Part of the reason SBC President Johnny Hunt was ready to
“shock the system” with a strongly worded call to a “Great Commission Resurgence” is that he and other leading Southern Baptist pastors feel a large
denominational structure that depends on gifts from churches is not flexible
enough to appreciate churches that sometimes do missions outside of that
structure.
Hunt shared his feelings on a new Koinonia podcast conducted
by Doug Baker, public relations director for the Baptist State Convention of
North Carolina and posted May 14 at ncbaptist.org.
Hunt said in Baptist life, “the church is King,” but “some
in our denomination feel the church can be king in word only.”
BR file photo Johnny Hunt |
Hunt’s church, First Baptist of Woodstock, Ga., gives
millions to missions and has started numerous other churches, but he received
criticism last year when running for the SBC presidency over Woodstock’s giving
just 2.2 percent of its undesignated funds for missions through the Cooperative
Program.
Ten percent has become an implied leadership standard, even
as average church gifts have sunk to just over five percent. In the 30 years
since the “conservative resurgence” launched, the churches of only four SBC
presidents have given as much as 10 percent, a fact that a committee
commissioned by the SBC Executive Committee said contributed to the decline of
CP giving overall. Executive Committee President Morris Chapman’s church was
one of the 10 percent givers when he was SBC president 1991-92 and pastor of
First Baptist Church, Wichita Falls, Texas.
“I feel sometimes…that bureaucracy is speaking down to
church and holding us accountable, such as, ‘Here’s what Johnny Hunt gives
through the Cooperative Program. Question mark. Would we want someone to lead
who has no greater commitment to CP?’
“There we have speaking down to the pastor. Now this is an
opportunity for us to speak back up to the state and ask, ‘What is fair?’”
“Should it be the church holding the denomination
accountable…or should they be holding us accountable?” Hunt asked. “If the
church is king, anyone else that speaks to us is a prince speaking to the
king.”
Hunt emphasized that the 10 commitments called for in the
“Great Commission Resurgence” document, posted online for supporters to sign,
reflect “what we hear from grass roots pastors and grass roots leaders of local
churches across America,” and are not just his feelings and those of its
primary author, Danny Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological
Seminary.
Chapman himself raised the possibility during an address
April 5, 2004 at a Baptist Identity Conference at Union University that an
“overhaul” of the processes by which national and state conventions function
“appear(s) to be an absolute necessity.”
Hunt said that without being aware earlier of
Chapman’s remarks, “I am literally attempting to lead the SBC to do literally,
literally what he said. If he said the SBC needs fine tuning, let’s tune it up.
If it needs an overhaul let’s tune it up.”
Hunt favors messengers approving a study committee during
the 2009 SBC annual meeting in June. “Let’s let the facts speak for
themselves,” he said. “No one in our denomination should have to be afraid of
what we discover if indeed we discover the facts. I want to know this
denomination does a better job of serving the churches.”
“Facts are our friends,” he said repeatedly.
He said Southern Baptists have more resources,
pastors and churches than ever before but the primary measure of effectiveness
– baptisms – is at its lowest rate since 1972.
“We should be doing more,” he said. “Why are we not? It’s
time to take a look.”
He said “the church is king” and “we should be giving proper
leadership to denominational staff” to “help us to experience the ‘Great
Commission resurgence.’”
Hunt expressed gratitude for state convention executives and
“those in Nashville,” home offices of the SBC, but wants accountability to
begin at the local church and from there have a committee study the national
system of associations, state conventions and national agencies and institutions
so Baptists can “do the best we can with what God has entrusted to us.”
Baker said in a question to Hunt that Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary President Al Mohler raised the issue in 2004 of
“theological triage,” or first, second and third levels of importance for
particular theological positions. Fellowship is contingent, Mohler said, on
agreement on first level theology.
Hunt said he is not going to break fellowship over
“non-essentials” and said “a team from across denominational life” could “help
us determine what are these first things.”
His own list of “first things” is short, but a
denominational consensus would help Baptists determine more clearly where they
should be “spending valuable resources, valuable time and valuable energy,”
Hunt said.
“One thing that can steer us in the right direction is that
we Southern Baptists agree almost always on far more than we disagree on,” Hunt
said. “I hope we can get our arms around the gospel, the Great Commission, the
building of churches, global missions, evangelism to the point we can agree to
agree on so much that it will start pointing us in the same direction.”
Hunt said some say his call for a “Great Commission
resurgence,“ particularly Article 9 that refers to “commitment to a more
effective Convention structure,” and a willingness to streamline at all levels,
is threatening the Convention.
He said trust is “really missing in this denomination” and
asked if either he or Akin had given any evidence that they would “desire
anything other than God’s best for the denomination.”
“If Southern Baptists as a Convention win, we all win,” Hunt
said.