The Southern Baptist Leaderships' Addiction to Blame: Is it conducive to the sparking of another Great Awakening?

-



Our denomination is Shrinking!
Our churches are closing in unprecedented numbers !
Our numbers of baptisms are falling!
Giving to the Cooperative Program is down!

When the question is asked of SBC leadership: 

Whose fault is it? 
Where does the problem lie? 

Too often the automatic answer comes back: "With the people in the pews. The members of the churches. If THEY would only get THEIR act together and do A, B, or C, things would turn around overnight and we'd have a revival!"

Sometimes one gets the impression that when there's a problem, Southern Baptist leaders just don't DO self-reflection. They don't have to. They already know whose to blame and they are ready at the drop of a hat to tell you.

Thom Rainer is a Southern Baptist. He says he based these fifteen points on a poll. Rainer usually bases what he says on polls and yet amazingly the results always seem to support the thesis he's wanting to promote, which has recently been:

"Is there a problem? Its your fault as members! Jesus is VERY disappointed with YOU! I keep on telling YOU that YOU'RE the problem, but, since YOU'RE so lazy, so hard hearted, so uncommitted YOU won't listen to MY good advice. If YOU'D only get a right attitude and get busy with A. and B. and C. then OUR ministry as a pastors, would start flourishing as it ought, the old glory days of Southern Baptist greatness would return, and it would be glory to glory from hear on out!"

Very often one hears talk about wanting to have another Great Awakening in the SBC, as if Great Awakenings are as easy to schedule as a workshop. Would that another Great Awakening did happen! But we might at least ask in the mean time whether a leadership addicted to blaming those being led for its own failures is conducive to sparking Great Awakenings. 

Gilbert Tennent
One of the famous documents of the First Great Awakening was Gilbert Tennent's sermon, "On the Dangers of an Unconverted Ministry". Are Southern Baptists immune to the danger of an unconverted ministry? Certainly they are not. Are there unconverted ministers and leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention? It grieves me to say that there probably are, even in quite prominent positions. 

And this causes me to ask: 

"Is it even conceivable that a sermon entitled 'On the dangers of an Unconverted Ministry' would ever be written by a Southern Baptist leader for Southern Baptist leaders?"

Is God content with everything addressed to leaders being bathed in flattery, while it is at the same time, quite acceptable for what is said to church members to be bathed in self-justifying blame? Once again, is such a practice likely to be conducive to sparking Great Awakenings?

In his book Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer warnedChristian leaders against trying to be the Holy Spirit to their congregations. In the end, he says, it inevitably ends in disappointment and ultimately leads pastors to partner with the devil by becoming, like him, "accusers of the brethren."


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Timeline of David Alexander, Celebrity Ex-Evangelical Convert to Mormonism

-
Image
"...my 47 years in evangelical Christianity." See here ( 20:20) Here, as best as I can gather, is the religious background of the celebrated ex-evangelical convert to Mormonism David Alexander.  Alexander features his evangelical background as the platform from which he defends Mormonism and opposes evangelicals.  Questions have been posed about the extent of Alexander's evangelical involvement.  How one answers these questions will depend on (1) whether one considers the Twelve Tribe group in which Alexander (as "Duresh") belonged for what appears to be most of the last 20 years, should be counted as evangelical or not, and (2) whether the great number of churches Alexander reports having passed through during the previous 27 years, some of which could undoubtedly be counted as evangelical, represents typical evangelical experience.   I leave it to my readers to decide the answers to these two questions for themselves. Where possible I have relied on Alexand
Read more

Sex & the Spiritual Teachers: Spiritual Sexual Predators in the SBNR Community

-
Image
Recently added items:  " Sexual Ethics and Healthy Boundaries in the Wake of Teacher Abuse ," Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Guide (Winter 2023): 63-77. Buddhadharma  is a spinoff of Shambhala Sun , which was founded by the notorious womanizer Chogyam Trungpa.  I was very interested in seeing whether the article mentioned Trungpa and his son Sakyong Mipham, since both of them represented poor examples of the problem described in the article.  And as it turns out they are mentioned later in the article.  They don't note, however, that Sakyong Mipham, whose sex-scandal goes back to 2018, laid low for a year or so and then went right back to teaching. They do mention that "Osel Tendzin, the American dharma heir of Chögyam Trungpa, had engaged in unprotected sex with a number of his students despite knowing he was HIV positive. One student later died of AIDS, as did Tendzin." But they don't address the charge by Stephen Butterfield, a member of the gro
Read more

Four Key Differences between the Essenes and Jesus

-
Image
1. Oil Defilement: The Essenes regarded oil as a defilement, such that “ anyone who accidentally comes into contact with it scours his person” ( Jewish War 2.123, cf. Damascus Document xii.16).   Jesus urged those who were fasting not to “ look dismal, like the hypocrites,” who “disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting,” but rather to “put oil on your head and wash your face.” (Matthew 6:16-17).   2. Hierarchy:   The Essenes were in general very big on hierarchical ranking, especially in their separated communities. If a higher-ranking member so much as touched a lower-ranking one he had to bathe, “as after contact with an alien” (Josephus, Jewish War 2.150, cf. Damascus Document XVI.5-6 and 4Q279, Community Rule III.19-25).   This naturally also affected who the Essenes in their various rankings would sit down and eat with and who they would not (Community Rule [1QS] V.10-19). Jesus, in contrast, rejected such ranking, insisting that his disciples
Read more