Concerning recent activity within the SBC, the IMB and its Board of Trustees, I have spoken with several former pastors who are my seniors in both age and, at times, in supervision in ministry. In other words, some of them were my boss at one point or another. These have been among the most frustrating conversations I have ever had – including some pointless arguments in Seminary.

My problem? They do not pay any attention to the SBC any more. One chooses to focus on his church and its needs right now. This sounds noble until you add that he was constantly steering the conversation to insignificant issues in his personal life – y’know, small talk. So it wasn’t that he had tremendous weight of important local ministry on his mind – that never came up.

Another conversation was met with the constant reference to how Baptists are so bad about beating each other up. I was asked if I had read a book documenting all the controversies and the mean things we had done to each other over the years. The overall reaction? This is just the next issue to beat each other up over, since that is what we do. While I agree that we need not to be mean spirited and ungodly toward each other – that is a major issue for me – I do not agree that we should just ignore the fight. This attitude implies that the people involved just fight because that is what they do and if we are involved in the fight it is because we are fighters (read: we lack the peace part of the Christian character) and not because we think a part of the issue is worth the fight.

So how do we convince those older than us, those who have seen some tough fights in the SBC, that they need to be active in this one? By the nature of their relationship to us, they think we are not as experienced and astute as they are. How can we go up the ladder with this message?

First I think we need to be humble. If we come across as thinking we know more, they will ignore our message because of our arrogance. The truth is they probably have seen and done more than we have in the area of denominational principles. We must give them that respect and I think it gives them a reason to listen to our concerns.

Second, I think we point them to the blogs. They are a consistent record of what has been said, so there is no hearsay or degradation of the message. If they are not ‘net savvy, then print out the salient stuff and give it to them on paper. Not too much, either. If you hand them the stacks that it would take to put all that has been written recently, it will go unread. No more than 5 – 10 pagers, I think. Also, after that, you might throw in the papers by Drs. Patterson and Eitel hosted on sbc outpost. The relevance of Eitel’s paper might need to be explained, but Patterson’s is obviously relevant to the new policies of the IMB.

Third, I think we need to be patiently consistent. I think numerous small conversations will do more than one big “We need to save the SBC from annihilation!” conversation. They do have a lot on their minds and the relevance of this situation may not be readily grasped.

What do you think? How are we going to go up the ladder?

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