BaptistLife.Com Forums.

William and others,

I'd like to hear your thoughts on Barber's most recent post which I thought made a number of salient points. Barber challenges a number of the "populist" ideas put forth by William and others here at BL.com on subjects such as the number of trustees, etc. by offering his own form of Southern Baptist populism.

NAMB is already a merger of several former agencies, part of the Brotherhood Commission and Radio and TV commission landed there, and some of the programs it inherited were preserved not because of their success, but because someone who worked for them was connected to someone influential enough to keep the program alive. That's at least part of the problem at NAMB. To merge it with the IMB would be, IMHO disastrous to both, and counterproductive to current efforts underway to streamline NAMB.

The term "populist" is getting a lot of use these days, it seems, in both secular politics and denominational politics. I've been a fairly regular participant and observer in Baptist convention life since 1979, in three state conventions and the SBC, and it seems that, more than any other organization I've been involved in, Baptist conventions are more prone to personal kingdom building, influence peddling and the development of a good-ole-boy power structure that both makes us look like total backwoods bumpkins and by putting certain people in position to grant favors (i.e. denominational jobs with high salaries) makes the operation of our entities extremely inefficient. That is the sort of thing that has pushed a lot of gifted and talented Baptists into both mainline Protestant and non-denominational churches for service, and has caused thousands of churches to re-evaluate their contributions to the Cooperative Program. It is why there was a conservative resurgence, a CBF, an Alliance of Baptist, a Texas Baptists Committed, a SBCV and an SBTC. It is why I received over 500 email responses to my blog post advocating a limit on trustee and committee terms in the BGCT, the vast majority saying "about time" and "go get 'em."

The problem with large committees, Boards of Trustees, and Boards of Directors is that there is little or no accountability because of defacto anonymity due to size. IMO that was/is one of the systemic problems with the IMB BOT - the sheer size prevents any meaningful debate and decision making by the Committee of the Whole, therefore it ends up in the lap of some Executive or Steering committee which ramrods through their own agenda. Programs bloat, staff and field personnel are intimidated, progress stagnates, recriminations begin, lather, rinse, repeat.

NAMB was saddled with junk and through some very real leadership issues and inertia of extreme mass wallowed, teetered and fell.

Rome was neither built in a day, nor fell in a day. But it certainly was built and it certainly did fall. Not comparing NAMB or IMB with Rome, but there are certainly parallels.

I've yet to see anyone or any group who has the gravitas or fortitude to accomplish real change in the SBC. The way the SBC is structured and has bloated AT THE TOP, there is no real way to turn the ship other than sinking it and starting fresh. But as I opined, I don't see it.

NAMB will be rolled into IMB because someone with pull will get to a microphone and make believers out of the Messengers. This will be to the detriment of all.

Just call me the Friday evening Blue Bird of Happiness.

Gary

Check out Bart again

http://sbctoday.com/2009/05/20/bgct-ref ... es-report/

http://praisegodbarebones.blogspot.com/ ... -moon.html

Looks like Barber's sources gave him bad information.

I'm still waiting to see if Barber/Rogers/SBC Today will make any changes to the blog post's title/content.