Taking Baptist Up a Notch

The joke used to be that anytime a Baptist got mad, he started a new church. Well, it seems like we've upped the ante a bit, and everyone is starting new denominations. Why would you want to be a church planter when you can be a bureacracy planter?

It seems everyone in their dog is driving around Texas and other places holding "meetings" to build some type of coalition. There was a group last summer of "young" pastors who were "fundies but not as fundie as you" who met in Memphis and had the self-righteousness to issue their own declaration. Now a few of those leaders still travel around and play politics.

Now, another group wants to meet in Dallas soon for more of the same. The leader is a seemingly nice and integrous guy who blogs here. I'm sure these guys will travel around Texas after the meeting and play politics (I do not mean that pejoritively).

I admire these attempts at reform, but there does seem to be a lot of Gen X instant gratification underpinnings. These guys want reform yesterday. Say what you will about Paige Patterson - I need hits from SWBTS - but the guy at least plotted his takeover for decades. It was what, about 30 years from the time he started planning his coup to when he final got its target - Pecan Manor?

It just seems like pastors spend an inordinate amout of times on internal bickering and politicking than ministry. Something tells me that if pastors worked on their individual spiritual lives as hard as they work on politicing, everything else would fall into place. All of the conflict and discord springs from sinful hearts and selfish wills. If every Christian leader worked on himself or herself more and the other stuff left, our internal problems would subside.

Dang, I'm naive.