Posted: 6/28/06

BaptistWay Bible Series for July 9

Investigate your heart’s desire

• 1 Timothy 6:2-16

By Joseph Matos

Dallas Baptist University, Dallas

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett made the news recently. Gates announced he would soon step down from overseeing the operations at Microsoft and dedicate himself to his charitable foundation. Buffett will donate in excess of $30 billion to philanthropic ventures (much of that given to Gates’ foundation).

I don’t know the spiritual condition of either person, but what a gesture. They are doing the very thing Paul told Timothy to teach the rich (1 Timothy 6:18). You may protest, “Well, they can afford to give away billions and still have billions.” Admittedly, this is an extreme example. After all, they are the world’s first- and second-richest men. But it would be wrong to suggest one must have billions (or millions) in order to be generous. Besides, Paul did not condemn wealth. He condemned an unhealthy desire to gain wealth.

For a printer-friendly version, click on the printer icon at bottom of page.

In his final comments, Paul charged Timothy to offer correct teaching regarding wealth. In those comments, he addressed the false teachers’ wrong motives for godliness (6:3-5), listed the dangers associated with unhealthy attitudes toward wealth (vv. 6-10), warned Timothy against such temptations and exhorted him to righteous living (vv. 11-17), and advised Timothy on what to teach those who were rich. These words are as timely today as they were when Paul first penned them.

False teachers (6:3-5)

As previously in the letter, Paul used a characterization of false teachers as preface to his instructions to Timothy. Verse 3 opens with a hypothetical—“If anyone teaches false doctrines …”—but the situation at Ephesus hardly was hypothetical.

False teachers were present. Paul used this device simply to offer up a description of them. Here the list is long again of the many errors of the false teachers (vv. 4, 5). Anyone who teaches what is contrary to sound Christian doctrine is both arrogant and ignorant (“conceited and understands nothing,” v. 4).

Further, the results of their activity are many, but they can be summed up briefly: They bring controversy that leads to disruption. One characteristic serves as Paul’s transition to the topic he addresses in the remainder of the letter. The false teachers believe godliness is only a means to securing financial gain (v. 5). That their teaching was riddled with error wasn’t their only problem; their motive for godliness was wrong, as well.

Unhealthy attitude toward wealth (6:6-10)

Paul defined true gain: it was godliness with contentment. Financial gain, though not wrong in itself, does not bring contentment. It doesn’t go with us when we die (v. 8).

Paul declared we should be content with food and clothing. The point is, if our needs are met, we should be content. The struggle nowadays is grasping the difference between our needs and our wants.

Paul then went on to warn that people who desire wealth face temptations. Even ruin and destruction can result.

At the heart of Paul’s comment is an axiom often misquoted: “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” (v. 10). He did not say money was the root of all evil. Money is a medium of exchange and a tool; it is neither good nor evil. It is the love of money that is the problem. Some who loved money, Paul illustrated, wandered from the faith and encountered many griefs.

Exhortation and encouragement for Timothy (6:11-16)

In light of those dangers, Paul exhorted Timothy to “flee from all this” (v. 11). The drive for wealth should not characterize Timothy’s life and work. Rather, he should follow a six-fold higher pursuit—righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness.

Paul then repeated his earlier command to Timothy: “Fight the good fight of the faith” (v. 12; see 1:18). Perhaps as a direct comment on the false teachers’ misplaced value on money, Paul commanded Timothy to take hold of the eternal life to which he was called. He also encouraged him to do these things until the appearing of Christ (v. 14). The reference to the coming of Christ, which God would bring about in his own time, caused Paul to break out in doxology (vv. 15-16).

A word to the rich (6:17-19)

Paul did not call for the wealthy to repent of anything; he did not tell Timothy to confiscate the wealth of the rich. Rather, he provided clear instruction on the proper attitude toward their wealth. The rich should avoid arrogance and should not put their hope in their wealth. Money is not certain; it can be here one day and gone the next. Just follow the stock market to see. Sooner or later, we and our wealth eventually will be parted (one need only be reminded of verse 7). The only certain hope is God, for he is the provider.

Paul required two things of the rich—doing good deeds and being generous to share with others (v. 18). With language that echoes Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:19-21), Paul offered assurance such generosity would lead to treasures for the coming age. The rich, then, would take hold of what is “truly life” (v. 19).

Perhaps the Gates/Buffett example is not extreme after all. For it is not about one’s wealth; it is about one’s desire for wealth. The object of our desire is what matters. Your money or your God, Jesus said as much (Matthew 6:24).

Discussion questions

• What are the signs indicating that money has taken priority in our lives over God?

• How do we identify and avoid the “temptations” and “trap” Paul mentions (v. 9)?

• What are ways we can show generosity with our money?

• What kinds of evil can result from the love of money?

Posted: 6/28/06

Family Bible Series for July 9

God can be trusted to help in times of struggle

• Exodus 3:4-8, 19-21; 4:10-12, 27-31

By Greg Ammons

First Baptist Church, Garland

Perhaps we have voiced the questions openly or wondered them secretly. Does God truly have a purpose for my life? Does my situation really matter to him? Does he have the power to help me in situations that appear overwhelming?

As the book of Exodus opens, the Israelites wondered the same things. They faced an overwhelming situation as slaves in Egypt and needed to know God had the power to act. His people needed to know God was able and willing to help in their situation.

God takes the initiative to help (Exodus 3:4-8)

Pharaoh’s heavy hand made life almost unbearable for God’s people. They labored each day in the hot sun and cried out to the Lord for help. God noticed their trials and heard their cries. So, he took the initiative to help them.

For a printer-friendly version, click on the printer icon at bottom of page.

God ignited a bush in the desert near Moses as he tended the flock of Jethro. Moses decided to see the strange sight of a burning, yet unconsumed, bush (v. 3). As Moses turned aside, God called to Moses from the bush and assured him of his presence (vv. 4-6).

The Lord said: “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. … I am concerned about their suffering. … So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians” (vv. 7-8). God saw the desperate situation and took the initiative to provide help in calling Moses to lead the Israelites.

In a letter from William Tecumseh Sherman to U.S. Grant in 1865, Sherman wrote he was assured of Grant’s help. “I knew that whatever situation I was in, you would come to my aid, if you were still alive.”

God can be trusted much more than even a close friend. Whatever situation you find yourself in, you can know God will take the initiative to help you. He can be trusted.

God’s power exceeds any other (Exodus 3:19-21)

Pharaoh appeared all-powerful to the Israelites. They needed to know God’s power was far superior to any other. God told Moses the king of Egypt would not release the people unless a mighty hand compelled him (v. 19). God said, “So, I will stretch out my hand and strike the Egyptians with all of the wonders that I will perform among them” (v. 20). When Pharaoh saw the power of God, he would let the people go.

A seminary professor struck up a conversation with a young boy on a bus. He wanted to instruct the young lad about the power of God, so he offered, “I’ll give you this shiny apple if you will tell me something that God can do.” The young boy replied, “I’ll give you a whole barrel of them if you tell me something God can’t do!”

The young boy knew what we often need to know today. God’s power far exceeds any other. Whatever your circumstance, remember this powerful fact.

God knows how to help (Exodus 4:10-12)

Moses was skeptical about his new assignment. He told God he had never been eloquent (v. 10). God asked Moses: “Who gave man his mouth? Is it not I, the Lord? … Now, go. I will help you speak and will teach you what to say” (vv. 11-12).

Often, Christians are in overwhelming situations and wonder if God truly knows best. They ponder the possible solutions to their plight and secretly wonder if God knows how to help.

Later, God reminded his people through the prophet Isaiah his ways were not their ways. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways than your ways" (Isaiah 55:9). When faced with seemingly impossible situations, remember God’s ways are not your ways. He knows exactly how to help, although it may not be what you had in mind.

God can be believed (Exodus 4:27-31)

God sent Moses’ brother, Aaron, to reassure the new leader. Moses told his brother all God had told him to do (v. 28). So, the brothers brought all of the people together and told them what God had said (v. 29). Also, Aaron performed the signs God gave him before the people and they believed. When they realized God could be believed, they bowed down and worshipped him (vv. 30-31).

God is trustworthy and can be believed. One theologian estimated there are more than 2,000 promises in the Bible. When God makes a promise to us, we can know for certain he will accomplish whatever he says.

We all know people whose word is not trustworthy. If they make a promise, we listen to it cautiously. However, God is completely trustworthy. His word is backed by his character. Whatever your situation, you can know with certainty that God can be believed. You can trust both his purpose and his power.

Discussion questions

• Describe a situation in which God took the initiative to help.

• Why do you think many Christians doubt God’s power?

• Describe a time when you simply took God at his word.

Posted: 6/28/06

Explore the Bible Series for July 9

Elihu seeks to set things straight concerning Job

• Job 32:1-37:24

By James Adair

Baptist University of the Americas, San Antonio

In the 1960s TV show Bewitched, nosy neighbor Gladys Kravitz regularly snooped on the strange goings-on at the house of Darrin and Samantha Stephens. Although warned by her husband not to stick her nose where it didn’t belong, she did so anyway, often with comic or even disastrous results.

In the book of Job, the enigmatic figure of Elihu appears suddenly in chapter 32 and also sticks his nose into the discussion. As the first few verses of the chapter tell us several times, Elihu is mad, and he’s not going to take it any more.

Who is Elihu, and why does he feel compelled to participate in a discussion in which he previously played no part whatsoever?

Most commentators believe the Elihu speeches of Job 32-37 are a later insertion into the text, perhaps added by a critic of the book who wasn’t happy with the conclusion of the cycle of speeches involving Job and his friends. There are a number of characteristics of these chapters that suggest a different, probably later, author.

For a printer-friendly version, click on the printer icon at bottom of page.

First, Elihu appears suddenly in the story, without having been mentioned in the prologue, where all the other characters were introduced. Even more surprisingly, after his speech, he never is mentioned or directly referred to in the speeches of Yahweh (Job 38-41) or in the epilogue (Job 42).

Second, Elihu is the only character in the story with a Hebrew name. His name means “he is my God,” and it perhaps suggests that Elihu’s words more closely reflect correct divine teaching than those of Job’s three friends.

Third, Elihu is the only one of Job’s critics who ever mentions Job’s name, and he does so frequently.

Fourth, several stylistic differences appear in Elihu’s speeches contrary to the normal style of the rest of the book, including different vocabulary and an increased preference for Aramaic rather than Hebrew words.

Job 32:1-5

If the words of Elihu are a later insertion, what does that mean for modern readers of the text? If we adopt a canonical perspective, which reads the biblical text in its present form regardless of its compositional history, we will take the words of Elihu seriously.

The brief prose introduction to Elihu’s speeches indicates Elihu was dissatisfied with the three friends’ inability to answer Job satisfactorily, and he also was unhappy with Job’s self-justifying argument.

Some textual traditions in verse 1 say Job’s three friends stopped speaking because Job was righteous in their eyes—that is, Job’s arguments had convinced them of his innocence—and thus they declined to speak any further. This reading seems unlikely. It is more probable the friends on the one hand and Job on the other had stated their cases, each without convincing the other.

In verse 3, Elihu is angry with Job’s friends because of their inability to refute Job. The Hebrew text says despite their inability to answer Job, they still condemned him. Although this reading is possible, Elihu’s anger at the friends seems misplaced. An alternative reading, recording by Jewish scribes, makes more sense: The friends’ inability to refute Job effectively resulted in God standing condemned, a good reason for Elihu’s anger. If this reading is correct, it accords well with another similar scribal alteration of the text in Job 2:9.

Job 33:8-11; 34:1-37

Elihu has two main problems with Job’s arguments. The first is Job believes God is punishing him despite his innocence. Although the speeches of Elihu may be somewhat more nuanced on this point than the speeches of Job’s friends, Elihu shares the same basic view of God’s relationship with humanity: God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked. In other words, we live in a moral cause-and-effect universe.

Elihu is quite concerned to protect God’s righteousness: “God will not do wickedly, and the Almighty will not pervert justice” (34:10). Job must have sinned, Elihu says, or else God wouldn’t have brought this punishment upon him. Even if Job’s former sins were not great, his recent claims that God is unjust certainly qualify as sins worthy of severe punishment (34:34-37).

To prove his point, Elihu even resorts to quoting Job out of context in 34:9 (referring to 21:15), attributing to Job words Job had earlier said were characteristic of the wicked. Perhaps Elihu reasoned, “Well, Job really did say these words, so it’s fair to throw them back in his face.”

Job 33:13-33

Elihu’s second major problem with Job’s defense of himself is Job’s claim that God refuses to answer him. On the contrary, Elihu argues, God speaks to people all the time, in many different ways, but people don’t always perceive it. Sometimes God speaks to people through dreams or visions. Sometimes God’s communication comes through pain and suffering. God might even send an angel with a message. All the ways in which God communicates are designed to bring a person back into a proper relationship with God. After all, Elihu says, God does not want to punish the righteous but to restore them after a fall.

Elihu makes a good point: God does speak to people in a variety of ways, but people often are unaware of what God is trying to communicate because their hearts are not attuned to God. Too often, Christians who await a specific word from God are oblivious to the many ways in which God is at work around them.

Having said this, however, I can’t agree with Elihu’s conclusion that because Job hasn’t heard God, Job must not have been listening. Sometimes God’s “answer” to our plight is silence. It is entirely possible for a righteous person to seek the presence of God and be answered only by God’s apparent absence. God is never truly absent, of course, but God, for reasons which we may never know, may choose to remain silent in certain situations.

Elihu's claim that God constantly is communicating with the righteous ignores the sovereignty of God. God often speaks, yes, and we need to open our ears—and our hearts—to hear what God is saying, but sometimes we have no answer from God, and that is just as God intends.

Discussion questions

• What does Elihu contribute to the conversation about Job and God’s justice? Would the message of the book of Job have been significantly different without these speeches?

• Does it offend us when people say things about God that we believe to be false? What about when people make what we consider to be weak arguments in God’s favor?

• Do we ever resort to taking another person’s words out of context in order to win an argument? Do we approve of politicians and other public figures who do so, as long as they’re just arguing with those with whom we happen to disagree?

• In what ways does God communicate with us today? Have you ever experienced a time when you felt God was absent?

Posted: 6/27/06

Lotz: Be more like the early church

By Tony Cartledge

N.C. Biblical Recorder

ATLANTA (ABP)—Western Baptists need to leave Christendom behind and become more like the early church, Baptist World Alliance General Secretary Denton Lotz told a BWA dinner held in conjunction with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship general assembly.

Many Westerners still hold a “Christendom-based” model of thinking—characterized by the dominant cultural role played by the Christian church in Western history, particularly in Europe, where national churches were granted privileged status, he said.

“But the fact is, there is a new paradigm,” said Lotz. “Christianity has moved to the southern hemisphere.”

When the BWA—a global network of 213 Baptist organizations—was formed 100 years ago, 85 percent of all Christians lived in the northern hemisphere, Lotz said. Now 60 percent of Christians live south of the equator.

“Baptists work best outside of a Christendom model,” Lotz said. As a result, Africa and Asia are on their way to becoming the center of Christianity, he said. And a day will come, he said, when America and Europe will need to be re-evangelized.

The establishment of Christendom moved Christianity from the margins of society to the center, leading it to rely on the church’s power rather than on divine power, he said.

The early church was voluntary, but Christendom made it compulsory, Lotz explained, making it at home within the culture. The image of Christ changed from that of a loving shepherd to that of a cosmic Lord, he said, and the energy of the church was shifted from mission to maintenance.

Lotz illustrated a movement from the Christendom model to the early church model by describing rapid church growth in Moscow, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Aremenia, and China.

“There is a great movement of the Holy Spirit around the world,” he said.

The Western church should learn to think of itself “as a colony of faith, as a prophetic movement,” Lotz said.

Earlier, Lotz interviewed visiting Baptist leaders from Romania and Liberia. Paul Montacute, director of Baptist World Aid, talked about recent disaster relief work following the earthquake in Indonesia, and continuing recovery work in Sri Lanka, where a Baptist children’s village now serves orphans left by the tsunami that struck Dec. 26, 2004.

BWA was also instrumental in arranging a meeting with Vietnamese officials to discuss religious liberty in that country, according to Alan Stanford, president of the North American Baptist Fellowship, one of six regional groups within BWA.

Using funds contributed by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, several Baptist leaders traveled to Vietnam and arranged to sponsor a celebratory dinner for about 600 Vietnamese Baptist leaders who had not been able to meet together since the fall of Hanoi in 1975, he said.

Posted: 6/27/06

CBF broke tradition in commissioning service

By Robert Marus

Associated Baptist Press

ATLANTA (ABP)—The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship broke tradition during its annual general assembly in Atlanta by commissioning only short-term and self-funded mission workers, rather than any fully funded career missionaries.

The group commissioned 19 new affiliated workers during the service, which has become a tradition on the last night of the Fellowship’s annual meeting. Of those, six were funded for one-to-three-year posts under the aegis of the group’s Global Service Corps.

The remaining 13 were self-sustaining missionaries appointed as part of CBF’s AsYouGo program, which provides CBF affiliation and some support to workers whose careers take them to mission fields or whose full-time missions work is funded completely by a church, donors or themselves.

CBF, whose missions giving has lagged in recent years, will not appoint any career missionaries this year. Appointments during the last two years benefited from a multimillion gift from a single donor.

With the latest appointments, CBF has 107 active career missionaries, 20 Global Service Corps workers and 38 other missionaries affiliated with CBF through AsYouGo and other programs in the United States and abroad.

In a charge to the new missionaries, Jack Snell, interim CBF global missions coordinator, gave a candid assessment of the situation into which the missionaries entered.

“There is so much to be done, and we are doing so little,” he said. “Our offerings are flat; we have not reached our goal in the Offering for Global Missions in several years. In many cases, our passion is dull and our compassion is diluted by fatigue. …

“And yet there continues to be unbelievable statistics that tell us that one out of every four persons in the world still has not had the chance to hear the gospel of Christ. … The inequity between the haves and have-nots widens even as we are here tonight. The world is groaning.”

“Will we simply bless these (missionaries) tonight and go home and feel good that we had a part in this service?” he asked. “What we’re talking about tonight involves all of us—not just for tonight, but for the future. Because each of us is being called to show compassion. Each of us is being called to enter into the pain of the world.”

General assembly participants heard a video presentation on the work each missionary will do, followed by an endorsement and commitment voiced by a representative of their home church or a congregation with which they will work.

Global Service Corps personnel commissioned included Susan and Wes Craig of Waco, who will work with the Romany people in Bucharest, Romania, and Elizabeth Fortenberry of Waco, who will work with international women and families in Los Angeles’ academic community.

AsYouGo affiliates commissioned included Connie and Rod Johnson of Houston, who will facilitate teams helping with medical and other physical needs in far southern Mexico.

New CBF Global Missions Coordinator Rob Nash, who was elected two days earlier, prayed for the appointees at the end of the service.

“We pray for their hearts, that you might fill them with an overwhelming love that emerges out of their own brokenness and humility,” he said. “We pray for their minds, that you might open them up to even deeper truths about you and about the world to which you’ve called them.”

Posted: 6/27/06

CBF, emergent church good fit, Myers says

By Tony Cartledge

N.C. Biblical Recorder

ATLANTA (ABP)—Atlanta church planter Jake Myers used the images of beer, candles and theologian Soren Kierkegaard to describe the “emergent conversation” taking place within Christianity, which he said could be a good fit for members of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

Myers, who leads an emergent community in the Little Five Points area of Atlanta, led a breakout session during the CBF general assembly. He also serves on staff at Wieuca Road Baptist Church in Atlanta as a church planter and mission leader.

The “emergent church” movement is a decade-old movement of Christians—both mainline and evangelical— exploring new expressions of Christianity within a context of postmodern thought and culture. Led by proponents like Brian McLaren and Doug Pagitt, the emergent community interacts through blogs and websites like emergentvillage.com.

Myers suggested “generative friendship” as a two-word definition for the emergent movement—a place “where we can come together and talk about what it means to be Christ-followers in a postmodern, post-Holocaust, post-colonial, post-Christendom world.”

Myers used beer as a rubric for the conversational and inclusive aspects of the emergent-church movement, suggesting that beer is commonly shared by friends and accompanied by conversation. That conversation crosses theological and generational lines to support “the church in all its forms,” he said, from new monastic communities to house churches and from coffee shop groups to larger gatherings.

Ethics, social justice, and hospitality are central to the movement, he said. Among evangelicals, he said, the emergent movement has sparked a greater concern for justice issues, he said.

Candles “transform space” and “create a more somber, sacred environment,” Myers said, thus serving as an appropriate metaphor for a discussion of “how we connect with God in our postmodern world.”

Some emergent Christians have embraced ancient liturgical practices, he said, finding in them an openness to mystery not found in worship that is primarily rational.

Whatever the shape of it, liturgy needs to be organic, not imposed from outside but emerging from within the community of faith, Myers said.

The emergent conversation promotes a different model for doing church, Myers said. It is not an “attractional model” based on investing resources and doing marketing designed to attract as many people as possible, but a more incarnational or missional model that places more emphasis on being the church than on going to church.

Myers cited Danish existentialist Kierkegaard as a theologian who dealt with an apathetic, bourgeois church that didn’t really impact its culture but became assimilated to it. The emergent church, like Kierkegaard, calls on believers to follow Christ more than culture.

“The emergent conversation allows everyone to be a theologian,” Myers said, adding that “theology gets a lot of us into trouble” with critics.

Some emergent Christians are rethinking concepts like the penal substitution theory of atonement and challenging the idea that the primary reason for becoming a Christian is to avoid going to hell, he said.

Emergent Christians place a “huge emphasis on the kingdom of God,” Myers said, and on becoming “missional.” To be missional “is to be passionate on purpose,” he said, worrying less about whether people come to church and more about how “we participate in God’s mission in the world.”

Myers' audience included older Fellowship members wanting to learn about the emergent-church movement and younger Fellowship participants interested in ministering in such a setting.

Myers stopped short of identifying CBF with the emergent movement, but he said they have some similarities. Both think of themselves as renewal movements, he said. CBF describes itself as a “fellowship”; the emergent church describes itself as a “generative friendship.” Both CBF and the emergent movement were birthed through crisis. Both emphasize autonomy. And both have made theological education a big part of the conversation, he said.

Posted: 6/27/06

Hudson: Step out of bubble and hear God

By Hannah Elliott

Associated Baptist Press

ATLANTA (ABP)—A Methodist from South Africa told a group of Baptists in the American South that they need to wake up to reality and challenged them to “step outside your own little bubble” in order to hear God’s call.

When Trevor Hudson spoke at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s general assembly in Atlanta, his speech—which complemented the session theme, “For the healing of the nations, Jesus wept”—was received with thunderous applause.

But listening to the groans of the world won’t always be easy, Hudson said. If Christians are going to open their hearts, they need to do something often difficult: Step out of their protective bubbles and embrace the world around them.

“Please never turn your back on the world—never!” Hudson said.

Reciting the words of a popular chorus, he added, “‘The cross before me, the world behind me’—that is heresy. Jesus is the light of the world. He lights everything up. Those songs betray the love of God for this world. God’s loving arms encircle the globe. God is wanting to redeem the whole of creation. Listen to the groan.”

Hudson cited the eighth chapter of Romans, in which the Apostle Paul wrote that all of creation “has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.”

The groans, he said, come from creation, from Christians and, most notably, from the Spirit, which constantly prays the “prayer of Jesus” in Christians’ hearts. He told the audience the Spirit’s prayer calls for the kingdom of God to come quickly, for the “universe to be mended,” and for everything to be reconciled together in Christ.

Illustrating the global nature of their concern, assembly participants sang worship songs from Argentina, South Africa and Liberia.

Hudson told the Fellowship assembly their group is moving in the right direction toward spreading the gospel.

“I have a sense that the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is on a train, and it’s moving,” he told participants. “I’ve really appreciated the energy that I sense in the movement. To me as an outsider, it seems that you’re on a journey toward greater missional faithfulness, to deep recognition in your life of the inner and outer journeys of faith.”

The important thing about that “train” ride, however, is whether you have a ticket, Hudson said. Hudson defined the ticket as “an open heart” ready to hear the groans of the world and the Spirit.

Hudson has spent 34 years ministering in a congregation in Benoni, South Africa, “seeking to grow the people of God in a very turbulent context.” Reconciliation shows the true love of Christ and makes a difference in the Christian life, he said.

An advocate for social justice, Hudson started a project in the 1980s that gave white, middle-class South Africans the chance to experience the suffering caused by apartheid and poverty in their own country. The project is detailed in A Mile in My Shoes, one of Hudson’s seven books.

After Hudson’s address, CBF participants gave $23,095 to the CBF’s Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Offering for Religious Liberty and Human Rights. Two-thirds of the offering is designated for the Fellowship’s religious liberty and human rights ministries, and one-third goes to the Baptist World Alliance.

“As you know, religious liberty and human rights issues are at the center of our hearts and work,” Rosalynn Carter said via video. “We continue to advocate for those who do not have the right to vote, who cannot worship as they please or who dare not act as their conscience leads.”

Posted: 6/23/06

TROUBLED WATERS:
Are Baptists watering down commitment to baptism?

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

Disputes about baptism are troubling the waters in some Baptist circles. From Southern Baptist International Mission Board guidelines that narrow the parameters for acceptable baptism when it comes to missionary candidates, to churches that wrestle with the perennial question of how to handle new members from other denominations, questions swirl around an issue most Baptists considered settled more than 350 years ago—believer’s baptism by immersion.

“Believer’s baptism has long been a distinctive mark of Baptists,” Baylor University religion Professor Bill Brackney wrote in a paper published by the Baptist History & Heritage Society and the Whitsitt Baptist Heritage Society. “All Baptists, to one degree or another, recognize the importance of a believers’ church and the signal rite or ordinance of baptism.”

The earliest English Baptists believed only adults who professed faith in Christ should be baptized, but they initially practiced sprinkling or pouring. However, by the mid-1600s, immersion became the standard mode for Baptists, Brackney noted.

But some modern observers believe that distinctive mark is being diluted by factors ranging from postdenominationalism to postmodernism to pragmatism.

A variety of reasons may cause some modern Baptists to downplay believer’s baptism by immersion, said Bill Pinson, director of the Texas Baptist Heritage Center and executive director emeritus of the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

Possibilities include the influence of “ecumenical evangelicalism” that stresses commonly held beliefs over denominational differences; the influence of Calvinism in some Baptist circles; a desire to be nonjudgmental and tolerant; a postmodern worldview that questions exclusive claims of truth or “right” methods; and a lack of understanding about distinctive Baptist beliefs, Pinson noted.

Baptists who champion immersion as the proper method of baptism have appealed both to the original Greek meaning of the term and to the symbol of being “buried in the likeness of Christ’s death and raised to walk in the newness of life”—a phrase commonly used by Baptist ministers as they immerse a new believer.

New Testament baptism requires a proper subject (a believer who comes to faith in Christ voluntarily), the proper mode (immersion) and the proper meaning (a symbol of death, burial and resurrection), Oklahoma Baptist pastor-theologian and 20th century Southern Baptist statesman Herschel Hobbs wrote in a study guide to the 1963 Baptist Faith & Message.

“Change the mode, and the meaning is lost. Change the meaning, and the mode loses its New Testament significance,” Hobbs wrote.

Traditionally, most—but not all—Baptists have understood believer’s baptism by immersion as an ordinance that is “prerequisite to the privileges of church membership and to the Lord’s Supper”—language common to both the 1963 and 2000 versions of the Baptist Faith & Message.

“This is the oldest and most divisive theological question in Baptist history,” said Bill Leonard, dean and professor of church history at Wake Forest University Divinity School. “Early Baptist churches divided over closed and open membership regarding baptism.”

Landmark Baptists—an ultra-conservative group that seeks to trace Baptists’ origins directly to New Testament times and believes Baptists are the only true church—draw the circle narrowly. They grant membership only to Baptists who have been baptized in like-minded Landmark Baptist churches and limit participation in a church’s observance of the Lord’s Supper only to members of that local church.

But as far back as John Bunyan in the 1600s, some Baptists have argued for open membership—granting membership to sincere Christians whose baptism was by sprinkling or pouring.

Class lets students get feet wet: Ryan Vanderland baptizes fellow ministerial student Jon West during a practical ministry class at Hardin-Simmons University’s Logsdon School of Theology. Vanderland reported: “The water in the baptistry is cold—not ice cold, but colder than I expected. The first thing I learned is to make sure the baptistry heater gets turned on so that the water is warm.” In addition to giving students hands-on experience in a baptistry, church ministry Professor Ronnie Prevost also took students to a funeral home to learn about grief ministry and to Crescent Heights Baptist Church in Abilene to practice conducting a Lord’s Supper service.

“However, Bunyan held that believer’s baptism was the ideal and pleaded for baptism by immersion, but he asked for ‘a bearing with our brother that cannot do it for want of light,’” Pinson said.

“Such an approach to baptism and church membership was in Bunyan’s day, and has been since criticized by most Baptists for various reasons, including weakening or undermining other basic biblical beliefs precious to Baptists.”

Leonard contends most Christian communions have “broken baptism” in some sense in that they do not literally follow the New Testament norm of “adult believers’ immersion—in cold running water.” For instance, the practice in some Baptist churches of baptizing children—some as young as age 4 or 5—deviates from the biblical standard, he insisted.

“When Baptists started baptizing children, especially preschool children, they departed from the New Testament norm so they can claim to have believers’ baptism, but not adult believers’ baptism, which is the only kind practiced in the New Testament church,” Leonard said.

Some churches continue to wrestle with the issue of whether believer’s baptism by immersion must be prerequisite to church membership.

Last year, elders at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minn., recommended a policy change that would have allowed the church to accept as members—under certain conditions—Chris-tians who gave evidence of conversion but who were sprinkled as infants.

In a widely disseminated 85-page position paper, Pastor John Piper and the council of elders asserted belief that “the door to local church membership should be roughly the same size as the door to membership in the universal body of Christ.”

But three months after the church’s governing body introduced its original motion, some elders reconsidered their position, and the group withdrew its proposal.

Still, the church’s website acknowledges “the issue cannot be dropped because the majority of the elders still favor the motion, including almost all the pastoral staff. …”

Other Baptist churches have found different ways to include in their membership Christians who have not been immersed.

Lake Pointe Church in Rockwall has carved out a special niche—“alternative baptism”—for Christians who are baptized as believers but not by immersion.

“As long as a person’s baptism comes after salvation and is done for the right reasons but by a different mode, we accept it,” Pastor Steve Stroope said.

People who enter the church by alternative baptism are granted full membership, except for limits on their ability to serve in some leadership positions, he explained.

“We have not changed our theological position on baptism by immersion, but we are not making it a test of fellowship,” Stroope said.

Lake Pointe Church rejects infant baptism and believes immersion is the clearest symbol of identification with Christ’s death, burial and resurrection, he stressed. But the church does not deny fellowship to a person who becomes a Christian and subsequently is baptized in a church that teaches pouring or sprinkling as an acceptable mode.

He compared differences about baptism by immersion—as opposed to sprinkling or pouring—to varying opinions about the millennium or Calvinism among “conservative evangelicals.”

Alternative baptism has served as a gateway through which people from other denominations have entered Lake Pointe Church. Once they become a part of the church, about 85 percent eventually ask to be baptized by immersion, he noted.

Some churches provide a special category for people who want to be part of the church but are not ready for membership—watchcare.

In part, watchcare provides a way for college students who temporarily live in the area to become part of a local fellowship without moving their church membership. But it also provides a transitional step for people who have questions or concerns about baptism or some church doctrine.

“Watchcare is for those who are not yet ready to become a Baptist,” the website of Williams Trace Baptist Church in Sugar Land notes.

People who seek to enter under the watchcare of the church are not entitled to full voting membership, but it allows them a way to be included in the life and fellowship of the church, Pastor Phil Lineberger said.

“We tell them: ‘We’ll watch over you. We will care for you. You are a part of our congregation; you’re just not officially a member of the church,’” he explained.

People under the church’s watchcare cannot serve on committees involving the congregation’s legal status, such as personnel or finance, and they are not permitted to be teachers. However, many of them serve as ushers or greeters, participate in church-sponsored mission trips and work on ministries such as Habitat for Humanity building projects, Lineberger noted.

“We want them to be a part of the family and to be in a place where they have the chance to hear the gospel presented in a friendly, nonthreatening way,” he said.

Typically, people under the church’s watchcare are part of a family that includes some church members, he noted.

“Usually, it’s the father whose wife and children may come to join the church, but he’s not ready,” Lineberger said.

While the family member under watchcare often is a Christian from a different denomination, William Trace Baptist’s watchcare ministry also includes non-Christians, he added.

“We have a Muslim family in which the son has accepted Christ as his Savior, but the mother and father have not, but they’re in our watchcare,” he said.

“We’ve had three Jewish men under our watchcare, and one of them—the grandson of an Orthodox Jewish rabbi—came to faith in Christ.”

Watchcare offers churches an avenue for evangelism, Lineberger noted—including people within the circle of fellowship who haven’t been immersed as believers without watering down distinctive Baptist beliefs.

Posted: 6/26/06

CYBER COLUMN:
Parables

By John Duncan

I’m sitting here under the old oak tree, pondering the parables of Jesus. Jesus had a way of giving the good news in ways his hearers could understand.

Parables might be found in everyday life.

The Dallas Mavericks’ playoff run serves as a parable that not all dreams come true, so you have to rebuild your dreams.

My flower bed in front of my house serves as a parable that in spite of the flowers planted and the hard work I give to the flower bed, weeds still have a way of sneaking in and trying to choke the flowers. Weeds show up in life in the prettiest places and have to be rooted out.

My closet serves as a parable. It possesses clothes, shoes, ties and all my diplomas stored in a bag on the top shelf. Life, no matter how hard or wonderful, with new clothes of shining apparel and loaded with framed diplomas educational success, life requires constant refreshment and renewing, and there is always more to learn.

Jesus spoke parables. He spoke of seeds being planted in the ground. He spoke of tares growing among the wheat, stuff that looked like wheat but was really not wheat. Fake, if you will. He spoke of a servant who unmercifully choked his debtor in spite of the fact the servant had himself been forgiven a vast debt. He spoke of a Samaritan who stopped beside the road and cared for a Jew who had been mugged near Jericho. He spoke of using and investing the gifts God gives while not burying the gifts. He spoke of wineskins and lamps and vineyards and the blind leading the blind, which happens every day, and of fruit and mustard seeds and the great supper and weddings and treasure and lost coins, lost sheep and lost sons. Life happens in the day-to-day, in the hour-to-hour, and the gospel shows up minute-by-minute as God speaks in mysterious ways. Are we alert to his voice?

Jesus spoke the parable of the laborers in the vineyard who received pay at the end of the day, regardless of how long they worked.

In 1982, I graduated from college with diploma in hand, the same diploma that is now in the top of my closet in a brown bag. I searched for a job. I knew of God’s call to preach and surrendered to it. I knew that seminary started for me in September. I knew that on that May day as I turned my tassel, tossed my graduation cap in the air, received my college degree, that I needed a job to make a living. I called Forrest, a man for whom I had worked before and a gruff man with a no-nonsense attitude toward work.

“Boy, you do what I tell ya, and you’ll be just fine,” clanged as his motto. He owned a fence business, and that summer of 1982 I learned to use a rock bar to bust the rock, to dig post holes, to use an auger to drill, to set fence posts, to carry eight-foot wooden panels on my back, to mix concrete and to nail the fence to the post. I also learned about chain-link fence and a come-along and twist ties that twist on chain-link posts to hold the fence like twist ties that help keep the bread fresh in your cupboard.

Forrest told stories, took a nap every day after lunch—including the short nap that he once took when he laid down under a tree in a pile of giant red ants, then screamed—and he also yelled at high pitch at any dear soul who did not do exactly what he wanted when he wanted it just the way he wanted it. After all, time was money, and there was no time to waste, and wasting time wasted money, or something like that.

Forrest knew I was a preacher-in-training, but that did not keep him from telling preacher jokes and off-color jokes and from laughing his guts to glory even when he shared a story that did not make me laugh.

I well remember Forrest and his overalls and his red truck and the whole nine yards, if you will, of the fence business. I recall the summer of 1982 as one of the hottest on record in the state of Texas. Hot enough, as they say, whoever “they” is, that you could fry an egg on the sidewalk in the 100-plus-degree heat. Forest helped me understand some things about life, some I wish to forget and some I wish to remember.

Occasionally, on those hot summer days, work would pile up, and we would need an extra laborer for the day. Forrest would drive his red truck to downtown Fort Worth to Taylor Street and the Texas Employment Commission. I do not know if it is still there, but in 1982 a line formed, even around the corner of the building, as people waited to see a clerk to fill out paperwork in hopes of finding a job. I guess jobs were scarce. Anyway, Forrest would pull up in front of the building and holler through the window, “Any of you boys want to work today?” I should tell you women were in the line, too, but Forrest chose his words carefully. Fencing was a man’s job, and a woman had her place, if you know what I mean. I am not saying that is true, but that’s just the way Forrest thought. When Forrest hollered, some times a man would come over to the truck and sometimes there was no movement. Some days no dear soul wanted to work, I guess. I never understood it.

When a man came over to the truck, though, Forrest explained the job, and I scooted over to the middle of the seat in the truck, and off we went to work. We worked our tails off, and some of the extras worked, but some did not. Forrest paid us on Fridays, and I must tell you, I worked for Forrest for a long time, but when payday came, I always wondered, “Did those extras, those laborers, receive the same pay as I did?” After all, I worked from 6 a.m. until about 7 p.m. every day, and some of those guys did not start work until after 8 a.m., and some did not work nearly as hard as I worked. At least that’s the way I saw it.

Jesus told a parable of laborers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16). An owner of a vineyard employed laborers. He employed most of his laborers for 12 hours. He employed other laborers for nine hours, six hours, three hours and one hour. The owner promised each a wage. He gave to each more than they deserved. Scholar Joachim Jeremias says the parables of Jesus use “dramatic machinery” for the telling of one truth about a central idea of the kingdom of God and his gospel. In the parable about the laborers in the vineyard, the owner, like God, shares his goodness and it overflows. Still, we must welcome God’s goodness with joy.

The parable that Jesus tells of the laborers in the vineyard ends with payday. Never mind that the brash disciple Peter, before the telling of the parable, had asked Jesus, in essence, “What will our reward be in the end since we have sacrificed all to follow you?” Peter’s mind was never far from the gold of glory, a glittering crown, a chief seat, purple robes, golden chariots, and a host of servants at his every call in the kingdom. Peter’s mind was never far from a big haul of rewards for service to Christ. Peter’s mind was never far from a big payday at the end of the day because he worked so hard for Jesus, so much harder than the average guy. I run into a lot of guys like Peter in the church, dare I say.

And so Jesus ended the parable and answers the question: Every one in the parable received the same pay at the end of the day. Each received one day’s wage in spite of the fact some worked a 12-hour days and others nine, six, three and even one hour. They all got paid the same. Even the one-hour laborer received a day’s wage! That’s the answer to Peter’s question and the end of the story.

The 12-hour laborer was hot to trot. As one guy who quit working for Forrest in anger because he did not like his yelling once said about Forrest, “I ain’t never workin’ fo’ him again!” I can imagine the angry laborer in Jesus’s parable angrily stomping off, saying the same thing. Forrest was bound to give guys like that a piece of his mind! “That boy’s gonna have to learn that life ain’t always fair!” And it’s not.

So summer is here under the old oak tree, hot and dry and stuffy like 1982. The sun forms sweat beads on my forehead, and the old story lingers: Life is not always fair. But I am still wondering, “Did Forrest pay those other laborers the same as me?” After all, he once told me I was one of his best workers who stuck with it, whatever that meant. When I read Jesus’s parable, life makes sense. It’s not what you get paid in the end but Who pays you. It’s not how much you make but how much you have to give. And that God’s greatest good is the gift he gives to all who serve him in his vineyard, a gift the same for all who serve—grace. I am sitting here thinking that’s all I need in the end—and even now that I think about it, grace and more grace.

I preached this parable once, and an angry lady said to me at the door, “That ain’t right! That just ain’t right! That’s just not fair.” I wanted to say, “Lady, I don’t write it; I just report it!” But I smiled, and gave her what God has given me for years—grace. I sure miss old Forrest. And right now, all I can say, is that I am getting ready for payday.

John Duncan is pastor of Lakeside Baptist Church in Granbury, Texas, and the writer of numerous articles in various journals and magazines. You can respond to his column by e-mailing him at jduncan@lakesidebc.org.

Posted: 6/23/06

WMU emphasizes God’s call to missions

By Charlie Warren, Bill Webb & David Sanders

Arkansas Baptist & Missouri Word & Way

GREENSBORO, N.C.—Christians need to hear, understand, embrace and live God’s call, program personalities reminded Baptist women during the 2006 Woman’s Missionary Union celebration.

“How can you hear God’s call when those around you want you to mimic the call of someone else?” asked Paige Chargois of Richmond, Va., who interpreted the missions celebration theme throughout the meeting, June 11-12 in Greensboro, N.C.

Christians should discover the authenticity of God’s unique call upon each believer’s life to follow and obey, she stressed.

Archie and Caroline Jones, former missionaries to Chile, reflected on their lifetime commitment to missions. Since retiring as career missionaries, they have served as short-term volunteers in South Africa, Venezuela, Armenia and China, and they are ready to go again “wherever God sends us and whenever he provides the plane tickets.”

They related their experiences in Chile, where they served an 800-mile-long association, starting churches and seeing them grow.

While in South America, they adopted a Chilean baby and were surprised by the reaction of the Chilean people. “You must really love us,” they often heard people say. “You adopted one of us.”

An International Mission Board representative, identified only as Pam for security reasons, described the ministry she and her husband, Ben, started at the Mindanao Baptist Rural Life Center in the Philippines.

The ministry started when representatives from some of the 14 Muslim tribes in the region contacted the center and asked for agricultural assistance. As a result, missionaries train local Christians to go into Muslim villages, providing Christian ministry and establishing house churches, she said.

Mississippi WMU President Donna Swarts described how she discovered she could balance WMU involvement with work in a ministry typically led by Baptist men—disaster relief.

She provided emergency childcare in the wake of flooding in Georgia in 1993 and then coordinated eight childcare units that responded to floods in North Dakota in 1997. She also joined relief efforts in New York City in the wake of 9/11.

“The experience of the years and the call of God have enabled me to be a small part of the army that is the church of Jesus Christ,” she said.

John and Terri Forrester, North American Mission Board church planting strategist missionaries to Kotzebue, Alaska, testified that early in their marriage, they felt God’s call and sought appointment as international missionaries. But their son was born with a birth defect, which ultimately blocked their appointment to overseas service. They served churches in their native Georgia and participated in short-term mission opportunities. Forrester served as a pastor in Montana and a director of missions in Georgia.

Then came the unexpected call to serve in Alaska in an area where snowmobiles provide the main mode of transportation, temperatures drop to 60 degrees below zero and the nearest Wal-Mart is 350 miles away. The cost of living is out of sight, with gas costing $7 a gallon and milk costing $8 a gallon, they noted.

“Nobody wanted to go, but we answered God’s call and said, ‘We will go,’” Forrester said. “I know that I know that I know God called us there.”

National WMU President Kaye Miller of Little Rock, Ark., presiding at her first meeting, presented the Martha Myers Girls in Action Alumna of Distinction Award to Jacqueline Draughon of Grace-ville, Fla. Draughon, now in her 80s, began serving as a Girls in Action leader at a young age, and girls from her mission groups have gone on to be missionaries and church leaders.

WMU Executive Director Wanda Lee presented the Dellanna West O’Brien Award for fostering Christian leadership in women to Eileen Mullins of Inez, Ky. Mullins started Haven of Rest, a ministry providing shelter and ministry to families visiting inmates.

Posted: 6/23/06

Patterson, Mohler discuss Calvinism

By Tony W. Cartledge

N.C. Biblical Recorder

GREENSBORO, N.C.—Baptist seminary presidents Paige Patterson and Albert Mohler may have philosophical differences on the subject of divine election as interpreted by Calvinism but little that has practical effect, an hour-long dialogue revealed.

Patterson and Mohler discussed “Reaching Today’s World Through Differing Views of Election” in two breakout sessions of the Southern Baptist Convention Pastor’s Conference June 11. Both sessions, in a cavernous space occupying three hotel ballrooms, drew standing-room-only crowds.

Mohler, a self-described Calvinist and president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., and Patterson, president of South-western Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, gently sparred while emphasizing their mutual love and respect for each other.

Patterson said he didn’t like the “flawed logic” that if one isn’t a Calvinist, he or she must be an Arminian, insisting, “I am neither.”

The claim that non-Calvinists don’t accept the doctrines of grace or the sovereignty of God also is flawed, Patterson said.

Patterson listed several reasons why he is not “a Dortist Calvinist,” referring to the Synod of Dort in 1618-19. The synod produced five cardinal tenets of Calvinism—total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints.

“I do not find in Scripture any case for irresistible grace,” Patterson said, arguing salvation would be coercive if humans have no choice and citing Scriptures that suggest humans have the ability to reject God.

Likewise, Patterson said he could find no biblical support for a belief in limited atonement, citing multiple texts supporting a belief that Christ died for all and God wants all people to be saved.

Patterson quoted Scriptures that he said link predestination to divine foreknowledge, indicating that God knows in advance who will accept Christ but does not predestine some to salvation and some to condemnation. That would put God in the position of creating people just so he could condemn them, Patterson said.

“I believe too often Calvinism is the death-knell for evangelism for many people,” Patterson said. He acknowledged many Calvinists—including Mohler—remain evangelistic, and said, “It is my conviction that as an evangelist for Christ, we are compelled to persuade men.”

Mohler affirmed, “I believe in all five points of Calvinism,” before offering his interpretations of several points.

Mohler said he prefers to speak of “effectual calling” rather than “irresistible grace.” God’s effectual calling does not draw someone to Christ against his will, but once the work of salvation begins, one cannot resist, he explained.

“We all believe in limited atonement,” Mohler said. “The question is by whom. I do believe before the creation of the world, God determined to save sinners who would come to accept Christ through the electing purpose of God.”

But, Mohler said, “God is a choosing God.” God chose Israel as a special people and has called out the church, he added.

Mohler said every person attending was probably a Calvinist to some degree. Belief in inerrancy, substitutionary atonement, divine omniscience and the perseverance of those who accept Christ all owe something to Calvinism, he said.

Evangelism is essential, Mohler said. “I don’t believe anyone who appeals to Christ will be denied.”

“We must be as eager as the apostle Paul to persuade others to follow Christ, knowing that only God can effectually bring about the internal call,”

Mohler concluded. “We do not know who is elect; we just know there are sinners in need of the gospel, and we believe that God does save sinners.”

Posted: 6/23/06

CP standard, WMU ‘invitation’ nixed

By Robert Marus & Steve DeVane

Associated Baptist Press & N.C. Biblical Recorder

GREENSBORO, N.C.—Southern Baptist Convention messengers turned back a grassroots attempt to strengthen language encouraging the convention to elect leaders from churches that give generously to the denomination’s budget, but they rebuffed an attempt by the convention’s leadership to rein in the SBC women’s auxiliary.

Mike Stone, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Blackshear, Ga., attempted to amend a recommendation from the SBC Executive Committee regarding an ad hoc committee’s report on promotion of the Cooperative Program, the denomination’s unified giving plan.

The ad hoc committee originally recommended that churches be encouraged to give 10 percent of their annual undesignated receipts to the program, and it urged the election of state and national convention officers whose churches give at least 10 percent to the Cooperative Program.

But on the eve of the convention, the larger Executive Committee revised the report to remove explicit references to a 10 percent standard. Stone’s amendment attempted to restore that language, but it failed by about a 2-1 margin on a show-of-ballots vote.

In the 27 years since fundamentalists began gaining control of the SBC, the denomination’s giving to the Cooperative Program as a percentage of overall revenue has plummeted. Anthony Jordan, executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma and a member of the ad hoc committee, said the committee recognized a problem when they studied the history of CP giving.

“In 1980, the Southern Baptist Convention gave (an average of) 10.7 percent per church in undesignated receipts to the Cooperative Program. Today, that is 6.6 percent,” he said.

But Executive Committee officials backed off after the report was publicized. Critics feared the 10 percent standard would be used as a de facto litmus test for denominational service—something fundamentalists criticized moderates for during the denomination's struggles in the 1980s.

Rob Zinn, outgoing chairman of the Executive Committee, said his body decided it wanted to be careful not to appear that it was intruding on the autonomy of local churches to give to the denomination as they feel called.

“We believe by putting a percentage there, it will be misconstrued that we are mandating what to give,” he said.

After Stone’s attempt to amend it failed, the recommendation to approve the report passed with little opposition.

Convention messengers turned back an attempt, however, to assert more control over the SBC’s independent women’s auxiliary.

Messengers defeated an Executive Committee recommendation to “extend an invitation to” the Woman’s Missionary Union to tighten its ties with the SBC by becoming an official convention agency.

For its 118-year history, the organization—which promotes the denomination's missionary efforts and provides hands-on ministry opportunities—has elected its own leadership. It receives no funds from the SBC budget.

The measure also offered WMU the option of affirming in its governing documents its “historic, unique and exclusive promotion of Southern Baptist Convention missions and ministries,” and asked the organization to explain to the Executive Committee its response to the invitation.

WMU Executive Director Wanda Lee told messengers becoming a convention agency— and thus no longer self-governing—would remove the agency from the grassroots missions supporters who animate it.

The messengers then defeated the measure on a show-of-ballots vote.