Will associations, conventions become relics?

Posted: 3/02/07

Will associations, conventions become relics?

By Phillip Jordan

Associated Baptist Press

JACKSON, Tenn. (ABP)—Baptist state conventions and associations will soon cease to exist as they are currently structured, according to Mike Day, director of missions for the Mid-South Baptist Association in Memphis, Tenn.

“A new paradigm is on the horizon,” Day told participants at the “Baptist Identity II” conference at Union University. “It is not a fully developed paradigm. It is at the stage where it is embraced by a few, touted by a few, and discussed and dismissed by the many. But it is emerging.”

At a three-day symposium featuring speakers such as Paige Patterson, Frank Page and Thom Rainer, Day sparked the most discussion with his description of a new model for Southern Baptist state conventions and associations.

This year, Baptists will celebrate the 300th anniversary of the association, traditionally a geographic grouping of congregations—in the South, typically the size of counties. In the last two centuries, state and regional conventions also have developed, giving Baptists a bureaucratic structure many believe is ill-suited for today’s world.

Day called for associations to quit directing church programs. He called for associations to turn control of all properties and programs over to congregations. Instead, they should exist only to help support what churches are doing.

He also suggested associations be organized regionally so that state conventions can morph into these new supplementary regional associations.

Associations and state conventions never were established to be superior to local churches, but that is how they operate today, Day said. And as associations and conventions have lost influence, so too have local churches.

Southern Baptists “will proclaim autonomy as sacred and necessary,” Day said. “Yet we behave sometimes like we require the approval of others or we behave as if we have the right to approve. It’s an implied hierarchy, for sure. We won’t ever admit that it exists.”

Because of that, services are duplicated at the church and associational levels, churches lose influence, funding structures become more bureaucratic, and mission dollars get stretched even thinner, he added.

“Now, some of you are wondering what in the world am I eating, what am I smoking?” Day joked. “I know what the SBC has been saying, and I know about the massive restructuring in 1995. I know we say the focus is on the local church.”

“But my question is, has the church gotten that message? Does the church realize that is what we’re about? I would say, based on the predicament we are in, it has not heard the message, or we have not done a good enough job communicating it clearly.”

But that must be changed, he said. The new paradigm must be church-driven, priority-based, resource-focused, strategically managed and regionally oriented.

He pointed to St. Louis, Tulsa, Okla., and his own Mid-South Association as examples of where this shift already is under way.

“It starts with the church as the legitimate expression of God’s mission in the world,” Day said. “It affirms that the Great Commission was given to the church and was not given to associations or denominational entities.”

The boldest statement of Day’s speech came near the end, when he predicted if associations are not bound by geographical boundaries, then they can be located regionally around the top 50 cities, and state conventions will no longer be needed.

“They won’t exist,” Day said. “They will eventually morph into these regional associations.”

These new-look entities could be interdenominational, he observed.

Art Rogers is the pastor of Skelly Drive Baptist Church in Tulsa, where the regional association has been working toward this new model for more than a year. Tulsa is even further along that path than the Memphis-based Mid-South Association, he said.

“We have completely divested ourselves of owning any institutions and are moving to a completely supportive role,” Rogers said. “We don’t want to run things anymore. It’s a completely new approach.”

Tulsa’s association has given away a campground, ministry center, crisis-pregnancy center and other possessions either to independent bodies or local churches.

A trimmed budget, smaller staff and downsized bureaucracy has allowed Rogers’ association put money back into programs run by local churches—and avoid duplicating any services.

“Everything has just flourished as we’ve done it,” Rogers said. “Everybody is just so much freer now to do what they’re supposed to do.”