SBC approves resolution urging ‘regenerate’ membership

BP photo by Van Payne

When the 151st session of the Southern Baptist Convention convened at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis June 10-11, more than 7,200 registered messengers and numerous guests from the more than 16 million-member denomination gathered from across the country to pass resolutions, elect officers, conduct business and hear reports from its international and domestic missions entities and six seminaries.

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INDIANAPOLIS (BP/FBW)—Messengers to the 2008 Southern Baptist Convention passed nine resolutions June 11, with the liveliest debate surrounding one urging the maintenance of a “regenerate church membership” and another addressing a California “gay marriage” court ruling.

Floridians played key roles in the debate with three serving on the Resolutions Committee, including Chairman Darrell Orman, pastor of First Baptist Church in Stuart.

As presented by the committee, “On Regenerate Church Membership and Church Member Restoration” urged Southern Baptist churches to “maintain a regenerate membership by acknowledging the necessity of spiritual regeneration and Christ’s lordship for all members, ... maintain accurate membership rolls for the purpose of fostering ministry and accountability among all members of the congregation and ... implement a plan to minister to, counsel, and restore wayward church members based upon the commands and principles given in Scripture.”

Church membership had been a topic of discussion in many circles prior to the annual meeting and the resolution brought to the floor was crafted from elements of four resolutions submitted to the committee, Orman told messengers in introducing the committee’s report.

Alluding to the biblical story of King Solomon identifying the real mother of a child by threatening to cut the child in two (1 Kings 3:16-28), Orman said: “We took the DNA of those four resolutions and we made one child. We want to present that to you and those who presented those resolutions we’d like to encourage, ‘Would the real mother let the resolution live?’”

The committee’s strategy was not as successful as Solomon’s, however, as authors of two submitted resolutions proposed amendments to insert wording from their proposals into the resolution before the messengers.

Malcolm Yarnell, an associate professor of systematic theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a member of Birchman Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, asked for language to be inserted that specifically mentioned the practices of “believers’ only baptism by immersion,” the Lord’s Supper and church discipline.

Although Orman voiced concern that such language might be taken to place church discipline on the same level as the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, he said the committee regarded the suggestion as a friendly amendment. President Frank Page suggested an alternative way to insert the wording into the resolution and the amendment was adopted on a show of ballots.

Tom Ascol, executive director of Founders Ministries and pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, then proposed an amendment that would add “whereas” language noting only 6.1 million of the reported 16.2 million Southern Baptist church members attend the primary worship service of their church in a typical week.

Ascol also suggested adding two “resolved” sections. One called for churches “to repent of any failure among us to live up to our professed commitment to regenerate church membership and any failure to obey Jesus Christ in the practice of lovingly correcting wayward church members.” The other encouraged “denominational servants to support and encourage churches that seek to recover and implement our Savior’s teachings on church discipline, even if such efforts result in the reduction in the number of members that are reported in those churches.”

Orman responded that the committee felt it was not proper to ask all the churches to repent when many—including all the churches represented by pastors on the committee—have made conscientious efforts to restore inactive members or remove them from church membership rolls.

Bill Ascol, pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in Owasso, Okla., and brother of Tom Ascol, countered, “Several years ago in this convention, we called for corporate repentance for past racial tension. Not all were guilty of that, but as a convention we recognized that ... we have, by and large, failed to practice integrity on the issue of church membership.”

Ascol’s amendment passed with a large, but indeterminate number of messengers in opposition. The amended resolution passed overwhelmingly.

After the vote, Ascol and Yarnell, known for strongly disagreeing with each other on the issue of Calvinism, told Florida Baptist Witness they were united on the problem of cleaning up church membership rolls.

Ascol said he was gratified messengers had passed a resolution like the ones he had been presenting for three years.

“I’m grateful that we’re finally on record about this,” he said. “Our churches are to demonstrate to the world what the Kingdom of God looks like and what the Gospel actually does.”

Yarnell said reporting a total membership number dramatically higher than the number of people actually involved in a congregation raises serious integrity issues.

“We have to restore the integrity of Baptist churches. We have to obey our Lord,” he said. “There’s no options here with regard to believers’ only baptism by immersion, with regard to the Lord’s Supper as a place of communion in Christ and with regard to redemptive church discipline. ... These are commands of Jesus Christ. If we really believe Jesus is Lord, we have to follow not only personally in our own personal lives but also corporately in our churches’ lives.”

Ascol said he hopes pastors would go back to their churches and implement a program of contacting inactive members, making an effort to either restore them to ministry involvement or removing them from the church rolls.

At a news conference, Orman said of the amendments, “We agreed with all of the theology that was inserted. We felt like there were a couple of things that maybe weren’t helpful for” Southern Baptists. In explanation, he later cited the call for repentance by the entire convention and the inclusion of statistics he contended did not provide an accurate picture of the reality.

The entire resolution may be viewed here.

Messengers also approved overwhelmingly a resolution supporting a California initiative to repudiate same-sex “marriage” in response to a May decision by that state’s Supreme Court that will permit homosexuals to “marry.” Californians collected enough signatures to place a referendum on the November ballot that will combat the ruling by defining marriage as only between a man and a woman.

The resolution urged Southern Baptists in California to work and vote for the referendum and called for all Southern Baptists and other Christians to pray for its passage. It encouraged California pastors to “speak strongly, prophetically and redemptively” about homosexuality and the protection of biblical marriage. The addition of “redemptively” came in an amendment offered from the floor and accepted by the committee.

The resolution also repeated calls for adoption of a federal constitutional amendment to define marriage as only the union of a man and a woman.

Ron Wilson of First Baptist Church in Thousand Oaks, Calif., sought adoption of an amendment that would have encouraged “all Christians in California to remove their children from the public schools, which are the main training ground for the teaching of same-sex marriage.” After messengers debated its merits, the amendment failed by a margin that was estimated by some observers as about four to one.

The failed amendment essentially would have accomplished the goal of a proposed resolution—not reported out by the committee—that dealt with recent events which legally cemented the indoctrination of California’s students into “sexual deviancy.” The rejected resolution was an extension of recent advocacy by some Southern Baptists for a Christian “exit strategy” from the public schools.

At the news conference Orman said the panel wanted to stay focused on the same-sex “marriage” issue in opposing Wilson’s amendment.

Seven other resolutions, adopted unanimously or nearly unanimously, included those which:

• expressed thanksgiving for the growing ethnic diversity in the SBC and urged “balanced representation” of ethnicities on the convention’s boards and in its entities;

• called for Southern Baptists and other Christians to participate in the political and public policy process, while avoiding the politicization of the church;

• urged Southern Baptists and other Christians to “resist the march of secularism” and to seek to influence businesses and other institutions to return Christmas to “its proper place in the culture;”

• celebrated the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel and encouraged prayers in its behalf;

• urged government defunding of Planned Parenthood, the country’s leading abortion provider;

• recognized the 100th anniversary of Royal Ambassadors, the convention’s missions training program for boys; and

• offered thanks for the work of Southern Baptists in Indiana and others who assisted with this year’s meeting.

All resolutions express the views of the messengers at an annual meeting but are not binding on churches and the entities of the SBC.

A total of 24 resolutions were submitted to the committee before the convention.

Floridians joining Orman on the 10-member Resolutions Committee were Rick Lineberger, pastor of First Baptist Church in Bradenton, and Frank Moreno, member of First Hispanic Baptist Church in Jacksonville, and director of the Florida Baptist Convention’s language division.