Posted on June 12, 2008, by Marv Knox to his FaithWorks blog on the Baptist Standard Web site (www.baptiststandard.com)
Johnny Hunt, the Southern Baptist Convention’s new president, presents a paradoxical picture. He’s an ultimate insider calling for “radical change” within the SBC.
No wonder he’s calling for change. Its leaders acknowledge the SBC is declining and membership is falling. This is quite a slap in the face for a group who gained control of the convention by warning “liberalism” would lead to decline. It’s a bitter pill for folks who touted every numerical gain as a sign of God’s favor upon their movement.
If the reason you’re growing is because God approves you, then what does God think of you now that you’re sliding?
This realization may bestow a blessing upon the SBC. Whatever your theology or politics, you can find grace at the bottom of a pit. When you’re strong and flying high, you’re tempted to think you don’t need God’s help all that much. “It’s OK, Lord. We’re strong and smart and committed and faithful and, of course, orthodox. We can take it from here.”
But when you’re declining, you need God’s grace. To quote the old hymn, that’s when you lean on the everlasting arms of God, your Savior.
So, President Hunt advocates “radical change” in the SBC. “We’ve been declining as a denomination, and you can’t turn something around until you stop the tide and direction it is going,” he said at a news conference.
He also called for unity among Southern Baptists, telling the media he hopes to show there is room “under the Southern Baptist umbrella” for those with the passion to take the gospel “down the street and around the world.”
And he urged younger Baptists to “step up to the plate” and get involved in the convention. After working diligently for 15 years to mentor and encourage young pastors, Hunt might have special currency to accomplish this feat.
But if he really wants to initiate “radical change” that will result in Baptist unity, he should take seven steps to radically change the SBC and foster a kind of unity he and his inner circle haven’t dreamed of.
This will call for him to exercise radical courage. But if he pulls it off, he could go down as the most effective president in SBC history. Here they are:
- Rescind the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message statement and reaffirm the inclusive 1963 BF&M. The newer document has been a bellwether of disunity.
- Affirm the historic Baptist diversity of biblical and theological interpretation and vow to build unity on missions, evangelism, fellowship and passion of purpose.
- Publicly apologize to seminary professors, missionaries and others who lost their ministries exclusively because they did not affirm the “conservative resurgence.”
- Vacate half the membership of each SBC board of directors and intentionally select leading so-called moderates to fill the new vacancies. Within three years, remove all current SBC agency heads, and exhort the newly reconstituted boards to hire centrist leaders to build balanced faculties, student bodies, missionary forces and staffs that reflect all Baptists whose tradition is the Southern variety.
- Lead in dissolving the two new state conventions that formed solely out of loyalty to the “new” SBC and call on their churches to return joyfully and enthusiastically to full membership in the state conventions from which they sprung.
- In other states, especially where conventions loyal to the “new” SBC disenfranchised churches that did not agree with SBC developments, overtly embrace and affirm those churches.
- Reach out to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the Baptist World Alliance as faithful bodies of believers. Join those two organizations in sponsoring a national convocation of apology and repentance: Together, apologize to the world at large and the broader Christian community for three decades of bitterness, recrimination and infighting that defamed the name of Christ, undermined evangelistic witness and demeaned brothers and sisters in Christ. Also, jointly apologize to one another for all the lies, gossip and slander said about each other. And most importantly, repent before Holy God for all these sins, begging forgiveness and a second chance at being the people God intended.
President Hunt vows he wants “radical change” leading to unity. This is radical. It would give Baptists an opportunity for unity.