Pardon a Moment of Southern Baptistry (Baptism? Baptistology?)

Or whatever you want to call it.  This will sound suspiciously like a rant, and may I apologize in advance for that. Now, on to the show:

I just received an e-mail from our wonderful state Baptist offices. You have them in your state too.  Some of you may even have more than one form. And within the confines of the attached invitation, I discovered that there are those who don’t really understand Southern Baptist Life. (Admittedly, such life has morphed and transmuted and otherwise distorted itself over the years that perhaps I’m the one who doesn’t understand, but let’s go with this for now.) I learned in reading that missive that the event advertised is a free event “provided through generous donations to the Cooperative Program.” (emphasis mine)

I love my fellow workers in this not so southern state where Southern Baptists are still seen as interlopers on northern soils, but to misunderstand the Cooperative Program (or even to change it to fit a form that those outside the SBC would recognize) is to reach a total misconception of who Southern Baptists have historically been.

A Quick History Lesson

The Cooperative Program (CP) was developed in the mid 1920s as a response to the Southern Baptist charge to help churches to fund the various missions/ministry efforts chosen by the convention, and to do so outside of the Society concept. In the old society method, representatives would come to churches to sell their particular cause. If a particularly good communicator showed up, a church might remove support from a prior ministry and funnel those funds toward the nice speaker’s cause. Another difficulty arose when so many good/worthy causes were presented to the churches: so much was being sent to these efforts that churches were having trouble keeping up with local on-going needs. On top of this, pastors were asked to relinquish their pulpits so often that they rarely had ample opportunity to preach the Word.

And so the CP was born. This new concept (growing out of a unified effort of fund-raising previously devised by the convention) was indeed that–a new concept. Simply put, the idea was to ask churches to designate an amount–whatever amount deemed appropriate to the local congregation (eventually the SBC narrowed its encouragement on a goal of 10% of undesignated gifts to the church) to send cooperatively in order to pay ongoing costs of the Convention.

Until recent years, this method has been the well-worn practice of Southern Baptists. During the last couple of decades (has it really been that long?), we have changed and whittled the CP to something that it is not. It has only been in the last few years that churches have been allowed by convention ruling to include designated giving in their CP funds. We have always been given the privilege to designate gifts, but for a gift to be considered CP, it was given with no strings attached–if you were dissatisfied with where CP money was spent, you made a trek to the annual SBC meeting and voiced your opinion as a duly elected messenger (not delegate–that’s a whole different post), hoping to convince the budget and finance committee of the convention to redirect funds to a more appropriate recipient.

Semantics at Its Best

Now we get down to the nitty-gritty of my tirade. We must begin to understand what the CP truly is. It is not an offering that we give to. We have plenty of those–one at Christmas (named in memory of the late Lottie Moon) which is designated for the use of the International Mission Board’s ministry budget–every penny is to go to the work our missionaries are doing overseas; another (memorializing the champion of missions Annie Armstrong) is designated for use by the North American Mission Board; and others set up by various state conventions and local churches to benefit a variety of needs. All of these are good. But the Cooperative Program is not like this.

Instead of seeing CP as a special offering to which we give, we must reorganize our thinking to see it as a conduit through which we finance the work and ministry of the Southern Baptist Convention. It’s how we as Baptists get things done.

My point in all of this is that we need to educate our state and national Baptist employees and team members to use the right language in order for all of us to understand that we have the concept right. Perhaps then people will cease in trying to designate their “tithe” or trying to control their church from the grave by bequeathing a large sum of money to the church “to be used for ________” (fill in the blank).

Why do these words get me bothered? It’s because one says one thing and the other says an entirely other thing. So don’t donate generously to the CP, but give generously through it!

 

What’s in a Name?

I’ve been Southern Baptist all my life. There, I’ve said it. I grew up in the home of a Southern Baptist preacher (then started one just like it). I’ve served in Southern Baptist churches my whole adult life. I’ve been a music director, a youth minister, a “minister of youth/music”, an associate pastor (with responsibilities for youth and education with the possibility of music), a bi-vocational pastor, an interim minister of missions, a career missionary, and am now serving as the pastor of a nice rural/village-type church (which is Southern Baptist even though we’re not in the South). These churches have been located in a variety of states–Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Illinois (with a few years overseas). I’ve preached in churches from all those states mentioned, plus Wyoming and Arkansas thrown in–and they’ve all been Southern Baptist churches.

In all this Southern Baptist experience, I’ve learned something about our convention–we can do some pretty stupid things. There, I’ve said that, too! Over the past year we have been locked in a knock-down, drag-out fight over whether or not we should change the name. (I’ve even tossed in my two-cents’ worth–which is probably an inflated price. You can read it here.) Most of our church members don’t really care one way or another, “it doesn’t affect us” is the prevailing thought. For a number of months a special task force (the Baptist word is Committee) has been studying whether it would be a positive thing for our convention to re-dub herself with some name less regional or baptist sounding than our traditional “Southern Baptist Convention” (which is, btw, a denomination that has been working to build itself a good name after a rocky start over 150 years ago, and I think we’ve done pretty good as cases go) or leave well enough alone. The preliminary soundings of what the committee will suggest at the SBC annual meeting this summer gets us to a new high (or is it low?) in stupidity. All the time, effort, and resources have been spent with the following conclusion–The official name will remain Southern Baptist Convention, but churches will have permission (if the vote goes right) to call themselves “Great Commission Baptists” if they are afraid they will be offensive to their geographical region by being a part of something that is Southern. (Reminds me of when Kentucky Fried Chicken tried to re-invent itself by going by its initials-KFC-and everybody knew that they were still eating FRIED CHICKEN–which may or may not have originated in the Bluegrass State.)

If you missed it, we’ve spent all this energy to do nothing–and we’re allowing ourselves to vote on it!

That said, with apologies to the Bard, I’d like to present a few altered lines from a famous speech in a play:

(New Church Start somewhere outside of the deep South):

O SBC, SBC! wherefore art thou Southern?
Deny thy region and refuse thy roots;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my CP dollars,
And I’ll no longer be a Community Church.

‘Tis but thy region that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Baptist.
What’s Baptist? it is nor FMB*, nor HMB,
Nor Sunday School Board, nor Annuity Board, nor any other part
Belonging to a church. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? that which we call a denomination
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So SBC would, were he not SBC call’d,
Retain that dear doctrine which he owes
Without that title. SBC, doff thy Southern Baptism,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

Have a great day–whoever you are!

[*All name changes have been ignored for the purpose of this post.]

 

My Post-VBS Post

At times I want to travel back to a more innocent day, a day in which we really understood society, and we knew all the songs at Vacation Bible School (“Only a Boy Named David”, “Zaccheus Was a Wee Little Man”, and the like), and Kool-aid® and graham crackers ruled the day. I wax nostalgic for those days when blue-haired ladies in orthopedic oxfords marched in with us and we knew what to day when the pianist played the “Stand-up” and “Sit-down” chords.

Those days are gone—with the two-week Vacation Bible Schools. And we are left shopping for VBS in a Box, focusing on this year’s theme and trying to make it work for our situation. We choose from the mountain of catalogs when selecting the back-pack, suitcase, canister, or other oddly-shaped bag that has the most creative theme (including craftily-named cartoon animal to guide our way). When our own LifeWay (Southern Baptist’s curriculum publisher and sales force) decided that if Southern Baptists were to keep all the VBS dollars in-house they would have to package Bible school around a theme rather than the Bible, I was skeptical.

But the switch has worked rather well. Children are latching onto the themes, so churches are buying into them. For fifteen years now, we have been treated to some really up-beat, theme-related, kid-friendly music that pounds out the thematic message and charms the soul. The cynic in me sometimes thinks that maybe the music is starting to sound pretty much the same—just the motions have been changed to confuse the workers.

I was also concerned last year when LifeWay announced that their theme would be “Big Apple Adventure” (centering all the activities and music around New York City). Will our kids go for it? The Ranch theme was right up our alley here in rural, cornfield America. The Hawaiian and Alaskan themes were kind of exotic. And the trip to China a few years ago was really enticing if not a little on the racist edge. But New York City? What were they thinking?

So, here’s how it went down for us: We opted to go with “Big Apple Adventure”, we recruited our helpers, and found a church who held their VBS a couple of weeks before ours and took advantage of their generous offer to take their exceptionally made decorations to festoon our church, and we had at it.

Our VBS results floored me. We averaged over 95 children for the week (never falling below 90—which is a record for the six years we’ve been doing VBS since I came to be pastor here). Ten children in the older classes turned their lives over to Christ—I’ll get to baptize the majority of them in the next few weeks (others have families who go to other local congregations in the area), and we collected over $300 in missions-related offering which will go to Illinois’ Baptist Childrens Home.

Why the success? I don’t think it has so much to do with the music or the theme as it does with a couple of other factors. First, we are one of the few churches in our area to do a week-long, morning-based VBS. Most have gone to either evenings or a Saturday, one-day effort because of difficulty in getting workers. At this point I would argue to get the workers, and do VBS in the day-time—parents like it, kids like it, and your church will have an opportunity to minister to a larger number, sharing the gospel in a kid-friendly way.

We also make a big deal of getting the word out, inviting anyone and everyone to bring their children. There are children in our community who opted to go to VBS over other fun summer activities for this week. One of the mothers shared that she had been taking her charges (some cousins are visiting for the summer) to a great reading program three days a week. The boys said they wanted to go to the reading club, but the girls wanted to go to VBS during this week. When the boys saw how much fun the girls had, they ditched the reading club the rest of the week and came to learn about the Bible.

I’ve always said Monday in VBS week is my favorite day of the year because of all the chaos and mayhem that goes on as we register and corral the children (some who don’t see the inside of a church building except during this special week), and it is also my least favorite day of the year because of all the chaos and mayhem that is involved in getting VBS started. Either way, it is always worth it!

 

Leaving It Better

Joe Ball at Despising None is urging Baptists to take a long look at how we act. I think this one is worth your time (it won’t take much).

HT: Art Rogers