Diversity Experiment at SBC Pastors Conference

[Jerome]

Baptist Press

"The 2017 Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) Pastors’ Conference in Phoenix is expected to highlight the contributions of the convention’s smaller churches and celebrate the diverse landscape that makes up the SBC. To that end, Pastors’ Conference officers are seeking nominations for event speakers who represent these churches."

"The online nomination process opens Sept. 12 at sbcpc2017.com. Nominations can be made through Sept. 30."

"Nominees should be the pastor of a Southern Baptist church with about '500 or less in average attendance' who has not preached at the annual meeting in the past five years."

"The leadership team encourages nominations representing the ethnic and geographic diversity of the SBC."

"this is meant as a one-year opportunity to acknowledge the contributions of smaller churches. They have no designs on having a small church pastor lead every year."

 

[Van]

Giving others a seat at the table seems like a good thing.

 

[Baptist Believer]

"this is meant as a one-year opportunity to acknowledge the contributions of smaller churches. They have no designs on having a small church pastor lead every year."

And there's my issue with it.

I don't necessarily want a small church pastor designated to lead every year, but it should happen frequently. Unfortunately many in the SBC loves large churches and judges a persons capabilities and ministry on the size of the church membership.

I pastored a small church in a county in West Texas where the total population was just over 8,000, with about 5,500 in the county seat where I was located. The active membership of the church grew from four to about 35 people when I completed my time there after nearly two years. When I went to the Convention and/or spoke to other pastors throughout the state, I consistently received unsolicited advice to shut down the church because the membership is too small or, worse yet, was informed that there was something wrong with the way I did ministry since I didn't have a numerically-large congregation. Since we had a small congregation, I received very little salary and even buying food and gasoline so I could live there was a big challenge every week.

After a while, that sort of thing got me discouraged and I decided to figure out what size church I had compared to the "experts" in terms of percentage of the population. I realized that I had .6 percent of all persons in the city within the building every Sunday morning, and there were numerous church in town - including three other Baptist congregations of various types.

If I were to take that percentage and apply it to my current city of residence, I would lead the equivalent of a 5,000 active member congregation, which would excite a bunch of folks in the SBC.

I have never been about the numbers, but it seems that in the religious world, numbers are revered and pastors are judged superficially. Now it takes a certain skill set that I might not have to shepherd a congregation of 5,000, but the Lord places us where He chooses, and I'm afraid we don't respect the small church pastors like the Lord does.

 

[TCassidy]

Some of the most faithful Shepherds of God's flock I have ever known have been Godly men laboring unrewarded in small towns and rural areas in tiny little churches. But their reward in heaven will be great. Perhaps even greater than the pastor who had the riches of this world due to a large salary from a large church.

 

[Baptist Believer]

Some of the most faithful Shepherds of God's flock I have ever known have been Godly men laboring unrewarded in small towns and rural areas in tiny little churches.

One thing you can sure of - they are not doing it for earthly fame and fortune. Many of them are working other jobs so they can afford to minister to the small congregations.

 

[Sapper Woody]

And there's my issue with it.

I don't necessarily want a small church pastor designated to lead every year, but it should happen frequently. Unfortunately many in the SBC loves large churches and judges a persons capabilities and ministry on the size of the church membership.

I pastored a small church in a county in West Texas where the total population was just over 8,000, with about 5,500 in the county seat where I was located. The active membership of the church grew from four to about 35 people when I completed my time there after nearly two years. When I went to the Convention and/or spoke to other pastors throughout the state, I consistently received unsolicited advice to shut down the church because the membership is too small or, worse yet, was informed that there was something wrong with the way I did ministry since I didn't have a numerically-large congregation. Since we had a small congregation, I received very little salary and even buying food and gasoline so I could live there was a big challenge every week.

After a while, that sort of thing got me discouraged and I decided to figure out what size church I had compared to the "experts" in terms of percentage of the population. I realized that I had .6 percent of all persons in the city within the building every Sunday morning, and there were numerous church in town - including three other Baptist congregations of various types.

If I were to take that percentage and apply it to my current city of residence, I would lead the equivalent of a 5,000 active member congregation, which would excite a bunch of folks in the SBC.

I have never been about the numbers, but it seems that in the religious world, numbers are revered and pastors are judged superficially. Now it takes a certain skill set that I might not have to shepherd a congregation of 5,000, but the Lord places us where He chooses, and I'm afraid we don't respect the small church pastors like the Lord does.

In a similar experience, when I was a teenager, my dad pastored a small church. Our max attendance was around 70 on a Sunday Morning. However, our town literally had a population of 10. Not a typo. Ten.

So, he had a church that was 700% of the population of the town. Small churches ought not be automatically dismissed. Especially in light of the growth. The church doubled in size in only about five years there.

Sent from my QTAQZ3 using Tapatalk

 

[Jerome]

Diversity—ethnic, soteriological, etc.—will characterize platform at next year's one-time SBC Pastor's Conference featuring pastors of smaller churches:


http://bpnews.net/48077/diversity-smaller-churches-in-pastors-conf-lineup

a culturally diverse line-up of pastors including six Anglo, three African Americans, one Jamaican American, a Cuban American and an Asian American

http://sbcvoices.com/announcing-the-preachers-for-the-2017-sbc-pastors-conference/

They also represent the diversity of our convention in ethnicity, age, worship style, soteriology, and in many other ways

 

[Revmitchell]

We have not had a real pastors conference in years. They used to serve pastors by preaching on things about pastoring. Now they just want to use them as a platform to promote giving to the convention or expository preaching. Sad

 

[Jerome]

Smaller church pastors groomed for their Pastors' Conference appearance; will preach through Philippians because it's a non-controversial book for the Convention:

http://bpnews.net/48361/pastors-conference-speakers-meet-to-unify-sermons

This year's Southern Baptist Pastors' Conference has already promised several firsts, including the first time all preachers will be from small- and medium-sized churches and all sermons will walk through a book of the Bible expositionally.

"One of the reasons we chose Philippians was because it had good preaching passages but did not have a lot of the theological minefields," Miller told the TEXAN. "We wanted to stay away from some of the things that had been controversial in the convention."

This year's Pastors'Conference added another first -- the first time the speakers met in advance

Eleven of the 12 pastors, whose churches range in attendance from 60 to 500, met with Pastors' Conference officers as well as preaching faculty from Southwestern and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminaries on Southwestern's campus Feb. 6-7 for what was called the Pastors' Conference Colloquium.

Recognizing it would be the largest audience most of the pastors have addressed, [seminary dean David Allen] gave advice for adjusting to a larger preaching venue, including addressing distractions, eye contact and voice projection.

 

[ChrisTheSaved]

Giving others a seat at the table seems like a good thing.

People should not be given a seat based off race. You earn a seat. Sounds like racism to me. Do you think as a black man I want to be picked to serve because of my race? No, I want to be picked because I did a great job. Lame. Stop this nonsense SBC, this is what's wrong with the county. Ask the Episcopal or Methodist church how all that diversity's going for them?

 

[Baptist Brother]

Seeking ethnic diversity? Why not use straight-forward language: non-whites, please apply.

 

[ChrisTheSaved]

Seeking ethnic diversity? Why not use straight-forward language: non-whites, please apply.

I don't want my airline pilot picked based off of race. I want the best person for the job lol.

 

[Van]

People should not be given a seat based off race. You earn a seat. Sounds like racism to me. Do you think as a black man I want to be picked to serve because of my race? No, I want to be picked because I did a great job. Lame. Stop this nonsense SBC, this is what's wrong with the county. Ask the Episcopal or Methodist church how all that diversity's going for them?

My comment addressed giving small church pastors an opportunity to speak without regard to the color of their skin.

 

[Baptist Brother]

I don't want my airline pilot picked based off of race. I want the best person for the job lol.

How about your surgeon? How about the players for your favorite sports team? How about the lawn care guy? When do you ever want to pick someone based on race? If you're on the Left, all the time.

 

[Jerome]

2017 Phoenix Convention's diversity push prompts Oklahoma minister to withdraw his name from consideration for President of the Southern Baptist Pastors Conference:

Florida Baptist Witness

A month after it was announced that Brad Graves, pastor of First Baptist Church in Ada, Okla., would be nominated to serve as the next president of the Southern Baptist Convention Pastors’ Conference, he has confirmed that he wants his name to be withdrawn from consideration.

Graves made his decision after being told that Jacksonville Pastor H.B. Charles Jr. also was going to be nominated as the 2018 Pastors’ Conference president....he recognizes the importance of Charles potentially being the first African-American to hold this position

“I really believe we need only one candidate for these high positions,” Graves told the Florida Baptist Witness Thursday morning. “I really believe it is my time to step aside....Our Convention is really diverse. Having HB up there will really show that we’re diverse.”