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.