Bellevue Baptist Church, Cordova, Tenn., is on the cutting edge of a growing trend — at least when it comes to conflict.
Like members from several other prominent churches nationwide, congregants at the Memphis-area megachurch are using Web sites and blogs to post details about ongoing dissent within the ranks.
But do such high-tech tactics empower church members to address conflict or merely make the conflict worse while airing a church’s dirty laundry to the world?
The issue at Bellevue Baptist involves Pastor Steve Gaines and a group of longtime church members who say he’s receiving an inappropriately high salary, is pushing the church toward an elder-led system and has forced out a popular music director.
Others have said Gaines, former Alabama pastor, uses intimidation and arrogance as his main modus operandi.
Still more say they feel it’s too soon to change the 30,000-member church after the 2005 death of legendary pastor Adrian Rogers. Gaines, along with a strong contingent behind him, has denied the allegations.
As part of their protest, Bellevue members created www.bellevuetruth.blogspot.com and www.savingbellevue.com, which includes letters from members, a transcript of an interview with a concerned deacon and links to sites of churches in comparable straits. At press time, the site had received nearly 175,000 hits.
Across town at Germantown Baptist Church and hundreds of miles away at Montrose Baptist Church, Rockville, Md., congregants have faced similar divisions and used similar methods to disseminate information and garner support.
At First Baptist Church, Colleyville, Texas, bloggers brought scrutiny to financial dealings that led to the pastor’s resignation.
All four church conflicts involved conservative churches divided over leadership style and use of authority. But the trend to take those battles to cyberspace is not limited to conservative churches.
Blog and Web site proponents claim they need the online vehicle to level the playing field. The technology lets them publish information — like church financial statements or proposed bylaws — that would otherwise be hidden by what some describe as dictatorial pastors and elders.
Supporters also say blogs are necessary to distribute information actively blocked by other, more conventional channels. Some supporters say opposing factions within a church need a forum to communicate their concerns.
But Bob Perry, congregational health team leader of the Baptist General Convention of Missouri, disagrees with the need to use blogs as weapons.
Perry said blogging about denominational politics on a national level is useful to inform mass audiences via a broad medium — bloggers recently helped effect reforms in the Southern Baptist Convention and its International Mission Board — but it’s unacceptable, he continued, to use blogs for conflict resolution in individual churches.
“I think at the local church level, it is very, very wrong,” Perry said. “I just can’t imagine that there’s any real value to this. … God only knows the damage it does to the cause of Christ. You’ve got people reading blogs in India and China — folks we are hoping to evangelize — and they are reading about local disputes in Baptist churches. I think it’s just very unhealthy.”
Jerry Wilkins, director of missions for Tuscaloosa Baptist Association, agreed. Wilkins, who has spent a considerable amount of his 22 years at the association helping churches resolve conflict, said in most local church conflicts, the use of the Internet to disseminate information is “ill-advised.”
“One basic principle of managing and resolving church conflict is to involve as few people as possible in order to bring about resolution of that conflict,” he said. “The larger the group gets on either side, the more possibility there is for miscommunication and distortion of truth.”
Biblical guidelines for conflict resolution indicate that churches should start with the lowest number of involved people possible and then move to larger numbers as necessary, Wilkins said.
“The more people there are talking, the more confusing and heated conflict gets,” he said. “The Internet may simply be a way of adding fuel to the fire and escalating the issues.”
Joe Deupree, however, believes knowledge is power, especially when it comes to church conflicts. Deupree was instrumental in generating, among other outlets, online media coverage during alleged improprieties at First, Colleyville, Texas.
Bloggers picked up the links, and Pastor Frank Harber resigned Aug. 18 after months of online and print queries about questionable real estate transactions involving the church.
An independent audit revealed no questionable financial practices, church members learned Sept. 24 at an annual business meeting. Still the Internet made the Colleyville group successful in the “educational process” that finally ousted Harber, Deupree said.
“My thought on religion is that it should be completely open — hopefully we have left our secret societies and medieval hidden messages” behind, he said. “It’s better to be completely transparent than let people wonder what you’re trying to hide.”
Deupree said there are some parameters for proper Internet use amid church conflict, however.
“Be sure anything you put in there is factual, and if there is any doubt, don’t do it,” Deupree said. “Anything you get off other sites, give it a check with two or three sources.” (ABP, TAB contributed)
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