CHARLESTON, S.C. (ABP) — Providence Baptist Church never has been a Southern Baptist church and doesn't want to be one. But the congregation has had a hard time convincing the Southern Baptist Convention of that.
The eight-year-old church in Charleston, S.C., was counted as one of the SBC's 40,000-plus congregations for years and still gets mail and solicitations from its agencies, even though the moderate Baptist congregation has repeatedly asked to be excluded from Southern Baptist rolls, says pastor Don Flowers.
St. John's Baptist Church in Charlotte, N.C., voted to leave the Southern Baptist Convention in 1997 but is still treated as an SBC member, says pastor Richard Kremer.
“You've got a better chance of stopping the sun from rising in the east than getting off the list,” Kremer lamented. “It's not for lack of trying. We've called everyone we know to call. We've sent mail back marked 'return to sender.' … If our experience is paradigmatic of others, it's pretty much impossible.”
Because of the way the Southern Baptist Convention counts its churches, most moderate Baptist congregations are included in the tally long after they quit participating in the SBC.
No one knows how many moderate Baptist churches fall into this category.
Jack Wilkerson, an SBC spokesperson, acknowledged the convention has no way of knowing how many of the 43,024 congregations it counts could even qualify to send messengers to the annual SBC meeting — which technically is the only official way of joining the Southern Baptist Convention.
Instead, the SBC relies on state conventions to decide which churches are in. Usually if a church is a member of a state Baptist convention, by default it is considered a Southern Baptist church. “They control who is affiliated with them,” Cliff Tharp, the SBC's top statistician, said of the state conventions. “We do not go behind them and check that.”
State conventions, in turn, rely heavily on the Annual Church Profile, the statistical report each church is asked to file annually with its local association. But the hundreds of churches that don't file ACPs usually are counted anyway. State conventions routinely transfer data from the previous year for non-reporting churches, unless they know the congregations no longer exist or have opted out of the state convention, said Tharp, constituent information coordinator for the SBC's Lifeway Christian Resources.
Although the Annual Church Profile provides a wealth of information about church activities — membership, baptisms, contributions, etc. — the form does not ask churches if they are affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.
“The fly in the ointment is there is no formal process for joining the SBC, so therefore there is no formal process for 'unjoining' the SBC,” said Tharp, who manages the ACP data reported to the SBC from its affiliated state conventions.
Although the system worked fine in the past — when church participation was virtually uniform at the local, state and national levels — “that has sort of broken down now,” Tharp said.
Lifeway keeps a list of churches — now up to 108 — that it knows have officially opted out of the SBC or, in the case of a few, been kicked out. “When we do the SBC totals, we exclude those churches that are not affiliated, if we know,” said Tharp.
Although an updated system initiated in 2000 makes that information easier to track, he said, the list of non-SBC churches is almost certainly incomplete. An effort is made to keep the list up to date, Tharp said, but the default assumption is to include a church unless instructed otherwise.
That apparently is how Providence Baptist in Charleston got on the SBC's list in the first place.
When it was founded in 1996, Providence chose not to establish any ties with a national denomination. The congregation first noticed it was listed as an SBC church three years later and wrote the SBC Executive Committee in Nashville asking to be excluded. But mail kept coming from the Southern Baptist Convention and its agencies.
Earlier this year, the congregation was randomly selected to participate in a survey of SBC churches conducted by the Executive Committee, Flowers said. “So I wrote them back and said we have never sought membership, so it wouldn't be appropriate to participate in this survey.” An Executive Committee employee called to say Providence was indeed an SBC church because it is a member of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, Flowers recalled.
Bob Ethridge, director of the research group for the South Carolina convention, confirmed that churches are assumed to be in the SBC unless they state otherwise. And because the number of those churches is relatively small, he added, “that's not been something that we've been aggressive about identifying.”
“Providence is one that got by us, apparently,” Ethridge said. “Because of the Providence situation, we are more aware that this can happen and we are being more sensitive.”
Providence has since been added to the SBC's do-not-count list, said Tharp of Lifeway. However, the church still might be contacted by an SBC organization. “If someone got a printout of all churches in the [SBC's] database, Providence would be in there,” he said.
St. John's Baptist in Charlotte, on the other hand, is still on the list of SBC churches despite its protests.
Russell Schwab, assistant administrator for the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, said churches that are members of the state convention are automatically assumed to be SBC churches. St. John's was on the list forwarded to the Southern Baptist Convention, Schwab said, because he was unaware the church had withdrawn from the SBC. He said he would correct the problem.
Schwab said only 1-2 percent of North Carolina Baptist churches choose not to affiliate with the Southern Baptist Convention. The percentage likewise would be small on the national level, though no one knows for sure.
About 1,800 churches participated in some way last year in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the primary organization of moderate Baptists. That represents about 4 percent of the SBC tally of 43,024. Most of those moderate churches are still affiliated with the SBC — at least nominally.
The experience of Boulevard Baptist Church in Anderson, S.C., is typical of those moderate congregations. The church no longer takes an active role in Southern Baptist life, and Pastor Johnny McKinney noted, “I do not call myself Southern Baptist.” But he added, “We've never officially voted to withdraw from the Southern Baptist Convention.”
Boulevard Baptist, which remains a member of the state convention, still contributes a minimal amount to SBC causes “based on the individual choice” of some members, McKinney said. The issue, he explained, is fairness.
When some Boulevard members first grew disenchanted with the direction of the Southern Baptist Convention, they asked for the freedom to redirect their mission contributions outside the SBC, McKinney said. Now, years later, “we wouldn't feel very good about telling a handful of members who still want to fund the missionaries they know that they can't contribute to the SBC.”
Like other pastors who spoke to Associated Baptist Press, McKinney said the congregation decided little would be gained from a churchwide vote to leave the SBC. Instead, he said, the church will wait for the SBC or state convention to kick it out. Already there are rumblings, he said, because of the church's open membership policy, which got Boulevard ousted from its local association.
University Baptist Church in Coral Gables, Fla., came to a similar conclusion. “We don't like what [Southern Baptists] are doing, but we're not going to waste our time [debating SBC membership],” said pastor Bill White. “It would make more stink than it was worth.”
After a lengthy study, the church — one of the largest congregations in South Florida — decided instead to remain “minimally involved” in the SBC, White said. He described Southern Baptists as “uncomfortable relatives.” The church still is involved in the local association but not the state or national convention.
A multiethnic congregation in the heart of Miami, University feels far removed from Southern Baptist life, White said, and more like a foreign-mission outpost. When the church was asked to participate in the SBC's “Strategic Focus Cities” project, which targets large urban areas for evangelism, University decided to cooperate because there were no strings attached but made it clear it doesn't support the SBC's priorities, White said.
Although University's members disagree with many of the public positions of the Southern Baptist Convention, White said, “They determined they wanted to keep 'Baptist' in our name because of our heritage and what it really means.”
At St. John's Baptist in Charlotte, a negative public perception of Southern Baptists is causing church members to ask, “'Do you keep the name 'Baptist'?'” said Pastor Kremer, noting the church's deacons recently raised the issue of a name change.
“That, to me, cuts to the core of the whole theological evolution,” Kremer continued. “For those of us who have treasured Baptist values for a long time, dropping 'Baptist' from our nomenclature” would be both significant and sad, he said.
Kremer and others say being misidentified as a Southern Baptist church is particularly bothersome this time of year, as Southern Baptists gather for their annual meeting. Past headlines about Southern Baptists' boycott of Disney, evangelization of Jews, wifely submission or condemnation of Islam have put moderate Baptist churches on the defensive, pastors say.
“Our people are tired of saying, 'We're Baptist, but … ,” said Kremer.
A proposed SBC resolution urging a mass exodus of Christians from public schools already has stirred up national publicity even before the June 15-16 SBC meeting. That becomes a problem for Providence Baptist in Charleston, where a majority of new members don't have a Baptist background, said Pastor Flowers.
“I spend a great deal of time trying to explain to people that we are not a Southern Baptist church when something like this comes up,” he said.
Still only a tiny fraction of churches on the Southern Baptist rolls don't support the convention's direction, said SBC spokesperson Wilkerson. “Out of 43,000, the number you will find is minuscule,” he said. But he noted, “If by some means they have been mislisted, we would want to correct it.” Wilkerson, vice president of business and finance for the SBC Executive Committee, acknowledged the Annual Church Profile provides an imperfect accounting of Southern Baptist churches. “The ACP is not a complete list in itself,” he said. “There is the realization that even that database is not 100 percent.”
Any church that sends any amount of money to a Southern Baptist institution or entity can qualify for representation at the annual SBC meeting, Wilkerson said, but the Southern Baptist Convention has no record of church contributions. “The verification of that,” he said, “is the state convention,” which forwards contributions to the SBC in lump sums, not itemized by individual churches. “We have no idea at all where that money comes from.”
Although the system of representation is imperfect, Wilkerson said, there is no sentiment to change it. “The issue, from my point of view, is does [a church] have a heart and purpose for our work,” he concluded. “We think if they're with us in purpose and work, the dollars will follow.”
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