Love the Southern Baptist Convention

With all her faults [JC Ryle] loves the Church of England still, he loves the souls of men much more, and most of all the gospel of their salvation. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I have always loved JC Ryle’s passion to love and transform his church from the inside out. For the many disagreements Ryle had with the established doctrine of his church it would have been easy for him to run into the dissenter and/or Baptist camps, but because he stayed he did much good to the souls that were entrusted to him.

As a Southern Baptist I have attempted to model JC Ryle’s commitment to his church. It is far easier in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) because we do not have an underlying cancer in our doctrine like the infant baptism or church/state melding of the Church of England, but the SBC is far from perfect. Unlike Ryle and his church’s doctrinal statement, there is nothing for me in the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 (BF&M2K) that I have to explain away or hope that the authors meant something different than what they wrote. It is thoroughly biblical, and if we only allowed our creed to comprise the SBC, we’d have a perfect SBC. Where we go wrong is by allowing human beings to join our membership (obvious sarcasm intended). If there are heresies, moral failings, scandals, coverups, shameful biographies, and deviations from God’s Word in the SBC (and there are!) they were not birthed in the BF&M2K, but stand in stark contrast to what we profess to believe and preach.

What the SBC does so well is provide a framework which unites likeminded believers worldwide, and defers to conscience to hold true to what we say we believe. If there is a slide towards complacency and worldliness (and there is!) a church can return to godliness by believing what is written in the BF&M2K as it points the church back to Scripture, right theology, and saving faith. Our president does not define us nor drive our practices. He should be setting an example to follow, stating with a good conscience, “Be imitators of me as I am of Christ”, but the churches of the SBC vest no special authority in him and can choose individually to glean from his preaching, teaching, and leading, or not.

By far the most important part of the SBC is that nowhere do we profess that a convention can go to Heaven, nor that just by being a member of an SBC church grants you favor with God. No-one should be deceived into thinking that by their affiliation with the SBC they have a special standing in God’s eyes. Be not deceived: Conventions, Sees, Synods, Presbyteries, Seminaries, Parishes, Chapels, nor Fellowships will have any inheritance in the kingdom of Heaven. Christ came not to save institutions, but to seek and save the lost. It is the duty of any assembly to point their people to the saving work of the Living Christ. So many have failed, some because of a flawed dogma, and others because of a lack of doctrine, but I am sure that membership bodies like the SBC will be judged not on the faithfulness to their creeds, but to their faithfulness to the Word of God.

So for these reasons and more I remain a Southern Baptist. Not all Southern Baptist Churches are faithfully pointing to Christ, but that is their sin, because they have professed to believe the BF&M2K, and it repeatedly gives all glory to God. There is no SBC Inquisition – nor should there be – to ensure that all churches are faithful, because our head is Christ and our helper is the Holy Spirit. Are there wolves and tares in our midst? Absolutely, because there are human beings in our midst. Show me a perfect church and I will show you a creed with no members.

On a tangent, I must say that the name of the Southern Baptist Convention is a hindrance to world evangelization. I cannot imagine calling a church “Southern” in North Sudan or North Korea; it even has bad connotations in New England. There has been talk in recent years of changing the name and – while I enjoy the tradition of the SBC – I wonder if a name change should be something we are willing to reconsider. As an unashamed graduate of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) I understand the sentimentality, but is world evangelization worth holding to our regional and founding title? Regardless, a faithful adherent to the BF&M2K will point towards Christ and away from institutions as the only hope of salvation. SBTS (and other SBC schools/seminaries) and the SBC exist as tools in the Redeemer’s hand: they must decrease, and he must increase.

May it be said when we are examined by faithful preachers yet to come,

With all her faults they loved the SBC, loved the souls of men much more, and most of all the gospel of their salvation.