The 2023 annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in New Orleans is a few weeks away. If you are reading this, chances are high that the work and health of the convention are important to you. As you support kingdom work through the Cooperative Program, you probably join me in appreciating an old Russian philosophy introduced to Americans by Ronald Reagan: “Trust, but verify.” That actually sounds very Baptist to me. As your church contributes through the Cooperative Program, I hope that you take an interest in what the South Carolina Baptist Convention and the SBC do with those monies.
Regarding the upcoming SBC annual meeting, important decisions will be made, and messengers will approach multiple issues with differing convictions about best paths forward. Floor discussion and hallway conversations may turn spirited, revealing principled, even passionate, disagreement.
All of this is normal. We are a free convention of free churches, which is simultaneously one of the richest blessings and biggest challenges of Southern Baptist life. Individual churches, in their autonomy, decide whether or not to give to convention causes and, if so, at what level. But contributing churches are still independent congregations, comprised of independent Baptist Christians. I am thankful that most debate in our convention these days is about process and approach, and not about doctrine, the authority of Scripture, mission, or morality.
At any given time, there are Southern Baptists who believe the convention is generally on the right track, while others believe otherwise. Divergence of opinion is as old and enduring as the convention itself, with only the scope and scale of such differences periodically expanding and contracting.
With two large mission-sending agencies, six seminaries, a public policy entity, a resource and research publishing house, a financial and insurance services organization, and an Executive Committee — all served and led by mere mortals — there has always been fertile soil for disagreement. If we’re not careful to walk circumspectly, and we forget that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, we will be prone to aerate that already fertile soil with inaccurate, and even unkind, assumptions about others and further fertilize it with unfortunate words. Seed sown into that kind of soil will produce weeds, instead of fruit.
When you add multiple convention officers — and boards, committees and task forces, each with their own officers — it’s a wonder anything gets done at all in Southern Baptist life, with so many fallible human beings, charged with so much responsibility, by so many other fallible human beings. If we’re not careful, we will fall into a worldly politic that results in a world-mimicking cancel-culture, that, in turn, will hang over all of our heads like the Sword of Damocles.
While trust and verification are two sides of a valuable coin, it is important to remember that when Reagan said, “Trust, but verify,” he was engaged in arms-control debate with godless communists. We, however, are engaged in debate with born-again family members regarding the work of God’s kingdom.
With that in mind, I will strive to live accordingly as a messenger in New Orleans. I will aspire to pray, listen, and think, way more than I opine, post, tweet, or huddle. I will pursue and submit to the Lordship of Jesus, the authority and sufficiency of His Word, the primacy of the Great Commission, the health and integrity of our convention, and love for the brethren, under the Baptist Faith & Message, 2000. And I will not vilify those with whom I may disagree.
I believe that similarly convicted South Carolina Baptists who go to New Orleans can show our SBC family how we love and cooperate with each other, without compromise of convictions — and that reconciliation, redemption and revival can break out in the Southern Baptist Convention. “Let’s Go!”