Baptist Infidels

Major B, I don't know if the guy is still alive, still an atheist, still a Baptist, etc., etc.

I have friends in southeast OK, and have preached in SE OK, and can testify that probably little more than five years ago he was the pastor of Tom Baptist Church. Tom is a community just east of Idabel. If the Tom BC has a website, one might find out if he is still there.

 

I have found many in the SBC leadership today to talk a good game but with little practical guts. They claim they believe the Bible but will not take a stance except when they are in their little gang of comfort and not threatened.

I wrote to a former SBC president and he would not take a stance with me against a church I was having trouble with. He told me just to move on. The local and state association would not take a stance with me all in the name of autonomous churches. Where is their conservatism in their refusal to take a stance? I call that practical atheism. Who is their Lord? That church regularly invited the former Mormon bishop to come and preach at events they sponsored in the community and saw nothing wrong with it. That was in 1998. The leaders at the state and local level knew about it for about 25 years and did absolutely nothing and still have not. This is near the end of 2005. Many Christians in one of the nearby towns knows about it too. They were hoping I would make a change.

You call that conservative?

Any church which is not making disciples on purpose is living in the domain of practical atheism and disobedience. So often “conservative” churches are not making disciples.

Frankly I am disgusted with the SBC. When I see the large money givers pictures hung on walls I am disgusted. When I read the horoscope at HBU in 1992 I was disgusted. You call that conservative?

Conservatives or liberals I want no part of. They are useless in kingdom work. Jesus called us to radical Christianity not practical atheism, intellectual or practical conservatism, or intellectual liberalism or practical liberalism.

Many of my friends have left the SBC and they are not even close at all to liberalism. I fanything they are much closer to the other side than many in the SBC. They are disgusted as I was with the political nonsense and call it believing the Bible and being conservative. In practice they do not believe the Bible because they are afraid to stand up and be counted. The leadership of the SBC has not taken a stance against individual churches. Seems to me the Bible calls for such discipline. Isn’t that discussed in the NT?

 

Here <http://www.mainstreambaptists.org/mob4/harbin_bwa.htm> looks like he is part of the Mainstream Baptists of Oklahoma and still pastor of Tom Baptist Church. <http://www.mainstreambaptists.org/mob4/wesner.htm>

First BC, Tom, OK

Diversity Press

 

I wrote to a former SBC president and he would not take a stance with me against a church I was having trouble with. He told me just to move on. The local and state association would not take a stance with me all in the name of autonomous churches. Where is their conservatism in their refusal to take a stance? I call that practical atheism. Who is their Lord? That church regularly invited the former Mormon bishop to come and preach at events they sponsored in the community and saw nothing wrong with it. That was in 1998. The leaders at the state and local level knew about it for about 25 years and did absolutely nothing and still have not. This is near the end of 2005. Many Christians in one of the nearby towns knows about it too. They were hoping I would make a change.
</font>[/QUOTE]Maybe what you are looking for is a denomination with an episcopal system so that an archbishop can rule with authority when you go to him for help. I think the practice is reprehensible; however, when Baptists don't act like Anglicans, there is a reason--we aren't.

 

Mystery solved--and his wife is the co-pastor...cute. My wife is a better preacher, I bet! So, again, this guy's oddball stance makes EVERYONE in the SBC bad because........?

We don't have an episcopacy!
We don't have popes!
The DOM is not the Bishop!
The convention president is not the Metropolitan Catholicos nor the Pope!

 

Where is the conservative SBC leadership in all this? Out to lunch? What a bunch of practical atheists.

It is disgusting that the SBC would not take a stance. Many SBC leaders want position without responsibility.

What did the conservatives do? Nothing. They claim to believe the Bible but do nothing.

That pastor is listed on sbc.net

 

Who cares about the preservation of Baptists. Embalming works well for that. The Bible screams discipline. Are you saying that Baptists are too lazy to follow what scripture mandates? It is not about being Baptist but about doing what scripture commands.

Baptists may not control the church but it may separate from it and refuse fellowship with the disobedient.

 

Isn't church discipline a local church issue...not a denominational issue?

 

The leaders are bad when they stand by and do nothing and say nothing.

 

Who cares about the preservation of Baptists. Embalming works well for that. The Bible screams discipline. Are you saying that Baptists are too lazy to follow what scripture mandates? It is not about being Baptist but about doing what scripture commands.

Baptists may not control the church but it may separate from it and refuse fellowship with the disobedient. </font>[/QUOTE]Lazy? Infidels? Does the Bible SCREAM for every nut case to be tracked down and disfellowshipped? If the good Baptists in Idabel and OK don't have the time and energy to bother with this guy, I suspect that it is because they have better things to do, like obeying the great commission. If this guy was in our congregation, he would be "churched," as we say down here in Kaintuck. If his church applied for admission to our association, he they wouldn't get any votes. I suspect his outfit is so small that the locals have better to do.

[ December 14, 2005, 12:47 AM: Message edited by: Major B ]

 

In 1 Cor. didn't Paul exhort the church to carry out discipline and refuse fellowship. Where was Paul in all this? Was he not the main leader of a number of churches and pastors? Kinda seems like the start of denominationalism.

Passing the buck is easy when it is convenient.

 

What do you want them to do?

Go in there and demand the Church to get rid of it's pastor?

The day a Baptist Denom. does that they cease to be Baptist.

Baptists are not ran by the top down, but from the church up. That is one thing that makes us Baptist.

Would you like it if someone from another church came to your church and told you how to worship?

Of course He is wrong, but that is a local church that is autonomous, and yes that is a very strong biblical principle, and if we ever compromise autonomy, we will be no better than the RCC.

Go ahead, just crack the door on autonomy. Just compromise that principle one time, and see what Satan is capable of, then others would have the right to come into your church, and demand that you sing certain types of songs, or read certain translations, or that all women must wear dresses, or that all preachers must not have a mustache... etc.

To be Baptist is to be autonomous.

 

I guess you could say God does. I can just imagine what God must think when we sit by and do nothing and let liberalism and conservatism flourish when God has called us to make Jesus Lord and be radical Christians sold out to Jesus.

If the leaders in the SBC just like to talk and be politicians then get them out of there and get someone in who will do something.

 

I guess you could say God does. I can just imagine what God must think when we sit by and do nothing and let liberalism and conservatism flourish when God has called us to make Jesus Lord and be radical Christians sold out to Jesus.

If the leaders in the SBC just like to talk and be politicians then get them out of there and get someone in who will do something. </font>[/QUOTE]I am sorry that your former congregation so scarred you. I recommend that you read "The Wounded Minister" by Guy Greenfield. Good, conservative book! It helped me deal with my forced exit from a conservative congregation that was just as lost and dead as your semi-Mormon one. Bitterness is a fatal disease.

 

You can’t force that church to do anything, but you can disfellowship them. They can do the same thing other SBC associations have done with disobedient churches.

Are you saying to be Baptist is to be disobedient against scripture? I hope not.

To sit idly by and say and do nothing is simply wrong.

I was pastoring a small SBC church some years ago and a local high school teacher was requiring students to read a vulgar book. But nobody would take a stance except one woman. She called me to ask for help. We went through all the channels to get things changed. Not one SBC pastor in the area would stand with us. They gave me all kinds of excuses when I asked them to help us. So as a church we dealt with it and got things changed. I had my share of conservatism that talks a lot and does nothing.

It may be easy and comfortable to sit by and do nothing but it absolutely wrong.

If somebody were coming after you or a family member I am certain you would call the police. Where are those who will do something? We are talking about more than just church autonomy and dress. We are talking about blatant spit in your face theology.

Within the past few years I have heard non-Christians talk about such things they hear from idiots like that letter to the editor. If the SBC allows that and says or deos nothing what kind of a witness is that.

 

You are right. An association can, a local association, not the SBC leadership. Associations are the gate keepers of the denomination. It is up to the local association to do something. That is where your beef should be. Are you in a church that is in that association? If so, take action. If not, how do you disfellowship a church that you are not in fellowship with? Other associations cannot impose their views on other associations either.

If that association doesn't want to do anything, that is their business, no one else's. That's sad, but that is the way it works. The SBC leadership has no rights to disfellowship a church, only the local association.

 

Over the past few years I have had to work through some things. It was not so much the congregation that scarred me. Out of that church came some great people who left when I did whom I discipled.

What really bothered me more than anything is that I came from a non-Christian home and what I heard before I became a pastor sadly came true. That is the kind of thing that bothers me more than what happened to me. Do you think I really like it when I try to witness to my relatives and they know about some of the folks in the church who lied about me, my wife and family. My brother lives in that same town.

It has been amazing to watch what God has done since. It has given my family amazing boldness.

God is doing amazing things among the non-Christians I know. He has given me incredible favor with them. I do really enjoy and love them.
I am at a university as a doctoral student. I will graduate soon to be a professor. I know students are my passion. My greatest ministry has been among them over the years. The opportunities are endless. Opportunities are all over the place. I am challenged to pray for my students and the faculty.

 

Hey Mark,

It really is a theological issue (even if it is linked to a specific period in SBC history). I really don't see what difference it makes where the thread is located here on the BB as long as it is in a related debate forum. That's my 2 cents worth.

The leaders of the SBC conservative resurgence knew that they had to maintain control over the six SBC Seminaries in order to make the changes happen. Their goals included educating the general “Joe Baptist” out there about the liberalism being taught in the SBC Seminaries using Cooperative Program funds, and establish a grassroots ground swell that would elect conservative leaders to offices in local, state, and national positions. Likewise, they fully understood that we would lose the majority of Baptist Colleges because there were just too many liberal professors, college presidents, and trustees to be able to keep them all on board. It is a bitter pill but the colleges are all pretty much gone or on their way to removing themselves from accepting SBC Cooperative Program funds.