Decisions v Discipleship

If you read Guide To Spiritual Warfare by E. M. BOUNDS you will quickly see how deceived the church is and how it has changed from Christ centered to a man centered organization.

 

I became a Baptist because I am a friend and bondservant of Jesus Christ.

But so many want to make us slaves of religion.

 

I believe there are some foundational teachings that have been totally lost in the SBC of today.

I believe the Bible teaches, and my brand of Baptist used to teach, soul freedom or soul competency. That never meant you could just believe any old thing you wanted to believe. It meant that each individual is responsible for a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and that the person is responsible to study the Bible under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

I also believe there is no justification without regeneration. Briefly, the idea folks can "get saved" and yet have no change of heart would have been laughed out of church then. The free gracers are correct that change isn't necessary to GET saved, and the Lordship salvation bunch are correct that getting saved WILL change you.

I rue the day we gave up actually discussing the scriptures, actually using the scriptures in our studies, and started focusing on either the BFM2000 or the author of the week. More today can quote Warren or MacArthur or Ryrie it seems than can quote the Bible.

I think we ceased trusting the Holy Spirit to do His job, and I am beginning to think He will just let us flounder until we get back to the Baptist distinctives.

I believe when the church was a democracy, and the pastor was not trying to fill the role of either ceo or priest, the people stepped up to the plate more. I believe churches were stronger then, and the congregations more active. If you've sweated blood and shed tears to keep a church going, you are less likely to leave just because the praise band at another church is better. In McDonaldizing the church, we have turned the congregants into customers rather than members. It is a natural outshoot of the church growth movement teachings. Now we are reaping a bitter harvest. We taught folks to come on the basis of such shallow thinking, why are we suprised when they leave on the same basis?

I wish every member of a church in the SBC would read two books: Axioms of Religion by E Y Mullins and What Baptists Believe by Herschel Hobbs. (Be sure to get the one by Hobbs, not the convention's newer replacement.)

No, I don't and you probably won't agree with everything they say.

But if you read those two books you get a fair understanding of what we've lost.

And you might be surprised that you won't find flaming liberalism by a long shot.

 

Nodak, I would not pin that onto the SBC with such a broad brush. Each congregation is autonomous and most hold to whatever the strongest pastor in their history taught, just like every other Baptist congregation in the world.

Further, as one who has been a part of a good number of SBC churches, and who has studied with somewhere around 1500 future pastors and missionaries of the SBC, I can say with some assurance that it is RARE indeed that any particular church preaches the Baptist Faith and Message in any guise. It is possible that some pastor might do a sermon series based on the underlying Scriptures that are used in the writing of the BF&M, and that would be a legitimate sermon series based on the Bible with only the main outline of the series driven by the actual BF&M, but I don't know who would preach the TEXT of the BF&M. Simply isn't happening.

In seminary, many students have never even encountered the BF&M until some prof made it a part of a course requirement for something along the lines of church polity.

Not half as many liberals out there as you suppose, but there are some. Many are self-identified when they dually align with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship -- a splinter group within the SBC who MAJORS on the Baptist distinctives you mention above, but is far enough left that they embrace abortion, homosexuality, and a view of Scripture that is anything but what Scripture itself suggests that we hold. Of course, if you are fronting Hobbs, then you don't realize just how liberal your own throughts may be. He was at the very least a Baptist moderate, as was Mullins.

What was once "soul competency" has now turned into "individual liberty" and with it a turn in a liberal direction for SOME congregations. Others -- and in fact, likely the ones you would war with -- are more conservative now than they were earlier in their history. But in any case, it is a congregation-by-congregation issue not a denominational issue as you have phrased the question.

 

I would agree that is potentially true, and I do realize there are many still holding to those old truths.

BUT--I went through the Baptist Doctrine Diploma DURING the changeover--book titles stayed the same as the authors and interiors changed and it WAS quite different.

I keep getting told the SBC still has no creed but the Bible, but across 3 states found that membership in the local church usually required assenting to the BFM2000, and that indeed some state associations require churches to assent to it in order to be in the association.

When leadership refers to the SBC as a DENOMINATION rather than a CONVENTION they have already started using the broad brush themselves.

 

No, it is true...

So, you took a couse or two and are using that as foundation for what you believebout the entire SBC?

 

Which points to the sin and lack of godly leadership IN THAT CONGREGATION.

That has nothing to do with the SBC in general, nor with the BF&M, which calls Southern Baptists into a right relationship with God and with each other.

How could the SBC on the whole change what happens in an autonomous local church, even if what happens there is detrimental to the Convention? What is the power that the Convention wields in order to step in and make changes in the congregation. The question is rhetorical because there IS NO POWER within the Convention, nor within the BF&M to cause that sort of change within the local congregation. THEY have to change on their own.

 

glfredrick, What a slap in the face, the idea I took a few courses and paint the whole shebang with a broad brush.

No, I spent over 25 years in the SBC, I studied for that diploma with my SS teacher for over 18 months, and I HAVE experienced the BFM2000 recited (not the whole in one Sunday, but over the course of several weeks) EXACTLY as the Apostle's Creed is used in the creedal churches. I HAVE experienced the exact things you tell me do not happen.

Of course autonomous churches cannot be forced to accept it, but they CAN be refused membership in local and state associations if they do not, and in at least one state there is the issue, if they have a mortgage or loan from the state association, that they can lose their building if considered "not a functioning Southern Baptist Church." That means if they don't pay the state association $250 AND affirm the BFM2000. At least, that was the game when I lived in that state.

EY Mullins was not the author of the BFM2000 and IT trashes everything he taught.

Hershel Hobbs did indeed work on the 1963, which I hold dear.

You lost if you laid odds I never heard of the others--I cut my eye teeth on them.

SOME of us have been around long enough to know the changes and name them.

Your tone of ire and implying I am unlearned if not downright stupid is what we usually encounter when we name the changes.

The Convention has changed--some think for the better, some of us think it changed for the worse. Those of us in the latter category are used to snide, dismissive jabs by those that think it has changed for the better.

But I challenge those that HAVE NOT read "The Axioms of Religion" by E Y Mullins to get a copy and read it.

It might open their eyes to understand the full history of the SBC.

They still might prefer the way it is today, and as a soul freedom Baptist, I support them in that.

But they WILL know what was trashed.

 

I greatly prefer what we are growing into today -- conservative, Bible believing, reformed, and making disciples who are going into all the world with the gospel.

I am part of the change movement...

Sorry you took offense to what I said, but it is true. The men you greatly admire sewed the seeds of the destruction of the SBC with their moderate, heading toward liberal theology. Not that they did not lead well, or even do good things in the Convention, but rather that their legacy left us in a mess that needed a new reformation to return to the scriptural origins of the people called Baptist.