MEMPHIS, Tenn. (ABP) — Bubbling dissatisfaction over the Southern Baptist Convention's direction among some of its most loyal supporters may become action after a summit, scheduled to take place May 2-3 Memphis.
Benjamin Cole, pastor of Parkview Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, confirmed to Associated Baptist Press May 1 that he and other leaders concerned about the SBC's direction had called the meeting.
“It became clear to me that, in order to have any viable possibility…of moving our convention to a more open process of nominations for convention office, it was necessary to get these disparate constituencies in Southern Baptist life together, face-to-face. Not to just read each others' blogs, but to talk to each other across the table,” Cole said, in a telephone interview before departing for Memphis.
Cole is among a group of pastors who have been critical of recent decisions by the SBC's International Mission Board and other SBC agencies and leaders. Several blogs run by Southern Baptists have offered observations about, and discussion of, similar dissatisfaction among some SBC leaders in recent months.
Much of that dissatisfaction came to a head last year after Wade Burleson, an Oklahoma pastor and IMB trustee, heavily criticized policy decisions by his fellow trustees. They recommended that he be dismissed from the board in January but later rescinded that motion.
Burleson mentioned the Memphis meeting in an April 28 post on his blog (kerussocharis.blogspot.com).
“I have been invited to participate with a group of Southern Baptist men and women from around the nation that will be meeting in Memphis…to dialogue about what can be done to change the direction of our convention,” Burleson wrote. “All these men and women are grateful for our conservative heritage, possess an evangelical and missional zeal, but are concerned that we may be becoming too narrow as a convention by exceeding the [doctrinal parameters of the denomination's 2000 revision of its confessional statement] and excluding wonderful, conservative Southern Baptists from participating and cooperating in our convention efforts to reach the world for Christ.”
Several commenters on Southern Baptist blogs and Internet discussion forums in recent months have mentioned the possibility that Burleson may be nominated for president of the convention. Cole said that he and the other meeting organizers would not bring that idea up at the meeting, but they would be happy to discuss it or any other item that comes up at the meeting. Those may include recommendations for motions to be brought to the floor of the SBC annual meeting, scheduled for June in Greensboro, N.C.
“My hope is that we will be able to steer clear of conversations about the potential candidate for Greensboro,” he said. “But it would be the height of hypocrisy for me to say certain things were off-limits for a topic of conversation. Everything's on the table.”
Cole said there were “30-40 invitees” to the meeting, drawn from a wide array of groups who are loyal to the SBC and its conservative ideology but who nonetheless feel disaffected with certain aspects of the denomination's leadership. While he declined to provide the participants' names, he said they were geographically diverse, included pastors and laypeople, and included women.
“There was no coalescing of the disparate constituencies in Southern Baptist life” before this meeting, Cole said. He indicated that the summit participants include people representative of the SBC's neo-Calvinist wing, leaders from SBC congregations involved in the “emerging church” movement, bloggers and other disaffected Southern Baptists.
He also said several current and former SBC agency trustees would participate and that the organizers had invited upper-level administrators at SBC agencies.
“Some folks were not interested in participating, some were very interested in participating, but by virtue of their employment…felt like they couldn't come right now just to protect their own employment interests,” Cole said. “It's just an open dialogue. We're not planning to mount an insurgence — we're just wanting to talk.”
Cole invited only one media representative to the meeting — Don Hinkle, editor of the Missouri Baptist Convention's conservative Pathway newspaper. Cole said a larger media presence at the meeting would “limit our discussion.”
But, Cole noted, participants will issue a press release saying what happened at the end of the meeting, around midday on May 3.
“We're hoping that the pattern we set of not being secretive about the fact that we're meeting, what we're meeting about, and then announcing what we met about when it's over will set a pattern for our convention to cooperate with transparency in the future,” he said.
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