The recommendation that the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) withdraw from the Baptist World Alliance (BWA) was not a great surprise to most observers. After all, some members of the committee making the recommendation declared they would not be back to a BWA meeting after the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) was approved for membership during a July 2003 meeting in Rio De Janeiro.
In the past few years, as the possibility of CBF membership grew, SBC membership in BWA became more of a question. About three years ago, rumors began to surface about the SBC pulling out of the BWA and forming a new worldwide organization. In 2002, when the BWA membership committee gave a lengthy report to the General Council about CBF membership, Southern Baptist Convention officials objected. The objection was demonstrated even more when the SBC cut its annual contribution to BWA from $425,000 to $300,000 in June 2003.
After the July 2003 vote granting CBF membership, some of the committee members said the BWA had chosen a small group with 150 churches over the SBC with its 44,000-plus congregations. Some of the same people (not all) even moved out of the BWA hotel for the remainder of 2003 General Council meeting.
Still, many BWA supporters clung to hope. The SBC helped found the BWA. The SBC has been the organization’s most generous financial supporter. Southern Baptists continue to provide leadership to every area of the BWA. The BWA is the only place where leaders of Baptists from around the world sit together to discuss issues and efforts to win the world for Christ and to encourage and support Baptist believers. The BWA is strongly supported by Baptist leaders around the world.
The BWA without the SBC was unthinkable.
BWA President Billy Kim, a close personal friend to many SBC leaders, rearranged his schedule to personally plead with SBC Executive Committee members in September to stay in the BWA. It was to no avail. There is little doubt that the recommendation to withdraw will be supported by the SBC Executive Committee when next it meets and approved by messengers to the SBC annual meeting in June.
The decision is a great disappointment, even a tragedy. What is equally disappointing and equally tragic are the indictments of the BWA listed in the report. Instead of saying the SBC refuses to be a part of an organization in which the CBF participates, the report indicts the theology and ministries of BWA members around the world as justification for the decision to pull out of the BWA.
The truth is that had CBF been denied BWA membership, the question of SBC continued participation would not be an issue. Even though the official report does not mention CBF, it is the central reason for the recommendation.
The unnecessary indictments will tarnish the BWA in the minds of many people, and that is unfortunate. Perhaps the most damaging charge is that some BWA member bodies do not support the exclusivity of Jesus Christ as the only way of salvation. The issue came to the floor in Rio during a discussion of a “Call to Missions,” also known as the Swanwick Declaration. This paper had been prepared in a special conference of 150 missions leaders from around the world including Southern Baptists, among them the missions professors from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. All signed off on the document.
We are already on record as saying the paper should have had a stronger Christological statement. The reason it does not is that the paper was drafted in an atmosphere of belief. In the opening address of the conference, Denton Lotz, general secretary of the BWA, declared, “Let it be very clear from the start that our message is Jesus Christ. … We believe that there is salvation in no one else for there is no other name under heaven given by which we must be saved.”
To charge that participants did not believe in the exclusivity of Christ because the final draft did not have a strong statement to that end, would be a mistake. It would be like charging that SBC Executive Committee employees do not believe in the exclusivity of Christ because the personal covenant each signed in a public service last September does not reference salvation in Christ.
The personal covenant talks about being “created for God’s glory and to be a Kingdom agent.” It says nothing about being saved from sin through belief in the atoning death of Jesus Christ on Calvary’s cross. But the covenant was drafted in an atmosphere of belief. Its purpose was to advance Empowering Kingdom Growth. Commitment to salvation in no other name except Jesus was understood.
The same is true of the Swanwick Declaration. Its purpose was missions strategy, as Lotz explained during the General Council.
In hindsight, both documents could use additional wording at that point. But neither omission warrants the charge of failing to believe in salvation in Christ alone.
The report also cites a 1997 incident in which a German theologian was supposed to have said that he did not believe Jesus ever issued the Great Commission. The charge would be that some Baptists in the BWA do not believe the Bible as the Word of God. The theologian in question not only challenged the accuracy of that charge, he sent copies of his manuscript to committee members asking them to find anything vaguely similar to such a position. His request has been met with silence.
It has also been pointed out that the German theologian was suggested for the assignment in 1997 by a Southern Baptist member of the planning committee. The two had known each other at Harvard University during their studies.
Personally, there are times that I do not understand the positions of some Baptists from other parts of the world, and there are times that I leave meetings rather frustrated. I do not agree with some of the things said or done.
At the same time, I imagine Baptists from other parts of the world might not understand how I lead the BWA communications committee and might be frustrated with me at times. However, the BWA provides a forum for hearing one another, learning to understand one another and working out frustrations. Frustration is not a cause for separation. After all, the BWA is not responsible for every position or every pronouncement or every activity of every Baptist body or every Baptist in the BWA.
Southern Baptists have much to learn from Baptists from other countries. We also have much to offer these brothers and sisters in Christ. This can best be done through the Baptist World Alliance, the organization through which we have cooperated with other Baptists for the past 99 years.
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