Thoughts From One Never Alone

It’s been two weeks now since the annual meeting of the Missouri Baptist Convention. The dust is settled and I’ve caught up (it’s always a ministerial sprint when returning from convention activities). In the midst of catching up, I’ve given the proceedings a lot of thought. I’ll be praying about the following matters:

**It was good to see that we are continually exploring new relationships and opportunities for mission work. Several partnerships were formed and celebrated, reminding us of the important work of expanding the Kingdom of Christ to all peoples. I’m praying that God will cause these efforts and relationships to be fruitful and Christ-honoring.

**We did see the approval of an amendment that should lead to greater involvement in the future. That is, if churches take advantage of the ability to send a greater number of messengers. Churches will now have their messengers seated based upon total membership of their congregation as well as the amount of their giving to the Cooperative Program (which ever is greater). This is similar to the SBC’s approach.

That being said, I’m praying that we’ll see the day when we’ll no longer look at one another with skepticism based upon the size of our congregations. We seem to struggle with trusting larger churches. This tendency is often fueled in our convention by references to our past when liberalism was spreading and in control.

Comments were made, when debating this amendment, which were accusatory and uncharitable toward larger churches by tying them subtly to our past struggles. Yet, we must recognize that the problem of theological liberalism was not a ‘big church’ issue. Liberalism is no respecter of churches. We had associations made up of small churches that contributed to the problem as much as a few larger churches did. The real problem was that along with liberalism we also struggled with the lack of congregational participation in annual meetings. If all of our churches participated they way they should, then the few larger churches that seemed to have such influence would have been marginalized. This is exactly what happened when the effort of Project 1000 was operational. Thankfully, today we have solid churches of all sizes involved. Now they can be even more involved.

**Apart from the debate regarding the Legal issues (the five break-away agencies), there didn’t seem to be that much debate/disagreement. This certainly doesn’t mean that all is well regarding the recent disputes (i.e.: SOC v MBLA), but at least we have moved to a point where those disagreements are no longer front-and-center. That being said, MBLA supporters did distribute the ‘Viewpoint’ material which was mailed to MBC churches weeks earlier. This was the same material that was not well received when handed out at the SBC in June. I’m praying that we will see genuine, Biblical reconciliation and brotherly acceptance in the areas of continued disagreement.

**I’m also praying for the leadership of our convention. They have a tremendous amount of responsibility and need our continued support as they serve us.