What’s so wrong with increased seminary funding?

Having read Gerald Harris’ op-ed at Baptist Press, I have only one comment…why you all hating on the seminaries?

Dr. Harris lists Myth No. 1 about the GCRTF as “The goal of (particular members of) the Task Force to get more money to the nations is only a smoke screen to get more money to the seminaries.” Admittedly, I am a bit biased, being a seminary student, but what is the rationale for not wanting to provide for the best education for the most students of our Southern Baptist churches?

Point 1: We as SBC want to reach the world for Christ…but we don’t want to prepare new ministers to do that?

Harris also cites Axiom IX of the GCR Declaration, “We believe that North American church planting, pioneer missions around the globe, and theological education are three priorities around which most Southern Baptists will unite.” as the potential reason for this myth’s spread.

More irritating to me, however, is Daniel Akin’s own response to the myth: “The GCR is not and has never been about getting more money to the seminaries.  It has always been about international missions and North American church planting.  It is about getting the gospel to the unreached and under-served peoples of the nations and in our nation. ” How do we expect to have missionaries to send internationally and domestically, or even to our own churches to keep them mission-sending centers without theological education? Before we can tackle the bastions of Satan’s strongholds, we must have soldier-pastors who are more than adequately prepared!

Point 2: We want to fully fund our entities…as long as their names end in “Board”??

We already know that the seminaries are in trouble…the good news is that austerity measures in place at some of the six sisters have stemmed the tide of loss. Not to draw needed attention away, but why is that when mission boards run short in times of need, we offer to have special offerings for them, yet when seminaries run dry, we don’t? Perhaps it is the same reason why we prominently display missions during Christmas (Lottie Moon: international) and Easter (Annie Armstrong: domestic), but hide away SBC Seminaries Sunday and don’thave an offering for their support. Compounding this error is the requirement that missionaries have some seminary experience…”you need it, but we won’t fund it.”

Point 3: We as SBC started the Conservative Resurgence because of the drift of the seminaries…but now we just want to let them wither for lack of funds??

I have argued before about the need for a reworking of the funding formulae and to that end, I made two motions at this past Convention.  I remain speechless at how many seminary students struggle to make ends meet and pay for their schooling (EVEN with the SBC subsidy!) and yet our leadership is adamant that we are as fully funded as we need to be. It seems strange to make those assertions when some seminaries have put off necessary improvements or remodeling until money comes available and some seminary boards of trustees must pay out of their own pockets to build necessary facilities! Need I say any more?….

Thinking about what to do at Orlando 2010…

For those of you who care, I did make my two announced motions plus one more that I did not post. Of the three, all were referred to the appropriate SBC agencies and I have heard the response to two (both declined…which was expected).

Having had the drama of that all blow over, I now turn my thoughts to if I should make motions at the next Convention in Orlando. If so, what should they be about?Also, I don’t want to step on the toes of the GCRTF report…so what will they not cover?

I relish your thoughts and comments….

Time to nominate those worthy church faithful

Les Puryear has done an excellent job analyzing the upcoming trustee openings for the 2010 cycle of the Southern Baptist Convention. Feel free to check out his analysis of the slanted representation that each entity has and also take the intiative to nominate one (or more) worthy SMALL CHURCH leaders for these open offices. I have assembled the data below for your ease of reading and consideration.

Executive Committee

Alabama – 2
Arkansas – 1
Georgia – 1
Kentucky – 1
Texas – 1

NAMB

Alabama– 1
Florida – 1
Maryland/Delaware – 1
Mississippi – 1
Texas – 1

IMB

Arkansas – 1
Georgia – 1
Kentucky – 1
New Mexico – 1
Oklahoma – 1
Texas – 2

Guidestone

Arkansas – 1
Georgia – 1
Maryland/Delaware – 1
Missouri – 1
Nevada – 1
Oklahoma – 1
South Carolina – 1
Tennessee – 1

LifeWay

Alabama– 1
South Carolina – 1
Texas – 1

Southern Seminary

D. C. – 1
Ohio – 1
Kentucky – 1

Southwestern Seminary

Alabama – 1
Illinois – 1
New York – 1
Texas – 1

New Orleans Seminary

South Carolina – 1
Kansas-Nebraska – 1

Southeastern Seminary

Northwest – 1
Virginia – 2

Midwestern  Seminary

Florida – 1
Missouri – 1
North Carolina – 1

Golden Gate Seminary

California – 2
New York – 1
Virginia – 1

Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission

D.C. – 1
Illinois – 1
Kentucky – 1
Mississippi – 1
New York – 1
Virginia – 1

Totals for each state:

Alabama – 5
Arkansas – 3
California – 2
D. C.  – 2
Florida  – 2
Georgia  – 3
Illinois  – 2
Kentucky – 4
Kansas-Nebraska – 1
Maryland/Delaware – 2
Mississippi – 2
Missouri – 2
Nevada – 1
New Mexico – 1
New York – 3
North Carolina – 1
Northwest – 1
Ohio – 1
Oklahoma – 2
South Carolina – 3
Tennessee – 1
Texas – 6
Virginia – 4

I would like to announce my candidacy for SBC office…

We have officially kicked off the 2010 SBC presidential campaign, but wait, there’s a twist…it appears that now you can vie for entity leadership as well.

Arena 1: The Executive Committee:

Morris Chapman, president of the Executive Committee, is embroiled in a controversy that may cost him his job . Starting the inferno were his “outrageous and shameful remarks” concerning Calvinism and the Convention. Feeding the flames was the hush-hush dismissal/resignation of vice president Clark Logan, which has drawn many questions and not a little ire. Anybody want to run the largest Protestant denomination from July until May?

Arena 2: The Mission Boards

This just in…it seems that attempts to dismiss the leader of one of the largest mission-sending organization (see also here) are now being attempted at her sister agency. Now, admittedly, there may be some historical overtones to this, but it does seem a little odd that Poe’s pendulum seems to try to cut the mission leadership away at regular intervals?

Arena 3: Will the Page-Hunt Revolution continue? More on this later…

Convention Countdown: Day -2

Today we continue our journey through the three issues that I feel will be important at this year’s Convention

Issue #3: seminaries and the future of the SBC

Issue #2: Tensions between perspectives on the faith

As I sat down to write this post, I first checked Baptist Press to see what articles had been posted. You can’t imagine my surprise and shock when the lead story is about the largest Christian radio network in the Midwest dumping a program featuring Mark Driscoll! Turns out Mark has been a bad boy and said some risque things in Edinburgh. When Baptist Press has to start their article with a Editor’s Note about explicit sexual content, you know that something MAJOR has gone down!

The issue underlying this is not really about crude language…well, not entirely. It is about the deeper, trans-biblical acculturation that we in the American church engage in and feud about regularly. Soteriologically, we are divided into at least three camps: Calvinists, non-Calvinists, and anti-Calvinists (sarcasm alert: I always enjoy when we in the Christian community can be against yet another thing!). Ecclesiologically, we kick out pastors over feuds about church leadership veiled in the elders vs. deacons debate. Pragmatically we deprive new church plants of support because their practical theology violates our teetotaling sensibilities. It even turns out the the movement de jour is also an arena of in-fighting among the power camps! And I am tired of it!

Perhaps I am naive to think that the largest Protestant denomination in the United States might actually try to work together and get along for the Gospel and the Kingdom. Perhaps I am short-sighted to think we could, at least on these non-essential areas, move beyond our Separatist origins and not “kick at the goads” everytime someone displeases us. Of course I also believe that local churches shouldn’t fight over the color of carpets or worship music selections!

Into this fray, I plan to propose a motion to form a reconciliation committee to address the first fracturing issue (soteriological disagreement). If that works (please hold your laughter for the end of the post!), I might work toward the next two in the coming years.

However, this motion is the last (of four) that I have planned to present…and I might not present it at all if the business sessions seem too full of GCR committee plans or in-fighting over the language of congratulatory resolutions. I also need to see the response to my first three and more controversial motions….for all I know, I might be stripped of my messenger credentials, put before the thousands of retirees and three-piece-suit-wearing-preacher-boys, and tarred and feathered!

Convention Countdown: Day -3

Well, it’s almost convention time and that means (at least this year) a preview of some issues that I think will be important this year…if only because I am making motions concerning them!

Issue #3: seminaries and the future of the SBC

I’m not trying to be selfish here (although helping the seminaries does help me, a seminary student!), but there are definite reasons why we might want to focus on this area in the near (read: immediate) future:

1. Demographic decline in young members and baptisms
2. Purported loss of young leadership to attrition
3. Tensions between the young innovators and the older status quo seekers

Some solutions/responses:

1. This year, seminarians in attendance at this year’s Convention will be recognized during the first Executive Committee report:

This is the text from an email sent out by John Kyle, on behalf of the Executive Committee:

During the upcoming meeting of the SBC in Louisville, as part of our Executive Committee report, we are planning to recognize seminary students who are in attendance. The focus of our report this year is the fruit of our cooperative efforts and people like you who are following God’s call to serve as pastors, church planters, missionaries, and other ministry leaders, are part of this fruit. Part 1 of our report is Tuesday morning and I would like to invite you to participate. We have reserved a block on seats at the front of the room on the right side of the stage. During our report, we’re going to ask that all the seminary students in that section rise, come forward, and stand in front of the platform. We will then extend an invitation to pastors, and other messengers, to come and surround the students. Following a song, we will have a special time of prayer asking God to bless you, empower you, and make you fruitful as you serve Him. Following the prayer you can return to your seat. It is our hope that this will be a meaningful time for you and for those in attendance.… I’m hoping we can have over 100 students participate therefore, if you know of other students who will be at the convention, please forward this invitation.

I am very appreciative of the effort to recognize the future of the Convention…and I hope that the Midwestern cohort (my group) will at least be second-highest in attendance. Perhaps we should continue this practice even when the Convention is not in the city of a major seminary! Perhaps we should subsidize (not ExComm, but willing pastors and churches) the travel expenses of the seminary students in your area to go to Convention each year.

2. Efforts (on my own part) to normalize seminary allocations:

• revival of an effort to have a seminary offering (inspired by this post)
• a motion to count where seminary students come from, so that the states can know how to help supplement the seminary budgets or direct their scholarship funds
• a motion to include extension site FTE’s into the allocation formula: this both smooths out inter-campus transitions like the one occuring at Golden Gate and catastrophic loss of campus facilities such as New Orleans in 2004. Also it modernizes the funding method to fit the more regional, less centralized seminary structure of the modern day.

I hope that others will give their input and ideas at the Convention this year. If you will be there, I’ll present these two motions at the afternoon and evening business sessions on Tuesday…be there to see me on the Jumbotron!

Reflections on the “Generational Issues and the SBC”

I recently watched the “Generational Issues and the SBC” Panel Q&A conducted at Southeastern Seminary and found it to be most helpful for my own thinking about the future and the present of the SBC. I will treat the four speakers alphabetically and have included the approximate starting times (according the media player at the website) of the comments I quote.

Daniel Akin: (website)

“Bottom line: if you do that [violating a signed covenant],… your issue is integrity. Basically, you’re a liar, basically you’re dishonest, basically you are disqualified for ministry…. If you give your word to do something, then keep your word.” (63:00)

How appropriate in a day when we have a young man who chose:

1. to attend a fundamentalist school
2. to violate the covenant of that school to take his girlfriend to the prom

…and yet wants to whine and complain about their treatment (expulsion for violating the covenant he chose to sign and violate) of him!

“I am not a fundamentalist. I am an evangelical who affirms the fundamentals.” (16:15)

I have always found Dr. Akin to be a unfiying voice in the Convention in recent years. Yet again, I would like to thank him for encouraging me to move forward with a resolution to the 2007 Convention on soteriology.

Nathan Finn: (contributor at Between the Times)

“If your Calvinism precludes you from cooperating with non-Calvinists, then you would probably be happier somewhere else. But if your Calvinism is not the primary issue for you, but maybe an important issue, but you’re willing to work with other evangelical Baptist Christians who disagree with you on the doctrines of grace, then the Southern Baptist Convention is a great place to be.” (46:00)

I appreciate your emphasis on cooperation over Calvinism. I hope that others will agree to share a unified front against the powers of Satan and not let the friendly fire of theological discussions to weaken our ranks!

JD Greear: (blog)

“Good parachurchism…exists to assist the local church in her ministry…. Bad parachurchism tries to take local ministry from the local church,…thus separating it from the context God intended to move forward…. The Southern Baptist Convention was conceived in good parachurchism and over time, many parts of it have devolved into bad parachurchism.” (18:00)

I am glad that he has made a statement, recently reinforced by the Great Commission Resurgence statement (of which he is a signatory), that the Convention may need to be tweaked to be more effective. I’m sorry, state and national entities, but the years of programmatic and redundant ministry have passed. Just as we as a denomination need to trim our personal fat, we may need to reconsider if, for instance, each state convention really needs their own retirement homes system or not.

Greear later states: Take the lead (in doing ministry) and take what you’re doing to the institutions. See how fast they get onboard and those that don’t, “will probably get left behind.” (16:45)

David Nelson: (SEBTS article)

“I don’t think the major issue facing the Southern Baptist Convention is intergenerational. I think there are two issues. I think that there are competing visions for the Convention…. I think that we don’t all agree about what the gospel is. Those are two pretty big issues that divide us.” (22:30)

Nelson goes on to describe them:

Two visions:
1) those that enjoyed the CR and would like for things to be just like it was when the CR occurred:

• separatist stance: “Baptists have the way to do things”
• “Christian” subculture that isn’t and distance us from those we are trying to reach with the gospel

2) more ecumenical, willing to work with like-minded groups that are not Southern Baptist

• focused on cultural transformation or engagement
• interested in breaking out of the subcultures we have created

Two views of the gospel
“pray a prayer and get a better life” vs. “no life apart from Christ and maybe a life of suffering in this age”

Personally, I am in the second category on both terms (and I’m pretty sure the Bible is too!). I hope that the years ahead for the SBC will be a second Resurgence and not a second Baptist Civil War. I may blog on this issue in the coming weeks, depending on the ruling of my church’s elders about my plans.

The seminaries are in trouble…SBC people to the rescue!

Southwestern announces budget cutbacks (12/17/2008)

Southern Seminary cuts budget by $1.7M (12/18/2008)

Bart Barber suggested a few months ago the need for a seminary offering to help meet budget needs. Having read the above stories, I must agree!

First, the gory details — let me (humbly) suggest the following plan:

1) Move SBC Seminiaries Sunday (presently first Sunday in April) to the second Sunday in August.

2) Adopt a new offering, named J.P. Boyce Seminaries Offering.

3) Distribute the money as follows:
100% collected goes to seminaries (through Executive Committee), allocated based on the percentage of seminary students from that state at a certain seminary

e.g. – If 55 South Carolina students go to Southeastern, 15 go to Southern and Southwestern each, 10 go to New Orleans, 5 go to Midwestern, then:
55% of SC offering goes to Southeastern
15% goes to Southern and Southwestern each
10% goes to New Orleans
5% goes to Midwestern

4) Direct that the collected funds be used for:
a) further subsidy of seminary student tuition, explicitly not for use in baccalaureate programs, if tuition increases are considered
b) faculty benefits and cost-of-living increases, if surplus allows

Now for the reasons why:
1) The logical time to take up an offering for the seminaries is the Sunday dedicated to them. Yet if you look at the SBC denominational calendar for the next few years, you find a striking conflict between SBC Seminaries Sunday and Easter:

SBC Seminaries Sunday vs. Easter
April 5, 2009 — April 12, 2009
the same day in 2010: April 4
April 3, 2011 — April 24, 2011
April 1, 2012 — April 8, 2012
April 7, 2013 — March 31, 2013

Thus for the next five years, SBC seminaries are overshadowed by the more important remembrance of Christ’s resurrection, and in SBC life, the accompanying missions giving to North American causes.

2) Why J.P. Boyce? He best exemplifies the pulse in SBC life for the seminaries, just as Lottie Moon is to international missions and Annie Armstrong to North American missions. He best exemplifies our support for pastoral education since he is (one of) the first to push for the creation of a seminary.

3) Why distribute the funds based on each state’s representation at each SBC seminary? To overcome a flaw in the distribution formula of Cooperative Program money.

CP money is distributed “to the seminaries on the basis of the number of credit hours students earn on each campus. Only a small percentage of the off-campus hours taken at extension centers are included in the distribution formula.” (NOBTS Report, 2008 SBC Annual, p. 205) As a result, the larger seminaries get more money than the smaller seminaries, so that each seminary is supposed to gets the same per capita money for its students. However, this in practice does not work. The SBC Funding Study Committee “noted that the SBC’s two largest seminaries (SWBTS and SBTS) have significant endowments and are less cash constrained than the three smaller seminaries (SEBTS, GGBTS, and MWBTS).” (Sixth and Final Report of the SBC Funding Study Committee to the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, dated February 19, 2008, 2008 SBC Annual, p. 146). If (as seen in the articles at the top of this post) even the largest of the six are cash-strapped, how much more so those who are the smallest? As for the hoped-for per capita equality, it falls short so that “two of the six seminaries [GGBTS and NOBTS] annually have a significant number of credit hours taught but not funded by the Cooperative Program.” (NOBTS Report, 2008 SBC Annual, p. 205, brackets mine)

Each state convention should support the seminaries to which they send their students and from which (supposedly) they receive their pastors and ministers. Under this distribution plan, the frontier states support their local seminary and not (only) the largest one, which might be quite distant from them (geographically and culturally).

4) The purpose of this offering is not to fill the coffers of the seminaries’ endowments or building funds, but to help seminary students, many if not all who live hand-to-mouth during that time, and the seminary professors, who sacrifice much in order to dedicate themselves to the preparation of the next generation of missionaries, teachers, pastors, and denominational leaders. Also a complaint raised by the SBC Funding Study Committee was the perception of CP funds being re-directed to undergraduate programs and not post-baccalaureate education.

Please feel free to comment/complain/correct my thought on this. I hope to propose this as a motion at the 2009 convention, but hope that those of you who see the need for this will go ahead and collect money for the need now.

“We need to talk”: trustees and entities (3 & 4)

Needed modes of communication for united denominational life:

1) messengers to trustees

2) trustees to messengers

3) trustees to entities

4) entities to trustees

5) messengers to entities

6) entities to messengers

Now we have arrived at the part of the discussion of communication within the SBC…that you might not think is a problem: the conversation between trustees and entities. Granted, some may think that the behind-the-door discussions are the cause of the problems today, but my perspective is that they too must maintain the chain of accountability to the churches and the messengers.

There has been some discussion of entity heads and trustee leadership turning their trustee boards into rubber stamps. There have been allegations of entity heads involving themselves in issues beyond their responsibility and purview. This is very distressing to me..that such behavior could even be conceived among our body! No, openness and humility must reign among our representatives and leaders. They should not allow themselvs to be lured into a sense of superiority of thought or opinion…or into an exaggerated view of their own importance to the denomination.

Before I get myself into any more trouble, let’s get to the solution I am proposing. Every trustee should be mindful of the decisions being proposed by the board, particularly if they are of staff origin. New trustees, dont be shy…ask questions…get involved! Trustee leadership, most notably those on their second term of service, please consider that this is not your opportunity to set doctrine or make history (there I go again, making people mad!) Entity leadership and staff, please advise and recommend, but know that we elected trustees for a reason…to provide oversight and leadership for your choices.

I will close here…because there’s not much more I can say…without digging the hole any deeper! I’ll post again sometime around August 14, as I am in my borther’s wedding this Saturday and then packing to get back to KCMO!

“We need to talk”: messengers to trustees (1)

Needed modes of communication for united denominational life:

1) messengers to trustees

2) trustees to messengers

3) trustees to entities

4) entities to trustees

5) messengers to entities

6) entities to messengers

Last time, I wrote concerning a motion to provide Convention oversight on controversial policies enacted by the entities and their trustee boards. Today, I will continue that theme, focusing more on how we might avoid this rather contentious and divisive action.

The problem, it seems, is that the trustees either do not know or do not care what the messengers or the churches think about certain issues. I am hopeful it is the first option, though some actions seem to indicate the second is not as unlikely as we would think. Regardless, if the people, in the form of the messengers they send or by a mass letter/email campaign, spoke out about these problems, the entities would have to respond either by enacting what they now know or explaining why they differ from the status quo.

I have taken the liberty of collecting the addresses of the entities for those with some concern or gripe to send. Where I could find the information, I have listed the administrators (at or above the level of vice president) and the chairs of the various subcommittees as well as a listing of trustees by states. I do this so that you can more specifically direct any questions or comments to the committees within each board of trustees responsible for your area of interest. Also, any suggestions, I feel, should be first directed to your state’s representatives as an overture of friendly participation in the process of entity business. Also local trustees might be more apt to contact or meet with you to discuss your ideas before presentation to the whole board.

When one considers the small number of motions that each entity deals with in a given year, it is surprising that more is not done to present concerns to the entity boards directly during their inter-Convention terms. Certainly they are busy with budgets, hirings, appointments, and the like, but I feel that we might have less contention at Convention each year if we would take advantage of the opportunity to address our concerns directly. Most trustee meetings are open to the public (though whether public comment periods are schduled is unclear) and most trustees, it would seem, do not come to their assignments with any agenda other than to seek the best for the entity and for the Convention.

Let us discuss for a moment an alternate history of the most divisive debate in the past few years: the decision by two entities (IMB and SWBTS) to establish a policy on charismatic speech. Had those on the other side of the discussion from the majority of the board taken to writing to the board, appearing at their meetings, or otherwise engaged them in irenic conversation, we might not have had the anger of the 2007 convention nor the need for two trustees (W. Burleson and D. McKissic) to publicly step down in protest.

Indeed if we had more cross-talk, we might not need motions and changes such as I have previously proposed. Next time, we will discuss how trustees might report to the messengers and the churches more effectively, in a way in the spirit of cooperation of my proposed action without the messy and potentially volatile requirement.