Yesterday I got notice of some new research from the guys at Lifeway’s Research Department regarding opinions about the Bible among Southern Baptist pastors and church members. The article portrays a sharp disconnection between the views held between these two groups.

Upon reading said research, I skyped my friend Todd who allowed me to vent about this.  Today he writes a post that just knocks it out of the park. Todd states:

We can battle those in the pews all day long. We can overwhelm them with our theologizing and well-crafted arguments. The problem may lie in how we fought our battle. It may be those in the pews simply reflect what we has been portrayed to them. Talk of an inerrant, infallible Bible followed by pragmatic tactics to win the war of Scriptural fidelity may have left them, and some of us not surveyed, thinking we are all talk.

The issue is that saying “I believe in inerrancy” is not enough.  As I quoted in my review of The Blue Parakeet, Scot McKnight noted:

those who have a proper relationship to the Bible never need to speak of the Bible as their authority nor do they speak of the submission to the Bible.  They are so in tune with God, so in love with him, that the word “authority” is swallowed up in loving God.  Even more, the word “submission” is engulfed in the disposition of listening to God speak through the Bible and in the practice of doing what God calls us to do. (93)

In other words, if my life is wrapped up in God and living the Bible, I don’t have to go around telling people I believe the Bible is inerrant.  It becomes evident in my life that it is.

The problem in Southern Baptist circles is that it’s leadership has for years forced people to say they believe the Bible while living an pragmatic ethic in order to achieve victory.  Thus our “belief” in inerrancy may reflect nothing more than an intellectual assent, not a life-changing transformation.

Saying we believe in the inerrancy of the Bible is not enough. Living the Bible, with its ethical implications as well as theological is what matters.  It wasn’t the people who cried “Lord, Lord” that Jesus said would be in his kingdom.  It was the people who loved the unlovely, cared for the poor, and treated people as if they were ministering to the Christ himself that would enter into the kingdom.

The Southern Baptist Convention appears to be in decline. I say appears because the “Bagdad Bob’s” of the SBC are poo-pooing recent membership numbers that demonstrate this is a stark reality. There has been a firestorm over this release, especially in the commentary provided by the head of Lifeway Research, Ed Stetzer. People at all levels of the convention leadership are exhibiting different reactions. Some are upset, while others are acknowledging reality, and still others are wondering why it took so long to get published.

Being a Southern Baptist, and pastoring a Southern Baptist Church in Delaware, I felt I needed to weigh in on this issue. I, in general, do not blog about SBC issues, but this is as much a missiological issue as it is a SBC issue. It should wake up not only the American church, but the SBC about the state of the church in this country.

I want to first address the importance of this decline in the SBC. For years, we have been told that the reason other denominations were in decline was the move toward liberal theology. I guess we were wrong, because it appears theology was not the factor. With the reality that the SBC likely has tipped and is on its way down, this is very disconcerting for many. This is especially distressing for the oligarchy leadership who think they own the SBC. The move toward conservative theology has produced the lowest evangelism rates and the tapering off of membership since before the takeover began. I am conservative in theology; however conservative theology alone does not move one toward evangelism. Thus the conservative resurgence did not lead to a Great Commission resurgence convention-wide.

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