The 2021 SBC Annual meeting officially begins today in Nashville. Because of COVID, we are meeting for the first time in two years. Pre-registration indicates that it will be the largest convention this millennium and maybe even since the 1995 Convention in Atlanta. Significant prayer, political maneuvering, discussion, and debate have been taking place since the 2019 meeting in Birmingham. My hope is that God will heed the humble prayers of the broken-hearted, admonish the arrogant and contentious, and grant us all His unmerited grace and peace. If the Lord blesses us with life, breath, energy, and grace, Phyllis and I will be attending as messengers of our church. I will also be attending meetings prior to the convention as the SBC Executive Board representative from our state convention. Most of you will read this article from the comfort of your home or office, and thus you will read or hear about the convention’s activities second hand. My encouragement to you is to always remember that God is in charge, not Southern Baptists. Remember, every SBC church is independent and autonomous and the actions taken and resolutions approved are not dictates to be heeded, but they are the reflections of the messengers who attended and voted at this particular convention and are only something to be heard. I would also remind you that just because you read or hear something, doesn’t make it true. Everything you read or hear will be second-hand information. It will have been filtered through the mind, experiences, and emotions of the person who is sharing their personal perspective. As Phyllis and I do our morning devotionals, we are currently reading through Proverbs. We have received both exhortations and encouragement from several verses. Our prayer is that the wisdom we find in Proverbs will dwell in our hearts and minds and flow from our lips, and this will also be true for every messenger who attends this year’s convention. Here are some verses that have specific applications during a convention: "Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all sins. Wise people store up knowledge, but the mouth of the foolish is near destruction.” A final reminder, as Baptists we don’t get our marching orders from convention votes or convention offices, but from the eternal word of our Holy God. Thankfully, as Southern Baptists, we have historically chosen to work together for greater Kingdom causes always keeping a watchful eye and ear to make sure biblical integrity is being maintained. Far more important than the decisions made at the 2021 SBC Annual Meeting are the decisions we and our churches make every day as to whether we will be obedient to the Great Commandments and the Great Commission! Are we growing personally as disciples of our living Lord and are we showing others by word and deed how to find the narrow way? (Matthew 7:13-14) We can choose to debate and devour one another, or we can choose to work together to be His witnesses in our “Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
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I again embark on some strategies principles that I pray we will implement better as we move forward. To the five I have already listed, let me add the following five:
In the early years of Kevin Ezell’s leadership, NAMB ignored all but one of its ministry assignments as listed in the SBC Organization Manual, and that was planting churches. With that singular focus, entire departments at NAMB were eliminated. Over the years the other five assignments have slowly garnered some attention. If approved at this year’s convention a seventh one will be added related to supporting collegiate ministries. NAMB’s challenge will be to find the right balance as they move forward. When you place a laser focus on only one of the several assignments you have, you open yourself up to selective blindness. At the same time, you create a huge rift between your organization and those who value the other ministry assignments that are being ignored or eliminated. A singular focus can be helpful during certain times, but not during a season of critical evaluation or with the ongoing responsibility to fulfill multiple ministry assignments.
Good leaders take time to understand what is truly happening AND why it is happening before they design and implement needed changes. A Proverb that has application here is “Do not remove the ancient landmark which your fathers have set” Prov. 22:28.
That was a question we faced in our historic 2019 floods. After a bit of head-scratching and a little head-butting, we were able to find some workable options. We discovered that well-oiled and time-proven systems resist change. We were just a microcosm of the challenges that have been encountered at the national level when NAMB announced Send Relief, and, from the perspective of Southern Baptist Disaster Relief, diminished their role. Our goal should never be to sustain a proven structure, rather it should be to design a structure that effectively does the job in our current context with a constant eye on fulfilling our gospel mission.
History is full of such people. Two examples can be found in I Kings 11: “So the Lord became angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned from the Lord God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice, and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods; but he did not keep what the Lord had commanded” (verses 9-10). Pride and unchecked passions had replaced Solomon’s wisdom, and God removed His hand of blessing. A few verses later, I Kings 11:37-38, we read that God sent the prophet Ahijah to Jeroboam with a message: “If you heed all that I command you, walk in My ways, and do what is right in My sight, to keep My statutes and My commandments, as My servant David did, then I will be with you and build for you an enduring house, as I built for David, and will give Israel to you.” But Jeroboam feared that people who went to Jerusalem to worship would eventually return to Rehoboam, so he built places of worship at Dan and Bethel. In each, he placed a golden calf, and he led his people to repeat the sin of false worship that their ancestors had done in the wilderness. Politics and power won Jeroboam’s heart.
Do you struggle with any of these five strategic principles? What are you doing to address the issue? If you’re not, then let me hit you with a few more strategic principles next week! I shared two strategic principles last week that if applied well “might” have kept us from experiencing some of our current tension. I will share three more today knowing that when implemented well they too can help us avoid future problems. As I mentioned in the previous article, I have experienced the negative side of each of these strategic principles.
An example of a good strategy done poorly is what NAMB faced ten years ago. I am referring to the DoM/Church Starter Strategist positions that all new work conventions had used for several decades and one that I served in for almost twenty years. NAMB believed funding the dual role position was not a good strategic investment. However, today NAMB is encouraging the use of church-based Church Planter Catalysts. These are individuals who are currently serving on a church staff and are asked to pick up the responsibility to catalyze at least one new church plant per year. I would argue that this “new strategy” is identical to the traditional dual role that was previously declared ineffective. However, I will quickly admit that this strategy, whenever it is used, requires individuals who can function EFFECTIVELY in dual roles. They cannot be living examples of “a jack of all trades and a master of none.” I will also quickly acknowledge that ten years ago too many DoM/CSSs could not do both roles effectively—it looked good on paper, but was not being executed well. The old cliché “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater” has application as you consider NAMB’s early approach to this deeply engrained strategy. Effective leaders deal with ineffective staff, they don’t make rules that punish their effective staff, nor do they change their entire strategy simply because the current strategy isn’t being implemented well.
These realities mean we will need all kinds of church starting strategies. Unfortunately, some of the strategies that are available in old-line states are not always available in new work states. I have been directly involved in church planting for almost 35 years and only in recent years have I seen SBC church strength in our immediate area sufficient enough for a “hiving” or “campus” strategy to work. I would quickly add that it is a model that is still not available in much of Nebraska or in huge areas of other new work states. NAMB’s top down, single focus approach has relied heavily on the “hiving” model. They have shown “some” flexibility, but a limited feedback loop still exists which magnifies the problem of focusing on a singular strategic model.
I was serving in Iowa when the Iowa Southern Baptist Fellowship became the Baptist Convention of Iowa. At that time it fell far short of meeting the criteria needed to gain representation on SBC entity boards that have historically been granted to state conventions. The only “advantage” was the prestige of being called a state convention. The move came with a small financial “penalty” (HMB provided some financial support for the state executive position for a fellowship but none for a convention), and it still did not provide board representation. However, I learned growing up in Wyoming that it doesn’t do any good to close the barn door after the horses have already gotten out. So the question remains, how do we move forward in a truly cooperative environment? NAMB has unilaterally suggested that some new work conventions should be combined. Yes, COVID has proven that technology can be used to maintain connectivity, but I would suggest that cooperative partnerships and ministry to churches will always require healthy relationships. Those relationships are created with face-to-face connections over time—not by FaceTime type technologies alone. Before new work convention restructuring can be addressed, I believe the fractured relationships between NAMB and new work conventions must be healed. Only with healthy relationships and trust, can difficult conversations take place where we can put in place rules that provide mutually beneficial accountability to those who provide a significant amount of the gold. So far I have listed five strategies that we have not always implemented well in the past. The last two really demand more clarification, but space limitations do exist. My question for you is, which of these strategies has given you the greatest problems in your ministry setting? What would be the right next step that would help you resolve the issue? Next week I will be listing additional strategies that could have been better implemented Yours in Christ, Mark R. Elliott, AMS The SBC Organization Manual states that NAMB “exists to work with churches, associations, and state conventions in mobilizing Southern Baptists as a missional force to impact North America with the Gospel of Jesus Christ through evangelism and church panting.” However, over the last ten years, NAMB’s shift from the historic convention partnership model to a societal top-down model has created significant relational challenges because of the way they work in new work states. Things came to a head in June of 2020 as NAMB made more unilateral changes to the cooperative agreements with new work conventions.
Ten years after the GCRTF report was approved, which called for those cooperative agreements to end in seven years, additional changes that would have to extend the agreements through September 2023 resulted in a letter being sent to NAMB and the Executive Committee by six new work area state convention executives. The letter basically asked the Executive Committee to mediate ongoing issues they were experiencing with NAMB. Other new work state executives had concerns, but they were working towards a more conciliatory letter. Here is a link to that letter: Letter to NAMB from New Work Area States NAMB officers offered a response a few days later. Here is a link to that letter: NAMB Responds On separate occasions, the SBC Executive Committee staff and officers met and discussed the various issues with both parties. In January 2021 the Executive Committee issued a white paper entitled “Cooperation is the Way Forward.” Shortly thereafter, NAMB trustees approved a resolution in response to the white paper. RESOLUTION OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES ON COOPERATION AND MISSIONAL STRATEGY A few of you will be interested enough in the topic that you will take time to read the information on the above links. For the rest of you let me simply say that the issues remain unresolved. NAMB and the new work conventions have struggled to figure out how to work together with or without cooperative agreements. I would ask you to pray that the core values and the seven principles mentioned in last week’s article will actually take root. The issues we face with SBC home missions are not new and are very complex, and they will require humility, confession, and divine intervention before we can move forward in a true spirit of cooperation. I have observed a number of strategic principles being misapplied in the last ten years that have contributed to our current environment. Here are two of them—more will follow in subsequent articles:
NAMB’s third president arrived acting like there were no healthy associations or state conventions in the new work area, and that NAMB 3.0 would do it right. That is a bit ironic since NAMB’s two previous presidents resigned under pressure, and the GCRTF report’s recommendations primarily addressed NAMB’s ineffectiveness. Jesus gave us all some counsel about trying to remove the speck from someone else’s eye when we have a beam in our own (Matt 7:5) Because of our polity, most of the ineffectiveness has to be treated with benign neglect. That is until the unhealthy are ready to address their problems, or there is a leadership transition. What we can do in the meantime is focus our time and energy on supporting and partnering with the healthy among us and celebrating what God is doing in their midst. If that celebration enlightens, encourages, or convicts the unhealthy among us, then to God be the glory.
In the business world, the financial crunch of inefficient and unaffordable structures are eliminated by bankruptcies, structural changes, or acquisitions. In the government world, politicians simply raise our taxes and ignore the structural problems. In the church world, it usually takes a major intervention or financial collapse before we are willing to make necessary changes. A great example of healthy organizational intervention is recorded for us in Exodus 18 where Jethro gave wise counsel to his son-in-law Moses. One example of how we expanded structure is how we dealt with the overwhelming geographical challenges in some of our new work states. Over time the five states that formed the Northern Plains Convention were transformed into four separate state conventions: Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and the Dakotas (North and South together). The new conventions solved a huge geographic challenge, but they also created a financial burden as they staffed a traditional structure in each convention. In 2010, those conventions had a staffing structure that was not financially sustainable without continued NAMB support—and the GCRTF report’s approval meant those dollars were going to disappear. God is still in the redemption business. To be able to join Him in His work, we must all be willing to seek “True Wisdom.” That is not only the wisdom from above that is found in scripture, but it is also the wisdom we can glean from past successes and failures. I will point to additional strategies I have learned from the school of hard knocks in the days ahead. Yours in Christ, Mark R. Elliott, AMS Last week I began to shift our focus from SBC Home Missions History into the current events world. But before I set out a series of events that have been ten years in the making and that have now elevated the conflicts between NAMB and new work states onto the national stage, let me share principles and practices I have learned from reading and experiencing that history. Every organization will rise and fall on the basis of its leadership. When a church or any SBC entity is struggling, its current leadership has to change before it will experience effectiveness. That change usually comes in one of two ways: 1) Current leaders have a truly changed heart and mind—God is always in the redemption business, or 2) A new leader arrives who is able to cast vision, build relationships, and develop and implement effective strategies.
My choice has always been to pray and work for option number one, with the realization that changed hearts are the purview of God. I have suggested that the current tensions between new work conventions and NAMB are the result of missteps by current and former leaders. I also suggested that litigating those errors is not as beneficial as learning from them and changing our hearts and minds so we can move forward with God-honoring cooperative efforts. With that in mind, let me share some principles I’ve learned:
Yours in Christ, Mark R. Elliott, AMS My last article brought our historical pilgrimage to June 2010, and the approval of The Great Commission Resurgence Task Force’s Report (GCRTF). What I didn’t point out is that the report was issued and approved while the North American Mission Board (NAMB) was in the process of seeking its third President—the two previous presidents’ tenures had not ended well. Kevin Ezell began to serve as NAMB’s president in September 2010 with the specific task of implementing the GCRTF’s recommendations. Those circumstances were very similar to the situation Bob Reccord stepped into in 1997 when the convention adopted the Covenant for a New Century which combined the Home Mission Board, Brotherhood Commission, and the Radio and Television Commission and renamed it NAMB. In both cases, major changes were made. However, in spite of all the early changes made under Reccord’s leadership, after a few years, NAMB looked a lot like HMB did. Long-term change didn’t occur. Most new work leaders “assumed” that what had happened under Reccord’s leadership would happen under Ezell’s: changes will occur, but over time, the home mission’s work will end up looking like it always had. But that didn’t happen! As I describe the significant changes that have taken place, I will attempt to be balanced. But again I will confess that my perspective is shaped by my experiences. I am a third-generation Wyomingite who was born before a single SBC church existed in the state. At the age of sixteen, I moved with my family to Oklahoma where I joined FBC Vinita. I became an active church member, deacon, lay pastor, and seminary student and lived for twenty years in two old-line states (Oklahoma and Texas). I have served as pastor, director of missions, and a church starter strategist in two new work states for the last thirty-plus years (Iowa and Nebraska). Through those years I have been blessed with countless learning opportunities, primarily funded by NAMB. They have sharpened my God-given abilities. I can state that the newly adopted title Associational Mission Strategist (AMS) aptly describes how God gifted me, and how I have been equipped to function in my role. From a strategic perspective, what happened in our association is what I “assume” the GCRTF “assumed” would happen in most situations. My dual role as a DoM/Church Starter Strategist slowly shifted as NAMB “assumed” leadership over SBC church planting. Fully funded NAMB Church Planter Catalysts began to lead church planting, and my time was freed to do more in the leadership development and church health areas. However, the reality is that our association is one of the very few in the new work states that was actually able to pick up the slack as NAMB support was eliminated over time. The net results of these changes are that I am now the only full-time AMS that is supported solely by his association in the following nine states: Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado. There are seven state conventions represented in this nine-state region, and each of them has also experienced a steep decline in the number of full-time staff. Ten years ago over thirty full-time, dual-role, and jointly funded men served associations in those states. Three associations that geographically bordered ours have disbanded in recent years (two in Iowa and one in Nebraska). The two remaining associations in Nebraska have pastors who serve as volunteer coordinators. Our association’s geographic region expanded to an area the size of South Carolina and larger than ten other states. An analogy I have used to describe what happened is not flattering. In 2010 our SBC family had a lot of children and teenagers—(24) and a few adult offspring (17)—I am speaking of organizational not spiritual maturity. For years and years, the parents and adult offspring had provided nice credit cards for the children and teens with very few strings attached. One day they told all the children and teens that over the next seven years their credit limit was going to be gradually reduced to zero, and then they would be on their own. Some of the children were toddlers and seven years was not going to be long enough for them to be able to live on their own. Some of the children and teens didn’t believe it would happen, so they didn’t prepare. A very few heard and began to prepare for a new day when they would be on their own. Some of them were mature enough to make the transition with minimal impact. What I just described in numerical changes and via an analogy directly impacted the lives of hundreds of individuals, their spouses, and their families. Although the changes created minimal impact in my life, I have many friends who still carry deep scars because of what happened to them and their families. I could expend a lot of energy placing blame, and there is plenty of that to go around, but we can’t go back and change history. So, how do we move forward? I will suggest two big things that will help us. First is we must acknowledge that our home mission’s work has ALWAYS struggled! It can only be as strong as our desire to be cooperative and as our wisdom to do it well. Second, we must actually embrace the eight Core Values that were listed in the GCRTF report adopted at the 2010 SBC Convention. We can’t just “assume” they will be true. Those values are:
Next week I will identify current events that have moved the tensions between NAMB and new work conventions into the broader SBC world. I will also begin to identify specific leadership principles and strategies that we can use to mitigate our challenges in the days ahead.
15Pages 7-8 of the Draft Final Report of the GRCTF, April 26, 2010 Yours in Christ, Mark R. Elliott, AMS In the last two articles we have been on a high-speed run through SBC history with a specific look at our home missions work. As we turned the last curve, we found ourselves in 1961 celebrating the fact that we had finally fulfilled the vision cast in 1845 of being a national convention of churches. I pointed out that Southern Baptists did not become a national convention based upon our great mission strategy but because of the migration of former southerners. The churches they planted were predominantly for white folks who had a Southern Baptist background. I have worked with a significant number of ethnic churches, and the early SBC churches in the new work states could best be described as “ethnic churches.” They were ethnically southern and many emphasized the point by naming their church First Southern Baptist Church—which is on the cornerstone of our current office building. Because the vast majority of the churches in those new work states are main line churches (Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, etc.) and members of the SBC churches went door-to-door like the Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses, we were viewed as cults. Our worship services were also VERY different—even different from other established evangelical churches in the area: public invitations at the end of each service, informal and highly relational worship style (a lot of hugging and chatting before and after services), and unusual terminology and speech patterns (ministers were called “Brother” and not “Pastor,” they used southern idioms, and had a southern drawl). If that wasn’t enough, ecclesiological issues surfaced because SBC churches had a strong emphasis on congregational polity, individual church autonomy, Sunday School for adults as well as children, and we used lay pastors. AND, we had worship services on Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night and did revival services. For a more in depth description of the challenges we faced, follow the link describing SBC expansion in the Upper Midwest. However, by the 1980s some of the new work areas began to see the number of SBC churches and church membership numbers plateau, and in a few cases, even decline. The strategy of congregationalizing former southerners who had migrated north and west had run its course. Most Southern Baptists still live where there are a lot of SBC churches and a lot of other Baptists and evangelical churches. But in the new work areas ALL Baptists combined number far less than five percent of the total population and in most areas ALL evangelicals combined are around ten percent. So, the Great Commission was not going to be fulfilled by just starting churches of, by, and for people with a Baptist or evangelical background. We needed to figure out how to become missionaries and be willing to move out of our southern AND our Baptist comfort zone. It was time for new mission strategies to be developed! Some new work conventions recognized the need for change and began to make adjustments in their strategies. However, the reality is that because of our theology, polity, and multi-level cooperative partnerships making necessary changes is hard. Even when everyone agrees changes need to be made, there will be differences of opinion on what those changes should be, how and when they should be made, and who has the ultimate authority to make those decisions. For good measure we can also throw in the reality that in church life unless the changes are implemented with great skill and tact they will ALWAYS cause push back and pain! Conversations that should have begun decades before were suddenly forced upon churches, associations, and conventions in the new work areas when the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force (GCRTF) issued its initial report in February 2010. That report called into question the effectiveness of the historic partnership model: “The North American Mission Board and the state conventions have operated for several decades by what is called cooperative agreements and cooperative budgets. Through the years they have become complex and at times cumbersome, resulting in a lack of accountability.”12 In light of no or slow growth in many new work areas, the report also questioned who should be in charge of strategy development. “NAMB must become the leader in our strategy to reach North America.”13 The reality is that Southern Baptists had worked in a cooperative/partnership relationship since 1845 with the local churches through their associations and state conventions taking the lead role in strategy development. What Southern Baptists in the traditional southern states did not understand at the time was that our International Board and NAMB have always functioned very differently. A career missionary who serves through our International Mission Board is fully supported by the Board. Those missionaries function unilaterally in areas where there is little or no Christian work. In other words, they work like missionaries appointed by societies rather than conventions, because there are no local churches, associations, or conventions with whom they can partner. By contrast, only a very small percentage of those who were “NAMB appointed field missionaries” in 2010 were fully supported by the Board. If you were a church planter you had financial support from a sponsoring church, the local association, the state convention, co-sponsoring churches, and NAMB. If you were serving in the dual role of a Director of Missions/Church Starter Strategist, your position was funded by the association, state convention, and NAMB. There were even specific state convention positions that were jointly funded by NAMB and the state convention. The level of NAMB support for a given role depended upon the strength of the church, association, and the state convention. Historically SBC’s home mission work was partnership based. The Task Force did not recommend that historic relationship agreements be renegotiated, but that they should be eliminated. “Therefore, at the end of four years [final language was seven], the North American Mission Board will be completely free from these present agreements.”14 Their recommendation, when it was approved at the SBC Annual Meeting in June 2010, created a nationalized model for doing home missions (more of a societal model) and caused a 1800 shift in who had the authority to set strategy. With these realities in mind, what changes would you have envisioned taking place? What impact could they have on churches, associations, and state conventions in the new work areas? 12Page 20 of the Progress Report of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force of the Southern Baptist Convention, February 22, 2010 13Ibid 14Pages 21-22 of the Progress Report of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force of the Southern Baptist Convention, February 22, 2010 Yours in Christ, Mark R. Elliott, DoM Let me pick back up with my race through Baptist history. By 1880, “Southern Baptists began to debate seriously both in the Convention sessions and elsewhere whether a southern Home Mission Board (HMB) was really needed since the associations and state bodies in the South and the northern society were so active in the work.” These tensions created a “rivalry with the state bodies in the South, [and] not only radically diminished the receipts of the [HMB] but also closed many areas of work to it.”4 Established societies continued to do well in spite of the fact that “nearly half of all the offerings…was used for collection and administration.”5 We were still struggling to see the value of cooperation!
“The convention took radical action in 1882. Messengers voted to dismiss not only the secretary of the HMB but the entire elected board of trustees and move the headquarters to Atlanta.”6 A new Corresponding Secretary (I. T. Tichenor) was elected, a new office location was established (moving from Marion, AL), and a renewed passion to work together across the south was envisioned. “In Tichenor’s last year as secretary in 1899, 671 missionaries were supported jointly with the state boards. Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma Territory, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia were cooperating with the board in part or all of their work.”7 A significant step had taken place and once again leadership paved the way! Fast forward to the 1920s. The decade brought huge challenges. A deep agricultural recession caused the “two mission boards [to] cut their work to the bone in massive retrenchment; other SBC institutions, especially the seminaries, faced imminent foreclosure; and the SBC and its entire assets could probably have been thrown into bankruptcy proceedings had the creditors desired.” If that wasn’t bad enough the “SBC received another jolt in 1928 at the revelation that Clinton S. Carnes, treasurer of the Home Mission Board, had embezzled $909,461 from the agency.”8 But in the midst of those great challenges the Cooperative Program (CP) was adopted. “Launched in 1925 the plan called for churches to send their offerings for denominational ministries to their state conventions. The states, in turn, would retain a portion of the funds for work within the state, forwarding the rest to the SBC office in Nashville.”9 The convention had struggled for eighty years in an effort to get traction for its convention model. Societal style fund raising for the fledgling convention had been a failure. Baker notes in his book, “The significance of the adoption of the Cooperative Program resides in its correction of the ambivalence in the financial methods carried over from the society plan in 1845 and its exploiting of the genius of the convention-type program. The Cooperative Program brought the goal of the original constitution of 1845 closer to realization.”10 Collaboration became real! As we approach the 100th Anniversary of the Cooperative Program, the SBC funding model has become the envy of every other denomination in America. “Cooperative is the right word to describe this stewardship program, and it shows the near canonization of both the word and the concept among Southern Baptists. To be ‘non-cooperative’ is a serious thing to Southern Baptists, and to be ‘independent’ has become a severe criticism.”11 The dream of an organized convention of churches replacing the old societal model had come to fruition. But what happened to the idea of Southern Baptists becoming a national body of churches? In 1900, formal alignment of churches was still limited to those in the original fourteen states with two exceptions: the District of Columbia and the Oklahoma and Indian Territories. Through a series of conferences with the American Baptist Home Mission Society that began in 1894 the first new state convention to be added was New Mexico in 1912. Churches in Oklahoma which had been dually aligned with Baptists in the north since statehood in 1907, became solely SBC aligned in 1914. The depression and the dust bowl migrations resulted in SBC leaning churches being planted in California. Their desire to affiliate with SBC life led to a decision at the 1942 SBC Convention in San Antonio to recognize California. Before the Kansas Convention was formally accepted, it was discussed at three national conventions, 1946-1948. A committee was appointed at the 1947 meeting to bring a recommendation on “The Kansas Application.” They recommended that in light of agreements with northern Baptists the application should not be approved. A floor amendment passed which reversed the committee’s recommendation. This action opened the door to further national expansion over the next two decades. Migration from historical SBC areas during and following World War II to fill jobs in the more industrialized northern states, to staff the military bases many of which were outside the south, and to explore the oil and mineral-rich areas in northern and western states led to a more national vision on the part of Southern Baptists. The first Southern Baptist Church in the south was FBC Charleston, South Carolina, and it was established in 1682. By contrast, the first SBC churches in the Upper Midwest are as follows: North Dakota—First Southern Baptist Church, Ray (later disbanded), 1953 Iowa—Fairview Baptist Church, Anamosa, 1954 Nebraska—First Southern Baptist Church (Southview), Lincoln, 1955 South Dakota—First Southern Baptist Church, Rapid City (now Calvary), 1955 Minnesota—Southtown Baptist Church, Bloomington, 1956 In 1961 with the formation of a mission congregation in Vermont, Southern Baptists could finally claim a presence in all fifty states. After the initial excitement died down, the hard work began of strengthening and expanding churches in the newer work states. However, by 1980 some of those areas began to see the number of SBC churches and church membership plateau or, in a few cases, even decline. The strategy of congregationalizing former southerners who had migrated north and west had run its course. It was time for new mission strategies to be developed! 4Page 260 of Robert A. Baker’s book The Southern Baptist Convention and Its People 1607-1972 5Page 240 of Robert A. Baker’s book The Southern Baptist Convention and Its People 1607-1972 6Page 428 of H. Leon McBeth’s book The Baptist Heritage. 7Page 264 of Robert A. Baker’s book The Southern Baptist Convention and Its People 1607-1972 8Page 620 of H. Leon McBeth’s book The Baptist Heritage. 9Pages 621-622 of H. Leon McBeth’s book The Baptist Heritage. 10Page 404 of Robert A. Baker’s book The Southern Baptist Convention and Its People 1607-1972. 11Page 622 of H. Leon McBeth’s book The Baptist Heritage. Yours in Christ, Mark R. Elliott, DoM So far, I have discussed how the political shift in the traditional SBC states, our growing ethnic diversity, and sweeping cultural changes have fed some of the conflicts we are currently facing. Today I will begin to address the roots of the tensions we are experiencing as we moved from being a southern regional convention of churches into a nationwide network. I have to start this discussion by admitting that the closer we are to a situation the less objective we can be in its analysis.
Some basic Baptist History is going to be required, and I will be as concise as possible. At its inception in 1845, Southern Baptist churches were located in fourteen states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. The purpose of the Convention as stated in Article II of the constitution is “to provide a general organization for Baptists in the United States and its territories for the promotion of Christian missions at home or abroad.” To fulfill that goal, two mission boards were immediately formed: The Foreign Mission Board and The Domestic Mission Board. Our attention will be focused on the latter. Ten years after its formation The Domestic Mission Board absorbed the work of the American Indian Association and the name was changed to the Domestic and Indian Mission Board. In 1874 its name was changed again to the Home Mission Board and remained so until 1997. With the approval of the Covenant for a New Century the Home Mission Board, Brotherhood Commission, and the Radio and Television Commission were combined to form the North American Mission Board (NAMB). At the 2010 SBC Annual Meeting with the approval of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force Report, NAMB’s role was significantly redefined. The implementation of this change has generated the issues that many new work conventions are currently having with NAMB. But to understand why we need to put things in historical context. At its inception, the fledgling convention had two major challenges as it sought to fulfill its stated purpose. The first was related to providing “a general organization for Baptists.” What is hard for us to picture from our perspective of SBC life is the reality that the newly formed convention was starting from absolute zero as it began to design a different way for Baptist churches to organize themselves. All the existing mission societies, both foreign and domestic, were in the north. But what some Southern Baptists envisioned was not just starting new mission societies in the south, but rather their goal was to create a convention model. Instead of multiple independent benevolent societies, one for each area of need, the idea was to organize a convention of churches that would create multiple boards to meet the various mission and ministry needs that would arise. This wasn’t a new idea. It is one based upon churches cooperating and collaborating through a unified funding process. The existing societal method was based upon individuals with specific interests supporting an independent society that is organized to meet those defined needs. Societies are in essence parachurch organizations funded primarily by the contributions of various individuals. A Baptist association or convention is a group of independent churches who choose to work together to identify, organize, and resource a variety of ministry and mission needs. A “critical section of the new convention’s constitution was Article V, by which the body departed radically from the society principle that each organization should deal with only one benevolence. The new article provided: The Convention shall elect at each triennial meeting as many Boards of Managers as in its judgment will be necessary for carrying out the benevolent objects it may determine to promote, all which Boards shall continue in office until a new election…To each Board shall be committed, during the recess of the Convention the entire management of all the affairs relating to the object with whose interest it shall be charged.”1 This convention model was not immediately nor universally affirmed. Specifically, the Domestic Mission Board had trouble gaining traction. Among many issues facing the board was leadership tenure. The first president and secretary resigned shortly after the board was formed. The next corresponding secretary served for only five months. “In addition [to them and] to several [others] who declined the office, eight men served as the corresponding secretary”2 by the turn of the 20th Century. It should not surprise us to know that the board had “a basic organizational problem…They had not yet worked out the relationship of the local church, association, state convention, and Southern Baptist Convention. Many identified home mission work as the task of associations and state conventions. To them, the Mission Board seemed at best unnecessary duplication and at worst a rival to local work.”3 More in-depth analysis of our current reality will follow, but how many of us have had similar conversations related to the question “Who’s responsible for what?” or have made comments like “We don’t need and can’t afford SBC organizational duplication of ministries.” So we can say without contradiction that organizational issues are not new! The second major challenge related to the new convention’s purpose was that of becoming a national body of churches: to provide a general organization for Baptists in the United States and its territories. Although the new convention began to work on the organizational component from day one, the geographical expansion did not begin formally for over 150 years. The Civil War and Reconstruction years didn’t make the fledgling convention’s work easy. Let me pause our journey into the past and ask that you reflect upon your own experience with Baptist life as it relates to the two major issues the convention faced in its early days. “What do you see as the strengths and weaknesses of having a convention rather than a societal/parachurch structure in Baptist life?” Since our official name is still the Southern Baptist Convention, although Great Commission Baptists was an alternative name approved at the 2012 convention, ask yourself, “Have we really embraced being a national network of churches?” You might have noticed that the theme for the 2021 SBC Annual Meeting in Nashville is We Are Great Commission Baptists. 1Page 167 of Robert A. Baker’s book The Southern Baptist Convention and Its People 1607- 1972. 2Page 425 of H. Leon McBeth’s book The Baptist Heritage. 3Page 425 of H. Leon McBeth’s book The Baptist Heritage. Yours in Christ, Mark R. Elliott, DoM |
AuthorRetired in April 2022, Mark R. Elliott served as a Director of Missions (Associational Mission Strategist) in Western Iowa and Eastern Nebraska for almost three decades. He is a strong advocate for obedience and Biblically based disciple making. As such, he knows that making healthy disciples requires Christian leaders to be constantly pursuing spiritual maturity—be lifelong learners. Because of the time constraints of ministry, most pastors focus their reading list on resources that assist them in teaching and preaching the Word of God. As such, books focusing on church health, leadership development, and church growth tend to find their way to the bottom of the stack. With that reality in mind, Mark has written discussion summaries on several books that have helped him to personally grow in Christ and that tend to find themselves on the bottom of most pastor’s stack. Many pastors have found them helpful as they are able to more quickly process great insights from other pastors and authors. Archives
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