Leaning Forward: Will the real Southern Baptist please stand up?

It's To Tell the Truth, Southern Baptist style. Trouble is, the panel can't discern which are the pretenders and which one is in fact the real thing. The confusion exists because someone keeps changing the profile. So, the panel is stumped. Will the real Southern Baptist please stand up?

One has all the numbers and stats to establish their bonafides. Baptisms, average Sunday School and worship attendance, number of missionaries deployed on summer mission trips, children enrolled in basketball ministry, youth in summer camps, hot dog count at the Fourth of July picnic, average attendance at every function from children's choir to men's prayer breakfast, and an accounting of everyone who raised their hands for loving their mother's during the invitation last week. This guy is convincing and good. I mean, the scorecard used to be numbers and statistics. So, the real Southern Baptist is the one with the most impressive numbers.

Contestant Number Two has the smile of doctrinal superiority. His church affirms the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, the Chicago statement, the Abstract of Principles, the Nicene and Athanasian creeds, the San Francisco covenant (1966), the Bridgeport protocols (Northeastern synod), the Protocols of Zion, and the Geneva Convention. Each member of his church submits to a four-square test of doctrinal discipline and a lie detector test of previous doctrinal purity. Belief is the final proof of Southern Baptist identity. I mean, we can't just let anybody in.

The third contestant is a substantive provider of mission funds. He can quote mission percentages and provide sub-category breakdowns for local missions, summer mission trips, associational missions, community benevolence, mission education, gifts to the Cooperative Program, special designations, water bottles at the flea market, children on mission, women on mission, men on mission, youth on mission, senior adults on mission, left-handed people on mission, bald-headed men on mission, and the red-hat weekly luncheon mission brunch circle. Orthodoxy is about missions anyway. Right?

OK, it's not all hyperbole. Even with silliness aside, the Southern Baptist profile is rather complicated these days, even more than the three contestant caricatures. Add to them the tensions between the traditional and contemporary churches, the young and old drama, the pro-CP and ambivalent-CP poles, those who line up with state conventions, associations, or particular agencies and institutions, and all the other diversities that push us in various directions, and you get, well, an identify problem. Will it be theology, missiology, methodology, cashology, or some other off-the-wall diversion that defines us.

I'm praying it will be Jesus-ology that over-rides all other considerations so that, in the final analysis, we'll seek to be like him. He never sought his own will, spoke his own words, or did his own business, but always yielded to the bidding of his Father in heaven. Naive? Maybe. Call me simple. But, this thing about being conformed into the likeness of His son Jesus is real to me. All this other pretense is just because we've forgotten to be like him.

I have set you an example, that you should do as I have done for you. John 13:15

You see, when the real Southern Baptist stands up, there should be some resemblance to him. Wow!