Friday, November 10, 2006

More Wishful Thinking

The announced departure of two of the denomination’s leading “progressive” lights gives our General Secretary one more opportunity to be dramatically prophetic and lead ABCUSA back to being a denomination of “un-compromised biblical values.”
Our GS should proclaim throughout the land that he intends to lead ABCUSA in a strategic renewal of historic Baptist tradition. He should announce a three-point program as follows:
1. All theological under girding of ministry in and through ABCUSA will be in the evangelical Bible believing mold.
2. Traditional morality in obedience to scripture teaching will be the norm for ABCUSA churches.
3. Missions will have the primary focus of leading individuals to ask Jesus Christ into their hearts as their personal savior. Agricultural and socio-economic aspects of Missions work, as valuable and important as they are, will be secondary to the task of personal evangelism.
There is life after ABCUSA on both the left, as well as the right, and the GS, after adopting this personal ministry philosophy for his leading of the denomination, should invite those, who cannot, with a committed heart, conscientiously minister and fellowship in an ABC returning to these historic Baptist understandings, to relocate to a more conducive organizational home.
Some might ask, “Why should those whose biblical vision is less than consistently based on the text be invited to relocate. They now are a small, but significant minority in ABC, and have worked themselves into positions of influence, and they have a strong base of people who foster the “holistic” approach to mission and the “anything goes” attitude towards theology. So why shouldn’t the conservative evangelicals admit defeat and relocate themselves, leaving ABC as the liberal denomination so many want it to be?”
Legitimate question!
Maybe the tenets the GS declares should instead of the aforementioned be like this:
1. Modern thinking interprets the Bible in a way that allows any church or pastor to be convinced it supports any theological perspective found anywhere in today’s church.
2. Traditional morality no longer serves the church because of a “social revolution” that has rejected the old ways.
3. Mission today now falls most importantly under the “holistic” vision of those who believe more in the importance of the “evangelism of structures” than in the importance of individual, personal conversions.

So, it is about time for very honest, open, and public declaration. If this is where our GS is coming from, and the denomination is going, then it would be fair for him to invite conservative evangelicals to relocate. I for one would accept his invitation, and as the sun sets in the west say a fond fairwell to hopes for ABCUSA’s reformation and resurgence as a force for biblical evangelism. But we need the GS to define where we are going under his leadership. The two differing directions possible are mutually exclusive. As I view the law of non-contradiction one is the right way for us to go, the other isn’t. It is time for the ABC, in the person of the GS, to define itself so we can all evaluate our options, and choose our direction.