The 2008 annual meeting finished like a bad ending to an otherwise good movie.

The goal of President Rick Speas and of the Program, Place and Preacher Committee led by Jimmie Suggs of Wilmington was to have a worshipful meeting. They accomplished that with an inspirational missionary commissioning service, good music and preaching and business sessions that clicked along ahead of schedule.

The committee designates certain agenda items as “Fixed orders of business” to guarantee that messengers deal with them at the assigned time. At this meeting messengers twice had to suspend the rules to enable themselves to consider items way ahead of schedule.

An extensive list of Articles and Bylaws changes was approved with no discussion in large part because they were clearly presented and their pre-meeting publicity was extensive and transparent. The music was good, missions was emphasized and creative videos shared powerful messages of how North Carolina Baptists are involved around the world.

But when the defining, climactic moment arrived to make movie magic, the commitment kiss in front of a blazing sunset where young lovers find forever happiness in each other, this script came up a clunker.

Ed Yount and the Giving Plans Study Committee proposed an adept framework to return the Baptist State Convention (BSC) to a single giving plan. It offered a convenience option that would have allowed churches that want to support both the work of the Baptist State Convention and the work of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) to give through a single check. If a church indicated, the Convention would forward 10 percent of its gift to national CBF. The CBF money would not count as Cooperative Program; CBF is not in the budget; only churches that wanted to would check the box; churches clinging to any thread of reason to stay involved with the Baptist State Convention would feel they’d been thrown a lifeline.

Nope.

Messengers eliminated the convenience option because the majority wanted nothing to do with any hint that they tolerated the CBF. Comments about CBF indicated little understanding of CBF’s Christian missionary sending role, its service to churches, its missions initiatives or the “fellowship” aspect of its name as a place where churches of similar spirit find ... similar spirit.

It got so negative that Kenny Byrd, pastor of First Baptist Church, Sylva, stood as physical testimony that someone who appreciates CBF is not a dragon with smoke coming out his ears. Byrd says he is not a CBF advocate, by the way, just a guy who recognizes the church he leads has members who appreciate CBF just as he has members with a strong affinity for the BSC.

Churches easily find ways to accommodate both perspectives because missions support originates in the church. As Byrd said, there is no Southern Baptist, North Carolina Baptist or Cooperative Baptist Fellowship church. In Baptist life there are just churches and each autonomously, voluntarily and individually aligns with one, two or more of those bodies or others to support missions.

In a generation past, Southern Baptists easily and gladly accommodated dually aligned churches, long before CBF existed. I came from another denominational background and was surprised and pleased to discover in 1977 when I started working on the SBC Executive Committee staff that Baptists were big and bold enough to welcome churches into the fellowship, which supported missions also in additional contexts.

We know decisions bear consequences. We can handle them for the most part, but the danger is unintended consequences. On its face, the simple decision of messengers to the 2008 annual meeting of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina (BSC) is to make churches that want to support the CBF write the CBF a check.

At a deeper level of course, it says the majority of messengers present that morning — and by record the entire Baptist State Convention in the future — want nothing to do with churches that support the BSC, and also have an affinity for CBF. Remember, this decision has nothing to do with churches that support only CBF. The BSC was never going to simply forward such money.

When a church that supports two organizations is forced by one to choose between them, it is unlikely to support the organization that forced the choice.

Consider church X that gives $50,000 annually to missions through Plan C. Ten percent, or $5,000, goes on to the CBF and $45,000 is distributed by formula to ministries of the BSC and SBC. Do you think this church will simply now write two checks; one of $45,000 to the BSC and one of $5,000 to the CBF?

I hope it will. More likely the church will face internal turmoil and a painstaking decision finally to write one check after all… to the CBF, simply because people react negatively to being told what to do.

On one hand you can say the potential loss of churches is a maximum of the 160 “Plan C Only” churches. Support from these churches has been dwindling steadily as the North Carolina CBF has organized its own cooperative budget, about half of which supports current and former BSC entities such as Baptist Men, Woman’s Missionary Union and the colleges.

Still, through Nov. 7 those churches had given $1.4 million of the $29.5 million received by the BSC. But don’t forget that Plan B was the first “alternative” Cooperative Program giving plan in North Carolina springing from dissatisfaction with the way the Southern Baptist Convention was going. If these churches perceive that the BSC is losing its distinctive from the SBC, they too could reconsider their support. They’ve given $2.4
million thus far in 2008.

Beyond that, what is BSC leadership to think and do when a thoughtful presentation from a task force that’s worked for a year is rejected by messengers after it has been endorsed by staff and elected leadership, the Executive Committee and the Board of Directors?

Would the result have been different had leadership advocated for the option, had they put some political marbles on the line like Campbell University President Jerry Wallace did last year when he beseeched messengers to vote for the college trustee option?

At every juncture we are told relationships are everything. You will accomplish little in your life if you do not nurture good relationships. But as a convention of churches we’ve now said relationships with a very large body of believers who share our Baptist and missions DNA is not only not important, it is not to be tolerated.

If inerrancy is the issue over which the BSC now refuses to break bread with its brothers, so be it. But that inerrant word teaches us in Rom. 12:4 that “Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these member do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body and each member belongs to all the others.”

It admonishes in Rom. 15:7 to “Accept one another then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.”

It admonishes in John 13:34-35 that “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

The Bible plainly encourages fellowship, cooperation and love among believers. It seems this action is less about what the Bible says, and more what you say about the Bible.
 
For complete coverage, click BSC 2008.