"Emerging Leaders or Submerging Servants?"---A Response

In a forthcoming edition of the Florida Baptist Witness, there is an opinion piece entitled "Emerging Leaders of Submerging Servants?" submitted by North Carolina pastor Ben Brammer, a 26-year-old Ph.D. student at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. In this article Brammer makes the accusation that a number of younger pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention are "jockeying for leadership" within the SBC and do not show proper appreciation and respect for those who led the Conservative Resurgence. His message is similar to what Ergun Caner said about younger SBCers a few weeks ago, but Brammer is much more tactful.

Brammer seems to place SBC bloggers at the top of this list of younger Baptists who are demanding positions of leadership: "Some younger Baptists are under the assumption that leadership is a right available to anyone with an opinion and a weblog." I personally would like to see a list of young SBC bloggers who are insisting that they be given leadership roles in the SBC. My observation, from an insider's perspective, is that most of us young SBC bloggers have publicly stated on numerous occasions that we are not interested in obtaining leadership positions within the SBC. If that were our goal, we would be cozying up to those who comprise the "Good Ol' Boy" network instead of criticizing this system that allows a handful of people to exercise almost complete control over the entities of the SBC. If that were our goal, we would not be publicly opposing the growing trend of exclusivism and separatism that some of our entities and leaders are moving us toward. If that were our goal, we would not be calling for reform within the SBC, but we would support the status quo that our leaders have established.

Brammer accuses many young SBCers of "doublespeak," which is another term for calling us hypocrites. I will admit that all of us have been guilty of that at one time or another. Not just the bloggers, not just young SBCers, but ALL of us. Is it doublespeak for seminary trustees to tell students that the president's job is not in jeopardy and the next day to lock him out of his office? Is it doublespeak for another seminary president to refer to a fire-truck baptistry as "blasphemous" but then endorse the pastor who uses such "blasphemous" methods for the presidency of the SBC? If the current generation is guilty of employing "doublespeak," remember that we learned it from some of our elders.

Brammer seems not to understand that there is a difference between having appreciation and respect for someone and turning a blind eye to anything they do that is questionable. I personally have a great deal of respect for those who led the Conservative Resurgence. I am grateful that we have a convention that unashamedly holds to the Bible as the inerrant, infallible, authoritative Word of God. But this does not mean that I am going to idolize those who led the Resurgence or ignore it when they do something that is questionable or even wrong.

Brammer also accuses many younger Baptists of being "obsessed with personalities." I almost laughed when I read this. All one has to do is look at the list of SBC leaders endorsing Ronnie Floyd to see that name-dropping is prevalent among our convention leaders. To be honest, I haven't really seen many younger Baptists bragging about who they know. I have to confess, I did comment on David Rogers' blog that I met his father at the 2005 SBC Pastors' Conference and found him to be a very gracious and humble man. Maybe my comment is what Brammer is referring to.

Perhaps Brammer has forgotten that the effort to bring younger SBCers to the leadership table was not initiated by any of these younger Baptists but by one of the most respected leaders within the SBC, Jimmy Draper. Draper began his Younger Leader initiative NOT because there were so many young Baptists demanding positions of leadership, but because many young Baptists displayed little or no interest in the SBC at all. Younger Baptists were not jockeying for leadership within the SBC; they were questioning the relevance of the SBC to their ministry. In reality, much of the activity that Brammer sees as "jockeying for leadership" in the SBC is really an effort on the part of younger Baptists to see not if there is a place for us at the SBC leadership table, but to see if there is a place for us in the SBC period.

(HT: Art Rogers)