The vultures are circling and something or someone is going to get---how do they say it in Pumpkintown?---ett. The so-called peaceful and unifying Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, last month has the scavengers riled and many good, innocent, and unaware servants of the Kingdom will be sucked into the vortex of their motion. Feathers flying and plenty of dust in the air, their venue is control of the convention, more precisely, the direction of our work in the future. The choice in relatively simple: backward or forward, which will it be?
Everyone has analyzed this annual meeting and taken the high road for the most part. Smiling, back-slapping Baptists enjoying a couple of days of good preaching, and tame business. Except for a few off the wall motions it was a united bunch, affirming the GCR and handing the Acts 29 stuff off to the institutions. Trouble is, there's a good bit of proceeding proceeding under the proceedings, if you get my drift. You know, as in hidden agendas, elephants in the room, and planks in the eyes. The blog world and Face Book are the feeding ground of this new predatory wave as the factions mark off their territory and declare their positions. Beware!
The small attendance was a first shocker. Unofficially, 8,700 messengers registered for the meeting, around 1,500 more than the previous year in Indianapolis. With the seminary locale promising more and younger registrants, the low attendance communicates the disinterest among rank and file Baptists. For most missionals, the meeting is irrelevant, a not so necessary possibility if nothing else is happening. They'd much rather spend their precious convention and meeting allowances attending the high octane and useful conferences sponsored by the other missionals. By and large, the only people actually interested in what happens at the convention level are the bloated convention bureaucracy that has become the central theme of convention polarities. I'd love to see a registration break-down of pastors, lay leaders, associational staff, state convention staff, and SBC institution staff just to see who actually attended the meeting. Most likely we wouldn't be all that surprised.
The vultures are the competing interests in SBC life. OK, Mr. Recording Secretary, I wasn't there. Our flights to Atlanta and Louisville were canceled and we decided not to go for a half-day, you know, with the recession and all. Still, it seems that the sides are gathering, the arguments taking shape, and possession of the convention is up in the air. I always suspected the line in the sand would be between the doctrinal opposites, maybe the Calvinists and us other guys. Shut my mouth wide-open, it's not them, per se. It seems to be the people looking and moving forward in one corner, and the people looking and moving backward in the other. Neither of them may swoop down and gobble you up. But, the whirlwind created by their swooping may just sweep our mission right over the horizon and out of sight. Cooperative versus separatist. That's the gig. Maybe the gag. Ruh roh! The gaggle. Do vultures swarm in gaggles. No, they operate in venues and form a kettle. Look it up. It's a mess no matter.
That's the sad part. The mission could get lost in the struggle. And, then we all lose.
Know what? It's time to re-think this whole thing, and maybe do away with the buzzards and vultures once and for all. No telling what we could do without the vulture wars.
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