COOPERATIVE BAPTIST FELLOWSHIP GENERAL ASSEMBLY meets this week in Birmingham, AL. I’ll be arriving Tuesday morning to attend our annual T. B. MASTON FOUNDATION CBF Student Scholars Retreat. Then I’m looking forward to attending Wednesday morning’s BAPTIST WOMEN IN MINISTRY Annual Gathering at the historic SIXTEENTH STREET BAPTIST CHURCH.
Thursday evening, at a dinner in her honor, we’ll celebrate SUZII PAYNTER’s leadership during her six years as CBF’s executive coordinator. Suzii is a longtime friend who honored me by speaking at my retirement dinner last year. We’re looking forward to celebrating not only what CBF accomplished because of her leadership but the way Suzii led CBF to confront difficult challenges forthrightly with grace, love, and courage.
We’re also looking forward to our first General Assembly presided over by CBF’s new executive coordinator, PAUL BAXLEY. I had the privilege of meeting Paul when he visited Texas in March and hearing him lay out his vision for CBF’s future and the areas on which he plans to focus. I came away excited about what lies ahead for our Cooperative Baptist Fellowship family.
I hope to see many of you in Birmingham this week – it will be a great time of celebrating our Baptist heritage and the many ministries of CBF. It will also be a wonderful time of fellowship – after all, it’s in our name!
WEEKLY BAPTIST ROUNDUP began in 2011 as a ministry of TEXAS BAPTISTS COMMITTED. Though TBC ceased operations at the end of July 2017, the spirit of TBC still infuses Weekly Baptist Roundup – the spirit of freedom under Christ. TBC was born over 30 years ago to fight the Fundamentalist spirit that had laid siege to the Southern Baptist Convention and to keep Texas Baptists free of such control.
That being the case, perhaps some of you wonder why there are so many links to SBC news & opinion in the Roundup every week. The answer is that Baptists can be truly free and faithful ONLY when we are fully informed – not just about our own piece of the Baptist world but the rest of it as well. Though I disagree with the spirit of power, control, and patriarchy that permeates SBC leadership, I celebrate the many good things going on among SBC churches and their members, and it’s important that we stay informed about SBC life as well as CBF life, as well as ABCUSA life, as well as the African-American and Hispanic Baptist conventions, as well as what’s going on among Baptists in Europe, Africa, Asia, and elsewhere.
This week’s issue of the Roundup, however, is SBC-heavy, for two reasons: (1) the SBC met this past week in Birmingham; and (2) the SBC was confronting some very thorny issues, resulting in one of the most consequential and newsworthy Annual Meetings in years, if not decades.
Two particular issues that took up much of the SBC’s time & attention this week are (1) sexual abuse by church leaders; and (2) racial justice & reconciliation. But life doesn’t stop for conventions, and – as life would have it – the Annual Meeting was bookended by stunning news on both of these fronts.
Regarding the racial justice issue, barely a week before the meeting came the news that Southern Seminary in Louisville had rejected a request for racial reparations, a request that came from EMPOWER WEST, a coalition of black and white pastors in Louisville, on behalf of a nearby historically black college. Unfortunately, in rejecting the request, ALBERT MOHLER, president of Southern Seminary, cast doubt (which was clear despite his clumsy syntax) on the motives of the Empower West pastors: “We’re not going to respond to public demands for reparations made, quite interestingly, by the people who demand that reparations be paid to them.”
On the issue of sexual abuse perpetrated by church leaders in the SBC: after a week of hearing from survivors, enduring protests by abuse victims’ advocates, and announcing initiatives to stem the tide of such abuse, the SBC was rocked by news that a staffer at an SBC LifeWay camp held in Arizona this very week had been arrested and charged with multiple counts of felony child molestation.
In reading the accounts linked in the special section (which follows the general Baptist News section), entitled 2019 SBC Annual Meeting – News/Opinion/Analysis, you’ll find that the SBC is proactively taking steps to confront its past failures in these areas. You’ll also find that there are critics who say that the actions the SBC has taken and announced so far are not sufficient – that there are additional specific actions it must take if it is to significantly change the environment that led to these problems.
One of those critics is WADE BURLESON, an SBC pastor from Enid, OK, who began urging SBC leadership to create a database of sexual abuse offenders among its clergy way back in 2007. They have yet to do so. Wade blogged daily this week, in his Istoria Ministries blog, and all five of his blog posts are linked in this issue of Weekly Baptist Roundup. I strongly commend Wade’s blog posts to you – more than any other SBC pastor, he has consistently exposed and confronted the patriarchal attitudes of the SBC leadership.