No Johnny Come Lately Here

In light of my last post, I feel that I need to share my history with the SBC.

I went to Sunday School at Isle of Palms Baptist Church in South Carolina. Little did I know at the age of 9 that I would one day be ordained into the ministry and serve as a deacon there.
At the age of 13, I was saved at a crusade sponsored by an SBC church by an SBC evangelist. As my family came to Christ over the next months, we chose to go to that same church. In the 1970's, our church was in the top 10 of all baptisms in the SBC. So, as a teenager, I was avidly involved in winning my friends to Christ, many of whom were saved a baptized at Southern Baptist churches.
I went to college, then after graduation, served on the mission field as a liaison between the SBC and Trans World Radio in Swaziland Africa.
Upon my return, I immediately began a new ministry as a youth minister at a church in the Charleston, SC area. I served 4 years where I was involved in the Charleston Baptist Association. It was during those years that I went to my first SBC convention, Atlanta 1986. I was thrilled to be a part of the conservative resurgence.
Over the next 25 years, I have been to multiple conventions to assure the conservatives stayed the course. Unfortunately, recently, because of health problems, I have not been able to attend many conventions, but still support our SBC through Cooperative Program giving and Lottie Moon offerings.
I went to an SBC seminary (SEBTS for the doubters) became a pastor at an SBC church, and am now a church starter fully affiliated with the SBC, the SCBC and the CBA.
Finally, my great-grandfather's grandfather was also an avid Southern Baptist as a behind the scenes founder of the this "new" denomination in 1845 (He's enshrined in the wall of Lawtonville Baptist Church in Estill, SC).

With all the boring background stuff out of the way, I need to say that I have been concerned for our convention for many years. I have experienced waste and mis-placed resources and wept as our Cooperative Program money was wasted on lavish hotels and expense accounts and excessive salaries. Regardless of the problems I personally had with these expenditures, I worked hard to get to the mission field only to be told there was not enough money to fund us. So, as a pastor, I attempted to begin an African-American work with the help of the SCBC and NAMB, once again only to be told there was no money. I then became a church starter hoping that someone, somewhere would help support our start. But, alas, I wasn't one of the few chosen ones the strategists had meticulously picked out. So, there was no money from the convention for us. All the while the WMU and the SCBC were adding staff in the convention building. They were taking our millions and putting it into what I felt was more and more bureaucracy. In an attempt to stop this, I asked at the SCBC convention in 1999 if the additional CP giving we were being asked to give as churches would be used to plant churches and do evangelism. I received no answer from the SCBC platform. I stated that I believed the extra money would only be used to fund more jobs for the SCBC's ever-increasing bureaucracy. I was summarily dismissed as the call was made for any other questions. I knew then that unless things changed, this was the plight of our convention...to sustain itself though the offerings of many churches that sacrificed their financial resources to support fluff at the top. We are told that the Christian life was one of sacrifice, yet I saw very little in our own convention.
Thank the Lord, that was then, this is now. Enter Johnny Hunt and the GCRTF. They have called for radical change, and the SBC 2010 confirmed by a 3 to 1 margin that vision. Soon our state conventions, our boards, and our committees will have to organize the GCR as they begin to place the money where it is needed most: the cities, the northeast, the west, and the nations.
I really can't believe that I have seen this in my lifetime. I am thrilled.