I have been largely detached from Southern Baptist politics for the last 10 years. When I entered the ministry in 2006, I had dreams of preaching at the state meeting and making a name for myself in the Convention. My dreams hit a snag in 2007 when rumors began to spread throughout our local association that I held Fundamentalist views. Even worse, some began to accuse me of Calvinism. This news quickly made the most popular young preacher in our area into an outcast. I had old preachers coming to talk to me as if I had committed adultery or denied the faith completely. They had high hopes for me but I had caught that fatal disease, Calvinism, and I couldn’t let it go.
I had only been at Lee Creek a few months when some of our men suggested that we stop supporting the local association due to their wasteful spending. This seemed good to me because the director despised me anyway. After attending an evangelism conference I realized that most of the ABSC leadership was as opposed to my views as much as the local guys were. We dropped Cooperative Program giving that same year. I still felt like we were a part of the SBC, we just didn’t let them waste any of our money anymore.
This form of watching but not giving carried on for a few years as I held out hope for a SBC revival. Yet every time I picked up the Baptist paper my blood pressure would spike at the headlines. We were not headed for revival, we were headed for ruin. I watched a few national meetings in absolute disgust at the appointments and resolutions that were made. I wrote against it, I preached against it, and then I realized I was in the minority. Minority’s have very little power in a democracy. Especially if they are an honest minority.
Eventually I took the opinion of my wife, “If you cant fix it, leave it alone.” I quit reading the Baptist news paper and read my Bible more. I quit calling myself a Southern Baptist, from now on I’m just a Baptist. I don’t write letters to Little Rock, Nashville, or Atlanta anymore. I write articles for the church bulletin now. I don’t stay up late at night debating SBC politics, I stay up watching documentaries on American history and then I sleep like a log.
Now when someone angrily tells me “Beth Moore is preaching on Sunday morning in a SBC church!” “The SBC President wouldn’t call homosexuality a sin!” “The social justice movement is growing in the Convention!” “Some SBC churches are speaking in tongues!” or “They’re pushing for a woman as the next SBC president!” I simply say “Yeah, that’s why we left years ago.” Besides I have all I can handle just keeping track of my own flock. How did I pastor in those early years, trying to keep tabs on all 46,125 SBC churches?
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