"Costs Too Much To Change the Sign"

I heard my youngest deacon explaining to a visitor what they had just experienced last Sunday after worship. Didn't hear it all, but I caught the part where he said "yeah, the sign still says 'A Southern Baptist Church', but that's partly because it would cost too much to change it." His father was an SBC pastor. But he's a guy who wants to see things happen for Jesus, and ready to work to see it. All he's seen from the SBC is fussing and fighting for years.

I've been in a conversation with my friend and fellow Florida Pastor Tom Bryant about the SBC over the years. Tom's at FBC Osprey, and is seeing God move in amazing ways among the community. I'd be hard-pressed to think of a more godly and effective pastor. And the church he serves with should be an example of what can happen when people follow Jesus outside.

But this is the Southern Baptist Convention.

No one will notice.

He's in a small church. And though FBC Osprey participates fully in associational, state, and SBC life revolves around famous pastors and their mega-churches.

The SBC began as a way for small churches to band together so as to increase their impact missionally. But over the years it has morphed into a bureaucracy where the mega churches set the program, and where the smaller churches have little voice but contribute their monies. And when the larger entities in the SBC do something like bring out a racially insensitive VBS, or decide that Calvinists are evil, or take on Disney - guess who hears about it? Yep. We do.

The glue that holds the SBC together is the Cooperative program. The CP is dying. Not from lack of cash, but from lack of focused passion. It's an organization. It's separated from the local church so far now by the layers of assoc,state,IMB,NAMB etc that no one at church can tell a compelling story of what their gifts did.

We've become fans of professional Christians and turned missions into a spectator sport.

That should not be.

So if a local church decides that missions by proxy won't cut it, and finds a way to really do missions... well, I'll understand.

...and applaud.

I want people to change the SBC. I want those people to be deep into missions. Until the SBC is changed, they are being good stewards by only giving what's left over. It's a "Mary - Martha" thing. The SBC looks busy, does little that matters to the local church, and that's where the priority has to be.

I've had people like Tom, who I respect tell me, "You need to get involved and be the change you seek." What you are asking is akin to me heading to the beach and building a seawall out of sand. A waste of the limited time and resources I have to get involved with the convention. And even if I brought the max number of messengers with me, one mega church would have dozens more.

You want change? Here's my idea of what should happen.

Sell off Lifeway, make the seminaries self supporting. If they are that good, they'll make it. Work with local churches to keep people in the church serving, in their homes making a living for their families, and bring education to them. Ditch the 30 hours on campus requirement. Replace it with 30 hour internships or mentoring. Tell ATS to take a hike. Train pastors and planters. Work to make them able to serve bivocationally through dual degree programs in education, social work, the chaplaincy - get real. Most churches are small, and a pastor needs to be able to take care of his family, have health insurance, prepare for retirement.

Close NAMB or the state conventions - your pick, pare the bloat. Keep them (State Conv.)in areas where they are needed. But in states like AL,FL, GA??? Please. Churches should be planting churches. Sell off properties that are underused and put all that money into church planter support.

Build direct links between churches and missionaries and missionary action. Give us the same options we have with Heifer.org, Compassion, Samaritan's Purse - and a host of others. Don't make us fight to be involved. MAKE IT EASY!!! NATURAL!!!

And please quit trying to create a Baptist ghetto of SBC events when there are other opportunities you could partner with. There's a reason why attendance is down at SBC events. Why would I want to go to a State Convention when I could go to Catalyst?

Really, this is the most I've spent thinking about the SBC all year. Don't have the time or the inclination to be involved in the petty causes and silly infighting. I'd rather see people changing and lives redeemed.