A messenger to last week’s annual meeting of the Alabama Baptist State Convention elbowed a friend sitting next to him. “Get up and say something,” the messenger said playfully. “This is getting boring.”
If one attended the 181st annual session of the ABSC looking for excitement, one was sorely disappointed, at least if excitement is defined as debate and disagreement, argument and confrontation. None of that occurred during the two-day meeting.
Instead, the 1,088 messengers attending agreed on practically everything presented. The only business conducted without a unanimous vote was on amendments to resolutions related to Judge Roy Moore. Recommendations of the State Board of Missions, including the budget for 2004, were adopted without discussion or debate. All of the officers were re-elected to their positions without opposition. Even the potentially volatile resolutions were approved by a wide majority.
The only discussion or debate related to including the name of Judge Roy Moore in a resolution concerning religious liberty. Messengers were united in their praise and support of Moore for displaying the Ten Commandments monument. Yet messengers appeared to distinguish between supporting the display of the Ten Commandments in public places and defying a legal federal court order.
That difference has been rather widely made in conservative evangelical circles. For example, television personality Pat Robertson and SBC religious liberty leader Richard Land separated themselves from Moore’s failing to follow the court order while Focus on the Family leader James Dobson has been a Moore champion.
Among Alabama Baptists present for the annual meeting were strong Moore supporters. Several resolutions expressing that position were submitted. One motion, later ruled out of order, asked the convention to endorse Moore’s actions. But in the end, about two-thirds of those present concluded the resolution on religious liberty was stronger by declaring support for the principle of publicly displaying the Ten Commandments rather than referencing a personality.
Attendance was expected to be low, but no one expected it to be the lowest attended convention in more than 50 years. The lowest attendance we could find in convention annuals was in 1953 when 1,106 messengers registered for a meeting in Montgomery. We could find no convention since that time where attendance failed to break 1,100.
Weather contributed to the low attendance. Heavy rains and wind kept a lot of local people home who otherwise might have registered as messengers from their churches. Only 40 of the host association’s 99 churches registered messengers. Other nearby associations were equally low.
Still, there was wide geographic participation. Messengers registered from 492 churches from 71 of the state’s 75 associations.
It is ironic that Mobile now holds records for the highest attendance and the lowest attendance for annual meetings of the state convention. It was just 10 years ago, 1994, that 3,137 messengers met in Mobile for a rancorous convention session. That is the only time in convention history that more than 2,200 messengers ever registered for an annual meeting.
Perhaps a greater irony is the difference in spirit between the two meetings. In 1994, there was division between convention leaders. Debate raged about the relationship between the convention and one of its cooperating entities. Another entity was closely questioned about its expanded programs. Entities quarreled with one another. Some asked if certain entities would survive. Financial statements and audits were challenged. Charges and countercharges flew on the floor of the convention and in the State Board of Missions.
A mere 10 years later, the convention met in the same place in harmony and unity. Among convention leadership there is unity of purpose and unity in program. Relationships between the convention and all of its entities are strong and vital. The financial condition of the convention and all of its entities is unquestioned. The convention audit committee reported no concerns from any ministry.
Relationships between entities are at a high point. Now it is frequently said that at no time in Alabama Baptist life have the three institutions of higher learning — Samford University, Judson College and University of Mobile — had a better working relationship.
This unity was not purchased at the price of losing a sizable portion of the Alabama Baptist family. An examination of those serving on the State Board of Missions, on committees and on various entity boards demonstrates that the wide family of Baptists still participates in Alabama Baptist life. And the number of churches financially supporting convention work has not dropped at all.
In some states, Baptists have traveled a course marked by bitterness, backbiting, exclusion and division. Thankfully, Alabama Baptists chose a higher road, a nobler road. In Alabama, the whole family works together to determine and follow the will of God. This annual meeting demonstrated that it is far better to let the “excitement” of a convention come from celebrating the victories in the Lord’s work rather than through confrontation and division.
May God grant that Alabama Baptists always have the wisdom to work together as brothers and sisters in the Lord.
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