As an example of “Acknowledging That Life Seems Unfair” in the church, read SBC pastor Scott Hill’s post “Blogging Changed the World”, which mentions being “fed a line of bull” as part of his SBC experience. He snaps at a generation of SBC leadership that only wanted a “LifeWay quarterly” (or should he have said, Sunday School Board?) and taught him extrabibilical ideas. This older generation is getting its due now. Justice is served.
If Scott’s experience is generally true, then we can expect this new generation of Baptist to castigate its prior leadership as it assumes control of the SBC and its member churches. The criticism seems a bit over the top. No one is without sin, but I pray that God’s purpose in allowing it is to ultimately increase baptisms.
With a goal of teaching the Bible to transform adult lives, I search for object lessons, illustrations, exercises, etc. I post these (and some original ideas) in hopes other teachers will benefit, too.
About Me
- servingHim
- I am a former adult Bible teacher at Champion Forest Baptist Church in Houston, TX, and Fielder Road Baptist Church in Arlington, TX
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8 comments:
Honoring my father and mother doesn't mean lying down and taking a beating. I may have sounded disrespectful in my post, but I still stand by what I wrote.
I do have great respect for those leaders in the SBC and the past battles that have been fought. They have a lot to do with making me who I am today, which was the bulk of my point. I am not trying to be a rebel intentionally.
However, generalities aside, there is a younger generation that is taking accurate doctrine very seriously. We have discovered that the "Big Five Sins" of drinking, cussing, chewing, dancing, and pool are not actually all that big on second glance.
We took our bibles as literal, accurate, and inerrant and begin to read them. That is when we discovered a lot of our inherited theology verbally pass down to us is extrabiblical if not unbiblical.
The problem is I would proudly come along side the current leadership in the SBC and, but guys like me have been place on the otherside of a new battle against reformed doctrine. Which has been called a virus, dangerous, and anti-evangelistic.
We have seen that the Finnyesque altercall system produces more and more lost church members. When we as young pastors tried to reform that system we are accused of not loving lost people. When we begin to hold our members accountable to the church they claim membership in we are accused of being mean. When we set up a biblical ecclesiastical structure that has SERVING deacons a plurality of Pastors instead of a deacon board we are accused of being Presbyterian.
The thing is we are trying to be biblical, and my accusation at the older generation is they are trying to be Southern Baptist whether that is biblical or not.
I was born and raised SBC and am currently an SBC Pastor. I like Scott have been tremendusly disillusioned with the SBC. There is a reason the PCA church is growing so fast -- they are getting all the ex-SBC'ers who got fed-up with the leadership.
I would like to see the boy's club dimantled for solid Godly leadership and solid teaching. I had to use the adult Lifeway material to teach my sixth graders and they still found it to lite. I ultimately had to take lifeway completely out of the Sunday School program for deeper material.
I love what the SBC history and what has been accomplished. I am also glad so many of us have a voice now.
Soli Deo Gloria,
Nick
Scott-
I see a difference between the act of demonstrating knowledge and that of exercising wisdom.
Nevertheless, I respect what you are trying to do (verses not do) and pray that God will give you great success.
Nick-
I apologize, but I haven’t read any of your stuff, so I don’t know from where you are coming. Your statement out PCA growth seems to be a bit of an exaggeration since no supporting data is given.
When you dumped the LifeWay material, what curriculum did you use instead? I’m curious because I’ve heard similar complaints from time to time.
Thanks to both of you for stopping by.
I switched to the curriculum from John Piper's church it is much more in-depth. We used it for 1st-6th grades.
The data on the PCA is well known and quoted often by Dever and Mohler. You can hear one of them talk about it on the T4G sessions.
Nick,
Here is one data point from a T4G post, "Who
are better evangelists?", but it doesn't highlight a shift of SBC
members to PCA congregations as your earlier post suggested.
However, Dever and Mohler talks might have more information than the T4G blog entries.
The Wikipedia article Demographics of the United States has a section on religious affiliation. You can compare Baptists with Presbyterians thus:
1990: Baptists represent 19.8% of the population
2001: Baptists represent 17.2% of the population
Baptist numerical growth is -0.4%
1990: Presbyterians represent 2.9% of the population
2001: Presbyterians represent 2.8% of the population
Presbyterian numerical growth is 12.3%
So while the Presbyterians are still small, their numerical growth is quite outstanding for a denomination that is a) Not historically revivalist, b) Not Pentecostal or Charismatic, and c) Has a history of liberalism stretching back to the 19th century.
Obviously many Presbyterian churches and denominations have managed to "shake off" the threat of theological liberalism.
Baptists, on the other hand, have declined both in number and percentage between 1990 and 2001.
Time will tell whether Baptists will continue to decline, and whether Presbyterians will continue to grow.
One salient oversight--
Interesting data oversight. Their are numerous Baptist sects (Independent, Missionary, American, etc.) that would fall into the Wiki Baptist data, so I still can't conclude Nick's reference to ex-SBC people joining PCA.
Notice the line: Christian - no denomination
1990: 4.7%
2001: 7.2%
Percentage growth: +2.5%
Numerical growth: +75.3%
It would be just as easy to claim the ex-Baptists changed to a non-denominational identity.
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