Showdown looms over SBC and Calvinism

It would be a travesty if anti-evangelizing Calvinists in the vein of George Whitefield, David Brainerd, William Carey, and Charles Spurgeon were in leadership positions within the SBC.

By the way, if “Calvinism is the biggest issue facing the SBC at the moment,” the SBC would be in pretty good shape.

What John says, but in a way, what a food fight we could kick off if each of us named what WE thought was the biggest problem with the SBC. I will abstain as well. :^)

To his point, the article really misses what is probably the biggest reason people are attracted to Calvinistic thought; it is the type of theological thinking that is all too often absent in fundagelical churches. Whatever our positions on the doctrines of grace, we need to remember that orthodoxy begets orthopraxy, and hence if we want active evangelism, we need to create a place where it’s safe and encouraged to think about these things.

Doubt it makes a difference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Baptist_Convention_Presidents

Ecclesiastical politics. How stupid and pointless. I’m a Calvinist, and I gave two young ladies Gospel tracts at church this past Sunday, then invited them to come have coffee with my wife and I to discuss the Gospel.

There is nothing more slimy and reprehensible than ecclesiastical politics. Secular politics is bad enough. This is stupider, and more vile.

Echoing Jim, it probably won’t make much of difference within local SBC churches. The SBC actually has less say over its member churches than the FBFI does over their member churches. Reformed SBC churches (like mine) will simply roll their eyes and keep doing business as usual and will continue to be thankful for the ministries of our faithful “non-reformed” brothers and sisters within the SBC.

By way of clarification - I didn’t mean for my comment above to imply that the SBC isn’t in good shape. I was simply amused by the quote I pulled.

Outcomes are measured differently: ‘Billy Graham wing’ vs .. the ‘John Calvin wing.’

BG wing:

• xxx came forward
• xxx professions of faith
• xxx [mostly children] baptized
• [note: immediate point of contact measurements. Concrete, measurable, clear correlation between event or speaker and response. Eg Evangelist Billy Bob preached and 50 were saved]

JC wing:

• Adult membership growth
• Lack of correlation between event and measurement
• Measurement can be done but might be more like this: we presented the gospel to xx students

Coming from the point of view of a business person: The BG style is like what we did in business:

• When I sold computers: [My biggest one time sale was $ 1.8M in 1977. That’s $ 7M in today’s dollars. It was a very big deal!]
• When we upgraded our bank computers from XP to Windows 7 (we measured this weekly until we were done … 300,000 of them! (on time)

But the BG style is not the right paradigm for the gospel!

So to the BG wing: the JC wing looks like nothing is happening!

Since 1845, Calvinism has ebbed and flowed in the SBC. It will continue to do so.

Many will vote for J. D. Greear because he is a Calvinist.

Many will vote for Ken Hemphill because he is not a Calvinist ( or you could consider him a Traditionalist, or non-Calvinist).

And many will vote for one of them for other reasons.

Both are good men. The vote will be interesting. Regardless, the SBC will survive after this year’s annual meeting in Dallas.

In the meantime, I will continue warn people of the errors of Calvinism :-).

David R. Brumbelow

Ken Hemphill

http://www.bpnews.net/50297/ken-hemphill-to-be-sbc-president-nominee

David R. Brumbelow

J. D. Greear

http://www.bpnews.net/50269/jd-greear-to-be-sbc-president-nominee-again

David R. Brumbelow

Calling non-Calvinist Southern Baptists traditionalists (or something similar) betrays either ignorance of SBC history or deliberate attempts to mislead. (I assume it is mostly the former.) If anyone will take time to read the book, For His Grace and By His Glory by Tom Nettles (now revised with a new title which I do not remember), they will discover that the SBC was founded and led by Calvinists for the first fifty or more years of its history. So who’s the traditionalist?

And it begins …

Since the FBFI was mentioned, I want to clarify that the FBFI is not church membership. It is an organization of individuals. No church votes to become a member of the FBFI. The individual has to agree to the doctrinal statement and pay a small fee that essentially covers the cost of the magazine. There is no control mechanism in place.

Jim’s comment about the Billy Graham vs. Calvinist wing reminds me a lot of the conflicts in business over long term vs. short term thinking. You get the finance guys in general wanting to trim spending to the bone, and then five years later, the company wonders why they don’t have any compelling new products. #NotRocketScience.

In the same way, churches can get gaudy “conversion” numbers, but when you look as little as a week later, there is no fruit. One might protest that it’s unfair to say this, but if a group is going to call themselves the Billy Graham wing, they own as a result not only the gaudy “conversion” numbers, but also the dismal retention numbers.

One doesn’t have to be a five pointer to recognize that the church ought to do some very different things than are being done in the Graham organization.

Fine, “individuals.”

Now, let’s pretend that Pastor X who is a member of the FBFI wants to introduce Getty music into his church’s worship service. If Pastor X chooses to do so, he runs the risk of being publicly demonized by the FBFI via Proclaim and Defend. That’s what the convergence nonsense was about. Fundamentalist churches were failing to adhere to FBFI’s strict rules of conduct and separation.

The FBFI may not have any official “control mechanism in place,” but that doesn’t mean that ecclesiastical control and pressure isn’t exerted.

Over the last ten years or so, I’ve had several conversations with brothers who were wanting to lead their church in certain ways but were wary of doing so out of a fear of the possible reprisals from the FBFI. I’m sure that we could start an entirely new thread to post anecdotes about the FBFI exerting pressure on “individuals” because of the direction that “individual” was leading their church. If I were to post further information about my conversations, my anecdote would frequently end with me encouraging the brother to join the SBC where he wouldn’t have to worry about being ostracized and publicly demonized over things like music. Hence my initial comment.

Not a discussion about fundamentalism … Noooooooooo!