JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (ABP) — A decision by Missouri Baptist Convention leaders to cut off funding for certain new church starts has set off a firestorm of protest and further widened a rift among conservative Baptists in the state.
The MBC Executive Board voted 28-10 at a Dec. 10 meeting to withdraw funding and other assistance to MBC church plants that are affiliated with the Acts 29 Network. The group is a confederation of newer congregations that are committed to reaching new groups with commitments to “both rock-solid theology and contextualizing the gospel.”
Some younger pastors have protested the move, and local associations with Acts 29 congregations are vowing to continue funding for the church starts.
As presented, the motion directed convention staffers to stop working with, supporting, or endorsing the church-planting network “in any manner at any time,” effective Jan. 1. An amendment added the provision to direct the convention's staff “to NOT provide Cooperative Program dollars toward those affiliated with the Acts 29 Network” (emphasis theirs).
The network has been controversial since last year, when some conservatives accused an Acts 29-affiliated church start in St. Louis of endorsing alcohol consumption by holding a Bible study night in a local pub. They later accused the network of being riddled with similar churches. Acts 29 is a non-denominational association of so-called “new paradigm” congregations.
Micah Fries, pastor of Frederick Boulevard Baptist Church in St. Joseph, Mo., was “very upset” by the board's decision. “This is further evidence that our lip service given to church planting is just that, lip service, and not representative of a significant commitment to the act of planting new congregations and pushing back lostness,” he wrote in his blog, Micahfries.com.
“We're not talking about a liberal/conservative argument, either,” he continued. “This is a matter of differing opinions between theological conservatives…. This decision is more evidence that we, as a convention, are moving from simply being biblical and conservative to being legalistic and exclusionary over non-essential issues.”
Fries and other bloggers point out that several Southern Baptist Convention leaders participate in the Acts 29 Network, including Ed Stetzer, senior director of the North American Mission Board's Center for Missional Research. Stetzer is a former Acts 29 Network board member.
The decision will not have an effect in at least one of the convention's largest local groupings of churches. The St. Louis Metro Baptist Association “has no plans to stop funding,” said Darren Casper, the association's director of church planting. The local body includes four Acts 29-affiliated churches, and two of those receive associational support.
“The vast majority of our churches are part of the MBC. Just because they choose to stop funding, doesn't mean we couldn't or wouldn't,” he said.
Concerned Missouri Baptist associational leaders, under the St. Louis association's leadership, have established a fund to try to offset the loss of funding to MBC-affiliated Acts 29 churches. In some cases, according to a posting on the Acts 29 website, church-plant pastors in Missouri stand to lose up to $1,000 per month of their own salaries because of the funding cut-off.
The St. Louis association will administer the fund.
Some bloggers are convinced that the convention's position against all alcohol use was the driving factor behind the defunding of Acts 29. Messengers to the convention's most recent annual meeting reaffirmed the body's tee-totaling stance.
But MBC president Gerald Davidson said he believes other issues are involved.
“Just to be real truthful, I don't know much about Acts 29,” Davidson said by telephone Dec. 13. “Alcohol was made to be the issue … that was one of the big issues, but I don't know if that was the real issue.”
A report by a special ad hoc theological study committee appointed by the convention to study the issue may have played into the board's decision as well, Davidson said. He emphasized the board did not vote to adopt that report, but simply to “receive” it.
However, the board did not receive a “minority report” prepared by committee member David McAlpin, pastor of First Baptist Church of Harvester in St. Charles, Mo.
In it, McAlpin disagreed with the committee's decision to draft a set of guidelines for cooperation that go beyond the doctrines laid out in the Southern Baptist Convention's “Baptist Faith and Message” confessional statement.
He called on Missouri Baptists to “reaffirm their commitment” to the 2000 version of the confession, and said the convention should allow its executive director to determine with which organizations the MBC will partner.
McAlpin described alcohol as a third-tier issue — a matter about which Christians can disagree while continuing to remain in fellowship. “The question Missouri Baptists must face and answer is this: Will every issue of personal conscience be made into a battleground, a matter over which we will divide fellowship?” he wrote.
The theological study committee labeled the Acts 29 Network part of the emerging-church movement. But network participants disagree with that characterization.
The committee called the network “the relevants” or the “right-wing” section of the emergent movement, which seeks to integrate the Christian message into post-modern culture.
The report charges the emergent movement with de-emphasizing “systematic Christian doctrine and biblical theology,” “intentional reluctance” to deal with “social, moral, ethical and political issues,” “distrust of traditional values” and “levels of immaturity and even rebellion,” among several other accusations.
In his blog, Acts 29 Network director Scott Thomas attributed the MBC decision primarily to alcohol and said his group is very conservative.
The organization's website emphasizes its Reformed theological views and notes that planted churches are asked to follow the guidelines set by their sponsoring denominational groups. If a denomination requires a pledge to abstain from alcohol, the church is asked to sign a pledge.
“Acts 29 believes (and practices) church autonomy,” Thomas wrote, in a Dec. 12 blog entry reacting to the defunding decision. “We do not mandate either a no-alcohol policy nor do we mandate a pro-alcohol stance. This decision is made by each local church how they wish to teach and practice the delicate alcohol issue. Acts 29 does not promote alcohol, nor do we decry the personal decision of each church planter to decide what the Scriptures teach about alcohol.”
Thomas wrote that, with the MBC Executive Board's decision to defund Acts 29 churchs, “toddling church planters were left out in the icy cold. Justice was not served. On January 1, several church planters in Missouri will lose their promised funding, not because they were guilty of breaking a rule, but because they were associated with a small church-planting network.”
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–Robert Marus contributed to this story