The Reason for Being Southern Baptist

I intended to write more often this week from Peru, but things got so busy I didn’t have time. Now, with our mission trip behind us and my half of the group waiting for our flight home later today, I have a few minutes to put some words on paper (I know the words are really just data bits streaming through the internet but “on paper” sounds so much better). By the way, those on the other half of our team left yesterday and will be home later this afternoon. The picture above is of them, leading a Bible study earlier in the week in the town of Chepen, about three hours north of Trujillo, the large city where the Baptist Seminary is located and where my group worked all week alongside the Seminary president and his staff.

I met the president and the academic dean on a Zoom call about two months ago. We got together to talk through the needs of his students and how I might be able to help them, settling on basic leadership training and introducing some small group approaches for discipleship groups. The Seminary administrator, a woman missionary from Texas who’s served in Trujillo for over a decade, translated for us since the two men don’t speak English and my Spanish is limited to “Si,” “Por favor” and “Donde esta el bano” (“Where is the bathroom?”)—all useful phrases but of limited value in a theological discussion. Mainly, though, the president, academic dean and I talked about missions, that beloved word in Southern Baptist life that captures so much of our focus, our effort, our identity.

The two men are passionate about their seminary’s mission of training pastors to build healthy churches to reach their region for Jesus. Their passion is in turn the reflection of the Southern Baptist missionaries who built the seminary 50 years ago, a passion that was ingrained in them through the Southern Baptist Convention as a whole. That’s still the case today. Even those times Southern Baptists when get things wrong (and there are plenty), we get one thing right. We’re serious about Jesus’ commandment to take the gospel to all the world.

That’s why, I think, there was a moment in my conversation with the seminary leaders when the excitement of what we were discussing shifted to something deeper and truer for me, something hard to put into words but impossible to ignore, something that re-connected me with my roots as well as pointed me to the future. Beneath the plans we discussed I felt an old stirring of the excitement of going to a distant place, speaking to people of a different race and sharing with them the truths of God’s Kingdom. I got a glimpse of the diversity that believers from different places, different colors, different languages and different economic groups bring to the gospel story of Jesus, a diversity that at once delivers it from being the exclusive province of white American evangelicalism and into the textured and beautiful riches of the Kingdom that transcends all denominations and races. I remembered missionary stories from previous generations like William Carey, Amy Carmichael, Lottie Moon, Jim Eliot—men and women so passionate in their faith that nothing mattered to them more than seeing the world turn to Jesus. And I recalled biblical passages that describe the end game, the prize, the goal of all our evangelistic efforts:

“After this I saw a vast crowd, too great to count, from every nation and tribe and people and language, standing in front of the throne and before the Lamb. They were clothed in white robes and held palm branches in their hands. And they were shouting with a great roar, “Salvation comes from our God who sits on the throne and from the Lamb!”” (Revelation‬ ‭7‬:‭9‬-‭10‬)

What I’m trying to describe is what I think lies at the heart of Southern Baptists. We are a missional people and apart from missions we have no stable foundation for staying together.

This week is the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, our yearly get-together when we receive reports from all our agencies, elect new leaders, make decisions regarding future plans, hear great preaching and air our dirty laundry. Really. And this year there’s lots to air. I’m not going to get into that in this post because, well, it makes me tired. But if you want to read what I consider to be an insightful, sane and balanced analysis, you can check out Jeff Iorg’s piece here.

Instead, I just want to dig down into what I think of as the three strands of Southern Baptist life. More specifically, the three that hold us together. Or what has held us together so far.

The first is what I call Southern Baptist culture. What I mean is the habits, values, approaches and commonly understood ways that we live. The most important part of the culture we hold in common is the commitment to missions that I described above. But along with that there are many other aspects. We pray a certain way, we talk a certain way, we expect our preachers and their congregations to act a certain way. And—here’s the distinctively Southern Baptist culture—we do it all with a folksy attitude. I often think that our small-church revivalist beginnings in the early 19th century never really left us.

The second strand that ties us together is doctrine. In this post I don’t have time to dig into that but only to make the observation that until the last generation or so, there was agreement regarding the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message. While not everyone signed off on that doctrinal statement, it was able to cobble together a general theological consensus among the overwhelming number of Southern Baptist churches. But that consensus is now eroding, and with the upcoming Law Amendment scheduled for a vote tomorrow it may be destroyed. You can read the Jeff Iorg article I mention above to get more insight into the backstory. My point here is to simply note that the doctrinal strand that once served to bind us together is now fraying and may not hold.

The third strand that ties us together is organization, the administrative structure of the Southern Baptist Convention as a whole. By this I mean the national convention, the state conventions, the local associations and the host of departments, ministries and departments that fill all three levels. In short, the entire bureaucratic apparatus that we’ve built up through the years that was intended to expand our ministry reach but has grown instead into a centralized force that’s become more important than the local churches. The problem is how our identity has shifted from being a denomination of autonomous local churches to a denomination of large institutions. We used to be a cooperating denomination formed by local churches cooperating for the sake of the gospel. We’re now becoming a confessional denomination in which local churches are required to toe the party line. I’m not at all sure that our churches will tolerate much longer the uncontrolled growth of this administrative state.

The title to this piece is “The Reason for Being Southern Baptist,” and as the first section made clear, the reason for me and many others to be Southern Baptist has always been missions. But now things are changing, and I don’t think anyone knows where it all will end. Can a denomination of churches that cooperate because of a passion for the gospel be transformed into a confessional denomination that takes its orders from a few denominational leaders?

I can’t answer that question. What I can do, though, is to love the church I serve and go with its people into the world with the gospel of Jesus. That’s something my church as well as so many others value above all else. Peru this week has been for me a refreshment in ministry and a reminder of who we are as Southern Baptists. I don’t want to lose that.