Frank

I am very sad to hear about the latest development in the SBC under Paige Patterson’s leadership. But I guess it is not too surprising, considering Patterson’s long-standing campaign against Calvinists, charismatics and egalitarians, as I believe Wade Burleson has documented on his website. And there are so many good Christian men and women being harmed through these policies.

For example, I have a good friend who, at one time, was a theology professor at a SBC seminary in Brazil. He was both a Calvinist and an egalitarian, and he clearly saw how changes in SBC policy would eventualy result in his dismissal. This caused stress for both him and his wife, who was a psychological nurse, engaged in a ministry supported by their Brazilian church. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, they both resigned and returned to the US. He is now an adjunct professor at Gordon-Conwell of NC, and she is once again involved in ministry. But as far as I know, they are not attending a SBC church.

Cheryl, I think what you said about resisting the Spirit and his work often results in churches falling into a dead legalism is well documented in the history of the Church. Pam Morrison, in her Priscilla Papers article, “The Holy Spirit, Neglected Person of the Trinity, and Women’s Leadership,” examines how in times of renewal and empowerment by the Spirit, not is the Church marked by effective ministry to the needy world, but men and women equally share in ministry and leadership. But in times of decline and spiritual impotence, the Church often reverts to hierarchical and legalistic forms of ministry and leadership. She says, “The Apostle Paul cautioned that God ‘has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant–not of the letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter kills but the Spirit gives life'”(2 Cor. 3:6) Our Scriptures, ‘the letter,’ are God-inspired for our good of course, and are provided for ‘teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training'” (2 Tim. 3:16) but, by themselves, without Spirit-quickening interpretation, the power to comprehend and to live them out, we can fall into legalism and dryness, into intepretations based upon wrong motives that do not give life” (Priscilla Papers, Vol. 23, No. 4, Autumn 2008) And surely this is what we see going on in the SBC and CBMW. May God have mercy upon us, and grant us all a true renewal and transformation of mind, heart and will by his Holy Spirit. Amen!