What Has Changed?

[Tim Bonney]

[Sandy]

The steps the SBC took to address the sexual abuse crisis is as much of a movement as I've seen the convention make in one annual meeting. That's a credit to the elected leadership making sure the issue was brought to the forefront and addressed. They did as much as the polity would allow, but beyond that, with the understanding that the SBC is a denomination made up of independent, autonomous churches, they provided some real incentive and motivation for churches to follow steps to prevent further abuse and to really clean this mess up.

Up until last June, the SBC has been an oligarchy for more than three decades. A few people called all the shots, stacked the boards and committees and there was no real leadership so the denomination stagnated. All of that changed just prior to last year's convention and it appears that some real leadership has been pulled up into the vacuum. It is the SBC, which means that it is always prone to be thrown backward, and those boards and committees are still stacked with the obedient lackeys of the previous oligarchs. But they made some progress this year.

For a decade now, the SBC has joined the ranks of declining denominations, and the decline in membership is serious. More than a million church members have left the rolls of the denomination in a decade. The churches are reaching and baptizing about half of the annual total that was occurring when the resurgence first ran a candidate in 1979. There's a big disconnect in there somewhere. Denominational leadership hasn't been successful at geting a whole lot of churches to follow along for a couple of decades now. Convention attendance has fallen to record lows. Giving executive leadership in the denomination as a reward for service in the resurgence led to decades of ineffective leadership. Adrian Rogers warned against doing that, but no one had much of a backbone to say "boo" to anyone. If there are enough pastors left like J.D. Greear, and David Platt, who still care about the denomination, they might be able to stabilize it, but I don't think they're going to prevent it from going the way of the mainline denominations.

[Dave Roberts]

One thing I see is that the baptismal strength of the SBC has always been in the smaller to moderate sized congregations (200 or less in worship). In recent years, the emphasis has been placed on the mega churches and the newer types of churches. Most of those mega congregations grow by gathering members who used to attend smaller to medium-sized churches. There has been little to no emphasis on helping the smaller, often struggling churches where much of the traditional Baptist evangelism has happened.

[William Thornton]

[Dave Roberts]

[William Thornton]

I appreciate your answer.

If state conventions set aside sums for "helping" small or average-sized congregations, exactly what form would the help take? I've been in enough of these sized churches to grasp that not a few of these would like a grant to complete deferred maintenance or any of a number of things to help the church just keep slogging on. NAMB is planting ethnic churches by the hundreds and many of these are relaunches of dying churches whose neighborhoods have changed. I'm not sold on the efficacy of higher level plans to hep smaller churches but assistance is available. Unlikely, though, to see it take the form of cash spread around.

A new SBC church was attempted one block from my own. It has now failed but I suspect another will be attempted. Strong SBC or CBF churches need not fear their members being syphoned off though we all live and will die in the consumer church culture.

Interesting that the BGAV has this policy to marginalize churches for low giving. Sounds like a shortsighted response to the loose program of cooperation the SBC has always used.

There's an ecclesiastical shakeout under way. As a whole, the six SBC seminaries and the two mission boards are very strong and stable. I suspect that the CBF is re-imagining a bleaker future. Any slight movement of the SBC to the left has consequences for the CBF, even after all these years.

You and I will not live long enough to see where all this goes, ultimately, but it's interesting to see it unfold.

And as an aside (and I'm far from being a. Expert on such things), some of the best writing I see comes from Bill Wilson.

[Sandy]