Was the now-broken NAMB a control ploy by SBC Conservatives?

Broken at creation, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) North American Mission Board is a "wasteful funding mechanism" that "has served as a pressure device to keep state conventions in line with Southern Baptist Convention programs," wrote SBC elder statesman Duke K. McCall.

McCall, who was SBC Executive Committee chief executive officer and president of two SBC seminaries, wrote in an essay in the recently published book Against The Wind by Carl L. Kell that:

The state conventions are a better alternative for domestic missions than a central organization. This has been obvious for at least 50 years in that most of the Cooperative Program funds sent to Atlanta for the North American Mission Board have actually been spent by the state conventions through various kinds of 'partnership' programs.

McCall is apparently recommending a return of power to and retention of funding by the state Baptist organizations - a view that is echoed complaints voiced recently at at Hardin Baptist Church in Dallas. Norman Jameson of the North Carolina Biblical Recorder wrote of that session:

Unfortunately, the church planter funding process through NAMB is cumbersome, even “stupid” as Jeff Long from Parkwood Baptist Church in Gastonia labeled it.
Host pastor Austin Rammell said there is “massive replication” in the process of identifying, training, placing and funding church plants and planters. “Either the state convention needs to go away or NAMB needs to go away,” said Rammell, who is on the Baptist State Convention board of directors. “I think the obvious answer is NAMB.”

Also arguing that the NAMB was a mistake from the moment of creation is Larry Lewis. He was president of the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1995 when it was merged with the SBC Radio and Television Commission and the SBC Brotherhood Commission to create the NAMB. The NAMB was not created for the sake of efficiecy, Lewis said in an Aug. 13 interview with the Biblical Recorder:

Lewis said he has been told that the real reason behind the reorganization was that leaders of the "conservative resurgence" were displeased with him because he wasn't aggressive enough about weeding out what they viewed as vestiges of liberalism at the HMB, but they didn't want to fire him because they had supported his election and he affirmed biblical inerrancy. The solution, the story goes, was to reorganize the agency in a way that didn't leave a place for Lewis.

It seems nonetheless clear that the GCR Task Force strategies will not involve the return of authority to state conventions that McCall implies and Lewis might accept. If there is a reorganization, it will almost inevitably involve further concentration of SBC executive authority through the merger of the troubled NAMB, whose focus is domestic ministries, with the SBC's also troubled, missionary-sending, International Mission Board.

Conservative, liberal Christian activists differences unrevealed

The startling headline says, Activists on the left, right share faith but little else, and although the attendant story says just that, it's wrong.

Just, wrong.

A study sponsored by the Republican-oriented Bliss Institute of Applied Politics involved two, separate, different surveys. the results of which were conflated to produce an outcome which is essentially meaningless.

Here is their description of what they call "Study Design:"

The
 design 
of
 the
 study
 proceeded
 in
 three 
steps. 
First,
 the
 authors 
consulted
 with
 scholars, 
journalists,
 and
 leaders
 of
 religious 
organizations
 to
 determine
 the
 organizations 
that 
were
 central
 to
 contemporary
 religious
 activism.
 The 
study 
sought
 to
 identify
 organizations 
that
 were 
national 
in
 scope, 
had
 relatively 
prominent
 public
 profiles, 
and
 had
 large,
 clean
 lists
 of 
their 
members/affiliates.
 This 
consultation 
revealed
 that 
it
 made
 most 
sense
 to 
conduct
 two 
separate
 surveys:
 one
 survey 
of
 progressive
 religious
 activists
 and
 another 
of
 conservative
 religious 
activists. 
This 
division
 also 
made
 sense 
for
 substantive
 reasons
 because 
somewhat 
different
 questions
 were
 relevant
 to
 progressive 
and 
conservative
 religious 
activists.
 More
 importantly, 
the
 consultation
 produced
 considerable
 agreement 
about 
the
 major 
organizations 
that 
fit
 these 
criteria
 and
 constitute
 the
 rival 
religious 
activist 
corps.

Their "study" may have revealed a little about the views of people who are members of the organizations identified by someone as "central to contemporary religious activism."

But Christian activists in general were neither identified nor surveyed.

Texas Baptists Committed dramaturgy and change

If you know about Southern Baptists in Texas you know that Texas Baptists Committed (TBC) was organzied to preclude the conservative takeover which racked every other state with a significant Southern Baptist presence, and that strategy is widely regarded to have worked.

From Spiritual Samurai we learned that TBC was going to " Restructure, Relocate, and Refocus." That plan included keeping David R. Currie on a director emeritus, with some unspecified authority and salary.

There was some astonishment and a subsequent story by the Texas Baptist Standard (TBS). Whereupon Samurai blogged his puzzlment over TBS's withholding the story until he scooped them.

Widespread mourning may not have been the rule among blogging Texans. Ken Coffee wrote:

TBC has become what they profess to have hated in others. You have become manipulative control freaks. I would hope, for the sake of the Kingdom and the BGCT, that you would want to change that perception.

Dramatic tension was mantained by Samauri's blog asking just what Currie's "director emeritus" status would mean. Key questions were what authority and pay did the new status entail.

Whereupon Currie really resigned "Sept. 28, effective immediately," as head of the "political organization two decades ago to resist a “fundamentalist takeover” of the Baptist General Convention of Texas."

Lee at Deep In the Heart reviews the difficulties faced by narrowly focused organizations like TBC during times of transition. The issue about which he tactfully walks is whether, original purpose gone, they will survive. Or whether they should.

'Moderate' Baptists & the tanking SBC

When theocrats were taking over the Southern Baptist Convention (1979-90), there was debate over what to call the "others."

"Conservatives/fundamentalists" may have preferred to call the losers in that conflict "liberals" but "moderates" carried the day. To the considerable unhappiness of many thus classified.

Not any more, says Fisher Humphreys, retlred professor of theology at Samford University:

The fact that moderate was somebody else's word for us doesn't bother me. After all, in the first century Jesus' followers didn't name themselves Christians. Outsiders did, and Christians embraced the name. In the seventeenth century, Baptists didn't name themselves Baptists. Outsiders did, and Baptists came to embrace the name. That's how I feel about the name "moderates."

Writing for the bulletin of the Center for Baptist Studies, he proclaims that being a "moderate" is good:

Principally because the Bible says it is: "Let your moderation be known unto all men" (Phil. 4:5). The word translated "moderation" is epieikēs. Paul used that word again when he wrote that Christian leaders should be "not violent but gentle" (1 Tim. 3:3, NRSV). He used the same word again in Titus 3:2 when he advised Christians "to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show courtesy to everyone."

These passages display that to be moderate is to not be an extremist, it is to not be violent, and it is to not be quarrelsome.

So what's not to like?

The good professor doesn't sully his argument by observing that under "conservative" leadership the SBC growth is tanking, expert leadership isn't sure a turnaround will occur and secular newspapers offer bleak advice.

True to his moderate calling, Humphreys explains:

Moderate Baptists are strong and effective people. They have deep convictions and the courage to live by them. One of their convictions is that extremism is not a virtue. Another is that, in our efforts to carry out God's purposes in the world, we must never resort to violence. Another is that chronic quarreling is not healthy. These convictions come straight out of Paul's teaching about moderation.

Indeed, "what's not to like?" Or emulate?