I enjoyed Dr. Russell Moore's column 10 Things I Wish Everyone Knew About Southern Baptists. As a follow-up, I came up with 10 Things I Wish Southern Baptists Knew About Southern Baptists. This is not an argument against Dr. Moore's article. Like I said, I enjoyed it. I'm just piggy-backing (okay, ripping) off what he shared to mention a few things even Southern Baptists should know about our own denomination.
1) We have a lot of great teachers... and a lot of bad ones, too.
The teachers I have valued the most in my five years as a pastor are Southern Baptists: Voddie Baucham, Matt Chandler, Mark Dever, Al Mohler, David Platt, and Paul Washer among them. In my opinion, some of the most Spiritually gifted Bible teachers on the planet come from within our denomination.
Unfortunately we have a lot of bad ones, too: men (and women) who devote themselves to myths, promoting speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith. In their sermons, they wander frequently into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law without understanding what they are saying, or the things about which they make their confident assertions (1 Timothy 1:3-7). The Apostle Paul told Timothy to keep anyone from teaching in such a way.
Southern Baptist churches are autonomous (more on that later), so individual pastors need to hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, giving instruction in sound doctrine and rebuke those who contradict it (Titus 1:9). Don't attend a church just because it's Southern Baptist. Attend a church grounded firmly in orthodoxy, submissive to the authority of the inerrant word of God.
2) Doctrine is not a hot enough topic.
And that brings me to the subject of doctrine itself, one that is not talked about enough in Southern Baptist circles. I've attended multiple SBC meetings from small, local gatherings all the way up to the national level, and doctrine is seldom ever talked about. There are Southern Baptist ministers who have more in common with Presbyterian and Non-Denominational ministers than they have in common with the pastor of the largest Southern Baptist church in the country. To quote Dr. Baucham, "Doctrine matters!"
Dr. Moore is right when he says, "We don't agree on everything, but we're more united than you might think." We're still also very divided, and sometimes those divisions are giant gorillas in the room that no one wants to talk about. Even seemingly small things still cause massive divisions. It's not enough to quote Ephesians 4:4-6. We must, even on the convention level, follow the instructions of 1 Corinthians 1:10-17, 1 Timothy 4:7, and 1 Timothy 5:21.
3) The pastor/deacon model given in the BFM 2000 is not quite how a New Testament church should function.
Dr. Moore mentioned autonomy, and that's a great thing about SBC churches. I think a church can appoint and ordain its own elders and deacons, test and approve its own teaching, be held accountable to other autonomous churches, and send out missionaries without the oversight of a religious bureaucracy. But the pastor/deacon model mentioned in the Baptist Faith and Message (article VI) is not the model of a New Testament church given in Scripture. If there's anything I could change about the BFM 2000, it would be that.
The biblically correct model is plurality eldership overseeing the teaching and spiritual needs of the church, and deacons who serve the elders and the church by helping to meet physical needs. In too many Baptist churches, the pastor is like a president or a CEO and the deacons are thought of as elders though they don't serve in that capacity and were not elected based on those qualifications (given in 1 Timothy 3:1-13 and Titus 1:5-9).
Our church just recently adopted plurality eldership. It took us two years, studying the Scriptures and the experiences and teachings of other Baptist ministers. I'm still the pastor, considered a ruling elder devoted to ministry service (1 Timothy 5:17). But now it's not just me. There are two other men serving with me. We lead together and hold one another accountable. I have no more authority than they do. That's the way it should be.
4) Infant baptism is not that big a deal.
When a Baptist says that a person who believes in and practices infant baptism is a heretic, they display that they don't understand what infant baptism is. Not all paedobaptist perspectives are the same. The reformed perspective on infant baptism, whether in the Reformed or Presbyterian church (RCA or PCA), is not heretical. They're not baptizing their infants because they believe it will save them. It's a sign of the covenant. Just as circumcision was a sign and seal of the covenant for the descendants of Abraham, so baptism is for babies born to Christian parents.
Now, as a Southern Baptist minister, obviously I don't fully agree with that perspective. It's something I continue to study -- I owe my Presbyterian brothers that -- but I don't share the hermeneutic that connects circumcision with baptism. Baptizing infants simply isn't necessary. Where a reformed paedobaptist and I would agree is that baptism symbolizes a covenant with Christ (Romans 6:4), and we would agree that the children of even just one believing parent are holy before the Lord (1 Corinthians 7:14). Therefore, I do not think it is necessary to exclude from church membership a person who practices paedobaptism.
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Dr. Dever (again, whom I greatly admire) has said that paedobaptists are sinning because they disobey the command to baptize and be baptized. I do not agree. I think that a reformed paedobaptist is absolutely keeping that command. If church membership, as Dr. Dever has also said, is a corporate endorsement of one's salvation, then there should be no reason to make paedobaptism a disqualifier for membership.
When a person comes into our church seeking membership, and we ask them if they have been baptized, and they say, "Yes, I was baptized in the Catholic church as an infant!" well that's a whole different animal. We do teach them they need to be baptized for the first time since they haven't been yet. Lutherans, Apostolic Pentecostals, and the Church of Christ also teach that water baptism is salvific, and that's a doctrinal problem. But I have no major doctrinal issues with my reformed paedobaptist brothers, and neither should any other Southern Baptist.
5) Baptism should be a bigger deal.
That said, we as Southern Baptists probably don't make as big a deal over baptism as we should. Or let me put it another way: We don't take it as seriously as we should. When a person is baptized in your church, guess what? They're not a number. They're not some random wet head. They've made a public declaration of their faith, having been buried with Christ in their sins and risen to newness of life. And now they are the responsibility of your church.
Don't just applaud and forget their names. Their baptism was done before the assembly for a reason. Know who they are. Remember them. Follow up with them. Talk to them. Get to know them. Invite them over to your house. Break bread together. Have spiritual discussions. Teach them how to pray and read their Bible. Make sure they keep attending church. This is all part of baptism, folks. Jesus said to baptize and teach what he commanded (Matthew 28:19-20). That's not two separate commands in two separate verses. It's all part of the same process of making disciples.
6) We might need to rethink the name "Southern Baptist."
One of the points that Dr. Moore made in his column was, "Lots of us aren't 'Southern.'" Dr Moore definitely is. He's a southern boy from Mississippi living in Tennessee with an accent that gives him away. He's the quintessential Southern Baptist. Though I minister in Kansas, I was born in South Carolina and my parents were married in a Southern Baptist church. I'm proud to be a Southern Baptist preacher.
But Dr. Moore is right, the Southern Baptist convention is not all that southern. Few Southern Baptist churches even claim to be Southern Baptist churches! The president of the SBC, Dr. Ronnie Floyd, pastors a church that doesn't have "Southern Baptist" in its name. It's the same story for the president of my own state convention. No where on his church's website can you find that they're associated with the SBC. I met a pastor last year who planted a SBC church in Alaska. Hooray, we get that far north! But that church also didn't have "Southern Baptist" in their name.
Maybe the SBC was on to something in 2012 when they voted to use "Great Commission Baptists" as an alternative name. They didn't replace the name; just offered an alternative. The vote passed by what I would consider to be a narrow margin, 53 to 46 percent. Obviously the SBC at large is not all that on-board with replacing the name, but I think we should bring it up again. As more SBC churches are getting away from the SB part of the name, maybe GCB is the moniker we should adopt.
7) There are some things in our past we should be ashamed of.
The 7th point in Dr. Moore's column was, "There are some things in our past we're ashamed of." I would say we're not ashamed enough. I don't think most Southern Baptist parishioners are aware of our history. "The SBC was founded over the issue of human slavery," Dr. Moore says, "precisely over the question of whether slaveholders would be appointed as missionaries. It's not just that the SBC was on the wrong side of the issue on that, we were on the wrong side of the Bible, on the wrong side of the gospel, on the wrong side of Jesus."
Before the early part of the 19th century, the Baptist churches of the south were almost all abolitionist. Slave holders would attend the Anglican churches until after the American Revolution when they were wooed into Baptist circles. The slave owners had all the money, you see, and by their influence, Baptist preachers started to abandon pleas in their sermons to set their slaves free. The slave owners wanted the church's affirmation that they could treat people as property and still be good Christians. But the Bible strictly condemns those who enslave others.
You know the old saying that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Today more and more Baptist churches are refusing to speak up about sins of divorce, marital unfaithfulness, lazy parenting, porn, abortion, and homosexuality to name a few. Might the reason be the same as it was in Civil War-era Baptist churches; that they don't want to offend the people with the money or risk losing their numbers? We need to be more ashamed of our past than we are -- enough that we will preach holiness and declare the authority of Christ. Let us not ever end up on the wrong side of the Bible.
8) Lifeway needs to stop selling certain books.
Let me just be blunt: The hashtag movement known as #The15 is ridiculous. Its inception is steeped in so much controversy and back-biting, it's counter-productive. For all their efforts to try and remove heretical books from Christian bookstores like Lifeway, they've actually caused more problems. It's now that much more difficult for those of us who don't participate in silly hashtag campaigns to be taken seriously. (If you identify as #The15, quit whining over the Southern Baptist leaders who aren't listening to you on Twitter. There's a good reason you've been blocked. Grow up.)
I'm glad Lifeway responded to last year's SBC resolution and pulled heaven-tourism books like Heaven Is for Real, 90 Minutes In Heaven, and The Boy Who Went to Heaven off the shelves. The books were lies. They should never have been on the shelf in the first place. Neither should books by Joyce Meyer, T.D. Jakes, and Sarah Young. I've been in stores where Meyer and Young have entire decorated sections promoting their work. They're false teachers. I still shop at Lifeway, but as the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist convention, they need to be more discerning about what they sell.
9) The Southern Baptist church is doing more in the public arena than perhaps any other denomination.
I love the presence of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission that Dr. Russell Moore is the president of. The conferences we have, the issues we discuss, the presence of the Southern Baptist church in the public square -- we're not only the largest protestant denomination in the country, we are, in my opinion, the most prolific when it comes to engaging the secular culture from a Christian worldview (I'd encourage you to listen regularly to Al Mohler's The Briefing).
But even as involved as we are, we could do much better. The convention has a great presence, but are we communicating the need for that kind of engagement to members of our congregation? Are we teaching them how? Do they understand why a "Christian worldview" is important? Do local pastors care about local government and inform their flocks about issues happening in their own communities? In the nation? In the world?
The convention is getting into this routine of taking a public stand on issues that even secularists and other faiths agree with (and it doesn't always do that in the best way). When we share the public sentiment, it might be great PR, but unless we're proclaiming loud and clear the gospel of Jesus Christ, we're just adding another voice to already agreeable rhetoric. Our message is not set apart, and as the people of God, it's supposed to be (1 Peter 2:9).
10) Evangelism is not someone else's job.
At the Southern Baptist Convention in Columbus earlier this month, Ed Stetzer, president of Lifeway Research, delivered a great line: "We have a denomination that loves evangelism as long as someone else is doing it." Ouch! But true. If at the very least we were knocking on doors or doing on-street evangelism, that would be something!
Church services on Sunday morning are not the way we engage a crooked and depraved generation. Inviting your atheist friends to church is not how you do it either. We reach the lost by going out into the community and preaching the gospel. When a person displays a repentant heart receptive to that message, we command them to be baptized and grow together with the rest of the members of the body of Christ. Evangelism is deliberate. It's intentional. It's loving. We can't do it accidentally. We do it on purpose. We've been commanded to do it. So do it!
I love the Southern Baptist denomination. For all of its shortcomings and pitfalls, it is an honor to be a Southern Baptist minister. I'm so glad the Lord called me to this and that I'm in the church I am in. As a recent article in the Washington Post asked, how can the Southern Baptist denomination do more than survive, but thrive? By being serious about sharing our faith, by being firmly rooted in sound doctrine, and that no watered-down or politicized gospel will do.
1) We have a lot of great teachers... and a lot of bad ones, too.
The teachers I have valued the most in my five years as a pastor are Southern Baptists: Voddie Baucham, Matt Chandler, Mark Dever, Al Mohler, David Platt, and Paul Washer among them. In my opinion, some of the most Spiritually gifted Bible teachers on the planet come from within our denomination.
Unfortunately we have a lot of bad ones, too: men (and women) who devote themselves to myths, promoting speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith. In their sermons, they wander frequently into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law without understanding what they are saying, or the things about which they make their confident assertions (1 Timothy 1:3-7). The Apostle Paul told Timothy to keep anyone from teaching in such a way.
Southern Baptist churches are autonomous (more on that later), so individual pastors need to hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, giving instruction in sound doctrine and rebuke those who contradict it (Titus 1:9). Don't attend a church just because it's Southern Baptist. Attend a church grounded firmly in orthodoxy, submissive to the authority of the inerrant word of God.
2) Doctrine is not a hot enough topic.
And that brings me to the subject of doctrine itself, one that is not talked about enough in Southern Baptist circles. I've attended multiple SBC meetings from small, local gatherings all the way up to the national level, and doctrine is seldom ever talked about. There are Southern Baptist ministers who have more in common with Presbyterian and Non-Denominational ministers than they have in common with the pastor of the largest Southern Baptist church in the country. To quote Dr. Baucham, "Doctrine matters!"
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| And when a jujitsu champion tells you something, you better listen to him. |
3) The pastor/deacon model given in the BFM 2000 is not quite how a New Testament church should function.
Dr. Moore mentioned autonomy, and that's a great thing about SBC churches. I think a church can appoint and ordain its own elders and deacons, test and approve its own teaching, be held accountable to other autonomous churches, and send out missionaries without the oversight of a religious bureaucracy. But the pastor/deacon model mentioned in the Baptist Faith and Message (article VI) is not the model of a New Testament church given in Scripture. If there's anything I could change about the BFM 2000, it would be that.
The biblically correct model is plurality eldership overseeing the teaching and spiritual needs of the church, and deacons who serve the elders and the church by helping to meet physical needs. In too many Baptist churches, the pastor is like a president or a CEO and the deacons are thought of as elders though they don't serve in that capacity and were not elected based on those qualifications (given in 1 Timothy 3:1-13 and Titus 1:5-9).
Our church just recently adopted plurality eldership. It took us two years, studying the Scriptures and the experiences and teachings of other Baptist ministers. I'm still the pastor, considered a ruling elder devoted to ministry service (1 Timothy 5:17). But now it's not just me. There are two other men serving with me. We lead together and hold one another accountable. I have no more authority than they do. That's the way it should be.
4) Infant baptism is not that big a deal.
When a Baptist says that a person who believes in and practices infant baptism is a heretic, they display that they don't understand what infant baptism is. Not all paedobaptist perspectives are the same. The reformed perspective on infant baptism, whether in the Reformed or Presbyterian church (RCA or PCA), is not heretical. They're not baptizing their infants because they believe it will save them. It's a sign of the covenant. Just as circumcision was a sign and seal of the covenant for the descendants of Abraham, so baptism is for babies born to Christian parents.
Now, as a Southern Baptist minister, obviously I don't fully agree with that perspective. It's something I continue to study -- I owe my Presbyterian brothers that -- but I don't share the hermeneutic that connects circumcision with baptism. Baptizing infants simply isn't necessary. Where a reformed paedobaptist and I would agree is that baptism symbolizes a covenant with Christ (Romans 6:4), and we would agree that the children of even just one believing parent are holy before the Lord (1 Corinthians 7:14). Therefore, I do not think it is necessary to exclude from church membership a person who practices paedobaptism.
Dr. Dever (again, whom I greatly admire) has said that paedobaptists are sinning because they disobey the command to baptize and be baptized. I do not agree. I think that a reformed paedobaptist is absolutely keeping that command. If church membership, as Dr. Dever has also said, is a corporate endorsement of one's salvation, then there should be no reason to make paedobaptism a disqualifier for membership.
When a person comes into our church seeking membership, and we ask them if they have been baptized, and they say, "Yes, I was baptized in the Catholic church as an infant!" well that's a whole different animal. We do teach them they need to be baptized for the first time since they haven't been yet. Lutherans, Apostolic Pentecostals, and the Church of Christ also teach that water baptism is salvific, and that's a doctrinal problem. But I have no major doctrinal issues with my reformed paedobaptist brothers, and neither should any other Southern Baptist.
5) Baptism should be a bigger deal.
That said, we as Southern Baptists probably don't make as big a deal over baptism as we should. Or let me put it another way: We don't take it as seriously as we should. When a person is baptized in your church, guess what? They're not a number. They're not some random wet head. They've made a public declaration of their faith, having been buried with Christ in their sins and risen to newness of life. And now they are the responsibility of your church.
Don't just applaud and forget their names. Their baptism was done before the assembly for a reason. Know who they are. Remember them. Follow up with them. Talk to them. Get to know them. Invite them over to your house. Break bread together. Have spiritual discussions. Teach them how to pray and read their Bible. Make sure they keep attending church. This is all part of baptism, folks. Jesus said to baptize and teach what he commanded (Matthew 28:19-20). That's not two separate commands in two separate verses. It's all part of the same process of making disciples.
6) We might need to rethink the name "Southern Baptist."
One of the points that Dr. Moore made in his column was, "Lots of us aren't 'Southern.'" Dr Moore definitely is. He's a southern boy from Mississippi living in Tennessee with an accent that gives him away. He's the quintessential Southern Baptist. Though I minister in Kansas, I was born in South Carolina and my parents were married in a Southern Baptist church. I'm proud to be a Southern Baptist preacher.
But Dr. Moore is right, the Southern Baptist convention is not all that southern. Few Southern Baptist churches even claim to be Southern Baptist churches! The president of the SBC, Dr. Ronnie Floyd, pastors a church that doesn't have "Southern Baptist" in its name. It's the same story for the president of my own state convention. No where on his church's website can you find that they're associated with the SBC. I met a pastor last year who planted a SBC church in Alaska. Hooray, we get that far north! But that church also didn't have "Southern Baptist" in their name.
Maybe the SBC was on to something in 2012 when they voted to use "Great Commission Baptists" as an alternative name. They didn't replace the name; just offered an alternative. The vote passed by what I would consider to be a narrow margin, 53 to 46 percent. Obviously the SBC at large is not all that on-board with replacing the name, but I think we should bring it up again. As more SBC churches are getting away from the SB part of the name, maybe GCB is the moniker we should adopt.
7) There are some things in our past we should be ashamed of.
The 7th point in Dr. Moore's column was, "There are some things in our past we're ashamed of." I would say we're not ashamed enough. I don't think most Southern Baptist parishioners are aware of our history. "The SBC was founded over the issue of human slavery," Dr. Moore says, "precisely over the question of whether slaveholders would be appointed as missionaries. It's not just that the SBC was on the wrong side of the issue on that, we were on the wrong side of the Bible, on the wrong side of the gospel, on the wrong side of Jesus."
Before the early part of the 19th century, the Baptist churches of the south were almost all abolitionist. Slave holders would attend the Anglican churches until after the American Revolution when they were wooed into Baptist circles. The slave owners had all the money, you see, and by their influence, Baptist preachers started to abandon pleas in their sermons to set their slaves free. The slave owners wanted the church's affirmation that they could treat people as property and still be good Christians. But the Bible strictly condemns those who enslave others.
You know the old saying that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Today more and more Baptist churches are refusing to speak up about sins of divorce, marital unfaithfulness, lazy parenting, porn, abortion, and homosexuality to name a few. Might the reason be the same as it was in Civil War-era Baptist churches; that they don't want to offend the people with the money or risk losing their numbers? We need to be more ashamed of our past than we are -- enough that we will preach holiness and declare the authority of Christ. Let us not ever end up on the wrong side of the Bible.
8) Lifeway needs to stop selling certain books.
Let me just be blunt: The hashtag movement known as #The15 is ridiculous. Its inception is steeped in so much controversy and back-biting, it's counter-productive. For all their efforts to try and remove heretical books from Christian bookstores like Lifeway, they've actually caused more problems. It's now that much more difficult for those of us who don't participate in silly hashtag campaigns to be taken seriously. (If you identify as #The15, quit whining over the Southern Baptist leaders who aren't listening to you on Twitter. There's a good reason you've been blocked. Grow up.)
I'm glad Lifeway responded to last year's SBC resolution and pulled heaven-tourism books like Heaven Is for Real, 90 Minutes In Heaven, and The Boy Who Went to Heaven off the shelves. The books were lies. They should never have been on the shelf in the first place. Neither should books by Joyce Meyer, T.D. Jakes, and Sarah Young. I've been in stores where Meyer and Young have entire decorated sections promoting their work. They're false teachers. I still shop at Lifeway, but as the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist convention, they need to be more discerning about what they sell.
9) The Southern Baptist church is doing more in the public arena than perhaps any other denomination.
I love the presence of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission that Dr. Russell Moore is the president of. The conferences we have, the issues we discuss, the presence of the Southern Baptist church in the public square -- we're not only the largest protestant denomination in the country, we are, in my opinion, the most prolific when it comes to engaging the secular culture from a Christian worldview (I'd encourage you to listen regularly to Al Mohler's The Briefing).
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| You know what this name really needs? To be longer. |
The convention is getting into this routine of taking a public stand on issues that even secularists and other faiths agree with (and it doesn't always do that in the best way). When we share the public sentiment, it might be great PR, but unless we're proclaiming loud and clear the gospel of Jesus Christ, we're just adding another voice to already agreeable rhetoric. Our message is not set apart, and as the people of God, it's supposed to be (1 Peter 2:9).
10) Evangelism is not someone else's job.
At the Southern Baptist Convention in Columbus earlier this month, Ed Stetzer, president of Lifeway Research, delivered a great line: "We have a denomination that loves evangelism as long as someone else is doing it." Ouch! But true. If at the very least we were knocking on doors or doing on-street evangelism, that would be something!
Church services on Sunday morning are not the way we engage a crooked and depraved generation. Inviting your atheist friends to church is not how you do it either. We reach the lost by going out into the community and preaching the gospel. When a person displays a repentant heart receptive to that message, we command them to be baptized and grow together with the rest of the members of the body of Christ. Evangelism is deliberate. It's intentional. It's loving. We can't do it accidentally. We do it on purpose. We've been commanded to do it. So do it!
I love the Southern Baptist denomination. For all of its shortcomings and pitfalls, it is an honor to be a Southern Baptist minister. I'm so glad the Lord called me to this and that I'm in the church I am in. As a recent article in the Washington Post asked, how can the Southern Baptist denomination do more than survive, but thrive? By being serious about sharing our faith, by being firmly rooted in sound doctrine, and that no watered-down or politicized gospel will do.