SBC's "Great Commission" task force has stumbled badly

When I first learned about the Great Commission Resurgence movement in the Southern Baptist Convention, I felt extremely optimistic that maybe—just maybe—this might be God's means of bringing the bureaucracy-laden, fervor-cooled, myopic, shrinking denomination back on the right track.

Then when I learned about the official Great Commission Resurgence Task Force that was formed after last year's SBC meeting, my hopes sank dramatically. I wrote at the time:

"After the committee's formation I was tempted to write a blog entitled 'Can the SBC bureaucracy save itself?' (Perhaps in the end this committee will be able to muster the courage, insights and influence necessary to make the required dramatic changes, but I remain skeptical because too many politicians and bureaucrats are now involved. What isn't needed is a simple rearranging of the chairs on the deck of this Titanic!)."

Now that I've read the preliminary report from this establishment-ladened committee, I am truly underwhelmed. Yes, underwhelmed. Overwhelmed I'm not.

This is looking more and more like a simple reshuffling the cards in a card game—a bureaucratic tug-o-war over money, position and power. That's the last thing the faltering denomination needs. The committee's recommendations look more like petty "robbing Peter to pay Paul" antics than the energy needed to expand the tent, bring in more members and more money, and re-ignite the cooling evangelistic fires that once burned so brightly inside the nation's largest non-Catholic denomination.

Presently top denominational bureaucrats are pointing fingers at each other over the committee's silly, Mickey-Mouse pronouncement that the solution lies in taking $2 million from the denomination's Executive Committee and giving it to its International Mission Board, which already receives 50-cents out of every dollar forwarded to the national denomination, and in taking funds away from its smallest state conventions, which are having a truly tough time living on the outskirts of the denomination's Southern base and staying afloat in this Great Recession, to invigorate its long-faltering North American Mission Board.

If this Movement is in reality just a ruse to steal each other's funding and play "pea-under-the- pod" bureaucracy games, then the Great Commission Resurgence is truly not what I—and many others—had hoped for: a way out for the denomination's cooling fervor, declining numbers, and dwindling dollars.

Instead of the Movement stirring up top, aging denominational bureaucrats to squabble over money and fuss about who's more evangelistic, the Great Commission Committee needed to motivate, inspire, and lead the denomination's core and younger lay and clergy members on the local level—not its bloated national bureaucracy—to aspire to new heights.

Time is running out for the task force to forge a creative, innovative, far-reaching, positive plan for the convention's future that truly will inspire the person in the pew.

Can the SBC reinvent itself as a powerful force for God today?

Just a few short months ago Southern Baptists seemed determined to stonewall their deteriorating denominational situation.

Like ostriches with their heads stuck in the sand, SBC denominational leaders and laypeople alike seemed oblivious to declining baptisms, dwindling membership, and shrinking income—not to mention weakening morale in many quarters, especially among younger members.

Then late spring arrived and with it the so-called Great Commission Resurgence movement. At first the movement sounded like the kind of reform uprising the SBC so desperately needs—one led by laypeople from the grassroots up. Then just as quickly the denomination's bureaucracy rose up to seize control of the movement. The movement was institutionalized into a special SBC committee filled to the rafters with a wide assortment of SBC politicos and bureaucrats and only few of them genuine laypeople, women, or from the under-30 crowd.

After the committee's formation I was tempted to write a blog entitled "Can the SBC bureaucracy save itself?" (Perhaps in the end this committee will be able to muster the courage, insights and influence necessary to make the required dramatic changes, but I remain skeptical because too many politicians and bureaucrats are now involved. What isn't needed is a simple rearranging of the chairs on the deck of this Titanic!) Before I could pen that column, however, the situation at the top of the denomination began to unravel further.

The first blow occurred when trustees of the denomination's North American Mission Board unceremoniously dumped their new president and top staff (allowing them to "resign", of course)—a strong indication, which is widely known, that the agency is faltering badly.

Then last week the president of the SBC's mammoth International Mission Board, Jerry Rankin, suddenly announced plans to retire and step down by next summer. That bombshell was followed by the announcement this week that Morris Chapman, president of the SBC's powerful Executive Committee, is also making plans to exit the stage. Both men are 68 and neither has been inclined to go quietly into the night to pave the way for younger successors.

So what's going on in the midst of all this upheaval?

What was once a swirling mess is now churning into what looks like a denominational hurricane.

1. The decline in baptisms and church membership is serious business for a denomination that has had a decades-long love attraction to growth and big numbers. While the statistical decline so far has been minimal, any decline at all is like a bullet in the heart to a denomination that has attached its star and too much importance to rising numbers.

2. The economic recession is real and Southern Baptists have not been immune to the pain in the pocketbook of average Americans. Less money in Southern Baptist homes means less money in local church offering plates, which in turn means less money for the denominational bureaucracy to lay claim to. Unfortunately the SBC has lived too long on the illusion that the money supply will always expand—seen as another this-worldly sign of God's blessings on the denomination. SBC leaders know real emotional pain will follow dwindling dollars.

3. As I said in my book, Witness to the Truth, published 16 months ago, the SBC's entire bureaucracy is antiquated and in dire need of reform, revision, and dramatic downsizing. When they first took control of the SBC bureaucracy in the early 1990s, Conservative SBC leaders badly misjudged the situation they inherited from their Moderate predecessors. Had they not been so awestruck by the denomination's wealth and resources at their disposal, they might have stayed true to their original plans to downsize and severely overhaul the denomination's expensive, cumbersome and far-flung structures. Instead they liked the spoils of their war with the moderates too much and opted instead to mimic those they defeated. For starters, the denomination desperately needs to revise its way of propelling leaders into its hierarchy; setting term limits on agency heads and seminary presidents would be another worthy goal.

4. The technological revolution swirling around us is making many institutions obsolete, including many church organizations. Unfortunately, churches themselves are not immune to this trend. Facebook and Twitter provide social connections Sunday-school classes once provided. The Internet and cable TV expand our ability to tune in to a whole smorgasbord of preachers, theological discussions, and "religious" experiences for a lot less investment of time, money, emotions, and resources.

Meanwhile far too many SBC churches as well as others want to do things "like we've always done them"; they presume their traditions are written in the Bible instead of their own narrow ethno-linguistic Southern cultures.

5. Many denominational structures are ill-equipped for today when people don't need mission boards to find them places of service or money to support them, when givers to church want to see real progress and results from the money they are asked to invest instead of just trusting whatever religious leader puffs enough smoke, when old-line missions supporters are dying off at a fast clip and younger ones are not lining up to take their places at the offering plates; and when people in general want to cut across artificial denominational, political, and economic boundaries in search of things that help them live better lives in a more crowded, more complex, more dangerous, and a less-religious world.

Like people witnessing a dam that has broken, Southern Baptists today face a rising tide of transition that will determine whether the denomination as we know it will live on as a dying, myopic, irrelevant, isolated, navel-gazing institution or somehow dramatically reinvent itself as a powerful global force for God and good in our culture and world today.

I vote for reinvention, but then I'm just one lone voice crying in the wilderness of the Internet. Inertia and the fear of change are always major stumblingblocks to any real reform.

Are Southern Baptists ready to wake up, smell the coffee, and do something about their bloated, irrelevant bureaucracy?

A key, sitting Southern Baptist leader has finally admitted publicly the truth about the denomination's wasteful, irrelevant, unnecessary, and gigantic bureaucracy.

Daniel Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, NC, this week spoke the truth when he said, "We (Southern Baptists) have become bloated and bureaucratic."

"It is easier to move some things through the federal government than the Southern Baptist Convention. Overlap and duplication in our associations, state and national conventions is strangling us," Akin said. "We waste time and resources, and many are fed up.

"The rally cry of the Conservative Resurgence was, 'We will not give our monies to liberal institutions.' Now the cry of the Great Commission Resurgence is, 'We will not give our money to bloated bureaucracies.'"

According to Baptist Press, "Akin called on Southern Baptist leaders to rethink everything they do—boards, organizations, agencies, structures—in light of a Great Commission agenda that maximizes cooperation and minimizes bureaucracy in planting churches and getting the Gospel to all people, everywhere."

I just hope and pray the average Southern Baptists in the pew will listen intently to Akin's words. I also hope and pray the SBC bureaucracy won't muzzle, character assassinate, or try to harm Akin for speaking the truth.

As I've said many times over the years, the SBC bureaucracy is the largest and most cumbersome church organization in the United States today.  While Southern Baptists used to point fingers of shame at the Roman Catholic Church for its curia and its bureaucratic style, members of America's largest Protestant denomination were actually busy constructing their own indigenous form of the Catholic curia that dwarfs anything the Roman Catholic Church has in America today.

If the Southern Baptist Convention were a regular business, its wealth and personnel would rival some of the biggest companies in America today. So vast is the denomination's enterprise that it's difficult to calculate all the billions of its assets, all the thousands of its employees, and all the tentacles of the organization that reach into almost every country in the world today.

Yet the graying denomination today is mired in its own form of recession—falling church rolls, declining income, stagnated purpose, fragmented direction, and dwindling support among its next generation of church lay people and leaders.

Life in Southern Baptist's mammoth "Baptistdom" (my term for the SBC bureaucracy) has taken on a form of its own. It often would be unrecognizable to the SBC's founders and first-century Christians.  More Southern than Baptist, more polite than effective, more navel-gazing than evangelical, the SBC's bureaucracy looks more like the federal bureaucracy than it does the biblical City of God Set on a Hill that it should be.

A couple of days ago I was chatting on the phone in a personal conversation with a former top leader of the SBC. He surprised me greatly when he suddenly said, "You know, Louis, we Conservatives have done a really poor job of managing the denomination's bureaucracy. I have to admit that the Moderates were much better at it." 

Bullseye!  The Moderates built the foundation and first tier of the Southern Baptist curia. And they managed their creation very well. The Conservatives revolted, took it over, and at first threatened to downsize it, reform it, and minimize it. Then they suddenly made a U-turn when they found the wealth, power, and creature comforts the bureaucracy affords so appealing.

In a day when taxpayer anger threatens the federal, state, and local governments as well as multinational corporations, Baptistdom could face severe headaches when SBC church members wake up, smell the coffee, and realize how much of their hard-earned tithes and offerings are wasted on airplane tickets, hotel rooms, catered lunches, fancy automobiles, beautiful offices, above-average salaries, wasteful practices, and all the other perks and accouterments that feed the denomination's bloated and ineffective bureaucracy.

We'll discuss this further in the days ahead. For now, keep your eye on Daniel Akin and what develops from his recent comments. Let's all pray he gets the respect he deserves for such courageous and right-on remarks.

Three key reasons why the SBC is losing members

After rocking along for years showing small numerical increases in membership, the Southern Baptist Convention finally has reported a loss. The tiny drop is the beginning of what many believe could become an avalanche.

The reasons for the situation are multiple. Screaming "do more evangelism", as some are prone to do, merely puts a small bandage on the matter. This has been the hue and cry of denominational leaders at least since World War II.

The membership slowdown—now a statistical decline—doesn't surprise those of us who know the denomination well. The drop has been on the horizon for years. The biggest surprise is why this negative report has taken so long to occur.

The drop in membership has nothing to do whatsoever with the Conservative-Moderate theological war that was waged within the denomination 1979 to 1991. The surprise was that despite all that brouhaha, the denomination didn't tip into negative numbers back in those days. The Conservatives have been in power long enough now that they can't lay the blame of this current situation at the feet of the Moderates.  That worn-out excuse won't hunt in 2009.

The current issues are threefold:

1. For more than 30 years the denomination has failed to demand that its congregations clean up their rolls and keep accurate membership records. Instead denominational leaders blissfully skipped along acting as though the membership numbers they were reporting were the real thing and knowing full well a time bomb was ticking away. Most pastors, church staff, and knowledgeable lay people on both sides of the political fence knew differently. They knew that year by year the numbers on those rolls were flooded with names of people who couldn't be found—either because they had died, had moved away with no forwarding address, or simply had exited out the church's back door without so much as leaving a goodbye note. This is one reason that within the denomination the hue and cry over the decline hasn't been more severe. Most lay and clergy leaders have known for a long time that their numbers are radioactive and unreliable.

2. The shift of the denomination during the past 25 years from its Southern Democratic roots to its current right-wing Republicanism has precipitated a massive polarization within the denomination that is thwarting its original goal to evangelize any potential candidate anywhere. People who are not aligned with the Republican Party no longer are comfortable—or even welcome—in denominational or church-leadership roles. 

Marrying theology and politics—and aborting the once-cherished principle of the separation of church and state—now drives away potential converts to the Southern Baptist fold.  As I keep asking Southern Baptist friends over and over, "What supporter of President Barack Obama in his or her right mind would want to attend—let alone join—a Southern Baptist church right now given the negative and sour political climate within the denomination and its churches against them and the man they admire?" Salvation isn't about how one voted last November, though some Southern Baptists seem determined to add that as a new pre-condition—even putting it before baptism.

3. The obsession of the denomination's leadership with "strategy" and "training" instead of leading by example is a major flaw that has led and will continue to lead to diminishing numbers of candidates for salvation and baptism. Except when called on to do showcase events, many higher-ups in the denomination's pecking order are less likely today to engage in real, old-fashioned, regular, shoe-leather witnessing to individuals and more likely to engage in bureaucratic "strategy" planning and training of others. On down the hierarchical line many pastors and church staff have picked up this "Do-as-I-say-not-do-as-I-do" attitude. 

Simultaneously Southern Baptist lay people are more and more expecting "the church staff" to do the work of the ministry. That work includes bringing in new converts and new members. 

With Southern Baptist clergy and lay people at such an impasse, does anyone wonder that Southern Baptist baptisms are declining and church membership is stagnated and ready to head downhill? The gridlock begs the question, who is doing the work now that once grew the SBC into the largest Protestant denomination in America?

Other factors, such as the breakdown of the traditional family, the rise of independent and Bible churches, the lure and effectiveness of the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses among Southern Baptists, and the declining U.S. birthrate contribute to the drop in SBC numbers. Those are easier to cite—and hide behind—than the Big Three I've named. (For more information on the meltdown of religion in the average American's life be sure and note the new American Religious Identification Survey released today.)

Interestingly, Southern Baptist leaders seem mostly uninterested in addressing the matter of their shrinking numbers. Perhaps they believe "benign neglect" is their best approach.

The real issues I've addressed in this column call for tough actions. My hunch is Southern Baptists are no longer up for the challenge. They'd much rather stick their heads in the sand about their long-neglected, bloated church rolls, their divisive Republicanism, and their leaders who aren't really leading by example—and instead continue to beat the worn-out, guilt-producing, old drum song "do more evangelism".  

Yes, more evangelism may be needed particularly by both upper-echelon clergy and lay people, but simultaneously and more importantly major efforts are needed to clear the boulders and obstacles blocking the path to growth.  Otherwise these trends will continue and the SBC membership someday may look like the decimated memberships of the Mainline Protestant denominations, from whom the SBC has so readily tried to distance itself.

Eye-popping figures on SBC, RCC memberships released by National Council of Churches

The following press release from the National Council of Churches is one of the most significant religious developments this decade.  After bucking the trends that decimated other Christian bodies in the United States for the last 30 years, the Roman Catholic Church in the U.S. and the Southern Baptist Convention are both now posting numerical losses.

The source cited is one of the most reliable and authoritative information sources for church life today.

I will be writing more about this later, but I want my readers to see this breaking news now:

NCC's 2009 Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches
reports decline in Catholic, Southern Baptist membership

New York, February 23, 2009 -- The 77th annual edition of the Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches , long a highly regarded chronicler of growth and financial trends of religious institutions, records a slight but startling decline in membership of the nation's largest Christian communions.

Membership in the Roman Catholic Church declined 0.59 percent and the Southern Baptist Convention declined 0.24 percent, according to the 2009 edition of the Yearbook, edited by the National Council of Churches and published by Abingdon.

The figures indicate that the Catholic church lost 398,000 members since the appearance of the 2008 Yearbook. Southern Baptists lost nearly 40,000 members.

Both membership figures were compiled by the churches in 2007 and reported to the Yearbook in 2008. The 2009 Yearbook also includes an essay by the editor, the Rev. Dr. Eileen W. Lindner, on the various ways churches count their members.

Neither figure is earth-shattering given the size of the churches. Roman Catholics compose the nation's largest church with a membership of 67,117,016, and Southern Baptists rank second in the nation at 16,266,920.

But this year's reported decline raises eyebrows because Catholic and Southern Baptist membership has grown dependably over the years. Now they join virtually every mainline church in reporting a membership decline.

According to the 2009 Yearbook, among the 25 largest churches in the U.S., four are growing: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (up 1.63 percent to 5,873,408; the Assemblies of God (up 0.96 percent to 2,863,265); Jehovah's Witnesses (up 2.12 percent to 1,092,169); and the Church of God of Cleveland, Tenn. (up 2.04 percent to 1,053,642).

There are no clear-cut theological or sociological reasons for church growth or decline, says Editor Lindner. "Many churches are feeling the impact of the lifestyles of younger generations of church-goers -- the 'Gen X'ers' or "Millenials' in their 20s and 30s who attend and support local congregations but resist joining them."

But former Southern Baptist President Frank Page told the Associated Press that the decline in his denomination was troubling because of the Southern Baptist emphasis on winning souls.

Page called on Southern Baptists to "recommit to a life of loving people and ministering to people without strings attached so people will be more open to hearing the Gospel message."

Lindner writes, "A slowing of the rate of growth of some churches and the decline of membership of others ought to be the focus of continued research and and thoughtful inquiry."

Churches listed in the Yearbook as experiencing the highest rate of membership loss are the United Church of Christ (down 6.01 percent), the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (down 3.01 percent), the Presbyterian Church (USA) (down 2.79 percent), the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod (down 1.44 percent) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (down 1.35 percent), American Baptist Churches USA, on the other hand, cut its previous decline rate of 1.82 percent in half, now reporting a decline of 0.94 percent.

Membership of the top 25 churches in the U.S. totals 146,663,972 -- down 0.49 percent from last year's total of 147,382,460.

The top 25 churches reported in the 2009 Yearbook are in order of size:
The Roman Catholic Church, 67,117,06 members, down 0.59 percent. (Ranked 1)
The Southern Baptist Convention, 16,266,920 members, down 0.24 percent. (Ranked 2)
The United Methodist Church, 7,931,733 members, down 0.80 percent. (Ranked 3)
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 5,873,408 members, up 1.63 percent .(Ranked 4)
The Church of God in Christ, 5,499,875 members, no change reported. (Ranked 5)
National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc., 5,000,000 members, no change reported. (Ranked 6)
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, 4,709,956 members, down 1.35 percent. (Ranked 7)
National Baptist Convention of America, Inc., 3,500,000 members, no change reported. (Ranked 8)
Presbyterian Church (USA), 2,941,412 members, down 2.79 percent (Ranked 9)
Assemblies of God, 2,863,265 members, up 0.96 percent. (Ranked 10)
African Methodist Episcopal Church, 2,500,000 members, no change reported. (Ranked 11)
National Missionary Baptist Convention of America, 2,500,000 members, no change reported. (Ranked 11)
Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc., 2,500,000 members, no change reported. (Ranked 11)
The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod (LCMS), 2,383,084 members, down 1.44 percent. (Ranked 14)
The Episcopal Church, 2,116,749 members, down 1.76 percent. (Ranked 15)
Churches of Christ, 1,639,495 members, no change reported. (Ranked 16)
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, 1,500,000 members, no change reported. (Ranked 17)
Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, Inc., 1,500,000 members, no change reported. (Ranked 17)
The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, 1,400,000 members, down 3.01 percent. (Ranked 19)
American Baptist Churches in the USA, 1,358,351, down 0.94 percent. (Ranked 20)
Baptist Bible Fellowship International, 1,200,000, no change reported. (Ranked 21)
United Church of Christ, 1,145,281 members, down 6.01 percent. (Ranked 22)
Jehovah's Witnesses, 1,092,169 members, up 2.12 percent (Ranked 23)
Christian Churches and Churches of Christ, 1,071,616 members, no change reported. (Ranked 24)
Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.), 1,053,642 members, up 2.04 percent. (Ranked 25)

Personal tie to Sanctity issue sparks my special letter (and plea) to President-elect Obama

Dear President-elect Obama,

Only one issue kept me from voting for you.

As an activist during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, I so looked forward to the day when I could cast a presidential ballot for a person with an African-American heritage.  I always thought I would vote for the first African-American Presidential candidate, regardless of which party, when he or she got his or her party's Presidential nomination.

I entered college the year my alma mater allowed its first African-American to become a student.  I lived in the same dorm as the young man and admired his prowess on the football field. As a newspaper reporter on the Baylor University student newspaper, The Lariat, I interviewed the first African-American faculty member at the school and dared to spotlight how years earlier she had been denied admission when she wanted to attend our school. As the student newspaper's editor, I scolded the university's administration for waiting so long to make that faculty appointment. I even won a journalism award for what I said in my editorial.  Then, I deliberately helped a young African-American journalist eventually become my successor as editor of The Baylor Lariat. (By the way, that was a feat that took decades to replicate.) 

Do you get my point?  I am so proud of you for making history this week. It hurt me greatly not to be able to vote for you.

But I still couldn't vote for you because of that one issue.

What is the issue? Abortion.

You see, Mr. President-elect, I have a very strong commitment opposing abortion. My commitment began long before my denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, changed course and became truly pro-life. In fact, long before the Southern Baptist leaders you're likely to encounter on this issue over the next few years ever spoke out against abortion publicly even one time, I was pro-life and outspoken on that position.

Today is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday in Evangelical churches across our land.  So, let me tell you on this day and on the eve of your inauguration as our nation's 44th President why I am pro-life.

It is a highly personal issue for me.

You see, I am married to an adopted person. I love her as much as you could love Michelle. We've been married almost 40 years.  She is my best friend, my soul mate, and the love of my life. She is also the mother of my beloved son and daughter and the grandmother of my only grandchild. (Call me up sometime and I'll tell you all about that 3-year-old who wraps her grandmother and grandfather around her little tiny fingers!) I love all three of them very much, too.

One day I met the woman who gave birth to my wife and made an adoption plan for her.  Back in the 1940s when people were so cruel to unwed mothers, the woman suffered much humiliation at the hands of many around her. I felt very sorry for her. Then she told me she felt so bad about being pregnant with my wife that she wanted to abort my wife and almost did.  A few missing bucks made the difference. That startled me.

Then I got to thinking.  If my wife's birthmother had aborted that baby, the love of my life would never have been able to enter my life. I would never have known the joy of being married for a very long time to a very special lady.

Then it dawned on me that my two precious children would not be here either. I can't imagine not having Matthew and Katie in my life. As children and now as adults, they have brought me untold joy and happiness. Years later when my granddaughter entered the picture, I thought, "Golly gee whiz, if Kay and I had never met and married and had our son, then this little princess would not be in my life either."

All this, of course, led me to read the Christian Scriptures more closely for an understanding of what God says about abortion. I found many passages in the Bible that underscored my concern and led me to a firm conviction about the sanctity of all human life.

Every time I think about abortion, I shudder and wonder who is going to have a great big gap in his or her life because some woman somewhere—perhaps because of humiliation, ignorance, greed, or whatever—chose to have an abortion.

I deeply regret that you do not share my perspective on this issue.  Perhaps you would if you had married a woman who had been adopted as a baby. You are lucky you never had to face such thoughts. Nevertheless, I hope and pray that some day you will rethink your support of abortion—and if not oppose it, at least not work to support it.

By the way, my wife, Kay W. Moore, is the author of Gathering the Missing Pieces in an Adopted Life, published in 1994 by Broadman and Holman and then reprinted later in 2008 by Hannibal Books. This was one of the first books ever written from a truly Evangelical Christian perspective about adoption.  It was based on a series Kay wrote in 1979 for the Houston Chronicle about her successful search (then a real novelty) for her birth mother. The series was even nominated by the Chronicle for a Pulitzer Prize. Let me know if you'd like to have a copy; I will personally see to it that you get one.

In the meanwhile, please know that I will continue to pray for you regularly, just as I have since the election. I may not have voted for you, but I truly want you to succeed. We may disagree on one major issue and maybe a few other smaller matters, but I do want you to become a truly great American President.

Blessings and Peace.

Louis Moore

Both Religious Right and Religious Left have much they could learn from one another

After riding high for years, the Religious Right is about to see its sun begin to set on political influence in this country. Meanwhile, the sun is rising for the Religious Left's influence on American political life.

January 20 marks the day. That's when Barack Obama officially takes the oath of office as President of the United States.

The Religious Right opposed Obama, though some in that crowd tried to praise him for breaking the glass ceiling imposed by racial attitudes in this country. The Religious Left supported Obama about as subtly as the Religious Right tried to oppose him.

Already signs of the shift are everywhere.

I keep a watchful eye on this shifting landscape through two very important news sources for me—the Southern Baptist Convention's news agency Baptist Press, and the National Council of Churches' NCC News. Together they represent the ying and the yang of political/religious life in America today. For the naive, the SBC is very much a part of the Religious Right, while the National Council is very much part and parcel of the Religious Left.

One can almost see the teardrops falling in the daily SBC postings and the bright smiles emanating from what is becoming almost daily news releases from the NCC.

Sadly, both groups seem to limit their interests to a few select issues. Reading Baptist Press regularly and exclusively could lead one to believe the Bible is mostly concerned about only two political/social issues: the pro-life movement and the anti-homosexual movement. Reading NCC News regularly and exclusively could lead one to believe the Bible is mostly concerned about those prisoners at Guantanamo and Global Warming.

The truth is the Bible is filled with a lot more than just these four issues. The Bible contains information on just about every moral, ethical, economic, social, and relevant issue today. Name an issue, and the Bible offers up an applicable verse or a teaching that relates to it.

The Bible is also neither a Republican nor a Democratic handbook, though regrettably both the SBC and the NCC seem to have a penchant for skewing biblical teachings toward the party of preference of each.

Both the Religious Right and the Religious Left stand correctly on different issues—sometimes on the opposite side of the same coin. The Religious Right is correct in its strong pro-life stand on behalf of the unborn. But while the Religious Left is wrong on sanctity of human life issues, it does score well in reminding us that once a person is born, medical care, education, and other necessities matter much. I wish the Religious Right was as passionate for children living in poverty without adequate education and medical care and in troubled environments as it is about the unborn. The Bible is clear that both the unborn and the born are precious in God's sight. 

The same could be said for a number of other issues. The Religious Left is more right than wrong on environmental issues; the Religious Right would do well to stop arguing about global warming, reread the book of Genesis about the Creation,  and start emphasizing God's commands to be good stewards of the world He has given us.

I know members of the Religious Right who cannot see a bit of good in Obama's uncoming inauguration. For them the demise of the Religious Right's influence will be a disaster of unfathomable porportions. 

I also know members of the Religious Left who will not for a moment concede that the Religious Right has done anything correct. To them the Religious Right's influence on political life for the past eight years has been a colossal disaster.

Both groups need to take some deep breaths and try to put things in perspective. Each brings to the table perspectives that deserve to be heard. 

And each could learn from the other. In listening to each other and in genuine, above-politics dialogue both the Religious Right and the Religious Left just might learn some important biblical lessons and truths from the other. Neither has a complete lock on the truth.

Keeping secrets in Southern Baptist, Roman Catholic churches

(My book, Witness to the Truth, contains about 80,000 words.  In about 650 words Scripps-Howard religion columnist Terry Mattingly did a masterful job capturing the essense of what I said in the book. Terry's column will appear in Scripps-Howard newspapers across the country for the next several weeks. Normally, I post only my columns on this blog. However, Terry did such a fine job that I asked his permission to post it here.) 

WASHINGTON BUREAU: Terry Mattingly's religion column for 11/05/08.

EDITOR'S NOTE: First of two columns on keeping secrets in church.

Reporter Louis Moore didn't know much about the Lutheran Church-Missouri
Synod when he began covering its bitter civil war in the 1970s.

Nevertheless, as a Southern Baptist with a seminary degree he knew a
biblical-authority battle when he saw one -- so he caught on fast. Soon he
was appalled by the viciousness of the combat between "moderates" and
"conservatives" as the 2.7 million-member denomination careened toward
divorce.

Things got so bad he told a Houston Chronicle colleague that if the
Southern Baptist Convention "ever became embroiled in such a heinous war, I
would rather quit my job than be forced to cover it," noted Moore, in
"Witness to the Truth," his memoir about his life in the middle of some of
America's hottest religion stories.

"Regrettably, years later, I was an eyewitness to SBC behavior that made
the Lutherans' battle look like a Sunday school picnic."

The Lutheran fight was his "learner schism" and Moore witnessed many other
skirmishes in pulpits and pews before -- like it or not -- he was engulfed
by the battle to control America's largest non-Catholic flock. He also
served as president of the Religion Newswriters Association during that
time.

The Southern Baptist Convention's return to the theological right would be
near the top of any journalist's list of the pivotal events in American
religion in the late 20th Century. This Bible Belt apocalypse also affected
politicians ranging from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan, and anyone else who
sought national office in the "culture war" era following the 1960s and,
especially, Roe v. Wade.

After leaving daily journalism, Moore saw the Southern Baptist world from
the other side of the notebook for 14 years, serving as an SBC media aide
on policy issues and then with the convention's giant foreign missions
agency.

Moore said that in the "best of times" he saw believers in many flocks who
were so "servant-hearted and so demonstrative of Godlike virtues" that the
memory of their faithful acts -- in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, for
example -- still inspires tears. But in the worst of times?

"I have seen church people ... violate every one of the Ten Commandments,
act boorish and selfish, be prejudiced, broadcast secular value systems and
in general behave worse than the heathen people they tried to reach," noted
Moore. In fact, just "name some sin or some act the Bible eschews, and I
could pair that vice up with some church leader or member I have known."

Moore said his career affirmed basic values that he learned as a young
journalist, values he saw vindicated time after time in the trenches. Wise
religious leaders, he said, would dare to:

* Adopt "sunshine laws" so that as many as possible of their meetings are
open to coverage by journalists from the mainstream and religious press.
"When you're dealing with money your people have put in the offering plate,
you should be as open as possible," he said. "The things that belong on the
table need to stay on the table."

* Acknowledge that "politics is a way of life and they need to make it
clear to the people in the pews how the game is played," he said. "I truly
admire the people who let the covert be overt."

* Come right out and admit what they believe, when it comes to divisive
issues of theology and public life. "Say what you mean and mean what you
say," he said. "Way too many religious leaders take one position in public
and say something completely different somewhere else."

It's easy to pinpoint the root cause of these temptations, said Moore. At
some point, religious leaders become so committed to protecting the
institution they lead that they are driven to hide its sins and failures.
There's a reason that clergy and politicians share a love of public
relations and have, at best, mixed feelings about journalism.

"People who get caught up in this kind of group think spend so much of
their time testing the waters and floating their trial balloons," he said.
"I prefer to deal with the people who are honest about what they truly
believe . . ..

"Of course, the other side of that equation is that these authentic
believers are often politically naive and that means that they don't
survive the realities of the political process."

NEXT WEEK: Why Catholic doors kept closing.

Terry Mattingly (www.tmatt.net) directs the Washington Journalism Center 

at the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities.

Whither the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship? Don't ignore the glue that binds 'em

Within the past four decades, two major U.S. Christian denominations have been wracked with internal dissension over how to interpret the Bible. One said the debate was over "infallibility" of the Scriptures; the other said the issue was "inerrancy" of the Bible. For all practical purposes the debates were the same. 

In both cases—the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and the Southern Baptist Convention—each denomination arrived on the threshold of a major division that might have divided each group along 50-50 or 60-40 percentage lines. However, in each case the losing side—in both cases known by the same "Moderate" label—hesitated so long and waffled on what to do that it not only lost the battle but ended up a tiny fraction of what it might have been.

The so-called Moderate wing of the Missouri Synod—once a very powerful and influential force—vanished completely into the annals of church history.  Its remnants were absorbed into other pre-existing Lutheran bodies.

The lingering remnants of the SBC's Moderate wing are scattered and divided—hardly a shadow of what they formerly were—but lurking still like defeated bands of Confederate soldiers roaming the familiar countryside not quite sure what to do with themselves. Fractured and divided, their only common thread seems to be their disdain for the entrenched conservative rulers of the SBC.

  This week in Memphis the largest group of those war veterans—the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship—met for its annual reunion. It displayed once again how small, insignificant, and angry the group has become. Its stagnated budget is but a tiny glimmer of the much wealthier SBC and its membership totals remain vague and nebulous--apparently hopelessly intertwined with SBC totals. Remaining passive while a key leader likened their debacle in the SBC to Hitler's Holocaust exposed the group's continuing seething anger.

I find feeling sorry for the CBF members easy because, as one extremely honest former Southern Baptist exec said to me over coffee one day: "I've spent my life swimming in this huge lake called Southern Baptists. I just don't know that I could ever move over and swim in a tiny pond (the CBF). What would I do?"

Many, particularly those with white hair at the Memphis meeting, once were influential in the SBC—often members of its huge bureaucracy somewhere. Now too many of them are crowded on the same ship without enough lay people to lead and not enough denominational money to function like in "the good ole days".

The lingering SBC Moderates have reinforced what I observed within the Missouri Synod: Denominations are made up of much more than just theology and common beliefs that bind them together. This "glue" consists of family ties, friendships, common histories, common ancestries, emotional connections, cultural language, and varied and assorted other things that create bonds between human beings.  

When push comes to shove over tricky theological points, which the vast majority of church members usually never understand anyway, this "glue" continues to bind them together and keeps them from separating.

Because the Missouri Synod was smaller than the SBC—the Southern Baptists are roughly five times the size of the LCMS—this "glue" and its impact was easier to see. Families caught in the crevices of the fight couldn't stand to part with each other; a common Germanic history and sense of identify pulled all but the most stalwart Moderate Missouri Synod members back to the core once the Conservative wing scored a resounding win.

Those same factors that pulled the Missouri Synod back together are still at play within the SBC. Observing it has led me to conclude that while important, theological issues are not nearly as divisive within churches today as theologians, denominational leaders, and pastors like to think.

Whither the former Moderate Southern Baptists? Now that's an ongoing sticky subject!

Clergy often resist retirement, usually to their own personal detriment

With Baby Boomers starting this year to move into retirement, the topic seems to be on the minds of many. Few, however, realize that retirement is truly a modern phenomenon. 

It's also one from which religious leaders have often run. No group has resisted the modern concept of retirement more than the clergy has.

Just 40 years ago Vatican Council II moved the Roman Catholic clergy toward this major lifestyle change. Not only did Catholic cardinals over age 75 lose their votes for the next pope, VCII set the stage for the retirement of Catholic pastors over age 75, too. Before that Catholic priests—as well as other clergy—thought they had lifelong locks on their jobs.

Seventy-five was also a compromise between the modern trend toward age 65 and the priests' view of "never, no never".

As a newspaper reporter in the 1970s as the retirement trend was unfolding, I encountered many tricky situations involving the forced retirement of Catholic pastors. In one case the poor fellow was so angry at the pope, his local bishop, and the church's hierarchy for putting him out to pasture that he spewed venom all over me just because I happened to be standing there with a notebook in my hand. I didn't take it personally, because he and I both knew I had nothing to do with the life-altering decision. I was just merely a scribe trying to report the event and the pastor's curious negative reaction to it.

Even with the concept of retirement more embraced among Protestant churches, the thought of retirement still sends far too many church leaders into a blue funk or a counter-defense trying to ward it off as long as possible.

During my years on the religion beat at the Houston Chronicle I wrote more than my fair share of retirement stories about aging Houston clergy from all denominations and religions.  I eventually developed my own little mind-game called "Guess how long this guy's gonna live?" During the interview, I would ask strategic questions designed to elicit from the retiring church leader how well he had planned for retirement.  I wasn't checking on finances! I wanted to know how the clergyman pictured life without his being in the limelight of leading a church or a religious institution.  

The longer the church leader waited to retire, the more he clung to his image of himself as a "church or religious leader" and the less he had planned emotionally for the reality, the higher I scored him for "likely to die soon". 

Conversely, pastors and other church officials who seemed eager to shed their clergy robes, who looked forward to developing new hobbies and interests, and who seemed to have a zest for living and not just filling a church role scored low on my "likely-to-die soon" scale. 

I often was amazed how my little scoring game was right on target. 

I remember one aging United Methodist leader who twisted and manipulated every church law on the books to stay active as a church leader as long as he could. Finally trapped in the rule-book corner at age 73, he reluctantly agreed to step aside. What were his plans? "Take a long vacation and then decide what I'm going to do with the rest of my life." What did he plan to do in retirement? "I haven't planned anything yet."

I left the interview at the Methodist Building planning to file my notes on this clergyman where I could get to them quickly. No, he didn't tell me of any secret illnesses. 

And yes, I did need those notes within six months of our interview to write his obituary.

I'm no psychologist--only an observer of religious life in America.  I don't know if other professions face the same degree of attachment to their careers as members of the clergy do. But I do believe firmly that over-identification with the ministerial role has a tendency to kill people shortly after they officially "retire". 

With so many Baby Boomer pastors and church leaders on the threshold of this major life transition, seeing how these folks approach this issue will be highly interesting.

 

Al Gilbert's Convention Sermon made significant points

Over the span of the last 40 years I've attended more than 30 annual meetings of the Southern Baptist Convention. Most often I have not found the annual "Convention Sermon" at the meeting to be particularly exciting or newsworthy. Sometimes I've found that "message" to be downright dull.

I wasn't at this year's annual session in Indianapolis—too busy launching my new book, Witness to the Truth, at Book Expo in Los Angeles and doing media interviews in Texas—but I sure wish I'd heard Al Gilbert's "Convention Sermon" this week. From Baptist Press reports, sounds as though he hit some really important nails on the head. Some of his comments sound like some of the messages about church bureaucracy I've delivered in Witness to the Truth and on this blog.

As I've said before, the Southern Baptist Convention has become the nation's Big Bureaucracy denomination—a label the SBC used to try to pin on Roman Catholics. 

Don't get me wrong: church bureaucracies are fine in moderation. But left unchecked they can become self-serving, self-perpetuating institutions more caught up in their own self-importance and well-being than in supporting the local churches they are supposed to serve. 

For the sake of transparency, let me tell you that Al and I are friends. About a decade ago he and I both worked for the same same SBC bureaucracy for a while: the International Mission Board. We even had the same title, but at different times: Special Assistant to the President. 

Al and I didn't communicate about his sermon beforehand. Nor do I believe he would agree with everything I said in Witness to the Truth. But I do think Al is pointing in the right direction in the following quotes he offered in his Convention Sermon:

"Soon, we will be passing the baton to the next generation, and I don't know about you, but they tell me they are not sure they want it. That should make us sad and that should make us ask how we want to hand it off to the next generation."

"Our baptisms continue to fall. We know that we are not impacting the world for Christ. We are not even winning our own sons and daughters like we should."

"We have acknowledged that we have inflated numbers of membership and an incredible number of people on our rolls that are inactive and probably lost."

"Could it be that we have established processes in our organizations that are really bureaucratic barriers, instead of mobilizing us to win the world to Christ?" 

"Can we really defend our bureaucracy to the next generation?"

Click here to read more about what Al, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, NC, said: http://www.bpnews.net/BPnews.asp?ID=28243

All I can say is, Preach on, Brother Al! And may all Southern Baptists take heed to these crucial words.

After snickering at others, SBC now faces its own decline

During the 1970s when the so-called Mainline Christian denominations began their incredible shrinking act, Southern Baptists and Roman Catholics looked on with puzzled amusement, because both America's Roman Catholic Church and America's largest Protestant denomination were growing at robust speeds.

Thanks to their opposition to birth control (practiced by some RC's but not by all), and rampant immigration of people from south of the U.S. border (who were predominantly RC's), the Roman Catholic Church in the U.S. knew the two trends would bode well for its future and keep it growing in numbers and influence.

Because they perceived themselves as an evangelistic denomination reaching out in all directions for new converts, Southern Baptists believed their future to be one of unstoppable growth. Somehow they believed they were immune to the realities that were engulfing other Protestant groups around them. Some even scoffed about the Episcopalians, United Methodists, Lutherans, and Presbyterians and their loss of evangelistic fervor.

Now four decades later—in the first decade of the 21st century—Roman Catholics continue to grow (as do U.S. immigration woes and many Roman Catholic families), but Southern Baptists are for the first time since the Great Depression reporting their first membership decline after several years of declining baptism rates. The situation was predictable and inevitable but is proving to be very painful for the SBC. 

This SBC nosedive may be just a blip in history (as some convention leaders are trying desperately to forecast), but it also has the potential to turn into a major rout and thus an embarrassing headache for the denomination.

At the annual Southern Baptist Convention Tuesday and Wednesday in Indianapolis, the topic is likely to spawn much attention and probably a lot of hand-wringing and finger-pointing. The Washington Post reported recently that Convention President Frank S. Page said that without decisive action soon, the number of SBC churches could decline significantly by 2030.

Watch out for glib explanations about the decline. Expect a lot of pep-rally talk about evangelism but little focus on the underlying issues.

What has caused the problem?

1. Birth control. Smaller families mean fewer children to baptize. Like all Protestant denominations, Southern Baptists have faced this problem all along. The numbers are just now catching up with them.

2. Roll-cleaning. Southern Baptist leaders for years have joked about their 16-million member denomination that is really about 10-million strong at best.  During the 1970s and 1980s Southern Baptists failed to follow the trend of major roll-cleaning, which resulted in the Mainline denominations arriving at more realistic—and honest—numbers. Once Southern Baptists realized their rolls were not accurate, they failed to develop a comprehensive policy to quietly let the air out of their numbers and slow the denomination's growth while baptism rates were at historical highs. Now with some church rolls so obviously overstated and some actually getting a much-needed cleansing, Southern Baptists face the double whammy that makes the situation all the more painful.

3.  A graying Southern Baptist population. Like the rest of America, Southern Baptists are statistically growing older. That means more people with gray hair, the group least likely to reach out to win new converts, particularly among ethnic and minority groups that are growing so fast. 

4. Failure to spot—and work against—the flight of young blacks to the Muslim faith. Since 1970, Islam has grown dramatically in the United States. Some of it has been the immigrants from Muslim countries. A sizable chunk of the growth, however,  is from converts made in prisons, where young black males are disproportionally represented and in African-American neighborhoods where Southern Baptist churches are too few. The chapter, "Wrong (or Right?)-Way Corrigans" in my new book, Witness to the Truth, explains this development further.

5. Too many refugees from other denominations.  Some SBC churches are packed to the rafters with members who did not grow up Southern Baptist but instead sprang from the exodus in the Mainline denominations over liberalism. Consequently these new members, who kept the growth going during the 1980s and 1990s, did not experience the evangelistic training that was so much a part of the denomination earlier. As the exodus from the mainline denominations levels off and actually begins to stop, these new Southern Baptists may not even know the importance of sharing their faith with others.

6. A house divided against itself. Read the questionnaire Baptist Press recently published with answers from the six SBC presidential candidates and you'll quickly note the large numbers of areas in which Southern Baptists are battling. Some of the fractures are deep and dangerous divides for the denomination. I discuss this more thoroughly in the chapter, "Reborn Again!", in Witness to the Truth.

This year's convention will be filled with calls for renewed evangelism efforts and plans for overcoming the quagmire. Most ideas are not new. Anybody remember former SBC President Bobby Welch's goal of reaching 1 million baptisms in a year? I have yet to see anything from anybody this year that hasn't been proposed previously or in a different wrapper or that addresses head-on the issues above that are pulling down the denomination's roll numbers.

Steering the rough waters ahead for the Southern Baptist Convention is going to take some mighty creative leadership and not just pep-rally talk.

Yes, I coined the phrase Baptistdom

You won't find the word in your Webster's Dictionary, but you will find it in my new book, Witness to the Truth. You'll also find the word many times on this blog, "Louis Moore on Religion". 

 

Yes, I coined the word. I have been using it for nearly 20 years now, ever since I first moved to Nashville, TN, almost 20 years ago to join the Southern Baptist bureaucracy.  Some of my friends still laugh when I use MY word; other friends have started to pick it up.

 

That word is BAPTISTDOM. It's a compilation of the word Christendom and Baptist. 

My definition of the word, however, is more akin to the word Curia. The word Curia refers to the bureaucracy of the Roman Catholic Church, centered at the Vatican in Rome. The Curia is notorious for its slippery, passive, courtly, overtly religious style.

 

Baptistdom is my label for the highly unusual Southern Baptist way of life we encountered in Nashville and later in Richmond. Baptistdom was like a peculiar and alien culture—something far, far different from "normal" life we had known in Houston and elsewhere. This wasn't because of Baptistdom's expressed faith in God nor because of its theological orientation so much as because of its unique small-town, Southern , bureaucratic, passive-aggressive style.  

 

Over the years I realized how much Baptistdom was like the notorious Roman Catholic Curia. Both are bureaucracies with their own social codes, political agendas, and unusual way of conducting business. Gossip and behind-your-back, cutting remarks seemed to be written into Baptistdom's genetic code; people often joked that the walls of the SBC's Sunday School Board building (now LifeWay) at 127 9th Avenue North, Nashville, would physically fall down if gossip in that structure ceased. I would suspect these characteristics are also written into the genetic code of the Catholic Curia as well.

 

Baptistdom is much, much larger than most people, including most Southern Baptists, ever begin to fathom. Part of that naivete is because early Southern Baptists tried to thwart the development of a Curia-like Catholic bureaucracy by locating various denominational services strategically throughout the South. Thus, Nashville got the publishing operation and the top executive offices, Atlanta got the North American missionary operation, Richmond got the foreign-missionary operation, Dallas got the retirement-funds center, Birmingham got the Woman's Missionary Union, and Louisville, Fort Worth, Kansas City, New Orleans,  Wake Forest, and (later) San Francisco each received one of the denomination's graduate schools in theology (called seminaries). Today, that diversity helps conceal the true size and wealth of Baptistdom. Diversifying to keep down a Curia-like bureaucracy worked fine until after World War II, when prosperity struck the SBC; its finances blossomed like its founding fathers never could have imagined.  Suddenly each of these tiny entities grew large and wealthy. Today, Baptistdom is more like a corporate-minded Fortune 500 company than poor church people struggling to pay the rent.

The massive size of Baptistdom does not even begin to count the staff and receipts of more than 40,000 individual congregations throughout the country. Nor does it count the large state and  associational staffs, nor the thousands employed by Southern Baptist-related colleges and university—and all of their budgets.

 

For more than a century, Southern Baptists have held to the myth that Roman Catholics are the large, bureaucratic denomination in America.  When they finally look honestly into the mirror, Southern Baptists will discover that they—not the Roman Catholics—are truly America's big-bureaucracy denomination.

 

Please feel free to adopt and use my word: Baptistdom. 

From the Darkness into the Light

Churches maintain they have much to offer—to teach—"the world".  And well they do. Jesus tells us Christians that we are to be "salt and light." in the world.  That means we are to preserve our world against the decay of sin and bring the light of Christ into the hearts of every man, woman and child of every tribe, people group, race, and so forth on the Earth.

 

But the world has some things it can teach churches as well. Or, put another way, Christians and churches can learn some things from the world, too.

 

My dear mentor, friend and hero Don Pickels, former managing editor of the Houston Chronicle and also prior to his death a very devout Episcopalian, helped to create an amazing legal legacy for the people of Texas. It was called the "open-meetings law". It was passed by the Texas Legislature under pressure from the Houston Chronicle management and others. It was adopted in the wake of the Sharpstown Scandal, which occurred in the early 1970s and rocked the State of Texas dramatically after evidence surfaced that public officials were meeting secretly and making financial decisions that should be made only publicly. 

I was reminded of this law two years ago when I was asked to serve on my home city's Plan Commission. As soon as I was officially elected by our City Council, our City Attorney called to tell me that I must spend about an hour watching a video created by the Texas Attorney General about the law.  He even cracked that the law had something to do with pressure from the Houston Chronicle. I knew immediately to what law he was referring.

In simple terms, the video told us public officials that we must conduct our business out in the open, not secretly behind closed doors. As I sat for an hour and watched the video, I marveled how clear and precise the law was.  Only an idiot could not understand the plain language and terms of the law and the video explaining it as well as the penalties for violating the law. Afterward, as I began my tenure on the public commission, I was grateful that I was schooled so quickly in such matters.

What I liked most was that the law is non-partisan, meaning it applies equally to Democrats and Republicans as well as Independents and other party members. I'm sure some politicians—being the personalities that they are—have tried to circumvent the law, but to my knowledge it has been administered fairly and equally in the State of Texas.

Regrettably, I know of no church bodies that have a similar law or policy. Texas' laws do not apply to churches, only government bodies.  The same is true of "open-meeting" laws in other states. I've known a few people to argue that their religious organization has an "open- meetings" policy or rule, but on further investigation discovered that what they were referring to was nebulous, vague and filled with all sorts of loopholes—or in some cases was just the figment of the person's imagination.

Today in too many churches and denominations too much church business is conducted in the dark. Whether it is couched as a "forum" or "private dinner for trustees", a "deacon's meeting for deacons only" or a "closed church business session", it's all the same thing: God's business conducted in darkness.

On pages 250-251 in Witness to the Truth, I describe in detail the closed-door, unhealthy situation in the Southern Baptist Convention that I found when I arrived there to work in the early 1990s. Closed meetings remain the order of the day in the SBC, both in the denomination as well as in local churches.

In the wake of Vatican Council II, Roman Catholics learned to be more open and public, but they still have a long way to go to overcome their long history of conducting business in the dark.

Many other denominations have the same problem. 

I know I'm an idealist, but I'd like to see all churches and denominations take a cue from the Texas Legislature and change this closed-door situation by adopting clear and unequivocal open-meetings laws or rules.