Last week I followed the Southern Baptist Convention meeting. Some interesting stuff was happening, beyond the Paige Patterson controversy. Ed Stetzer wrote a great piece about it, and the Washington Post covered the convention well.
The only story you probably heard was about Vice President Mike Pence’s speech. The audience was expecting an affirmation of the SBC’s ministry and influence, but all they got was a campaign speech. Which Stetzer said shouldn’t have surprised them. “The reality is that we should expect politicians to act in political ways.” But it upset a great many people–conservative, Southern evangelicals, Trump’s base.
Pence cited all of the Trump administration’s accomplishment, such as they are, and basically exalted President Trump, as Pence usually does. One person counted up the references Pence made: President (61 times), Trump (12 times), Donald (6 times), God (9), Christ (2), Jesus (1).
After the speech, JD Greer, the new president of the Southern Baptist Convention, tweeted this:
“I know that [Pence’s speech] sent a terribly mixed signal. We are grateful for civic leaders who want to speak to our Convention—but make no mistake about it, our identity is in the gospel and our unity is in the Great Commission. Commissioned missionaries, not political platforms, are what we do.”
Good for him! The question that people were then asking was: why invite politicians? Stetzer wrote:
“We must ask ourselves, what is our goal? And who do we want to be? If the focus is evangelism, discipleship, mission, and church planting, having a Vice President come to speak doesn’t actually significantly help us with our goals. The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest denominational missions-sending organization in the world, represented in numerous countries. So how does highlighting ONE country’s leadership help us model and show diversity and inclusiveness with other countries?”
He also pointed out an irony. Two hours before the speech, the Mission board told the inspiring story of a Muslim in an undisclosed country whom a Baptist missionary had led to Christ. Then Pence bragged about how the administration had radical Muslims “on the run.”
Said Stetzer, “We should not be confused about which of those scenarios should have us cheering the most. Our ultimate desire is not to have any people on the run, but rather to have them running to Christ.”
Stetzer and he and others basically said, “Enough with inviting politicians to our convention. There’s a time and a place to talk about politics, but it’s not at our conventions that are meant to be focused on the gospel mission.”
CNN reporter Daniel Burke, who spent a couple days covering the meeting, tweeted: “They’ve spent the vast majority of that time talking about evangelism. Not politics, not the role of women, not the culture wars. Church planting and baptisms are the core focus.”
But because they invited Pence, the news coverage was dominated by politics–not the work of the Gospel. From everything I read, the Southern Baptists aren’t going to let that happen again.
