December 8, 2000 |Rodney Carmichael; Tribune-Herald staff writer |
Lake Shore Baptist Church became the second church in Waco to sever ties with the increasingly conservative SBC, after a 91-1 congregational vote Wednesday night.
Although Lake Shore Baptist hasn’t supported the SBC financially since 1993, it was still aligned with the convention through its church constitution.
“That was our last official connection,” said the Rev. Brett Younger, pastor of Lake Shore Baptist. “I guess we were dealing with how best to be Baptist.”
Members of Lake Shore Baptist have been discussing the possibility of cutting ties with the SBC for several years. By doing so Wednesday, they joined Seventh and James Baptist Church of Waco, which voted to split from the SBC almost two months ago.
Two weeks after Seventh and James Baptist made its split official, the Baptist General Convention of Texas met in Corpus Christi and decided to reduce by $4.3 million the amount of money it annually contributes to SBC-member seminaries. As a result, those extra funds will now be divided between Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary and two other Texas seminaries.
Such realignments have been motivated by recent changes to the SBC’s Baptist Faith and Message. The changes have left the convention too conservative for some of its moderate members.
“People are upset,” said Lake Shore member Kyle Cole, “that the SBC has decided to be the all-powerful group that tells people how to believe and dictate to people what they should do.”
Earlier this year, the SBC altered its Baptist Faith and Message to state that, according to Scripture, women cannot be ordained pastors. In recent years, the SBC also deleted from its confession of faith the statement that Jesus Christ stands as the ultimate interpreter of Scripture.
“I think there was a lot of concern over exactly who is supposed to be the ultimate interpreter of Scripture if it’s not Christ himself,” said deacon Steve Gardner of Lake Shore Baptist.
According to William Merrell of the SBC’s executive committee, that change was made in response to left-leaning theologists who were incorrectly using Jesus “as a way of dodging the clear teaching of the Bible,” he said.
As more moderate congregations reevaluate their relationship with the SBC, differences of theological opinion are becoming obvious.
“I think that the difference is the SBC is trying to take the Bible literally, and that’s different from taking the Bible seriously,” said pastor Younger. “If you take the Bible seriously, it will lead you to the same openness that Jesus had.”
But the type of openness and diversity that is reflected in some Christian congregations today isn’t what the SBC wishes to espouse.
“We are not politically correct,” Merrell said of the SBC. “There are some denominations that feel they ought to change what the Bible says.”
There hasn’t been a significant exodus of churches from the SBC in comparison to the 1,500 new churches that joined the congregation last year alone, said Merrell.
Misrepresentation?
However, he said he is worried that the SBC’s confession of faith is being intentionally misinterpreted.
“There are certainly some spokesmen in Texas who I firmly believe have misrepresented what the SBC has done, what it believes and what it practices,” Merrell said.
Lake Shore Baptist Church will continue its affiliation with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the Alliance of Baptists, the Baptist General Convention of Texas and the Waco Baptist Association.
Younger said he talked to seven other pastors whose congregations have withdrawn from the SBC before Lake Shore voted to do so Wednesday.
“I think that more churches will sever their ties with the SBC,” said Younger. “And I think those churches will be healthier because of it. They’ll get to rethink their heritage.”
Calvary Baptist Church could be the next Waco congregation to rethink its heritage, according to the church’s senior pastor Julie Pen- nington-Russell.
“We have talked about it,” she said. “Although I would not rule out the possibility of our severing ties in the future, we continue to have a fair number of folks, mostly senior adults, who grew up as Southern Baptists.”