NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP) — Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee president Frank Page has announced the members of an advisory team who will help him craft a strategic plan to bring together various groups within the convention who hold different opinions on the issue of Calvinism.
The 16-member group — which includes three people from the Mid-Atlantic — will conduct its first meeting Aug. 29-30 in Nashville, Tenn.
“My goal is to develop a strategy whereby people of various theological persuasions can purposely work together in missions and evangelism,” Page told Baptist Press. The list was announced Aug. 15.
At some point in the coming weeks and months, he said, “most likely there will be the crafting of a statement regarding the strategy on how we can work together.”
“I want to be very clear: This is not an attempt to redo the theological consensus that we have in the Baptist Faith and Message 2000,” Page said. “It is practical in nature, not doctrinal.”
Page emphasized that the group is “not an official committee” of the convention. He also said additional names could be added to the group.
“It’s a group of helpers helping Frank Page come up with some sort of strategy document,” he said.
David Dockery, president of Union University in Jackson, Tenn., helped Page put together the list.
“We wanted people who truly represented the various constituencies involved in this theological discussion,” said Page, who in May and then in June publicly said he was working on naming such a group.
Following are the members of the advisory team:
• Daniel Akin, president, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, N.C.
• Mark Dever, senior pastor, Capitol Hill Baptist Church, Washington D.C.
• David Dockery, president, Union University, Jackson, Tenn.
• Leo Endel, executive director, Minnesota-Wisconsin Baptist Convention.
• Ken Fentress, senior pastor, Montrose Baptist Church, Rockville, Md.
• Timothy George, dean, Beeson Divinity School, Birmingham, Ala.
• Eric Hankins, senior pastor, First Baptist Church, Oxford, Miss.
• Johnny Hunt, pastor, First Baptist Church, Woodstock, Ga.
• Tammi Ledbetter, homemaker and layperson, Inglewood Baptist Church, Grand Prairie, Texas.
• Steve Lemke, provost, director of the Baptist Center for Theology and Ministry at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
• Fred Luter, senior pastor, Franklin Avenue Baptist Church, New Orleans; president, Southern Baptist Convention.
• R. Albert Mohler Jr., president, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Ky.
• Paige Patterson, president, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas.
• Stephen Rummage, senior pastor, Bell Shoals Baptist Church, Brandon, Fla.
• Daniel Sanchez, professor of missions, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas.
• Jimmy Scroggins, senior pastor, First Baptist Church, West Palm Beach, Fla.
In early August, Page was part of a panel discussion where he and other panelists said Southern Baptists should and can unite, despite differences on the issue of Calvinism.
“Baptists for 400 years have disagreed over this issue, and we’re not going to come to some place where we all agree. I think we can come to a place where we all can work together,” said Dockery, one of the speakers at the Aug. 4 conference sponsored by the Kentucky Baptist Convention. The conference was called “Calvinism: Concerned, Confused, or Curious.”
“In the 18th century, there were particular [Calvinist] and general Baptists, but at the sending of [missionary] William Carey, they joined hands together for the common cause of missions. That’s something we can do again,” Dockery added.
In addition to Page, other speakers were New Orleans seminary’s Lemke and Hershael York, associate dean of the school of theology at Southern Seminary.
The conference included two lectures by Dockery on the history of Baptists and Calvinism, a dialogue between York and Lemke, a panel discussion featuring all four speakers and a charge by Page on his vision for a unified convention.
“Right now, there is deep division in our convention over this issue,” Page said. “It comes every year at the convention [annual meeting]. It is not going to stop until we learn how to treat each other, how to be honest, how to clarify what we really are saying.”
There are “extremes” on both sides of the issue, Page said. Lemke agreed.
“We’ve got to rein in some of the people on our sides,” Lemke said. “Some of these poster boys for Calvinism are hurting the cause of Calvinism horribly —s ome of these guys on blogs that have an un-Christlike spirit and are just mean. … At the same time, there are some people on my side who are mean and they really don’t understand Calvinism. … They misrepresent or caricature Calvinism. I can’t rein in people on the Calvinist side. Dr. York has to do that. And he can’t rein in the people on my side. I have to do that.”
Panelists said when a church has an opening for a pastorate, both sides of the issue — pastoral candidates and pastoral search committees — must be honest in stating their beliefs and desires. A “small minority” of Calvinists, Page said, fail to be honest and then try to push Calvinism on the church.
Lemke said there “clearly” is a resurgence of Calvinism within the convention and among seminary students, “whether they be New Orleans Seminary or Southern Seminary.” Students, he said, are coming to seminary “with pre-commitments toward Calvinism, largely because of non-SBC speakers like John Piper and others.”
“Most Southern Baptist Calvinists of this generation are committed to missions and evangelism,” Lemke said, mentioning Alabama pastor David Platt as an example. “… As long as that is the case, that there is a common denominator, then we can work together.”
The debate over Calvinism, Page said, is a debate “within the family.” It is “inerrantists here who are disagreeing with other inerrantists.”
When Page was president of the convention, he said, he appointed Calvinists and non-Calvinists to the Committee on Committees “because they were men and women that would go out and witness with me.”
Both sides, he said, need to learn to respect one another.
“We’re talking about and at each other too often,” he said. “When you respect someone, you talk to them.”
Michael Foust is associate editor of Baptist Press.