Conservatives urged to stay the course

By Steve DeVane

BR Managing Editor

PLEASANT GARDEN - Conservative N.C. Baptists were encouraged to continue the rightward shift of the Baptist State Convention at the Conservative Carolina Baptists (CCB) rally on April 29.

Allan Blume, pastor of Mount Vernon Baptist Church in Boone, led the meeting in place of CCB President Bill Sanderson, who was out of town. Blume called on CCB members to get messengers to the BSC annual meeting in November.

"Don't back up," he said. "Don't relax."

Conservatives have dominated the BSC elections recently, winning the presidency for nine straight years and controlling at least two of the top three BSC offices for eight of the last nine years.

Blume asked CCB members to submit nomination forms for BSC positions with the names of "good Baptists that you know that will be loyal to the Southern Baptist Convention."

Loyalty to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) was considered a major factor in BSC elections last year, when conservatives won by a larger margin than previous years.

Blume also said at the CCB meeting that Baptists are "people of the book," a reference to the authority of the Bible. Conservatives used the inerrancy of the Bible as their battle cry while taking control of the SBC in the 1970s and 1980s.

BSC President David Horton emphasized his respect for the Bible in his remarks at the rally. He said he's excited about "what the Lord is doing" among N.C. Baptists.

"I am glad that I'm a Baptist," he said. "One of the reasons is that Baptists settled a long time ago that we are a people of the book."

Horton said the Bible has changed his life. He said he learned respect for the Bible growing up in his home, where his father, even though he was not yet a Christian, wouldn't let anyone sit anything on the family Bible.

Toward the end of the rally, Daniel Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, mentioned inerrancy in a reference to Chris Schofield, who was about to close the meeting in prayer.

Schofield was hired in February to lead a ministry of prayer evangelism for the BSC's Mission Growth Evangelism group. Akin described him as a strong inerrantist.

"That tells you a wonderful, new fresh wind is blowing through the state of North Carolina," Akin said.

Akin was keynote speaker for the meeting. He preached a sermon from 1 Peter 5 stressing the importance of pastoral ministry.

Akin talked about the encouragement, expectation and future exaltation of the servant of God.

Akin told the CCB members that a biblical text cannot mean today what it didn't mean in its historical context. Teaching or preaching a text contrary to its original meaning dishonors the Holy Spirit, the divine author of Scripture, he said.

"You're in essence saying to the Holy Spirit, 'I see something here you didn't see,'" Akin said.

Preaching "the whole counsel of God" means preaching the whole Bible, "book by book, chapter by chapter, verse by verse, phrase by phrase, word by word," he said.

Akin said that when preparing a sermon, pastors should ask five questions:

What does the text say about God?

What does the text teach about fallen man?

What do I want my people to learn?

What do I want them to do?

What area of theology is this text addressing?

Akin quoted his predecessor at Southeastern, Paige Patterson, as saying, "It's a sin to make the Bible boring."

"What you say is more important that how you say it, but how you say it has never been more important," Akin said.

Akin said he was tired of having to apologize to his students for the sermons they hear in chapel.

Blume presented Akin with a check from CCB for $5,000 to be used for a memorial at Southeastern in honor of Jerry Pereira, former president of the BSC and pastor of First Baptist Church of Swannanoa, who died in November after a six-month battle with cancer. Blume said the offering from the rally, which was nearly $1,000, would also go toward the effort.

George Bullard, associate executive director of the BSC, spoke at the rally in place of BSC Executive Director-treasurer Jim Royston, who had to be out of town due to a death in his wife's family.

Bullard preached a sermon based on passages from Romans 6 and Acts 4. He asked CCB members to plant new churches, to be generous with their resources and to call out their church members to Christian service.

Bullard said the new churches should focus on reaching "the lost, the unchurched and the dechurched." The BSC is losing ground to population increases even though it is planting 70 to 75 churches a year, he said.

"We're going backward because we're growing a little and the state is growing a lot," he said.

Bullard said his request for churches to be generous is not related to recent discussion about the BSC's four giving plans.

"The giving plans aren't my agenda," he said. "My agenda is we're hoarding God's money."

Twenty years ago, churches were sending 8 to 9 percent of their undesignated receipts to the BSC, Bullard said. Now that amount has decreased to 4 to 5 percent, he said.

Bullard said he asked CCB members to sound the call for Christian service because God needs laborers.

"God is calling you not to be ashamed of the gospel, but to speak the word of God in boldness," he said.