SBC Faces 10 Questions About Future
Mohler said the SBC faces at least 10 questions, which he put in terms of dichotomies. Mohler said Southern Baptists in the future will be either:
- Missiological or bureaucratic. The denomination will be driven by the work of the Gospel mission as set forth in Scripture or it will die a slow death along a path clogged by bureaucratic red tape. “The missiological logic, I would suggest, is the only logic that fits the church of the Lord Jesus Christ,” he said. “Unless the SBC very clearly asserts an unashamed, undiluted and ruthless missiological logic, we are going to find ourselves out of touch with our churches, with the generation now coming into leadership and with the world we are trying to reach, because the logic of bureaucracy will never take us where we need to go.”
- Tribal or theological. The SBC must be driven by common doctrine and not a “cradle to death” ethos in which one is a Southern Baptist by virtue of being raised in a SBC church. The SBC “tribal identity” no longer exists because the cultural assumptions that underpinned such a nostalgic identity have disappeared, he said.
- Convictional or confused. The basis of cooperation among Southern Baptists must be a robust theology. Mohler said Southern Baptists must not be afraid to discuss and even debate theology: “If we avoid talking about theological issues, if we try to minimize the theological logic of this denomination…Or if we make every issue a first-order issue, we are going to have a very confused people,” he said. “Southern Baptists are going to have to grow up theologically in this new age and we’re not going to have any choice. Southern Baptists are no longer going to be insulated from the theological and ideological currents around us.”
- Secular or sectarian. Southern Baptists are sectarian by their very nature, he said. Because of their allegiance to Christ and Scripture, Mohler urged that they must be qualitatively different than the world in their mores, ideology and convictions. In the mid-20th century South, Southern Baptists did not have to be sectarian because they were “at home” within that culture, Mohler said, but no longer. “The South became the Sun Belt and the primary religion of the Sun Belt is materialism,” he said. “We have gotten contamination from other worldviews and we are going to have to recover the sense that the church of the Lord Jesus Christ is always, in a New Testament sense, sectarian. It is going to be made up of resident aliens who are never fully at home in the culture because the culture itself is a Genesis 3 culture and the church is called to a different worldview under allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ.”
- Younger or dead. The SBC, Mohler pointed out, is losing two-thirds of its young people between adolescence and adulthood. He said Southern Baptists must reach the younger generation with a theologically robust vision of the Christian life to rescue them from a deadly therapeutic ethos that says God wants their lives to be worry-free, prosperous and happy.
- Diverse or diminished. Mohler said studies show that by 2050, 25 percent of all Americans will have a Hispanic grandparent. The denomination will have to become more racially diverse to reach America, he said.
- Missional or more methodological. “For a long time when you asked the question, ‘Who is a Southern Baptist?’ you got a methodological answer,” Mohler said. “You got a certain historical answer, a certain minimal theological answer, but by and large, it was a methodological answer. By and large, that’s not going to be an option in the future. The church is not methodological, but is deployed for the cause of the Gospel.”
- More strategic or more anemic. Southern Baptists must update their missions strategy at every level. Local churches will have to become individual missiological units to reach their communities, Mohler said. A fast-changing world demands that Southern Baptist be constantly rethinking their missions strategy.
- More bold or more boring. “This is a generation that is not going to be satisfied with boring,” Mohler said. “The kind of boring logic which is the same thing being said in roughly the same way every time - no surprises - is simply not going to work because that’s not the way the New Testament is. The mission of the Lord Jesus Christ is so bold that it can never be boring. … This means we are going to have to take risks.”
- Happy or bitter. The SBC has gained a reputation for denominational crankiness, Mohler said, adding that Southern Baptists often seem upset, angry and frustrated even while claiming to be happy. “Crankiness often erupts on the floor of the Southern Baptist Convention,” he said. “We criticize people who are not even there. We raise issues as if this is where the SBC should direct its energies. … The risk here is that we will be cranky in all the wrong ways. If we stand by the Scriptures, we are going to have to say hard things to a culture around us that will consider us backward, unloving, intolerant, while having to stand by the truth. …We cannot afford to waste our energy on being cranky about things that are irrelevant and unhelpful and extraneous to the life of the SBC. When we gather together there had better be evident joy and there had better be a unity of purpose and a commonality of heart or people will stop coming.”
