Two words kept scrolling across my personal screen as I sat before God in solemn assembly Jan. 30: arrogance and pride! How many times have I boasted about (1) being affiliated with the largest Protestant denomination in America, (2) giving to fund the largest mission force in the evangelical world, and (3) providing support for the other work accomplished by the Southern Baptist Convention, including the six finest seminaries in the world. At the same time, I was convicted about my haughty attitude toward other denominations, especially those relying on tradition and hierarchy as their authority in pursuing a kingdom mission. When I knelt in the circle on our floor, I asked the Father to forgive these grievous sins.
HolmesLately I’ve had the impression that these claims are boasts that may be factual, but only marginally so. We’re the largest denomination only if we include in our count unregenerate people carried on our rolls or a few million we haven’t seen in years. Yes, our foreign mission roster is impressive and perhaps the largest in the world. But we play footsie with the numbers on the home front. And, yes, our subsidiary work is significant, our seminaries certainly world-class. But these boasts don’t benefit the kingdom or acknowledge the sovereignty of God. They kind of make it seem God is depending on us to accomplish His global redemptive plan. Not good.
What is more, the discovery of the year, at least in the first three months of my term as president of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, is that we’re as tradition-bound and hierarchical as even our Catholic friends. Here I am, the one whose personal code involves the “new thing” God is always doing (Isaiah 43:19) having to learn which things are mandated by our governing documents and which ones are just plain tradition. Oops. The fingers we’ve always pointed at others are now pointing at us. No, me.
Maybe the mathematics of subtraction and reduction, our recent numerical declines and financial reversals, and all the rhetoric about the Great Commission Resurgence, are the outcomes of our arrogant and prideful ways. Doesn’t the Bible warn about sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind? Or, perhaps we don’t believe that stuff any more either.
So, read some of the Old Testament to rediscover what happens when arrogance and pride define people supposedly serving God. When they’re our lead descriptives, the virtues of trust, reliance, dependence, faith and reverence are subsumed in the undergrowth of self-absorption. Even more, read how God humbles puffed-up people. It makes me wonder: Is our loss of mission right now just a reflection of a pride that has eclipsed us from Him? Just wondering-
It’s back to the Bible time for me. Every day I’m asking God to bring Psalm 51:17 to mind: “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” For me, this involves remaining soft and pliable in His hands, our gracious potter. I’m thinking some time in Jeremiah 18 might be useful too.
If we still believe that stuff –