Pastor Peter Lumpkins’ outlandish charge of Dr. Bill Curtis’ words as “needless rhetoric” doesn’t hold any water. Did Pastor Lumpkins even notice Dr. Curtis’ thesis – a defined framework on how we can refocus on our task of fulfilling the Great Commission as cooperating Southern Baptists?
Dr. Curtis’ article is, indeed, prophetic. Why? He proves to be one of the few men in SBC leadership who actually sees the real problems that need to be addressed in the SBC and has the courage to publicly address them. According to Pastor Lumpkins, Dr. Curtis should have kept his mouth shut. Hello! Southern Baptists keeping their mouths shut is why we are in the predicament we are currently in. Dr. Curtis’ evaluation has sounded the alarm and cuts against the grain of the popular (needless?) rhetoric of the power brokers who have controlled the SBC for many years. Dr. Curtis is one of only a few men who have challenged the one-sided hurtful rhetoric spewed from the voices of the denominational machine. He gives us a defined framework on how to rescue the SBC:
1. Respect the worship styles of churches that affirm the 2000 BF&M.
2. Respect the theology of those who affirm the 2000 BF&M.
3. Reject the divisive rhetoric in our convention.
4. Refocus on the biggest problem facing Southern Baptists: the overwhelming number of lost people and our failure to do very much about it.
Two hundred years from now, the SBC historians will horselaugh those who claimed that the two C’s – contemporary worship and Calvinism – were the demise of the SBC. Yet they will look at Dr. Curtis’ analysis as prophetic. I am convinced that if we take heed to Curtis’ framework and apply it, the SBC, by God’s grace, will be able to be a Great Commission denomination 200 years from now. If we fail to apply Dr. Curtis’ prophetic framework, there will be no SBC 20 years from now. I am convinced the SBC must have men of God, like Dr. Bill Curtis, who desire to lead us into a new era of cooperation in fulfilling the Great Commission.
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