FBW Article - Day 2

Today, a state executive director told me that he had just told 140 pastors that I had called their churches weak. He clearly was misunderstanding and attempting to paraphrase this statement, "conventions exist because thriving local churches do not."

This statement does not suggest that our state conventions are full of weak churches. The statement is not descriptive but proscriptive. It is a proposed theological rationale for conventions.

In short, I was saying just the opposite of what the executive director had thought I was saying. So, please allow me take another stab at this.

To the extent that the Lord has blessed states with thriving churches, they should strive to get more and more funds to places where thriving churches do not exist(both within and without the state). The Lord has been very good to us in the south! We have many thriving churches.

We should rejoice and strive to send and allocate more for the establishment of thriving churches elsewhere.

My statement was inspired by Piper’s now famous dictum, “missions exists because worship does not.” Just as Piper was not saying that churches are not worshipping God. I am not saying that existing churches in the SBC are not thriving.

On the contrary, because there are successful churches in our states, the need to establish thriving churches is proportionately greater outside of our states than within them (particularly in the southern states).

We may have some minor disagreements on the way forward, but I believe we can all agree that the current allocations do not represent our best foot forward and that we can do more both at the church level and the state levels.

My desire is that more of our cooperating be directed at using the resources given by thriving churches for the establishment of more thriving churches. Resources should also be used to help assist churches who are struggling. The focus of the work of conventions should be establishing and maintaining thriving local churches because disciples are still made in local churches. This is true across town and around the world.

So far, no response that I have received to the FBW article has mentioned or interacted with this reality: we spend 1.31/person domestically and .038/person internationally.

Put another way, on average, less than .012 of every dollar given to an SBC church makes it to the nations (the IMB). Surely we are not pleased with the status quo. Surely we cannot ignore this fact at such a time as this. May God help us and give us the way forward.