long awaited rationale made public

I am grateful to IMB chairman Tom Hatley for releasing the rationale for the new policies on baptism and private prayer language passed last November. He has not revealed who wrote the rationale, although I suspect it was a culmination of those who headed up the subcommittees responsible for researching the issues These are not official until the full board acts on them, and they should not be seen as the sentiment of everyone on the board. Hatley is careful to state this in his open letter.

I have a busy day and will not be able to comment fully on these papers until I have more time, but do want to make a few quick points:

1. Although I am grateful for their release now, I would have been even more grateful if I, as a member of the personnel committee that was asked to pass them, would have had ample opportunity to study, research and talk through them in open debate over an extended period of time. In plenary session (public session) I suggested we take more time to think through the issues involved, sensing that it could create controversy convention wide. The sentiment from the majority of the board seemed to be that new members on the board could not possibly grasp how previous committees had been dealing with these questions in years past, and therefore the board should not delay a vote. Of course, for me, that is non-issue, I was the one being asked to vote. The motion passed without much debate.

2. Having said that, these papers do nothing to change my mind and I don't believe would have changed my arguments. The greater issues for me were (are), 1) not all Baptists hold landmarkist and cessasionists views on ecclesiology, therefore marginalizing good churches (like ours) and harming our cooperitive efforts; and 2) they seem to me to be a serious breach of the autonomy of the local church. We have no business sticking our head in the tent of the local church. In the hallway after our debate in closed session, someone pointed out to me that is not unusual for the board to be more restrictive in their requirements of candidates than churches are of their members. Fair point. But these issues are not pragmatic in nature (emotional health, physical health etc), they are docrtinal/theological and hit at the core of our beliefs and practices as cooperating Baptists.

3. You may ask why I am so concerned. I have been with our missionaries on the field. I have seen their hard work in places like Sri Lanka, Bulgaria, Jordan and Africa. It is EXTREMELY important to me that our board not give in to landmarkism. I cannot imagine a scenerio in which we are demanding that a missionary in some muslim country where Christianity is outlawed, must plant only landmarkist churches. There are many places around the world where only house churches exist and their church structure is not yet fully developed. To demand that they conform to our Americanized version of ecclesiology would be senseless. To demand that our local churches send only candidates who have a landmarkist and cessasionist view of scripture is unthinkable to me. The effect, I believe, would be devestating.

Consider also that this could get very personal for us as a church. We have missionaries on the field right now serving in some very difficult places who are members of our church. We support them, we love them, we pray for them. They are NOT landmarkist. Landmarkist ecclesiology would be extremely detrimental to their strategy. They are directly impacted by the policy and direction of our board and are held accountable for carrying out it's objectives.

This is not conjecture or speculation. Our decisions matter.

As I have said before, my hope is that the end result of all of this will be better communication of the issues and arguments. My prayer is that this process, as difficult as it has been, will lead to a much better, stronger and unified board. We are all learning.

Thanks again to our chairman- access to this rationale will provoke healthy discussion across the convention.

More later.