SBC Conservatives voice concerns

For some time now I have been concerned that Southern Baptist are in danger of losing their distinctives. While I understand the broadening the tent, some leaders are embracing things never embraced before. There was a reason. I was glad to read this article that seems to identify some of the same concerns I have.

Posted on Jun 14, 2011 | by Norm Miller
PHOENIX (BP)--A meeting of "SBC Conservatives" June 13 in Phoenix drew about 20 pastors and laymen who lamented the current direction of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Kent Cochran, a Missouri messenger from Calvary Baptist Church in Republic who organized the meeting at the Hyatt Hotel, announced at the outset that the session was on background rules, for attendees to be assured their comments would not be attributed to them.

Such rules disallow attribution of all comments. Cochran, however, agreed to be quoted on the record.

The meeting's agenda centered on Cochran's plans to make a motion at the SBC's annual meeting in Phoenix, June 14-15. The motion -- ruled out order -- called for a "Unity Committee" to study the "perceptions and realities about impact and implementation of the GCR Task Force Report," which set forth a number of recommendations that were adopted by the SBC during its 2010 annual meeting in Orlando, Fla.

Cochran announced the launch of a website, www.sbcr2.com, "to be a resource center for pastors and laymen who share his concerns about where the SBC is now headed."

Attendees' concerns included the Acts 29 church planting network and relationships that SBC employees at the North American Mission Board, LifeWay Christian Resources and Southern and Southeastern Baptist Theological seminaries have had with Acts 29 leaders.

According to Cochran et al, Acts 29 holds views regarding alcohol consumption diametrically opposed to numerous Southern Baptist resolutions and also requires its church planters to embrace Reformed, or Calvinist, theology.
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Norm Miller is a freelance writer based in Richmond, Va.

God's Rest

God’s Rest
On a recent day of retreat I took along F. B. Meyer’s, A Castaway and Other Addresses published in 1897. The pages in the old book would crumble and break as I turned each one. The binding would crack and break, yet I had to turn another page as I devoured the book at the expense of losing the integrity and possibly enjoyment of future readings.

How God used Meyer to speak to my heart. In the last sermon recorded in the book, he spoke of God’s Rest. After several months of turmoil and unrest in my life, it was as if God were audibly speaking to ME! How refreshing, how encouraging it was for me to find sermons spoken to preachers over 110 years ago by this man of God, still breathing fresh life into me.

Just a sample,

“The voice that breathed o’er Eden spoke of rest. In Gen. 2:3 we are told of the rest of God, and upon that day there fell no night, because the rest of God has no shadow in it, and never terminates. God has left open the door. It stands wide open, and every heart which He has made may share in it. A rest which is full of work; but like the cyclone, all the atoms of which revolve in turbulent motion around the central cavity of rest, so do all the activities of God revolve around His deepest heart which is tranquil and serene. And it is possible, if you and I learn the lesson amid anxiety and sorrow and trial and pressure of work always to carry a heart so peaceful, so still, so serene as to be like the depth of the Atlantic which is not disturbed by the turbulent winds that sweep the surface.

“Now this rest of God spoken of in Genesis was not exhausted by the Sabbath, or by Canaan; for after each of these had existed for many a century God still spoke of His reset as being unoccupied. And at last in Matt. 11:28, 29, a simple peasant (so He seemed,) stood up amid a number of peasants and fisher-folk and others, and said:
“On this breast of Mine is a pillow for ever heavy heart. My breast is broad enough, My heart is deep enough I offer Myself to all weary ones in every clime and age as Shiloh, the rest-giver”; for Shiloh in Him had come.

One feels that here is the accent of Deity. He says: “I am meek and lowly in heart.”
And yet He assumes to Himself the prerogative of giving rest to all that labor and are heavy-laden. How can you possibly account for the meeting of humility so great with pretentions so enormous in this meekest of men unless He be more than man, the Son of God incarnate? You will notice that as He stands there upon some mountain slope, with Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum on the land-locked lake of Galilee at His feet, He speaks of two kinds of rest which He shows us how to find. “I will give you rest,” He says, and then in a softer undertone He whispers: “Take My yoke and you shall find rest.”

More later on God’s Rest