North Carolina Baptists in Greensboro for their 180th annual meeting participated in good preaching, music, worship and prayer times and saw highlighted the work North Carolina Baptists accomplish cooperatively.

The fewest number of N.C. Baptists since 1952 came to participate in their cooperative work. The decline of the annual meeting as a focal point of interest and community for N.C. Baptists is a phenomenon with far reaching implications.

Don Wilton, pastor of First Baptist Church in Spartanburg, S.C., preached at the pastor’s conference and said one of the reasons people do not flock to hear our message is simply because they see our actions do not reflect that message. His and other convention sermons lifted Jesus, called us to holiness, prayer, piety, family priorities, mutual love and an embrace of the lost around us. Those are qualities North Carolina Baptists embrace and are the reasons that most convention participants could go home rejoicing that Jesus was lifted.

But the annual meeting is also to conduct the business of N.C. Baptists’ cooperative enterprise and in business sessions, two motions brought from the floor and approved by messengers for study threaten to embroil the Convention in unnecessary controversies that can only bog down the missions enterprise with issues from the past.

Specifically those motions threaten to move the Baptist State Convention backwards.

Tim Rogers’ motion to establish an alcohol policy for North Carolina Baptist leadership is simply unnecessary and extra-biblical. It asks the Convention to take a stand on one side of an issue over which sincere Christians the world over disagree.

Baptists are certainly known for our stances against things. We don’t smoke, drink, dance or chew and we don’t go out with girls who do. Yet, early Baptists in Kentucky sometimes paid their preachers in bourbon, and the smoking area outside the convention center was occupied by several sincere Baptists as the discussion on alcohol was initiated inside.

Young abstaining pastors who I talked with do not support beverage alcohol use but recognized that making it an issue for N.C. Baptists is divisive and extra-biblical. How much of this move is cultural?

One of our most prominent, rock solid, Bible preaching, abstaining pastors, who came here from another state, told me he cannot preach what the Bible actually says about alcohol because he would be run out of his church. You can argue wine dilution and bad water 2,000 years ago all you want, but I simply point you to John 2 and Jesus’ first miracle.

He turned water into wine so the wedding feast could continue without embarrassment; and it was the best wine and the miracle “revealed His glory” (v. 11).

Now, do not hear me saying that alcohol consumption is a good thing or that you should have champagne fountains in your parlor or beer at your youth meetings. Don’t be ridiculous.

I am saying that, like it or not, many sincere Christians read the Bible for what it says and do not abstain, for whatever reason. To ask the Convention to codify a cultural preference or personal conviction of someone is not helpful and can have the opposite effect on unity and purity than is intended.

The same is true of Phil Addison’s motion to adopt the Baptist Faith and Message as the official parameter of faith for North Carolina Baptists.

For 180 years the official parameter of faith for North Carolina Baptists has been the Bible, and the Baptist commitment to soul competency sees the Bible as wide enough, high enough, broad enough and specific enough to encompass a diverse people to work together in missions, with the “essentials” in common.

During decades of turmoil in Southern Baptist life, “the Bible” was the issue.

Then, once “the issue” was settled we thought we had to revise just what it was we thought the Bible was saying. And the Baptist Faith and Message became the issue. Missionaries had to sign it, or come home. They thought they were going to a foreign land to teach the Bible as priests, who were soul competent. But they were told unless they believed the Bible as laid out in this document, they really were not suited.

Is this the kind of discussion and turmoil we want to bring into the Baptist State Convention, which can only lead to employees and church planters and then program speakers having to sign an extra-biblical document of “faith?” Why is the Bible not sufficient for us any longer?

Maybe the answer is because of the continuing push to lose a North Carolina Baptist identity and merge it with being “Southern Baptist.”

Rogers’ alcohol motion talked about Southern Baptists in North Carolina; Addison said it’s time to identify as Southern Baptists.

In his address Executive Director-Treasurer Milton A. Hollifield Jr. said he supports movement toward a 50-50 split of Cooperative Program funds with the Southern Baptist Convention, but maintains his commitment to North Carolina Baptist Convention ministries.

He tried to encourage greater giving by raising an expectation that increased gifts will result in a greater percentage of those gifts being used in national and international ministries of the SBC. There is certainly a drumbeat by Great Commission Resurgence supporters who say giving is down because not enough Cooperative Program money leaves the state.

I disagree with that analysis but Hollifield’s statement indicates support.

North Carolina leaders will have to ascertain in the near future if a position that reduces the prominence of state ministry in favor of national and international ministry is actually more attractive to those in the state who give.

In some ways the 180th annual meeting of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina (BSC) Nov. 8-10 is shaping up to be a quiet event. At least planners always work diligently to make it as “uneventful” as possible.

However, what happens on the floor during business sessions can never be programmed. Rejection of a critical element of a proposal by the Giving Plans Study Committee in 2008 demonstrated how uncertain proposals can be.

Now that vote hovers over discussion of every proposal and no task force or study committee can assume their hours of work, prayer, thought and considerations will be trusted and accepted.

Not that anyone ever doubted it, but that vote proved messengers are there to consider — not blindly approve — proposals that their representatives on the board of directors are bringing to them. Where we once empowered committees to do the background work and trusted their recommendations, clearly people now want a direct voice in decisions.

Even board of directors members get frustrated if they feel their executive committee isn’t giving their input due consideration.

That was in part the larger danger behind the September threat to propose defunding the Biblical Recorder in the 2011 budget. If such a threat materialized and messengers approved, the inviolability of the process would be shattered, with unpredictable results in the larger budget.

Already some voices call for a dramatic shift in the division of Cooperative Program (CP) funds between the BSC and the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).

Three states are considering dramatic sudden shifts toward the SBC that will hinder their ability to serve churches locally, but will send a larger portion of CP funds to international and national missions.

The North Carolina budget proposes the sixth consecutive one-half percentage point shift toward the SBC, moving the SBC portion to 35 percent. At the same rate, it would take another 10 years to reach a 60/40 split with the BSC and SBC.

That’s the direction it’s going as the most influential BSC leadership keeps pushing for stronger SBC support. There are few North Carolina agencies or institutions left to argue for their own cause, but how long can Baptist Children’s Homes, for instance, remain silent when the CP funds for food, clothing and shelter for those it serves are shifted away from North Carolina? The 2011 budget provides $168,320 less than the 2009 budget for BCH and its related ministries.

Baptist Children’s Homes is not being picked on, it’s just that gifts are not coming from the churches sufficiently to fund the North Carolina ministries they’ve established. At the same time total gifts are at 1999 levels, the budget calls for an increasingly large portion to leave the state. Priorities are for messengers to establish, but the current trend is unsustainable.

Can the BSC enunciate a long-term CP allocation goal and a path toward reaching that goal that depends on the response of North Carolina Baptist churches?

For instance, the BSC budget committee could propose a CP budget floor, with the current 65/35 division and a long-term goal for a 60/40 division. Then the SBC portion would increase only as gifts from churches increase. The idea that North Carolina Baptist churches are decreasing gifts because too much CP is being utilized in the state instead of the nations is dubious. People give to vision, yes.

But they give to vision they’ve inhaled, not to someone else’s vision. It is more likely that churches feel the historical North Carolina Baptist ministries they initiated, funded and loved are no longer given their due.  

Convention details
As a former BSC staff member, I am always struck by the two faces of the annual meeting. There is the face applied by staff and volunteers through months of preparation to secure sites, plan themes, invite participants, produce the myriad materials that promote, explain and direct, conduct the committee meetings leading up to the annual session, prepare budgets and schedule staff presence.

Then there is the face for messengers who see the calendar date, arrange election by their churches and come to Greensboro. After they find the site, they just follow the signs and enjoy. At least that’s the goal of organizers.

They want you to be able to register in less than a minute; receive a valuable, attractive and informative packet of information and find your way to the convention hall and exhibits without having to wander around and guess. If it all works the messengers never even have to consider, “How did all this come about?”

Microphones, risers and even entry and exit paths for choirs of 100 or soloists are carefully plotted. In a special room behind the stage speakers are prepped in case the schedule runs ahead, or behind. Videos are cued following scripts and extras are handy in case odd moments to fill present themselves. This time is valuable and no one wants a blank spot.

Accommodations are prepared to give media working space and access to people who can speak for the Convention. Messenger comfort and safety is always a priority. Agencies, institutions and BSC departments work hard to create interactive displays where they can engage messengers and schedule later meetings to help churches.

Thank you to all those who make it happen, led this year by a team coordinated by Brian Davis, executive leader for administration and Convention relations, and Cynthia King in his office.

This year messengers will consider moving to a two-day meeting format, rather than Monday night through Wednesday noon. It was tried once before — over a weekend — with a marked drop-off in attendance. But a Monday-Tuesday meeting might work.

Among changes in the articles and bylaws this year is an effort to relax the requirements in the way the BSC is required to inform churches about such changes. Reflecting advances in media and technology, the bylaw changes would require notification of future changes be made in the Biblical Recorder only once, instead of twice with other avenues such as the Convention’s web site, the Recorder’s web site and direct mail also qualifying.

Visit here for more about the annual meeting.