The frustration and anxieties that I and other lay leaders in Alabama have felt over the past 15 years with the trend of some of our well-meaning pastors manipulating a change in their church polity from congregationalism to CEO is now being felt with the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) leaders changing their role from a servant and partnership role with the state conventions and seminaries to a CEO or dictatorship role for all Southern Baptists.
Southern Baptist growth has been built around adding Sunday School classes and then planting new local churches with the involvement of other local churches, local associations, state conventions and then the North American Mission Board as needed. The part-
nership worked because it was not top down or bottom up — it was both. It was a partnership with servant leadership at every level and as many volunteers as possible. No one gets excited about an enterprise, a mission or a church plant unless he or she is involved in the planning.
We are all human and want to be involved in exciting missionary work in which we feel we have a significant part to play in the work of the Great Commission.
This is only common sense. Dictatorships whether actual, de facto or attempted will always muddy the water and eventually fail. When the various parts of the SBC remember that they are a partnership reporting to the people, who individually report to God, they will return to the greatest entities in history.
Ron Travis Sr.
Birmingham, Ala.
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