for whom are we repenting anyway?

As many of you know already, I participated in Memphis with some fellow SBC pastors from many different stripes along with some concerned laymen and women to dialogue our thoughts, prayers and ideas for the SBC. All of us have had direct involvement in the convention either as pastors, board members, seminary students, seminary or college employees or in editing Baptist publications or blogs.

The result of the meeting was a document now referred to as the Memphis Declaration. As you read it you will see that it is primarily a statement of repentance and commitment. We did not presume anything on our fellow Southern Baptists or ask the convention to take any kind of action or pass any motion. It is not a political statement.

"Then why bother?", you might ask.

The reasons I believe are twofold:

1. We all believe something is inordinately wrong in our convention. It occurred to me about half way through our meeting that this was the reason we were all there. We were a very diverse group. From five point Calvinists to Old School evangelists; from emergent church types to traditionalists; from seminary students to university administrators. There were men, women young and old. There were some who had been in the conservative resurgence from the beginning and others who were just now cutting their teethe in SBC life.

But we all had some reason to invest in the group. Every single one of us had experienced either first hand or had been directly affected by something occurring within our convention that did not resonate with His Spirit living in us. I am not just talking about the minor stuff that inevitably happens in a large body of people. I am talking about habitual institutional sin.

We had all seen or witnessed things within our convention politic that checked our spirits. Some had even participated first hand. Others had been on the receiving end. All of us had been touched by it and all of us agree that cannot exist in our awareness of it without making some kind of statement about it.

2. We don't' want to be a part of it anymore. Some will question why we felt the need for repentance. Read the document carefully. Notice our closing statement,

"if God in His providence chooses to sustain our witness..."

Folks, it is only by his providence that we even exist as a convention. We are nothing special in and of ourselves. He is the one who gets the glory. God is patient in His mercy but He is also patient in His judgment. Our arrogance and deception must stop somewhere.

If you do not believe us when we say that something is wrong with us as a convention, consider that the ink was not dry on this Memphis document before one in our number was accused of supporting the Alcohol industry. And why? The possibility of his nomination for president of the SBC. This kind of thing is almost automatic the culture of SBC politics.

You see, we are not repenting for what was done as if we were personally each and all of us culpable for each specific sin. We are repenting for existing in this environment without making the proper commitments for change.

We are simply saying that our identity is as Southern Baptists; and because we have chosen this as our identity even after knowing what we know, we are in fact involved in the sin for every moment we allow it and do and say nothing. The lie is not just the one that is TOLD, it is also the one that is BELIEVED. When I believe a lie, I am perpetuating it.

When I allow my brother to continue in his sin, am I not also responsible for enabling his sin? Are we not a spiritual community? A city of God?

Tom Ascol gave an excellent devotion on Wednesday morning. He pointed out that self deception, the most common of all of our sin, is the malady that keeps us from living in biblical community. As long as we live with the lie, we will not truly fellowship.

Do not mistake our statement as a confession for everyone. There are some who will question our motive and others who will track with us and say AMEN.

Many more will simply know nothing about the Memphis Declaration.

Sobeit. We are only one group of Southern Baptists who are simply saying, "We love being Southern Baptists. We love what we do as a convention. But we will like the one that is truthful and repentant about our corporate sin much better."