c. 2008 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) Southern Baptists on Wednesday (June 11) easily adopted resolutions urging caution about political endorsements and keeping “Christmas” in the public square, but when they tried to determine how to accurately report membership figures, that took more discussion.
The 16.3 million-member Southern Baptist Convention has long prided itself as the nation’s largest Protestant body, but some pastors think the membership figure is inflated. A resolution by Pastor Tom Ascol of Cape Coral, Fla., who for two years has advocated reform, urged churches “to maintain accurate membership rolls” and “restore wayward church members.”
“Surely if we need to repent over anything in the Southern Baptist Convention … we need to repent over how we have failed in maintaining biblical standards in the membership of our churches,” Ascol argued as he tried to convince his fellow Baptists to amend a statement on church membership to include repentance.
His amendment pointed out that recent church figures cite 16.3 million members, but only 6.1 million attend a primary worship service in a typical week.
The Rev. Darrell Orman of Stuart, Fla., who chaired the Resolutions Committee at the Southern Baptists’ two-day meeting in Indianapolis, said his panel included pastors who have purged their rolls of deceased or inactive members to reflect a more accurate count.
“We felt it was not proper to ask our entire convention to repent when there are many godly, conscientious pastors … that are actually exercising this stewardship from the Lord of their flocks and of their fellowships,” he responded.
The nonbinding statement, including Ascol’s call for repentance, passed overwhelmingly.
The actions on the final day of the annual meeting came after delegates elected a new president, the Rev. Johnny Hunt of Woodstock, Ga., and unveiled a new evangelism strategy.
Hunt is believed to be the convention’s first Native American president. His election was followed by a resolution on ethnic diversity that was sponsored by a white pastor, Tim Rogers, who was concerned by a lack of minorities working for the denomination.
Rogers, from Statesville, N.C., said he was told by a black pastor, Dwight McKissic of Arlington, Texas, that when McKissic visited the Nashville, Tenn., offices of the church’s Executive Committee, he was told the highest level African-American employee was the head custodian.
“We don’t want to embarrass the convention,” McKissic said. “We want to motivate the convention.”
Roger Oldham, a spokesman for the committee, confirmed that the head custodian is African-American, and the committee has about 35 staffers. But he said there is wider minority representation on seminary faculty and staffs of other Southern Baptist agencies.
“To narrow it down to only one small pool of 35 people is not to get the full picture,” he said.
(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)
Other resolutions passed Wednesday addressed issues outside the denomination. Following recent furor over some pastoral endorsements of political candidates, the Baptists urged caution.
“We ask all Christians, and particularly those in leadership positions, to prayerfully seek God’s mind and will and strongly to consider the potential problems of politicizing the church and the pulpit before endorsing candidates,” the adopted statement reads.
Six months before the December holidays, Baptists decried the removing of the word “Christmas” from schools and businesses.
“We encourage Southern Baptists to be aware of and resist the march of secularism wherever it arises in opposition to the historic understanding of our freedom to worship and express our love for Christ in the marketplace of ideas,” they said.
Delegates also passed a resolution celebrating the 60th anniversary of Israel, calling it “the birthplace of our Lord and a bastion of democracy in the Middle East.”
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