{"id":1520,"date":"2009-10-28T21:46:37","date_gmt":"2009-10-29T05:46:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2009\/10\/28\/the-independent-baptist-model-specifically-rejected\/"},"modified":"2009-10-28T21:46:37","modified_gmt":"2009-10-29T05:46:37","slug":"the-independent-baptist-model-specifically-rejected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2009\/10\/28\/the-independent-baptist-model-specifically-rejected\/","title":{"rendered":"the independent Baptist model… specifically rejected"},"content":{"rendered":"

So says David Hankins, executive director of the Louisiana Baptist Convention. A bit more context:<\/p>\n

\n

To individuals who may foresee a confederation of churches "that have a common heritage and a common theology but no common methodology," Hankins said: "With all due respect, that is the independent Baptist model that Southern Baptists have specifically and decidedly rejected….<\/p>\n

"While Southern Baptists prize local church autonomy, we are not hyper-local church practitioners who believe in no extra-congregational ecclesiastical structures. We find no contradiction in believing in both. We believe the current structure of Southern Baptists is appropriate for Southern Baptist ecclesiology, life and work…. It fits who we are and what we want to do. And I believe Southern Baptists, by and large, want it to continue."<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

You can read the entire article here: \u201cCooperation ‘key’ to resurgence; offers strategy to strengthen CP<\/a>\u201d. The comments come from an address given to the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force.<\/p>\n

It is true that arguments can be made concerning cooperative efforts like the SBC Cooperative Program, but this particular address seems to belie the unanimity, cohesiveness, and commitment of all Southern Baptists to the idea.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

After all, the speaker seems to be \u201crallying the troops\u201d to the idea of the CP, which has fallen from 10 percent of churches undesignated offerings to 6 percent currently, according to the article. The article also says \u201cSouthern Baptists only give an average of 2 percent of their income for missions, including CP.\u201d<\/p>\n

So how well is that denominational \u201cextra-congregational\u201d structure working? How committed are the SBC churches and individuals to it?<\/p>\n

That is not to say that Independent Baptists are superior in their giving patterns. I have no idea what those might be and doubt that it would be that easy to find out. (And I am not sure how the SBC figures their statistics out either.) And that is also not to say that the Cooperative Program isn\u2019t a powerful idea and tool for missions.<\/p>\n

However, it does seem that the whole denominational thing is on a decline like all other aspects of church life. While the SBC men have rejected the independent idea, it may be that the advantages of cooperative effort are losing their charm. And it may also be that the independent ministry model isn\u2019t so bad, either, but that is another article.<\/p>\n

\"don_sig2\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So says David Hankins, executive director of the Louisiana Baptist Convention. A bit more context: To individuals who may foresee a confederation of churches "that have a common heritage and a common theology but no common methodology," Hankins said: "With all due respect, that is the independent Baptist model that Southern Baptists have specifically and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[71],"tags":[124,121,122,123],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2fYWj-ow","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1520"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1520\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}