I read your editorial entitled, “SBC continues to snub BGAV” [Herald, July 10]. I would like to share with you a retrospective view from another side.
I pastored Euclid Avenue Baptist Church in Bristol during the 1980s. Its membership included two active missionary couples with the IMB. They provided a mission home for furloughing families, sponsored two starter churches and ordained two ministers and the last year that I served them, they gave $108,000 to missions from a $565,000 budget.
I served four years on the Virginia Baptist General Board [now Mission Board], two years on the executive committee and two years on the long range planning committee, and as a trustee on the Baptist Sunday School Board [now LifeWay Christian Resources] for a term.
In 1985-86, [Mission Board staffer] John Ivins and I encouraged the Mission Board to remain open to conservatives and bind both factions together. We recommended that the budget be increased to 16 million and a million dollar increase per year for the next 10 years. I seconded the motion to purchase the present Virginia Baptist building. Then executive director Reginald McDonough pressed for the World Mission tracks for giving.
This was viewed by many conservatives as a method to divert funds from the SBC to mission projects endorsed by the BGAV. In the intervening years since then, with the exception of an accounting fluke, the BGAV has not met its budget goal. Prior to 1980, conservatives were not a viable leadership constituency in the SBC and barely visible in the BGAV. When in 1988, I was elected as a trustee for the BSSB, an older pastor touched my shoulder, hugged my neck and wept. He said he had participated in the SBC for 30 years and that I was the only conservative he had ever known to be elected to a board or institution.
During those years at the BGAV, I witnessed [former Religious Herald editor] Julian Pentecost touting Virginia's stance on religious liberty. I also spoke to Mr. Pentecost about a need to increase circulation for the Religious Herald to the level of states with similar numbers of church members. I only invoked his ire and he kept coming back for additional funding to keep afloat. I witnessed Bill Cumbie at a BGAV reception touting a parliamentary action to hamper the methodology of the SBC committee on committees in the selection of nominees. I witnessed Roy Honeycutt (at Christiansburg) espousing a plan to withdraw Southern Seminary from the SBC as a stand-alone entity. I saw Lloyd Elder tout his “Blueprints” for change at the BSSB and his termination.
I do not know [SBC president] Johnny Hunt. I do not know his parameters for nominees for boards and institutions. I do not believe that he has any obligation to accept a nominee from either you or John Upton. I do believe that he has an obligation to the one-third of Virginia Baptist churches who support the SBC to give due consideration to those churches' nominees. The BGAV helped create this situation with the World Mission tracks. I see no valid reason why churches who do not support the SBC could expect to be represented at the SBC, nor that you or John Upton could be expected to make nominations.
The question is, “Who snubbed who?”, if two-thirds of Virginia Baptist churches do not support the SBC. Did the SBC snub the two-thirds or did the two-thirds snub the SBC?
I believe that the SBC has been arrogant in taking the convention in a direction that was not foreseen by its voting members. I believe that the CBF has been arrogant in its approach to evangelism and missions. Each faction's “inclusion” has created an “exclusion.”
The younger leadership in Baptist churches may see both the BGAV and the SBC as factions traveling the “Road of Irrevelence” or even the “Road to Oblivion.” They believe in feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and leading the blind to see. They believe that if you pay, you go, and as you go, you minister and witness. These should be priorities we recover.
After 60 years as a Christian and 34 years as a pastor, I have seen SBC [annual meeting attendance] go from 45,000 in Dallas to 7,000 in Indianapolis and I have seen BGAV stagnate.
Baptist churches are yearning for a solid spiritual approach to the needs of dying humanity. They are tired of criticism, finger pointing and whining.
Russell H. Naron, Mobile, Ala.