AUGUSTA, Ga. (ABP) — Georgia Baptists approved a record budget and a controversial resolution against blogging during their annual meeting Nov. 12-13.
Gathering in Augusta, more than 1,400 messengers attended the Georgia Baptist Convention meeting, themed “Back to the Basics.” They also approved a 2008 Cooperative Program budget, added 62 new churches and missions, and approved the distribution of money previously given to Mercer University. Mercer is no longer affiliated with the GBC.
Wayne Bray and William Harrell, pastors at Beulah Baptist Church in Douglasville, submitted the anti-blogging resolution, which said blogs are used by “certain people … for divisive and destructive rhetoric at the expense of peace among the brethren.”
A group of younger blogger-pastors have risen to prominence in Southern Baptist Convention affairs in the past two years, with many calling for reform in the denomination's structure. But the Georgia resolution said blogging has become a tool for personal attacks on Christians and promotes a negative view of the SBC “in the eyes of the society we are striving to reach with the gospel.”
It further stated that “the messengers of this convention oppose blogging when it is used to cause division and disharmony among the members of our Southern Baptist family…. All personal attacks should cease immediately … [we] call upon bloggers to cease the critical second-guessing of these elected leaders; and be it further resolved that all Georgia Baptists respectfully request and expect that individuals who disrupt the fellowship through blogging repent and immediately cease this activity and no longer cause disharmony for the advancement of their own personal opinions and agendas.”
Several bloggers have already condemned the resolution. Roger Ferrell, pastor of the SBC- and GBC-affiliated Woodland Creek Church in suburban Atlanta, said most Baptist blogging does not center on personal differences but focuses on philosophical disagreements.
Besides, Ferrell added, all Baptists have the right to disagree respectfully with the actions of their institutions and to suggest better ways of doing things, he said in a column on www.sbcimpact.net.
“There is plenty of backbiting, backstabbing and unharmonious talk going on in Southern Baptist life and would be even if blogs never existed,” Ferrell wrote. “It is not the fault of the medium but the messengers. And many of those who blog as ‘reformers' really feel there are some deep problems in the SBC, things that desperately need to change.”
In other business, messengers elected Bucky Kennedy, pastor of First Baptist Church in Vidalia, Ga., as president Other officers elected include: Bray, one of the anti-blogging resolution sponsors, James Reynolds, associational missionary for the Floyd Baptist Association, as second vice president; Robert Richardson, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Waycross as third vice president; and Royce Hulett, pastor of Oakland Baptist Church in Hazelhurst, as fourth vice president.
Convention messengers unanimously approved a 2008 Cooperative Program budget of $52.3 million.
The ad hoc committee in charge of the redistribution of funds previously allocated to Mercer proposed that $2,412,946 be divided between the three remaining GBC-affiliated schools — Brewton-Parker College, Shorter College and Truett-McConnell College. The remainder of $1 million will be divided between the state mission budget and a special challenge budget for new state ministry projects. Messengers adopted the proposal without dissent.
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