“I see many valuable contributions to the SBC coming from the Emergent Leaders Movement.
I believe it is a positive thing to see a broader number of participants in our convention’s direction.
I personally applaud this movement.”
Frank Page, interview with bloggers
Technorati Tags: baptist, Emergent, emerging church, emerging movement, sbc
The SBC Annual Meeting finished yesterday – I haven’t been to one of these since 1999 in Atlanta. Imagine seeing thousands of people with diet cokes in their hands and smiles on their faces, and all the men wearing a strict polo/khaki uniform. You gotta love the Southern Baptists!
In yesterday’s meeting, Frank Page was elected President of Southern Baptist Convention. Frank says he appreciates the emerging movement efforts.
In a recent article, “Page said there is a need “to pull together various factions” within the SBC, and he mentioned young pastors, “emergent” pastors, Calvinists, extreme legalists, strong denominationalists, and even the few remaining moderates.” ABP NEWS
Related: Impact of blogs on the election
Sure beats the old days when the SBC was wall to wall leisure suits!
Andrew, have you heard about the influence of the bloggers? I told you about this a couple of months ago. Check out TIME magazine:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1204271,00.html. This was a pretty incredible thing to be a part of – I did get to go to the convention and all of the SBC Bloggers met and got to hang out the whole time. This would make a great case study.
I deffinitely like the sound of this. i know of a sbc that was recently removed from fellowship because of their ministry to homosexuals. they were from the Harbour, in baytown texas. andrew i think you stayed with them at the emergent gathering. their story is a good example of why the sbc needs to be opened to emerging leadership.
I grew up in the midst of this SBC culture and can promise you this: It will be a long time before the majority of the people on the ground of SBC practice line up with their new president’s apparent openness. It is a difficult culture for many to come out of, and an even more difficult culture for people to understand unless you’ve really been through it. Sorry to sound so pessimistic, I guess I personally experience too much resistence from friends and family from with the world of SBC to see the hope. At the end of the day, those comments may cost Page his job!
coffee. they have coffee in their hands, not diet coke.
Frank Paige speaking kindly about the Emerging Church troubles me. The Emerging church is open to immorailty has rejected the Biblical concept of the church and it’s congregational nature and is trouble for anyone that gets involved with it. Doctrinal truth is loose and free in this movement and Southern Baptist need to stay away from it. To have the new Southern Baptist president applauding it shows his ignorance of the movement and naiveness that is really baffeling as to why he was ever elected in the first place. If I could have attended the SBC this year I never would have voted for him.
As someone with long-standing connections to the SBC as a pulpit supply preacher and interim pastor, I am suprised and pleased of the openness of the new SBC president. It is time for the various expressions of church to dialogue about a fresh missional engagement with American culture. And while I appreciate the concerns that Adam has in his post above, we need to be careful about making broad generalizations about the EC or any expression of Christianity. Surely some aspects of EC are problematic and could benefit careful doctrinal as well as missional discernment, but so could some more traditional expressions of church.
How might we work together to become careful students of Scripture and culture in order to more faithfully engage Western culture? (See my blog for a new series of articles that touches on this topic.) Perhaps the new openness of leaders like Frank Page are a step in the right direction.