Sometimes My Plans Change

Back in June, I was blessed to attend the Southern Baptist Convention. I was pleased to write what I thought of, at the time, as initial thoughts about what had taken place at the convention midway through and expressed my plan to provide a more thorough overview once our team returned to Valdosta. In fact, I had begun gathering my thoughts on the convention but then my plans changed.

While others had provided excellent overviews, I had several points that caught my attention that was going to share at length. Baptist polity was one point and the beauty of our bottom-up structure in particular. When entities of the SBC make a decision contrary to the desire of the messengers in attendance at the convention, those messengers have the ability to redirect those entities. The churches do not exist to serve the entities of our convention; our entities exist to serve the churches.

Our messengers stated clearly that Christ-like handling of sexual abuse was to be brought to the fore, abortion is to remain a priority, all secular worldviews incompatible with Christianity are to be flatly rejected, and reasons abound to remain in cooperative fellowship with the SBC. Largely, what I saw in Nashville was unity even in the midst of disagreements among family. There were sour grapes about the outcome of the leadership elections and I even heard some express they would consider leaving the convention. I’m not sure how leaving the SBC solves any of our issues, real or perceived.

Anyway, there was quite a lot to write about and many brothers and sisters did so. Then allegations of plagiarism against newly-elected SBC President Dr. Ed Litton surfaced. As one might imagine, social media and the blogosphere lit up brighter than July 4^th and Christmas combined. I did speak with friends about the incident and was asked about my thoughts on the matter. At the time I thought it best not to add my voice to the fray.

For the record, there was much that was written that I found helpful but at the end of the day I agree with Dr. Litton himself. He said clearly what he did was wrong and should not have happened. To state my view frankly, as a graduate of two SBC seminaries, Litton should have known the manner in which he and his research team presented the material he had approval from J.D. Greear to use was inappropriate. Further, the optics of making videos from over 140 other messages private/unavailable didn’t help matters any. Sadly, we are likely to be reminded of this in the months prior to our next convention in Anaheim next year.

Now nearly two months since we gathered in Nashville, those I know in ministry are focused on the ministries of their churches and looking ahead to fall, the next school year kicking off, and beginning to think about 2022. My church sure is and our entire team is excited about what God is doing. From what our folks have said, they are looking forward to this fall too.

What’s the point? There is always a lot going on; there are always things that grab our attention for a season; the mission hasn’t changed. There is a new president of the SBC (and two new VP’s!) but the mission hasn’t changed. Vision 2025 (BTW: a solid initiative) has six strategic actions but our mission hasn’t changed. Some friends have new positions in their church or in new places of service but their mission hasn’t changed.

Jesus gave us our Great Commission and it hasn’t changed. Make disciples, baptize them, and teach them to observe all that He has commanded us. Our churches exist to carry out this commission and our entities exist to support our churches in doing so. We’re better able to carry out that work when we cooperate with one another. In other words, we’re better together.