Bryant Wright--Seminaries the Key to Global Missions Leadership? by Peter Lumpkins

 I'm all for seminaries--especially Southern Baptist seminaries.  Twice Southern Baptists underwrote my theological education through the Cooperative Program.  Hence, it's almost inconceivable for me to think ingratitude when I think of our seminaries.

On the other hand, I'm not so sure seminaries make the high grade our beloved president of the Southern Baptist Convention bestows.  In a Q/A forum after chapel at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Georgia pastor and SBC president, Bryant Wright, opened up concerning what he sees as "a huge shortcoming that we have now" in the distribution of CP monies.

The fall 2010 edition of The Midwestern Magazine records a partial section of Wright's exchange with the student body. It reads:

As Wright opened the floor to questions, he revisited his definition of “radical re-prioritization” to audience members, who wanted a clear sense of the president’ s vision for SBC organizations such as the Cooperative Program. In regards to theological education, Wright expressed his disapproval of the bulk of CP funds staying in the states because then the funds aren’t released to seminaries. “The seminaries are where the leadership of the global mission that God’ s given the church is taking place. I think it’ s a huge shortcoming that we have now” (embolden mine, Get Midwestern Magazine, Fall, 2010)

The seminaries exist as the leadership impetus for global missions?  State conventions keep CP monies from seminaries? Am I reading this correctly? If I am not, since when did seminaries move beyond the role of training missionaries sent them from the local church, the New Testament place where global mission leadership takes place?  Moreover, to suggest state conventions keeping the "bulk of CP funds" as the reason monies "aren't released to seminaries"  is a fundamental misunderstanding of the way the Cooperative Program works.

What is more, rhetoric like this is precisely what some had in mind during the pre-Orlando exchanges when some had suspicions there were those among GCR advocates who were looking for more CP monies directed to seminary education, a suspicion explicitly denied by seminary personnel.  

At a time when state conventions are severely divided and more party spirit has not been visible since the height of the Conservative Resurgence, it's discouraging to read remarks from our president which produce little if any unity and offer no hope for a peaceful future within the Southern Baptist Convention.

With that, I am...

Peter

Comments

[gabaptist]

Dear Brother,
Wright might be right on this one. The original formula among the states to keep about half of the CP was due to an eary aggressive spirit to promote SS, DT, and other programs of SBC within the state. Today, that aggressive denominationalism within our states does not exist. Likewise, our seminaries have lost funds over the past 20 odd years. A seminary education costs a lot more now than it did in the 1980s or 1990s. I too have gone to 2 such institutions and my wallet was always stretched thin!
In Him,
GA Baptist

[peter lumpkins]

GA

Thanks for logging on.  Perhaps.  Consider though: a) not only have monies for seminaries remained consistent with all other CP entities which receive CP funding (their slice of the pie is based on percentages; hence, if seminaries got less monies so did all other entities), but also our schools have had dramatic decreases in FTEs. For example, in March of this year, I wrote:

“In the academic year 2005/06, SBTS recorded a FTE*** of 2,223.  In the latest figures for the 2008/09 academic year, however, SBTS posts a FTE*** of 1,836, a whopping loss of 387 students or about 17.4%. No amount of shuffling feet can dance around this significant drop in FTE*** (link)

One has to ask why seminaries which have less students need more money. Also of interest to me is the raw insistence seminaries were not looking to get more money. Yet rhetoric like Wright’s appears to reveal a different yearning.

b) surely you cannot mean Wright is correct about his bizarre suggestion that seminaries are where it’s at when it comes to leadership impetus for global missions. From my side of the swamp, this reveals a fundamental absence of NT focus on the local church and goes against the grain of a genuine GCR in every conceivable way. Perhaps Wright didn’t mean that.  But he surely implied it by the words he used.

Trusting your day well.

With that, I am…

Peter    

[Wes Widner]

The more I watch what unfolds in relation to the GCR, the more it seems to me that there are deliberate forces at work within the SBC that are trying to steer it towards a more rigid hierarchal model where power is centralized in a few key places and not diffused among the local bodies of believers. This doesn't bode well at all for the future of the SBC.

[peter lumpkins]

Wes,

Thanks. I think you're right. There definitely is an aura of "top down" implementation even with GCR agenda. Another example brought to my attention is the restructuring Frank Page implemented in Nashville. Not that the president cannot do such; he can according to the parameters of the president's profile. However, the restructuring which squeezed out VP Will Hall and Bob Rogers in CP & Stewardship was based upon the EC receiving less funds per the GCR recommendations. The problem is, the GCR recommendations were not to be implemented apart from each entity considering the recommendations separately.

In other words, until the EC actually voted to change the formula that 1% less would be coming into Nashville and 1% more to the IMB, it was not policy. How Dr. Page made this decision apart from this consideration I do not know.

Thanks again, Wes.
With that, I am...
Peter

[Cory McDonald]

I agree with Bryant about the seminaries. If the local church isn't doing a good enough job at training Pastors, Missionaries, and other leaders then who is responsible to do it? All SBC members are able to attend Seminary for way cheaper than "normal" college and university, I am currently attending GGBTS and was able to get 99% of it paid for, but it takes CP monies to accomplish this and to maintain this.

The local church has almost given up on training leaders Pastors in particular. I tried for 6 months to get a internship (get taught) by a couple of SBC Pastors here where I live and after 6 months wasn't any closer to getting that training than I was when I started, so I decided that I needed to do things on my own, so I decided Seminary is where I needed to start, so I'm all for Seminaries getting a big chunk of the CP monies.