I just finished the 2nd of 3 annual conventions as a member of the  Southern Baptist Convention’s Committee on Order of Business.  The Committee is charged with setting a schedule for the Convention, and handling motions made by the Messengers.  Unpacking the whole convention will take weeks or years, but here are few thoughts:

It’s a battleship, not a race car. The annual Convention is the largest parliamentary deliberative assembly in the world.  After a hundred years of Baptist fights, for theological and practical reasons, it’s designed to prevent emotional, quick decisions that could be permanent.  The messengers can do almost anything, but the bigger the change, the harder it is to do it at a single Convention.  The power to act quickly has been given to trustees and agencies in their own spheres.  It’s a feature, not a bug.

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This morning, I attended a talk by Mark DeVine, at the Blue River/Kansas City Baptist Association’s “Leader Learning Lunch.” Dr. DeVine is writing (at a furious pace) about the good, the bad and the ugly of the “emerging” and “emergent” church. I won’t attempt to re-write what he said, since his papers state his position clearly, but here are a few thoughts that stood out* (below the ‘more’):

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