lot more complicated than that. Total chaos going forward. Watching some new EC trustees reminds me that the SBC is a convention of small churches, often with small minded pastors. Disgusting.

Yes, William, a little fleshing out of your comments would be great. Not that I doubt the general validity of what you said.

Part of the SBC polity problem is that within that system of smaller churches, often those churches have never been represented at an SBC meeting simply because the church budget does not have the finances to be represented at an SBC meeting. I grew up in an association that prior to 1979 had never had more than 3 or 4 of its churches ever sending messengers. They might send them to the local association, but they did not send then the the SBC or even to the state level. Suddenly the pressure to send messengers meant that people who had never been to a convention or understood anything about its polity were turning up to save the SBC without ever knowing any of the particulars, only that they believed the SBC needed new saviors, and they would come to save it. Now some have managed to step up to the EC, and they still have no idea how to lead at that level. The "small mindedness" of which you speak is exactly what sent some of us over the edge. Also, CBF has suffered from the fact that numbers of churches that thought like CBFers are still in the SBC not knowing even what the differences are, except as promoted by some very biased sources. Interesting these days to watch from a distance.