DownshoreDrift

Pretty amazing stuff happened today. Dr. Frank Page won the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention.  This is important because he was not the inner circle's nominee, and they have run nominees unopposed over a decade. He defeated Dr. Ronnie Floyd and Dr. Jerry Sutton handily.  Primarily, though, Dr. Page is interested in broadening the tent of cooperation among conservatives (this would lead to actions that in time would possibly overturn the IMB policies on baptism and private prayer language). 

Just before the election results came in, I had a chance to speak to Dr. Page and I asked him what his position was on the comments of Dr. Sutton re: making an amendment to the Baptist Faith & Message that would come against rank and file baptists having a private prayer language (see yesterday's post).  He said empmatically, "That will never happen."  His election, hopefully, begins a course correction in the SBC that will refocus us on missions and gospel and will begin to stop some of the shenanigans that have been going on.  What a day.

There were many factors at work in this. The most prominent were the issues of Cooperative Program giving (the way Southern Baptists fund missions) and a reaction against the inner circle, I believe. Interestingly, it also appears SBC bloggers played a role over the past several months after the issues of the International Mission Board and Wade Burleson came to the forefront (For a list of prominent bloggers, check out this post).  I have been able to meet and hang out with these guys the last couple of days, and I can tell you that they are just regular guys who want to see God work through the SBC.

I'll write more about this amazing day after I get some sleep, but check out what the Dallas Morning News said about the election:

But a handful of younger pastors used Internet blogs to call for new leadership and to underscore that Dr. Floyd's 16,000-member church had been a paltry contributor to the convention's Cooperative Program, its key means of pooling funds for missions, seminaries and other work.

Well, in a small way, mostly through comments, the Lord allowed me to be one of those younger pastors using blogs. For that I am grateful. I am also grateful for the friends I have made here the past couple of days. Unbelievable.