The Problem with the Southern Baptists

The Southern Baptist Convention has already been meeting this week in Louisville, Kentucky and they are planning to tone down the rhetoric when it comes to political issues and focus more inwardly. They say they want to place more emphasis on evangelism. They don't want to be as divisive politically. Back in the late 1970's and early 80's there was controversy between the supposed "conservatives" and "moderates" within the convention. They were debating over such issues as the inerrancy of scripture. They were debating the question is the Bible the Word of God or does it contain the Word of God?

In the last several years the political hot topics have been abortion, gay rights, the Bible's position on women submitting to their own husbands, prosleytizing Mormons, and boycotting Disney because they supported granting domestic benefits to gay partners. A denomination can become too inundated with politics. However, the church should stand on issues that today are deemed political when those issues violate God's word such as abortion, homosexual rights, or anything dealing with sin. The church should take a stand on those issues because they were Biblical/moral issues long before they became political issues.

The biggest problem with the Southern Baptists today is they have no God in their churches. I heard an evangelist who now lives in Jacksonville, Florida say years ago that two problems with the Southern Baptists are they don't know their history nor their Bible. That is the truth. They don't know what constitutes a Bible-believing church. There's more to a Biblical church than adhering to the cardinal doctrines of scripture. Those are just the tip of the iceberg. A strong Biblical church needs to be a praying church with the power of God in it as well as one that practices holiness. Most Southern Baptists are worldly as a bootlegger. They also need to practice church discipline when their members are practicing sin. A church is useless if church discipline isn't practiced when needed.

Southern Baptist churches today are consumed with church growth techniques trying to build "churches" like Rick Warren's Saddleback Church in California. They're involved in using worldly entertainment to draw crowds such as "Christian" rock music, choreographical dancing, etc. God's nowhere around that mess. We need to go back to the old-time paths. Another thing I believe they need to do is they need to stop the cooperative mission giving program and make the individual churches responsible for supporting missions. That's the Bible way. I would rather individually give to a missionary that I know is preaching God's word in a foreign country than give to a mission board which distributes money to missionaries I know nothing about. The cooperative mission board is just another tradition of the church that has no place in scripture.

I believe we need to quote that scripture in Psalms 85:6 which says "Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee." We need revival in our churches. Today's Southern Baptists need to study their heritage and the scriptures once again.