Is The Lord Writing Ichabod On the SBC?
Editor’s Note:
If the context of this post – Michael Catt’s recent words – is unfamiliar to you please see the material following the post.
The SBC is a convention of churches.
The hand of God cannot be on our Convention any more, or less, than it is on our churches.
The SBC’s entities, however, have created a silo of yes men. Men who sit in board rooms and bed rooms and hotel rooms paid by widows’ mites.
And in these rooms, the yes men look each other straight in the eye and know the real problem in the SBC: angry churches.
If you’re in the club – like Russell Moore or Beth Moore or Matt Chandler or JD Greear or Ed Litton or “Million Dollar” Rainer – your actual mistakes are never as bad as the response from the churches. Their pews should be full of listeners; the crisis in the SBC (they say) is that too many minor people are majoring in the minors.
In the club, you can call for more CRT; the problem is the group of “Confederates” who ask for more than a cursory denial.
In the club, you can call complementarianism a tool of evil MEN; the problem is the group of angry Biblicists who won’t make room in the tent for you.
In the club, your openly homosexual son is a faithful preacher of the gospel and those crying foul about it are attacking a prodigal son; outside the club you aren’t a faithful preacher if you define racial reconciliation the wrong way.
In the club, you can tell the New York Times you’re sneaking James Cone into your lectures; but those who ask for clarification are cruel racists with an unfair hang-up over Resolution 9.
In the club, you can decry interracial adoption as white saviorism; but those who call it out are “branches who need pruned.”
In the club, you can produce “Evangelicals for Biden” and let pastors be used by George Soros’s immigration lobbyist; but the problem is “those who add politics to Scripture.”
In the club, you can tell witnesses you are going to throw sex abuse evidence in a river, then claim you can’t even remember your own lawyer’s name, and the club will declare you exonerated.
In the club, you can steal confidential sex abuse records from your employer when you leave in April 2020, throw them out to the public in May 2021, and no one will say boo.
In the club, you can arrange for the “independent investigation” of your opponents by a lawyer known for protecting her ministry friends, so that there is no spillover.
In the club, you can advocate for pronoun hospitality and preach that God whispers about homosexuality; outside the club are those in a synagogue of Satan being discipled by worldly voices.
In the club, any notion there is any doctrinal or ethical drift in the Convention is participating in full-blown conspiracy theory but, also, the Conservative Baptist Network is full of wealthy racist and misogynist men whose only aim is to restart the Confederacy. Outside the club? Well, no one outside the club is disconnected from reality as all that.
In the club, you can sponsor the Nashville Pride Parade, put feminist lawyers in charge of payouts, and court people openly wishing for the death of the SBC.
And yet men in the club will write trite articles pointing fingers outside, at the churches. It is the outsiders that are “dangerously close to seeing the Lord write Ichabod on us.”
We are at a pivotal point in this Convention. The SBC will either be a Convention of churches or a platform for the club men.
We believe the Lord, in his graciousness, is writing Ichabod in the SBC.
But He is writing Ichabod over the new good old boys club. He revives Southern Baptist pulpits and pews.
We’ll see you in Anaheim.
Michael Catt, former pastor of megachurch Sherwood Baptist in Albany, Georgia and Executive Producer on Fireproof recently weighed in on the state of the SBC, coming down on the point that the problem with the SBC is those who say there is a problem with the SBC (see images below for his exact words). You can probably guess which class of Southern Baptists immediately signaled their praise – eeny, meeny, miny, and moe here provided as representative examples.
You man not agree with the conclusion of this post. That’s fine – the debate is very open. What should be clear, however, is that the SBC currently operates as a good ol’ boy network as much as it every has in any past era. There are privileges afforded to the men loyal to the company and serious penalties for those in our convention of churches who are on the outside. Nonetheless, partiality (as well as compromise) remains a concern of our Holy God.
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