I'd love to clarify my post, in light of Mark's feeling that my frustration might be related to placement issues. I have absolutely no desire to depart from the education field for the pastorate/church staff ministry field. I'd much rather deal with teenagers and the problems associated with their acquisition and application of basic academic skills, and the social problems that result from their forced association with a community called "school" every day than attempt to accomplish some form of Christian ministry in the face of oppositional deacons, self-appointed monarchs and power brokers in the church.
Certainly the national CBF has done a fine job in its partnership relations with seminaries, in international missions, in establishing the Passport youth mission ministry, and in its other partnerships. There are things that it has established and initiated that wouldn't be there now if they hadn't taken that initiative. On the other hand, it is obvious that CBF hasn't been successful in gathering and uniting all, or even a majority, of "moderate" Baptists who have been disaffected by the SBC leadership and its move toward fundamentalism. Apparently, there are moderate Baptists who feel the need to form other organizations like "Mainstream Baptists" and "Baptists Committed", not only to express their views, but to address different issues. There is a lot of overlap in these groups, and there is common purpose centered around their disenfranchisement from the SBC, but there also seems to be a lot of confusion and cross-purposes, and lack of unity and cause. The message that always seems to come forward is that they've organized, they've had a meeting and the important result of that is who got elected as an officer.
My frustration is that after over twenty years of being disenfranchised from the SBC, moderates still don't seem to know exactly what to do. Most CBF churches still maintain CP giving and an affiliation with the SBC. What does that say about the effectiveness of the leadership when after more than twenty years of having the pulpit, and of observing some absolutely abominable, un-Christian behavior on the part of the SBC leadership, it has not been able to convince those in its own churches to make a clean break, get off the fence, and move forward? There are others who want to focus their resources and energy on continuing the battle with the fundies over state conventions, which will also be, in most cases, futile. Then you have the unusual case of the BGCT, which has been largely successful in convincing the majority of its churches and leaders that the SBC has been wrong. Rather than unite with the other moderates who have opposition to SBC leadership as a common cause, however, the BGCT's leadership has fancied itself as the pole around which disaffected and disenfranchised Baptists can rally, and has even envisioned itself at the center of a "Baptist Convention of the Americas" which will rival, or even surpass, the SBC in power and influence. Its leadership has perceived at least two things: 1. That there are many among those disenfranchised and disaffected by the SBC who are theologically conservative, or at least not as "moderate" as most of those in CBF and 2. that the BGCT is four times the size, and has much larger, already established, more secure resources than CBF. The BGCT has, in fact, become a second and more powerful "pole" around which moderate Baptists can rally.
At the height of the controversy in the SBC, the moderates were drawing the vote of almost half of the messengers, in spite of the efforts of conservatives to stuff the ballot box. A concerted, unified effort on the part of moderate Baptists, while it would not have succeeded in returning the SBC to moderate leadership, would have produced a sizeable enough split to create a large enough moderate Baptist group to at least fill the gap in the missions and educational ministries that have been lost. Instead, there has been this time lag, during which moderates have elected officers and organized three or four overlapping, competing groups.
Moderates need a single structure, permitting diversity, around which a strong, significant organization providing educational and missions ministries could be formed. This would be far more effective than the limited scope that now exists between several small organizations, and would also be far more efficient in stewardship of resources. One of the primary challenges facing moderate Baptists these days is rescuing Baptist colleges and universities from fundamentalist takeover. A single, strong, united moderate body would make that task much easier. Those are the places where future moderate Baptist leaders, including the missionary staff, will be trained. Until moderates get to this point, if that is even possible now, forming new organizations and electing new officers is pretty pointless. [/i]
