News & Commentary About All Things Baptist

I just returned from the Thursday night Worship session here at the General Assembly of the CooperativeBaptist Fellowship.

I missed the first few songs but arrived in time for the mini-sermon (theme interpretation) by Taylor Sandlin.

The focal Scripture  was Luke 10:25-37.

Julie Merritt preached what sure did sound like an excellent mini-sermon on Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself.  Honestly, I couldn’t hear much of that sermon because two noisy gentlemen talked throughout the whole thing.  Thanks fellas.

She did, however, call on congregations to take one U.N. Millennium Development Goal and work towards achieving that goal.  That seems like a solid idea.

I’d like to see more Baptist churches take up the issue of environmental sustainability.  Lots of talk in the last couple of years  about the environment but most Baptists, most moderate/mainstream Baptists have still not gone green in any meaningful way.

The place was packed tonight.  Almost all of the 2,000 seats were filled.  

I’ll update this post with a more concise summary of tonight’s worship when that becomes available.

Here’s a concise summary of the two mini-sermons from tonight courtesy of CBF Communications:

“The question ‘Who is my neighbor?’ is really the question of who they’re not,” said Taylor Sandlin, pastor of Southland Baptist Church in San Angelo, Texas. “The young man [in the biblical story] basically wanted to know ‘Where does my neighborhood end? Where is that line that separates us from them? That distinguishes those for whom I am responsible from those for whom I am not?’ For if someone isn’t my neighbor then they’re pretty much a stranger. And we all know that strangers aren’t that far removed from being enemies. And no one would be expected to love their enemies, would they?”

 

The second speaker, Julie Merritt, pastor of Providence Baptist Church in Hendersonville, N.C., described love as an action. She urged the audience to move from what they know to do to actually doing it.

 

“What Jesus is calling us to is living with and among people that are different from us, actually getting to know them – meeting their needs but not seeing them as a need, but one of us,” said Merritt. “In short, we are to love in particular not in general. Loving in general is easy and cheap. But loving in particular requires more of us. We don’t just feed the hungry. We sit down with those who are hungry, and recognize our own hunger. We sit down and share a meal together, share a conversation and thus share a holy space.”

Here’s a great Reflections piece from a guy named Arnie Adikson who is at CBF’s General Assembly:

…But tonight, back at this year’s CBF assembly, I heard a man speak that always makes me think “I AM a Baptist.” His name is Bill Leonard, and he’s the founding dean of the divinity school at Wake Forest.

Bill Leonard is a historian, maybe the premier Baptist historian of our time. Okay, not maybe. I say he is. The first time I heard Dr. Leonard speak at Baylor University a few years ago, it was at a conference discussing among other things, how the Baptist influence has waned and the Christian light has dimmed at several traditionally Baptist schools, and Wake Forest was listed among them. This physically small man in a bowtie stood before the crowd and challenged the supposition that because a university no longer touts a certain line, it means that God has departed and the light has left. He basically said that he would wait right there for a few moments for an apology, and if one was not forthcoming he would return to North Carolina without delivering anything further of his speech. An apology was offered, and he continued, showing only grace and wisdom in the rest of his speech.

As a Baptist historian, he understands about the last 400 years since the first self-identified Baptists returned to England and opposed the state church there. (NOTE: Happy Birthday, Baptists.) Baptists have from the beginning been dissidents, who believe that religious liberty is not true of anyone if it’s not true of everyone. Baptists were kicked out of most of the colonies, tried and often killed as heretics. My forbears believed that the church was a local community of believers who were called to prophetically bear witness to the grace and love and liberty found in Jesus Christ.

When I hear Bill speak, I think that perhaps I am a Baptist.

I’m in a workshop session right now titled “400 Years of Baptist History: How A Church Can Speak-Up Now” led by Bill Leonard, Dean of Wake Forest University Divinity School, and James Dunn, former Executive-Director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.

Here’s the description of the workshop:

The American experiment in church-state relations was significantly influenced, some would say “shaped,” by Baptists.  The deepest theological principles and their ethical corollaries are the abidingly relevant foundation for the roles of church and state in the United States.  Learn more about the role Baptists played in church-state relations.

Dunn and Leonard touched on various Baptist separationist issues such as government funding of religion (faith-based initiatives) and the mixing of faith and nationalism (ex. American flag in the sanctuary).

Good stuff.  Classic Dunn.    Dunn called the “Fund-Based Initiative” a “Democratic and Republican Evil.” 

This morning, I attended the annual meeting of the William H. Whitsitt Baptist Heritage Society.

Founded in 1992, following 12 years of denominational infighting among Southern Baptists, the William Whitsitt Baptist Heritage Society was birthed by moderate Baptist historians concerned that fundamentalism endangered much of traditional Baptist heritage.  The Society publishes a Journal, meets annually during the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly, and presents the annual Courage Award.

The recipient of the 2009 Courage Award is Walter B. Shurden.  

Walter B. Shurden, the founding executive director of the Center for Baptist Studies at Mercer, retired from Mercer University on 31 December 2007. Since his retirement he carries the title of “Minister at Large, Mercer University.” A native of Greenville, Mississippi, Dr. Shurden served at Mercer for almost twenty-five years as Callaway Professor of Christianity in the Roberts Department of Christianity in the College of Liberal Arts. During eighteen of those years, he served as Chair of the Roberts Department of Christianity and for almost seven years as Executive Director of The Center for Baptist Studies at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia.

During his lecture, Shurden discussed Baptist Pavement (Baptist Strengths) and Baptist Potholes (Baptist Weaknesses).  Shurden celebrated the Baptist strengths of personal religious experience, biblical authority, believers’ baptism by immersion, local church autonomy, freedom of conscience, separation of church and state, world missions, priesthood of the believer

Shurden correctly lamented the temptation of some  to interpret the separation of church and state in a way that Baptists never meant, “that barters away our voice in the public square.”  

Here are few  rough quotes, rough because I’m not the fastest typist.  Some are partial quotes, slight paraphrasing in some places:

An emphasis on personal religious experience is essential for Bible and dynamic religion of any kind.  It can become, if we’re not careful, a kind of spiritual narcissism.  Faith is not all about me.

Baptist weakness: Tendency (among Baptists) to ignore 2,000 years of Christian history

Local church autonomy as a Baptist Strength: “A local group of believers seeking to live under authority of the living Christ as express in the Bible”

Local church autonomy as a Baptist Weakness: “tendency toward self righteousness and isolationism.  Despite weakness, I celebrate local church autonomy.”

On Freedom of Conscience:  Emphasis on Freedom of Conscience is important for whole human race, but if not careful, it can morph into a kind of theological relativism. [Freedom of Conscience] never meant that one idea is as good as another.  

I have been and remain today that the “freedom side” argument is more Baptist, more biblical and more human than the authority side of the argument.  At the center of my being, there is something about being Baptist as I understand it that is freeing and fulfilling: it is the principle of voluntarism, it is the principle of freedom, it is the freedom of human choice.

…The highest form of freedom, perfect act of freedom is the freedom to give myself away to God and God’s Kingdom as I understand it.  I know of no other higher freedom.  Genuine freedom is the freedom to do as you OUGHT not as you WISH.

On Fundamentalist-Moderate Controversy:  “It was a freedom issue that was at stake.  The Bible was not at stake.  We weren’t arguing over who was going to have the corner office with all the windows.  Something far more valuable than institutions was at stake….To forget that freedom was the issue would be a hideous betrayal.  For future generations to forget {that} would be an enormous tragedy.

the highest form of freedom, perfect act of freedom is the freedom to give myself away to God and God’s Kigndom as I understand it.  I know of no other higher freedom.  Genuine freedom is the freedom to do as you ought not as you wish.

On Fundamentalist-Moderate Controversy: It was a freedom issue that was at stake.  The bible was not at stake.  

We weren’t arguing over who was going to have the corner office with all the windows.  Something far more valuable than institutions was at stake….To forget that freedom was the issue would be a hideous betrayal.  For future generation to forget would be an enormous tragedy

…Being a Christian means taking seriously what Jesus of Nazareth took seriously.  It is not about signing a creed.  That’s easy church.  It’s not about identification with institutions.  That becomes too easily idolatrous…..What did Jesus take seriously?  It was not believers baptism by immersion or the priesthood of all believers or a symbolic view of the ordinances….those issues contain the seeds of freedom in our denomination that blossom into much larger issues in our world.  Jesus, so it appears to me, took freedom very very seriously.  He took seriously the freedom to be included rather than excluded, the freedom to be appreciated rather than exploited, freedom to share rather than horde, freedom to love rather than to hate, fundamental freedom to anchor your life under God’s reign.

It’s much easier to be a Baptist than it is to take Jesus seriously.

…I never want moderate Baptists to minimize or forget the Baptist ideals of freedom.  I want moderate Baptists to embrace the Jesus ideals of freedoms.  

the big daddy weave is here in Houston for the CBF’s General Assembly.  Will be blogging the General Assembly for the fourth consecutive year, 2006-2009.

Exhausted but I’m here nonetheless.  The mono is in the rearview mirror.

I’ll be blogging the General Assembly on Thursday and Friday, will be wearing my special Pink honeymoon tie from the streets of Firenze one of those two days!

So, follow my coverage of Baptist happenings at the General Assembly here at www.thebigdaddyweave.com

Also, note on the right-hand side of the screen you can follow all of my fellow CBFers on Twitter here at www.thebigdaddyweave.com

Finally, on Friday I will be on a workshop panel about blogging.  The details are below:

Reaching the World: Writing and Blogging as Ministry             

Lex Horton, Tony Cartledge, Brian Kaylor, Zach Roberts, Aaron Weaver
Fri/3:00 p.m.
Hilton/3rd FL/337 AB
Writing can widen your sphere of influence as you minister to neighbors both near and far. Join this talented panel as they explore blogging and writing for Bible studies, news reports, and books.

This story is getting a great deal of attention on Twitter (#cbfassembly) concerning CBF and a proposed workshop entitled “Homosexuality and the Church.”

The gist is this:

Over a year ago, Dr. Frank Tupper - Professor of Theology at Wake Forest University Divinity School - proposed a workshop for CBF’s General Assembly on Homosexuality and the Church.  Here is Tupper’s rationale for the workshop:

Homosexuality is the single most significant, emotional, and divisive issues in the United States today, and Baptists are talking about it along with everyone else. However, we Baptists remain silent, i.e. we do not discuss the issue anywhere in the congregational life of the church. Consequently, neither extensive Bible study or an analysis of the options before the church are discussed openly as an issue that we must think about and attempt to understand each other. Therefore, the sole purpose of my workshop proposal was to lay out different options the church faces in its endeavor to understand and address the problem. My proposal was positively modified to include a panel of Baptists who would discuss the options together as a group, modeling the kind of conversation with of open agreement and disagreement that would emerge in any discussion.

Tupper suggested to CBF leadership that they hold the workshop in 2009 @ Houston instead of in Memphis (2008).  Why?  Apparently Memphis is a hotbed of Baptist fundamentalism and Houston is not?  I didn’t know that.  Although if the fear is fundamentalists, it’s kinda hard to avoid Baptist Press.

Tupper says that the workshop was then planned for the 2009 General Assembly in Houston.  

Here’s Tupper:

A few months ago a group whose names I do not know decided that such a divisive issue could best be addressed in the local church rather than a workshop at the General Assembly. I disagreed with their decision, or I would never have made the workshop proposal for our annual meeting. If I had not been concerned for the environment and tone of the conversation, I never would have suggested we not do the workshop in Memphis but wait and convene it in Houston. I had thought (and still do): One of the ways that Baptist pastors and church ministers could introduce the conversation in their own church would be through material and conversation from a regular workshop in our June meeting. The pastor could refer to this workshop and panel if he or she thought it would be helpful. Otherwise, the minister must accept full responsibility for raising an issue not on a Baptist agenda anywhere. Although I regret the decision not to include the workshop this week in Houston, I am grateful to Dan Vestal and Bo Prosser for their patience and openness in the consideration of the viability of my proposal.

Read Tupper’s entire blog post here.

In a post entitled Talk of the Forbidden, Zach Roberts of the blog Baptimergent responds:

As a Cooperative Baptist minister I am not surprised by this. I am, however, disappointed.

I can appreciate to a certain point CBF’s justification that this is a local church conversation. That’s a very Baptist response. However, as Tupper argues in his post, creating space for church leaders to discuss it, and wrestle with how to bring the conversation before their congregations is the missing link in local church conversations about homosexuality, same-sex unions, and sexuality in general.

Read the rest here.

The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a renewal movement among Baptists comprised of individuals

and approximately 1,900 churches which partners with15 theological schools, 19 autonomous state and regional organizations and more than 150 ministry organizations worldwide, will hold its annual General Assembly in Houston, Texas this week.

The theme of the 2009 General Assembly is: Embrace the World: Welcome to your Neighborhood

Welcome to your neighborhood – a new one, a global one, one where we’re all connected, one where Christ’s compassion extends to our neighbors down the street and around the world, one where we are changed as God changes lives through us, and one where – as one – we can make a world of difference. Come this summer to a city as diverse as Houston, where you can embrace the world by getting to know your new global neighbors. Hear from them why this fellowship movement called Cooperative Baptist Fellowship matters, and leave the Assembly knowing you are part of this growing movement of God in the world.

General Assembly events began on Monday (June 29) with various missions service projects.  You can learn more about those here.  The Houston Sessions: A Collegiate Missional Experience kicked off on Tuesday (June 30).

Today, Wednesday features a Leadership Institute and a Global Missions Field Personnel Commissioning Service held at South Main Baptist Church in Houston.

The General Assembly officially begins on Thursday (July 2) with dozens of workshops and auxiliary events on the schedule.  Here’s a list of the workshops.

The church is Evergreen Chapel, a nondenominational congregation at Camp David which is open to the nearly 400 military personnel an staff at Camp David (their families included).

The current pastor/chaplain of Evergreen Chapel is Lieut. Carey Cash.  Cash is a graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.

Here’s the article from TIME:

Now, in an unexpected move, Obama has told White House aides that instead of joining a congregation in Washington, D.C., he will follow in George W. Bush’s footsteps and make his primary place of worship Evergreen Chapel, the nondenominational church at Camp David.

A number of factors drove the decision — financial, political, personal — but chief among them was the desire to worship without being on display. Obama was reportedly taken aback by the circus stirred up by his visit to 19th Street Baptist in January. Lines started forming three hours before the morning service, and many longtime members were literally left out in the cold as the church filled with outsiders eager to see the new President. Even at St. John’s, which is so accustomed to presidential visitors that it is known as the “Church of the Presidents,” worshippers couldn’t help themselves from snapping photos of Obama on their camera phones as they walked down the aisle past him to take communion.

…Camp David’s current chaplain, Lieut. Carey Cash, leads the services at Evergreen. If the White House had custom-ordered a pastor to be the polar opposite of Jeremiah Wright, they could not have come as close as Cash. (As it is, the White House had no hand in selecting Cash. The Navy rotates chaplains through Camp David every three years; Cash began his tour this past January.) The 38-year-old Memphis native is a graduate of the Citadel and the great-nephew of Johnny Cash. He served a tour as chaplain with a Marine battalion in Iraq and baptized nearly 60 Marines during that time. Cash earned his theology degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth — and, yes, that means Obama’s new pastor is a Southern Baptist.

Lieut. Carey Cash is the author of A Table in the Presence.

See this Baptist Press article on Cash’s book and ministry.

UPDATE:

According to Jen Psaki, Deputy White ouse Press Secretary, the TIME magazine report that President Obama has chosen the nondenom Evergreen Chapel as his new church home is inaccurate.  Here’s Psaki of the White House:

“The President and First Family continue to look for a church home. They have enjoyed worshipping at Camp David and several other congregations over the months, and will choose a church at the time that is best for their family.”

This week an estimate 40,000 African-American Baptists met in Detroit, Michigan for the 104th annual session of the

National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. The National Baptist Convention USA Inc. is one of the largest religious groups among African-Americans.  It is comprised of over 8.3 million Baptists in over 41,000 Baptist churches.  The National Baptist Convention USA, Inc. is the second largest Baptist organization in the world.

Unfortunately, there has been very little coverage of this gathering that has attracted around 40,000 Baptists to Detroit.  Those are some big numbers when compared with the 8,800 Baptists that convened in Louisville for the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention.  Most of the news coverage relating to this Baptist gathering deals exclusively with complaints about a downtown hotel that was short on towels and other basic amenities and lacked working AC.  See Upset Baptist Conventioneers Leave Hotel.

There are two articles worthy of your attention:

Baptist Churches Seek Revival: 40,000 expected at convention in Detroit

National Convention Brings Together Baptists

Here are a few snippets:

Detroit — AIDS among church members, pastors’ compensation and whether women should be preachers are among the topics to be discussed at the National Baptist Convention’s 104th annual session starting Monday at Cobo Center.

…An estimated 40,000 members of the National Baptist Convention, the nation’s oldest and largest African-American religious group, will meet through Friday, organizers said.  The convention is expected to pump about $50 million into the local economy through hotel stays, restaurants, cabs and other services, Detroit Convention and Visitors Bureau spokeswoman Renee Monforton said.

…In addition to discussing key religious topics, the convention will also provide free medical screening during two events.  “(Health workshops have) been a strong emphasis because large numbers of African-Americans suffer disproportionately with certain ailments,” Branch said.  For the Rev. Robert Smith, the convention is an opportunity to discuss how churches in the Detroit area and around the country are struggling amid an anemic economy. He said it also will be a chance to brainstorm on how ministers can get the faithful back in the pews.

“The African-American church … is always wrestling with the question of relevance,” said the Rev. E.L. Branch, pastor at Third New Hope, host church for the convention. Yet, he added, it “remains one of the key anchors.”  But the Baptist denomination faces challenges it will have to deal with in coming years, ministers and experts say.

Some congregants who were raised Baptist are leaving for nondenominational and Pentecostal churches. Others have moved out to the suburbs and no longer identify with the traditional urban Baptist church. And the decline of the auto industry and manufacturing has crimped church development.

Meanwhile, Baptist leaders must now compete for attention with a diverse range of power centers within the African-American community.  Decades ago, black Baptist churches were a major source of social services, political activity and support within the community. While their role still is big, experts say their influence has diminished.  “The black church’s leadership no longer has a monopoly,” said Aldon Morris, professor of sociology at Northwestern University who has studied the black Baptist church.

In a way, the church is partly a victim of its own success.  The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and some other Baptist leaders played a key role in the civil rights movement. Because of their efforts, African Americans established themselves in leadership roles in the worlds of politics and business, and so they don’t have to now rely solely on the church. The election of President Barack Obama is the most notable example.

“The Baptist church is built on freedom,” Branch said. “It has a tremendous history and is an anchor, but at the same time, provides the freedom to allow a diversity of ideas.”

Still, divides remain. Some churches such as Third New Hope have embraced women preachers and are open to gay members, while others are opposed to both.  The wide range of views is what makes the Baptist tradition so rich, ministers say. Baptists don’t have a national hierarchy, which allows each individual church to chart its own course.

Still, Morris said, “there is no doubt the black church remains the most important and fundamental institution within the black community.”

This is probably the most profound quote included in either article.  It is from Kenneth Flowers, pastor of Greater New Mt. Moriah Missionary Baptist Church in Detroit:

To sustain the Baptist faith, we have to make sure our young people don’t forget that heritage of freedom.

I recently wrote about the decision of Southern Baptist messengers to oust Broadway Baptist Church from the Southern Baptist Convention.  Messengers ended a 125-year relationship between Broadway and the SBC in a matter of 30 seconds with no discussion.

So, why did the SBC’s Executive Committee recommend that the SBC and Broadway end their historic relationship?  According to Stephen Wilson, a member of the Executive Committee, Broadway was ousted because their membership role includes homosexuals who are unrepentant.  See Baptist Press. Here’s Wilson:

“If churches are ministering to homosexuals, they are doing nothing more than what our own convention’s task force has asked us to do,” Wilson told Baptist Press. “But in Broadway’s case … the church was in effect saying that it was OK to have members who are open homosexuals.”

According to Baptist Press, Broadway Baptist has approximately five open homosexual members.  As previously mentioned, Broadway maintains that it has never taken an action to affirm or endorse homosexual behavior.

According to Bob Allen of the Associated Baptist Press, this vote marks the first time that the Southern Baptist Convention has ousted a church simply because SBC leaders PERCEIVE that the congregation is in violation of Article III of the SBC Constitution which prohibits affiliation with welcoming and affirming congregations.

From Bob Allen:

The SBC changed its constitution in 1993 to exclude churches that are welcoming and affirming of gays. Previously the amendment was interpreted to apply only to churches that take some formal action, like ordaining or licensing a gay minister or conducting a ceremony to bless a same-sex union…

So, now that Broadway is gone, who is next on the SBC hit list?

I noted in a comment earlier that there are likely many many SBC congregations have an openly gay member.  In fact, it was revealed in April 2008 that one large Southern Baptist congregation - North Phoenix Baptist Church in Phoenix, Arizona - has at least one dozen openly gay members.  Here’s North Phoenix’s pastor, Dan Yeary in an interview with ABP from April 2008:

The pastor is aware of a dozen or more gays who are members of North Phoenix Baptist. Yeary said he has told them they are welcome, but that he can’t “encourage their lifestyle.”

Back in April 2008, I asked in a blog post:

One can only wonder…will the same Southern Baptists who were hollering for Broadway Baptist Church of Fort Worth to be ousted from the SBC now holler for the 7,000 member North Phoenix to be ousted? After all, North Phoenix like Broadway has gay members.

Now that Broadway is out of the SBC, Charlie Johnson - Broadway’s former interim pastor - poses a similar question:

Every Southern Baptist church of any size has homosexual members. These friends pray with us, sing with us, give with us, serve with us, and take the Body and Blood of Christ at the table of the Lord with us. Will the test imposed upon Broadway by the denomination now be required of all the churches?

Good question.  Again I ask, who’s next?

It’s worth noting that North Phoenix Baptist Church is listed as the #1 giver to the Cooperative Program of the Arizona Southern Baptist Convention during the first quarter of 2009.

North Phoenix is a regular top giver to the Cooperative Program.