Featured If you think the Southern Bap Convention controls local churches...

I think it depends on the church, the pastor, and the state convention.

IF your pastor has desires for state level office, or harbors the dream of being on the Committee on Committees, or a seminary trustee, etc, you bet your bippy whatever the current leadership says goes. BTDT with a pastor who was a Midwestern trustee during, shall we say, the one of the trusteeship's less finer moments. He currently serves at state level rather than pastoring.

IF your state convention is wise they will put some strictures on money they loan. But if a church is wise they just won't borrow there, and avoid those strictures.

More and more I see churches just kind of with a "whatever" attitude towards the convention. They send less to the CP, and more of them seem to be directly funding mission endeavors instead of doing so through the convention.

So while some see it as a Conservative Resurgence and others as a Fundamentalist Takeover, whatever it was has had two opposite results.

The first is that the boundaries, the lines in the sand over which one cannot cross and expect any leadership roles have tightened. The true liberals are gone (yay!), the moderates are gone, and lots of the conservatives are gone. Some see all this as good and purifying, others as bad and stultifying. Take your pick.

The second result is that churches don't seem to see themselves as SBC churches, but as churches that sometimes send some money to the SBC. It may turn out that those that wanted to be in leadership so badly may wind up captains of an empty ship.

Some of the areas where I have lived the churches used to ALL use SBC material, contribute heavily to the CP as well as Annie Armstrong and Lottie Moon, have very active Brotherhood and WMU as well as activities that were SBC for the teens and kids. The BFM was used in a new member class every year, and copies were given to all new members. The SBC may not have been as pure or as tightly controlled, but we were SBC through and through.

Since the CR, curiously, those churches now usually DON'T use the SBC material, don't contribute much, and while as active as ever are more likely to offer AWANA'S or scouting to the younger set and to order non Baptist books off Amazon for the older set. There may be something in the church constitution about ascribing to the BFM2000, but it isn't handed out or taught to the members. Instead of Brotherhood meetings the guys go fishing, and instead of WMU the gals get together for some syrupy video book study.

It would seem, to me at least, that when the SBC took a "my way or the highway" attitude, a lot of churches just turned around and ignored them. That way they can claim to be SBC affiliated for what perks it still brings them, but for the most part they became the polar opposite of what the CR was supposed to make them.

Hollow victory at best.

 

Santa Cruz Sentinel June 19, 2006

 

Add these to the quote list for the whole story:

Yep, that was dumb...Good thing most SBC churches don't do this, and therefore this single example does not disprove the OP.

Yep, that was selfish. They should have let them have their church, especially after the new church affiliated with the National SBC.

 

What a ridiculous charge. The Church I pastor is SBC, and they have 0 say in what we do. We could vote to end funding tomorrow with a 51 percent majority at a business meeting, and leave the SBC in a heart beat.

 

Actually, this shackling of churches is quite common. Nathan Finn, professor at SEBTS, recounts how North Carolina denominational bureaucrats "urged all BSCNC churches to amend their bylaws so that, in the event of a. . .vote to disaffiliate, all the assets would remain with the minority who wished to remain SBC":

http://sbcvoices.com/resolved-the-case-for-resolutions-by-nathan-finn/#comment-28166

I agree with you that it is dumb to trust the counsel of SB denominational bureaucrats.

 

Good for them! Nothing more disgusting and unethical than a church takeover! The idea that a group of individuals should give and participate in a SBC church, only to have a group come in and vote to make it "non-denominational" and in effect steal their church, is ludicrous. OF COURSE a church should protect itself in such a way!

 

Professor Finn notes that it was Southern Baptist conservatives who sided with the congregation departing the Convention [North Rocky Mount Baptist did not become 'non-denominational', where did you come up with that?]:

 

Yes, but what happens if the denomination departs from the faith, and a majority in the local church votes to disaffiliate because of that. Then the majority who have remained faithful would lose their church to an apostate minority.

 

Apostates are not a church and it will eventually die. The church is not defined by what man does by what God does among His people.

 

How would that make any difference?

 

That's not the point. What about the majority who had to give up their church to the minority? What about the Baptist principle of local church autonomy?

 

I'm not sure where you got the idea of a takeover. The fact is, one of the primary BAPTIST distinctives is the autonomy of the church to declare themselves "non-denominational" if they wish. Simply doing so does not constitute "stealing" a church. This kind of bylaw requiring association with SBC actually goes against the Baptist local church autonomy.

 

I fail to see how this would help. It would just make it a little more difficult...and that's only if the church also has a provision that says it takes 2/3 vote to amend the bylaws, in which case they could do that with a simple majority, and THEN vote to disaffiliate!

 

Sure it does. Think of it this way. A group of people get together and start a church. They say "We want this to always be a SBC church." Then the church starts growing, and as happened in one church which I know of, some Pentecostals started infiltrating the church, and becoming members. A few months down the road, the Pentecostals voted to change the denomination of the church. The people who bought the land, built the building, etc., were forced to leave.

No it doesn't. What YOU are saying goes against local church autonomy. You are saying that a church has a right to do anything, EXCEPT vote that it will be permanently SBC. Thus, you are the one attacking autonomy.

 

What about this scenario: What if the SBC started affirming and accepting homosexual ordinations and marriages, and a majority of a local church voted to disaffiliate with the SBC over this matter, but there was a clause in the church constitution such as mentioned here. The majority who voted to disaffiliate would have to leave and turn over their church to the apostate minority. Now, how does that line up with the historic Baptist principle of local church autonomy?

What you are advocating in effect is that the denomination can own the property, and regardless of the direction the denomination takes in the future, that local church must remain a part of the denomination. That is not autonomy.

The situation you described with the Pentecostals is regrettable, but you either believe in autonomy or you don't.

 

I DO believe in autonomy. Which includes the autonomy to include provisions that a Church never leave a denomination/association. Apparently you want to tell them what they can do...are YOU the ecclesiastical authority?

 

If the pastor is that poor and the leadership that weak then they will get what they are prepared for. I have seen that many times in my life where churches are on auto pilot and do not know what a false teacher looks like. I have been in the situation you suggest three times. In one case the leadership did not car3e to deal with a false teacher and when they made that known I resigned as an interim pastor and told them I was leaving them to Satan to be destroyed. They laughed and three months later they disbanded and the property put up for sale. They were shocked at what I said and thought I was wrong but when it came to pass they did not laugh any longer. The good people left and are now doing ministry is a good church and the others are dead wood and are attending another church as a group. That same group went to another church and insisted that they have their own small group. The pastor had already given me a call and told them that they would be in some other groups. They left and went to another church. One of the group is known in the city among pastors, other Christians and among non-Christians as trouble.

 

You are redefining autonomy then. What you are proposing amounts to the denomination owning the local church property. That is not Baptist, and that is not autonomy. I never thought I would see this, but I've been shocked many times in the last few decades about what some consider "baptist".

This is one thing that I disagreed with so much about Church of the Nazarene polity. They say the local church owns its property, unlike the United Methodists, for instance; however, if the denomination went apostate and that local Nazarene church withdrew from the national body, they would be in the street, no matter how many years the church had been in existence and no matter how much money the people had put into it. So, in reality, the local Nazarene Church owns the property in name only.