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I Vote No: 2022 Southern Baptist Convention, Anaheim, California

The 2022 Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) scheduled in Anaheim, California is about to be underway. I'm not going. But if I were, I would unequivocally vote No on the proposed recommendations by the Sex Abuse Task Force (SATF). Not that I would be opposed to any and all reform efforts to better inform and resource churches and entities associated with the SBC about sexual abuse. Being associated with and supportive of the SBC since I was converted in 1977, and having served SBC churches as volunteer, church planter, lead pastor,... Read more →

Is it time for Southern Baptists to get new leadership in Washington?

A new president of the greatest nation on earth will be sworn into public office in just over eight months. It's time. Eight years of Barack Obama's butchered policies and broken promises have choked to death the American spirit. He promised he'd unite us both racially and politically. However, only the most obtuse observer could deny that racially and politically, the United States of America has perhaps become more hostilely divided than in any known era of American history. Why Washington's Oval Office needs a new leader The President's latest... Read more →

Seminary president indicts Southern Baptists for funding shortfalls at International Mission Board

Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary president, Jeff Iorg, joins the chorus of high profile Southern Baptists (see here and here) who are publicly insisting the reason for the recent announcement of budgetary problems at the nation's largest and most prestigious missionary-sending agency in the United States, The International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention (IMB), is that rank-and-file1 Southern Baptists are "robbing God." In a short but pungent piece on the seminary president's blog entitled "Missionaries Are Coming Home," Dr. Iorg was anything but vague. "The basic problem causing... Read more →

IMB president's open letter and his "limitless" number of missionaries

Today, David Platt released an open letter to Southern Baptists. In it he described the process which led him to his "painful decision" announced this week about balancing the budget and the dismal spending patterns of the International Mission Board. "This is certainly not an announcement that I, in any way, wanted to make. At the most recent meeting of the SBC in Columbus, I shared with messengers how IMB spent tens of millions more dollars than we received last year. In our budgeting process over the last couple of... Read more →

Just what role did the trustees play in the International Mission Board's fiscal failure?

What role does the trustee board possess in overseeing an agency of the Southern Baptist Convention? Is the board primarily a support group for the agency's president and his administration? Do trustees of our convention agencies and/or entities function similarly to trustees of a local Southern Baptist church? A group possessing proxy empowerment to represent the church in real estate, banking, and other legal matters where the church's signature is required? Or, does the trustee body have more of an authoritarian role which includes writing, establishing, and maintaining agency policies;... Read more →

More dismissing fiduciary obligation of IMB administration and trustees

I recently expressed my lament over the recent announcement of the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention (IMB). Not only is it hard to accept that at least since 2010, our missions-sending agency has outspent its predictable income by close to a quarter of a billion dollars, it also remains gut-wrenching to know IMB both sold off tens of millions of dollars of real estate and properties and depleted its cash reserves just to keep the doors open. Adding insult to injury, IMB officials announced it expects seasoned... Read more →

Six to 800 missionaries must come home apparently due to apathy of Southern Baptists

source Recently, International Mission Board (IMB) leaders announced a plan to scale back Southern Baptists' global mission effort by cutting personnel by approximately 15%. The plan was presented by President David Platt and his senior leadership team during an Aug. 27 "town hall" meeting, a meeting which included missionaries and staff and was available both on and off site (i.e. digitally). According to Baptist Press "Platt said the urgency of the plan is based in the reality that while Southern Baptist giving through the Cooperative Program and the Lottie Moon... Read more →

Ergun Caner's first interview as president of Brewton-Parker College

DULUTH — The Christian Index recently interviewed Ergun Caner in order to give Georgia Baptists an up close and personal look at Brewton- Parker College’s new president. Just three months ago the BPC Board of Trustees voted unanimously to elect Caner as the 16th president of the 110-year-old institution of higher learning. Retiring BPC President Mike Simoneaux endorsed Caner’s presidency by stating, “Dr. Caner brings a wealth of experience to the presidency with more than three decades in Christian higher education, leadership, Biblical teaching, preaching, and apologetics. This appointment will... Read more →

H. Ray Newman, Georgia Baptist statesman, dies Nov. 25 by Joe Westbury, Managing Editor, The Christian Index

The story below is posted courtesy of Georgia's Christian Index and written in full by Managing Editor, Joe Westbury. Our dear brother Ray Newman, a Georgia Baptist icon passed away to be with his God and ours on Monday morning, November 25, 2013. Only recently did Georgia Baptists honor him at the annual Georgia Baptist Convention for the service he rendered for our Lord through the local church and both state and national convention assignments. Mr. Westbury's article nicely captures and summarizes Brother Ray's gospel ministry as a lifelong Southern... Read more →

Georgia Baptists adopt resolution on the sexual abuse of children, Kentucky and Alabama too

click for larger image The Georgia Baptist Convention met in Dacula, Georgia November 11-12. Without edit or opposition,1 Georgia Baptists passed the resolution I submitted to the resolutions committee for consideration in September of this year, a resolution almost identical to the resolution passed by the 2013 Southern Baptist Convention back in June.2 In addition, Kentucky Baptists adopted a very similar resolution submitted by Kentucky pastor, Jon Carter. Dr. Rick Patrick, pastor of First Baptist Church, Sylacauga, Alabama proposed a resolution on the sexual abuse of children which Alabama Baptists... Read more →

Earl Blackburn at 1845 Conference--'I can work with a flaming Arminian'

According to Louisiana Southern Baptist pastor, Earl Blackburn, Arminianism is not rampant in the Southern Baptist Convention. Rather Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism is and has crept into Southern Baptist churches and institutions. After rehearsing a brief historical sketch of the Pelagian controversy in the fifth century A.D. in which Pelagius's teaching on human depravity was condemned as being "outside the bounds" of orthodoxy, Blackburn laments in his sermon "A Historic Southern Baptist View of the Fall of Man" (beginning at the 54:50 mark): What is sad today...What is sad as I... Read more →

The Calvinism Advisory Committee report online...

The committee Frank Page put together to consider how to approach the continued conflict Calvinism has become in the Southern Baptist Convention has published its report. Entitled TRUTH, TRUST, and TESTIMONY in a TIME of TENSION: A Statement from the Calvinism Advisory Committee, the reader may find it in the current online edition of SBC Life. For your convenience, I posted a link below so the reader may download it as a PDF file. I do not want to comment on the report itself before carefully reading it first. But... Read more →

Resolution on Sexual Abuse of Children by Peter Lumpkins

I've never proposed a resolution before. Truth is, I've not written one either. But if this issue is not a valid subject about which Southern Baptists should publicly express a strong voice, I'm not sure what qualifies as an issue we should address. For all its flaws, I just submitted the following resolution to the Resolutions Committee for the 2013 Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Houston, Texas. As with all resolutions, it has but a small hope it will make it out of committee deliberations. I fully understand this dynamic.... Read more →

Young Truett-McConnell scholar drops a bombshell on Southern Baptist academia

When Karl Barth's classic commentary on Paul's Epistle to the Romans was first published in 1919, a biblical monograph which effectively delivered Old Liberalism its first mortal blow, one German reviewer described Barth's neo-orthodox innovation revealed in his Romans exposition as falling "like a bombshell on the playground of the theologians" >>> And, while one cannot place Adam Harwood's modest theological reflection at SBC Today on such a profoundly global ecclesial scale as was Barth, the Assistant Professor of Christian Studies at Truett-McConnell College just dropped a theological bombshell on... Read more →

The "Sinner's Prayer" Revisited

Dr. Eric Hankins, Pastor of the First Baptist Church in Oxford, Mississippi, proposed a "Sinner's Prayer" resolution at the 2012 Southern Baptist Convention in New Orleans back in June >>> As some have noted, while Hankins' original proposal was accepted by the Resolutions Committee, the committee overhauled the original submission fairly extensively before putting it to the messengers for consideration. After a lengthy discussion on the convention floor, messengers approved the edited version of Hankins' resolution. Consequently, most of us probably expected Hankins' original resolution proposal never to surface again.... Read more →

Headed to the Georgia Baptist Convention today

After taking care of some loose ends, I'm headed to the Georgia Baptist Convention held this year in Warner Robins at the Second Baptist Church where Jim Perdue serves as the senior pastor. Recalling last year's convention, my hunny asked me if I was taking my camera. I said, "Sure! It's a matter of principle." Her response--"Principle my foot!" After almost 40 years of marriage--a beautiful marriage I might add--she probably knows me fairly well, I'd say (smile). "To take or not to take: that is the question..." Perhaps I'll... Read more →

Larry Wynn leaving North American Mission Board for new position at Georgia Baptist Convention by Peter Lumpkins

UPDATE: a chart courtesy of The Christian Index concerning The Georgia Baptist Convention's restructuring plan is available to the public. Included is the position Larry Wynn will fill as he so soon leaves the North American Mission Board...(09/12/2012/3:17pm) ========================================================== Sources indicate Vice-President of Evangelism, Larry Wynn, is apparently leaving the North American Mission Board (NAMB) in Alpharetta and headed to Duluth to serve as Vice-President of Church Revitalization* for the Georgia Baptist Convention. Wynn was senior pastor of Hebron Baptist Church in Dacula, Ga for 33 years before being recruited... Read more →

Tom Nettles and the takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention (part II) by Peter Lumpkins

In part I, we rehearsed the historical relationship Dr. Tom Nettles, professor of historical theology, at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has had with Founders Ministries since its inception in 1982. Nettles still sits on the board of directors for Founders Ministries. Nor has Dr. Nettles been rhetorically shy about stating in forceful language precisely how he sees those Traditional Baptists who deviate from what Director of Founders Ministries, Tom Ascol, has called "historic Southern Baptist Orthodoxy." Nettles wrote: >>> Southern Baptist beginnings were self-consciously and vigorously Calvinistic. This is... Read more →

The Calvinists are here: a guest editorial by Gerald Harris

UPDATE: the word is LifeWay is preparing a detailed response to Gerald Harris' essay and is scheduled to post this evening on Baptist Press. I'm anticipating precisely what facts in the essay LifeWay intends to dispute. ======================= Below is the current editorial in The Christian Index, the Georiga Baptist Convention's state paper. Dr. Gerald Harris has served as editor of The Christian Index since May 2003. We happily publish by permission Dr. Harris' latest editoral, "The Calvinists are here" >>> SBC Tomorrow welcomes Gerald Harris as guest contributor* John Calvin... Read more →

Brad Whitt Makes Baptist News Again by Peter Lumpkins

On February 28, South Carolina pastor, Dr. Brad Whitt, wrote a provocative piece entitled “Young, Southern Baptist…and Irrelevant?” Within a few weeks, over a half dozen state papers had picked up the young pastor’s essay. He obviously resonated with Southern Baptists all over the United States. Indeed his stated concerns shook loose a rebuttal from two Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary professors, Nathan Finn and Ed Stetzer >>> Truth be told, Whitt has kept those in the convention who desire to change the methodology/ecclesiology of SBC churches from the top-down running... Read more →

Reformed Theology vs. Free Church Theology in the SBC: Disaster Inevitable by Peter Lumpkins

I started blogging in 2006. The reason I gave then, is the reason I state now: the aggressive Calvinist agenda being promoted among Southern Baptists. In 2006, Founders Ministries was the kingpin blog. Tom Ascol peeled every non-Calvinist banana who dared mention the "doctrines of grace." Indeed it would be hard to name a then, mega-church pastor in the SBC, who did not feel the wrath of Founders' blog and blog thread. They were "exposed" for the "Arminians" (i.e. "heretics") they were... >>> A new day arrived for Southern Baptists... Read more →

On Marginalizing Brad Whitt by Peter Lumpkins

UPDATE: Brad Whitt has a great follow-up to his original post entitled, "The Challenge for Committed, Contributing Southern Baptists" Also, Tim Rogers queries if Brad Whitt fits the profile of a fresh, young stateman in "A New SBC Statesman?" Dr. Steve Lemke offers insight on Brad Whitt's essay in "The Shot Heard Round the SBC (Part 1)" ========================================================== On February 28, South Carolina pastor, Dr. Brad Whitt, wrote a provocative piece entitled “Young, Southern Baptist…and Irrelevant?” Barely a week later, in an unprecedented maneuver, two highly visible Southern Baptist professors... Read more →

Young, Southern Baptist...and Irrelevant? by Brad Whitt

The following are excerpts from a piece published today in South Carolina’s The Courier and also on Dr. Brad Whitt’s site (if you have not placed Whitt in your feed-reader, I suggest you do so asap). Brad writes>>> I’m not “young, restless and reformed.” I guess you’d say that I’m young, Southern Baptist and, it seems, increasingly irrelevant. You see, I’m just a pastor’s son who grew up with a love for my denomination — a Southern Baptist boy by birth and conviction… As I travel around the SBC, I... Read more →

Alabama Baptists Push Back Against GCRTF Agenda by Peter Lumpkins

GCR advocates drove away from Orlando, FL last June believing they received a mandate from the Southern Baptist Convention—"We’re ready to move forward with the GCR agenda!" The then president of the pastor’s conference and now president of NAMB expressed regret for his “disengagement” from SBC life promising to create a vision so compelling, all Southern Baptists would begin to give till it hurts. Even those churches on the present periphery of Cooperative Program giving would rush, as Ezell now has, to hop aboard the CP choo-choo >>> Well, the... Read more →

The Southern Baptist Convention 2010: Part I by Peter Lumpkins

I followed much of the Southern Baptist Convention via video-streaming on Tuesday. From my perspective, the two big business items—The Great Commission Resurgence Task Force Report and Presidential election—hardly posed any surprises. While admittedly I anticipated more discussion from the floor... on the TF report, few, if any, with whom I have conversed thought the report would be hacked or defeated. One grand surprise was Parliamentarian McCarty’s technical faux pas concerning the one major amendment to the report. Everyone, I suppose, is allowed a bad day now and then, even... Read more →

The GCRTF Debate: What Could Happen in Orlando 2010 by Peter Lumpkins

With that, I am... Peter P.S. thanks to an incredible Youtube upload of a hailstorm in Oklahoma City a few weeks ago (//link) Read more →

Southern Baptists: Meet Your New Executive Committee President by Peter Lumpkins

In October, 2009, I happened to be a day ahead of some in naming Dr. Frank Page as the new Vice-President for Evangelism at the North American Mission Board (//link). I am not stating this as a way to “brag.” Actually, I’m but grateful our Lord has given me many friends in the Southern Baptist Convention. Once again the present guessing game will be over on another high-level appointment (//link). The Presidential Search Committee will soon officially announce their choice for our next President of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive... Read more →

Troy Gramling Responds by Peter Lumpkins

Raul Palacios, Executive Pastor, Flamingo Road Church (FRC), Cooper City, Florida, and husband to Heather Palacios, teaching Pastor at FRC, posted a link to Lead Pastor, Troy Gramling’s response to questions raised concerning the recent announcement about his nomination to presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention Pastor’s Conference. We thank Pastor Palacios for furnishing us with this link. Furthermore, we’re grateful Pastor Gramling took seriously the questions raised toward his nomination, even if the questions were being raised by those outside the sphere of leadership in the Southern Baptist Convention.... Read more →

0.18% CP Giving and Women Pastors: This is a Very Big Deal by Peter Lumpkins

Some believe Vice-President Joe Biden puts the curse on anything he touches. Literally. Introducing the President, Biden’s euphoria overshadowed his brain by expressing a profanity even national TV still abhors and bleeps—the F-bomb.... Scripture teaches us to both respect and pray for our “higher powers” (Rom. 13:1; 1 Tim.2:2). Admittedly, the latter is much easier to perform than the former when you have men serving as “higher powers” like Mr. Biden (and, of course, it goes much deeper than his foul mouth, I assure). What Biden was doing, however, was... Read more →

Dr. Jerry Vines on Cooperation by Peter Lumpkins

While our moderate-liberal Baptist brothers shockingly lift up Crawford Toy--the once Southern Baptist turned Unitarian--as a Baptist hero, there are more worthy examples to cite. Nor are all Southern Baptist heroes dead. For my money, Drs. Paige Patterson and Jerry Vines qualify nicely for such an honor. Dr. Vines has a delightful post on his blog entitled "This Independent Baptist Likes Cooperation." He wittingly writes: "I was elected president of the SBC in 1988. Some half-jokingly said I was the first independent Baptist in history elected president!" And, quite revealingly... Read more →

Friday Mishmash by Peter Lumpkins

Below are some unrelated items of interest over the past couple weeks. No particular order. Just interesting--at least to me. 1 Last January, I committed an unpardonable sin in the eyes of some young Southern Baptists: I wrote a post which raised questions concerning what I still believe to be sub-Christian ministry methods of Mark Driscoll (//link). If you'd like an entertaining display of just how irrevocably passionate Driscoll lovers are, check out the short but revealing exchange I recently had over a simple quote I offered from Driscoll---- here...................... Read more →

Destruction Therapy, the Cooperative Program and the Southern Baptist Convention by Peter Lumpkins

About a year or so ago, Fox News ran a story on a therapeutic phenomenon known as Destruction Therapy (//link). The therapeutic idea is both primitive and simple: "fix" yourself by freely destroying something else (//link). Of interest to me is the possible parallel between the proposed method Destruction Therapy therapists advocate for securing psychological health and some Southern Baptist leaders who advocate similar measures to "fix" the Southern Baptist Convention. Below is a flick which captures perfectly what some seem to want for the Southern Baptist Convention. With that,... Read more →

Ted Traylor to Chair the NAMB Presidential Search* Committee: by Peter Lumpkins

A tiny little blue bird went whizzing by me this morning, chirping the name of Ted Traylor as the nominee to Chair the presidential search committee for NAMB (//link). Dr. Traylor is a worthy guy. He's done a great job at Olive Baptist Church in Pensacola, Florida (//link). He nominated Johnny Hunt to be president of the SBC in 2008. Some think he's a favorite nominee for the 2010 SBC in Orlando. Let's see though. Dr. Traylor is on the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force. Curiosity is going to be... Read more →

Frank Page to NAMB: Perfect Medicine or Planned Maneuver? by Peter Lumpkins

Tonight, NAMB trustees are apparently scheduled to vote on Dr. Frank Page as Vice-President for Evangelism at the North American Mission Board, sources indicate. If correct, this vote surely takes many Southern Baptists by surprise. Experience usually dictates the President of an organization should be deeply involved in the selection of VPs--if not the exclusive voice initially--since, in the proverbial chain of authority, VPs report directly to the President. With this purported move by the trustees, however, a Vice President is deemed more significant to the health of the organization... Read more →

Great Commission Resurgence: Rewinding the Tape by Peter Lumpkins

Robert Reeves has served since 1998 as the communications director for the Kentucky Baptist Convention following previous service with the Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children (now Sunrise Children’s Services) and Connie Maxwell Children’s Home (the children's ministry of South Carolina Baptists). Reeves background is in professional journalism (//link). As a vocational writer, he offers interested Southern Baptists a taste of history leading up to the roaring twenties when Southern Baptists were convinced God had placed in their hands the explicit responsibility to gospelize to the ends of the earth. How... Read more →