Greatness and Smallness

“Southern Baptists have always been a Great Commission people.”

So begins the Great Commission Resurgence document that will be the center of debate at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual gathering next week in Louisville, Kentucky.

If you grew up Baptist, you know what they’re talking about. It’s Matthew 28:19-20 where Jesus said: “Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you….”

This is the core of evangelicalism, and the heart of Baptists’ missional motivation.

Now, faced with declining numbers in the denomination, Southern Baptist president Johnny Hunt is trying to re-energize Baptists’ missionary efforts by streamlining denominational structure.

Based on talk in the Baptist blogosphere, the Convention’s debate will likely center on a single article of that Great Commission Resurgence document. It’s article 9, in which they call upon Southern Baptists “to evaluate our Convention structures and priorities so that we can maximize our energy and resources for the health of our local churches and the fulfillment of the Great Commission.”

In the explanation beneath article 9, the document talks about the need for a “more effective convention structure” so that Baptists can be “streamlined for more faithful stewardship of the funds entrusted to them.” It urges Baptists to “ask hard questions” about every aspect of structure and priorities.”

What it’s really saying, in a nice way, is that the Baptist bureaucracy is out of control. Maintenance of Southern Baptist national headquarters now takes 2.86 percent of the Cooperative Program budget each year. For those of you who weren’t raised Baptist, the Cooperative Program is the pooled portion of the $11 billion in Southern Baptist offering plate dollars that is directed outside the local churches and toward programs on which Baptists work together.

The 2.86 percent that’s now being spent at national headquarters is not money that’s being spent for missionary work. It’s money that’s going for the salaries, benefits, buildings, offices, and travel of all those guys in Nashville.

Just thirty years ago, the national headquarters took only 1 percent of the Cooperative Program budget, and it was a much smaller overall budget.

But Baptist numbers are dwindling. This mighty faith group is becoming less mighty. So clearly, the bigger, bloated bureaucracy isn’t helping them win more souls or put more people in the pews. (And keep in mind that, for now, I’m just talking about the national bureaucracy. The state convention bureaucracies also take Cooperative Program dollars.)

People who put money in Baptist offering plates ought to ponder this. The Southern Baptist national bureaucracy is taking 2.86 percent of the $548 million Cooperative Program budget each year. That’s a lot of bucks for a bureaucracy.

Wouldn’t you think that such a well-funded bureaucracy could at least manage the task of keeping track of Baptist clergy-predators? After all, if they’re going to build such a big bureaucracy, shouldn’t they at least put it to good use?

When I saw these numbers and the call for “more faithful stewardship of the funds,” I couldn’t help but wonder why Southern Baptist leaders weren’t equally concerned with stewardship of the children who have been entrusted to upbringing in Baptist churches.

In promoting the Great Commission Resurgence, Baptist leaders talk about their “instititutional identity.” Why don’t they realize how much their “institutional identity” is tainted when they allow clergy predators to church-hop without anyone imposing accountability?

A big part of Baptists’ institutional identity has always been the grandness of “go ye therefore and teach all nations.” From my earliest days in Sunbeams, I knew that this was what it was all about -- going into all the world. Later, in Girls’ Auxiliary, I painstakingly put thousands of tiny cross-stitches into a white cloth to make a map of that world.

That world was the mission. That world was the vision. That world was the commandment. That was what Baptists were all about… going into all the world.

Nowadays, I find myself wondering if perhaps Baptists have focused too long and too much on the greatness of “go ye therefore and teach all nations.” What would Baptists be like if they had focused an equal amount of energy on the smallness of “the least of these”?

What would Baptists be like if they were equally attentive to Jesus’ words just a few chapters earlier in Matthew 25? What would Baptists be like if, for all these many decades, they had focused an equal measure of attention on “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these… ye have done it unto me”?

I realize that “the least of these” doesn’t carry the grandeur of “go ye therefore and teach all nations.” But maybe that’s the point. Maybe that smallness is exactly what Baptists have overlooked for far too long.

Maybe Baptists could indeed see a “resurgence” if they would care about the smallness of “the least of these” as much as they care about the greatness of “teach all nations.”

Besides, I thought part of what they were supposed to “teach all nations” was the lesson of “inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these.”