Sunday night fellowship

I just returned home after visiting with the folks of The Journey Church, a start-up currently meeting in peoples' homes. The singing was amazing, Pastor Harold preached on servant-leadership, and Chris and Cindy supplied their beautiful home and plenty of goodies to eat. What a great group of people! We're looking forward to getting to know them better on Sunday nights.

Confessions of a recovering Baptist

I just received my September 2006 issue of Christianity Today. I was drawn to flip through the magazine as soon as I saw it because of the very cool "Jonathan Edwards is My Homeboy" t-shirt featured so prominently on the cover. What caught my eye while flipping through was a little more surprising (and amusing):
"Two Degrees of Separation
GARBC distances itself from college after Southern Baptist endorsement."

Now, for my friends that don't have the same fundamental independent Baptist church background that I do, "GARBC" stands for the "General Association of Regular Baptist Churches". This group is officially an association of churches and organizations (colleges, mission agencies, and social service ministries) that are held in confederation by a commitment to a common doctrinal statement. They like to stress the fact that they are NOT a denomination, and besides the fact that they have a titular head (called the "national representitive") and a college of cardinals (the portentously-named "Council of Eighteen"), they aren't really. Each church retains its autonomy, and as long as they stick to every jot and tittle of the doctrinal statement, they get to retain their association. Pastors are ordained through local churches, and the member bodies can leave the association at any time and without fear of losing property because it's owned by the church rather than the association (power that many of my friends in the PCUSA would love to have about now).

The GARBC was formed in the 1930s in response to the modernism that was creeping into the American Baptist church. Because any churches that left the denomination were forced to give up their property, GARBers have tenaciously guarded two points of doctrine that most churches don't think as much about: Autonomy of the local church and Separation.

I've already explained the reasoning for the autonomy issue, and this makes sense. Where things get a bit kooky is when it comes to separation. Separation is a scriptural principle of disassociating oneself from people that profess to be believers, but that adhere to a willful disobedience to God (1 Cor. 5:11) or apostasy (2 John 9-11). Disobedience to God is also known as "sin". Sin is easily identified since it's called out in scripture by name: sexual immorality, drunkeness, idolatry, etc. By willful, it means that even if a person is confronted about their behavior, they refuse to change.

Apostasy is basically denying one of the main tenets of the Christian faith. The strange thing is what qualifies as a main tenet: for example, the GARBC has an almost cultlike allegiance to dispensational premillennialism and to them, it DOES qualify as one of the essentials of the faith (to many anyway). The GARBC church I attended was once faced with a situation where a certain GARBC-affiliated mission board was separating from a missionary that we supported because, while holding to the requisite dispy theology, he was teaching folks to be pastors that didn't hold to dispy theology. Did you catch that? Even though the missionary held to the proper theology, and even though he taught from that perspective, because some of his students at the seminary where he taught did not hold to that perspective, he was told to either give up his ministry or to lose the financial support of the mission board. Sound absurd? Of course! The worst part is that it didn't even rise to the proper standard of what separation is for. There was no apostasy involved, just a minor theological disagreement. If those students were denying the resurrection of Christ or his return, THAT would be apostasy. Disagreeing about a minor point? Not so much. This is an example of "second degree" separation. This means that you separate from someone who doesn't separate from someone. It sounds very Seinfeld, I know, but I wanted to give you, the discerning reader, an example. (For the sake of giving you closure, my church did the right thing and continued to support the missionary in question. We even went the extra mile by dropping our monthly support of the mission board's home office and sending that money to the missionary as well. It was one of our finest hours!)

Now for the example that I originally wanted to write about:
I graduated from Cedarville University in 1995. At that time the school was in fellowship with the GARBC (notice the similar doctrinal statement). Not everyone that attended Cedarville was GARBC, but the 'Ville has long been considered a fine institution to which good GARBC parents could feel good about sending their kids--until recently. Cedarville made the mistake of being noticed by the Southern Baptist Convention of Ohio, who commended Cedarville as a fine Baptist institution that was worthy of its Southern Baptist students. Now, read that again. Do you see what happened? Cedarville was the endorsee. They received the endorsement. Evil? You bet!

This action enraged many in the GARBC. Why? Because of the second-degree rule of separation! See, Southern Baptists are a strange group. They are Baptists (dunking once backwards is good), but they aren't GARBC Baptists (not being GARBC results in a 15 yard penalty AND a loss of down). The greater US society in general, and the "liberal media" in particular, regard the SBC as the most conservative, oppressive, restrictive, Brill Cream-wearing, Jerry Falwell-loving group around. If they had Pat Robertson in their ranks, they would be the Dr. Evil of denominations. But a devout GARBer knows the truth: the SBC is not conservative at all!

There are several different types of Southern Baptists, and many are pretty conservative. But, there are those that aren't as, umm, conservative. How can the two coexist in a single handy denomination? Well, they can coexist because, like the GARBC, the SBC also reveres the principle of autonomy of the local congregation. But, unlike the GARBC, the SBC doesn't place as high an emphasis on separation. So, they have a higher threshold of tolerance for folks with slight differences of opinion in some things. In GARBland, this makes the SBC "liberal" and worthy of being separated from. And, so it follows that since Cedarville received an endorsement from the SBC, they are guilty by association. The official explanation from John Greening, pope...err, national representative, follows (read the whole statement here):

...it is obvious the SBC is a work in progress. For example, the decision by the trustees of the SBC International Mission Board to no longer permit tongues to be practiced as a private prayer language by missionaries is a good step forward, though it did not win unanimous support and the sitting president of the mission has been grandfathered in though acknowledging that tongues has been a continuing practice of his for thirty years. The newly elected SBC president describes himself as a conservative inerrantist yet he has issued a call for more open dialogue on theological issues. A fifteen-foot statue of Billy Graham was unveiled two weeks ago at the SBC meeting in North Carolina. We praise the Lord for many who have come to faith in Christ through Billy Graham’s preaching. However there is no one in evangelical circles who has done more to blur the lines of distinction between Evangelicals and Catholics than Billy Graham. GARBC leaders have been outspoken critics of his cooperative form of evangelism for decades. There are significant differences between the GARBC and the SBC that cause me to not want to gradually get drawn into a relationship with the SBC through an agency. By maintaining our distinct Regular Baptist identity, we have the greatest ministry platform from which we are able to make a contribution for truth within the harvest field of this world.

In other words, "Tongues and dialogue and Graham, oh my!" Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, brothers and sisters, the GARBC is a denomination (sorry, association) in decline. The most conservative among the churches pride themselves on being more pure than everyone else by separating out for lesser issues than these. Those that embrace a broader evangelical witness in the world are leaving because of narrow views like those displayed by Dr. Greening and company in the above statement.

The funniest quandry is the one the GARBC has made for Grace Baptist Church, its member church in Cedarville, OH. Pastor Craig Miller is quoted in the Christianity Today article as saying, "It is difficult for us to maintain membership in an organization that has broken its ties with the alma mater and employer of half the congregation." I think it's worse than that. If this principle of separation is followed to its logical conclusion, the GARBC would have to declare that any church that has members that are still affiliated with Cedarville as apostate too.

As an alum of Cedarville and former congregant of a good GARBC church, I wish to say to the GARBC a heartfelt and sincere, "See ya!" I intend to give more generously to my alma mater now that this association has been severed. Cedarville can only improve with the GARBC footprints brushed off of the welcome mat.