Some semioticians argue meaning is carried in codes. It would be interesting to study the SBC since the CR for just this kind of communication. Many still measure a person’s commitment to the Scriptures in code – inerrancy. The ACP is code for “Who is “getting it done?” Whatever “it” is since we really cannot decide.
Enter the GCR. Marty Duren offers some thoughts at the behest of some friends just what this new code may mean and how he sees it playing out. The article is a good piece. I participated in a venture to see if a revolution could occur. I concur with his insights and his conclusions.
Pay particular attention to No.6,
6. God does not need the SBC. At least one SBCer, Jedediah Coppenger, has written a lament about the drop in Cooperative Program funds relating to international missions asking if the Great Commission is filing for bankruptcy. While I appreciate the concern, I cannot join the chorus of despair because I do not think that God is dependent on the SBC. Was there no fulfillment of the Great Commission before the founding of the Southern Baptist Convention? If not, how did the gospel get to our ancestors? Was the modern missions movement founded in Nashville? Did Adonirum Judson go through the International Learning Center?
A few years ago I sat in a room with 20 or so other men and ladies and we discussed the future of the SBC. My primary contribution to the conversation was this: â??If we are not prepared to admit that God may be envisioning a future without the SBC, then we are not prepared to envision a future with it.â? That is, the SBC must be willing to at least seriously and thoughtfully consider that God is done with the SBC before serious thought can be given to a potential future. Otherwise we think and act from a position of triumphalismâ??that God needs us to fulfill His plans, when, in fact, He does not. (emphasis added)
Whether he reads Rollins, Zizek or Derrida, or a host of others, Marty captures the way language works when power is in question. Read the post carefully. Marty breaks the code. He does not carry a hidden acronym for “we aren’t in good shape.” He just says it.
It is so difficult to speak from a place that does not privelege oneself. I know I struggle with that regularly and often find out only after words have escaped just how ‘in’ context I am.
We in the SBC have been the dominant culture in the South for so long that we are able to operate as if we are truly the largest denom. in the US. while in reality we are only a strong majority in a handful of states with little presence or influence elsewhere. When we speak as if the South is the world, we get a skewed view. When we talk as if God needs us, or “our most effective mission sending agency the world has ever known” then we have a skewed view of power, privelege and our place in the large whole.
Even a quick scan of the literature of the rise of a global south church ought to give us pause to consider exactly what God is doing and how that work is being done without us, often even in spite of us and our money.
May God help His people who call themselves the SBC.