Trustees of the North American Mission Board (NAMB) approved a 34-page document Oct. 6 that will serve as a guideline for what constitutes a New Testament church. NAMB starts 1,500 new Southern Baptist churches each year.
“It is important that the North American Mission Board have a very clear statement of what we see to be a Baptist church,” said NAMB president Robert E. (Bob) Reccord. “We are not planting ‘baptistic’ churches. We are not planting churches that resemble what Baptists are. We are planting Southern Baptist churches that reflect what a biblical New Testament church is.”
Speaking to trustees during their regularly scheduled meeting, Reccord said the document was needed because of the rapid proliferation across the country of some nonbiblical church models including the ‘family’ or ‘simple’ church networks.
“In many parts of North America, an errant theology of church has begun to spread, especially in a few younger church planters, because these nonbiblical models sound good and it’s easy to get sucked in,” he said. “A church cannot be myself and my wife meeting in our home, and it’s we two and no more. That is not a church. What we’re doing with this document is giving guidelines to ensure that Southern Baptists are starting biblically sound New Testament churches.”
The document, titled “Ecclesiological Guidelines to Inform Southern Baptist Church Planters,” was written by Stan Norman, associate professor of Theology at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
The paper reviews and comments on such issues as the authority of a Baptist church, classic marks of a true church, congregational polity, autonomy and the offices, ordinances and mission of a New Testament church. Trustee chairman Barry Holcomb, pastor of Bethany Baptist Church, Andalusia, said the paper would “prevent us from getting to the extremes such as one account I read that said a family could use pancakes around the breakfast table for the Lord’s Supper. This paper is a sound theological document and position.”
Richard Harris, NAMB’s vice president of church planting, initiated development of the guidelines “to ensure that churches we help start throughout North America are Southern Baptist.”
The complete document is available for review at www.namb.net.
In other business, NAMB trustees:
• Approved a 2005 budget of $120.7 million, a 2 percent increase over the 2004 budget.
• Appointed Randy Singer as president of FamilyNet through 2005 in addition to his responsibilities as chief counsel and special assistant to the president.
• Approved a cooperative agreement with Dakota Baptist Convention. (BP)
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