(from “Problems of the Christian Life” series, Baptist Standard, April 10, 1968)
We should be grateful to God for His evident blessings upon our denomination. But we should be alert to tendencies that threaten to reduce, if not to destroy, its effectiveness.
There seems to be a tendency to move up the economic ladder and away from the common people.
The movement upward seems to be inevitable. The movement away from the common people is not. It is the latter that is a threat to Southern Baptists.
Our strength has been among the laboring people. We must continue a good rapport with them if we are to have an effective voice in shaping the future. The restless masses are doing more to determine the direction of the contemporary world than any other group.
If we are to counteract the move away from the common people, we must honor the small church as much as the large church, the poor church as much as the rich church, and the “working people’s church” as much as the “professional and business people’s church.”
Second, there seems to be a tendency for our churches to conform to the world rather than to transform the world.
One evidence of this is the tendency to measure the success of churches in worldly, material terms. We talk entirely too much about the size of budgets and the cost of buildings.
Even some denominational leaders seem to be more concerned about our prestige in the world than in our power to change the world. This is a contributor to some of our problems, such as the tendency to build and to maintain too many and too elaborate institutions.
Third, there is an apparent tendency to resist change in a rapidly changing world. On the surface, this may sound contradictory to the preceding. Many, and possibly most, Southern Baptists tend to identify with the status quo. Entirely too many of us have failed to understand that the old ways of life are on the way out.
Fourth, there is a tendency to stress quantity more than quality. There is a need for both, but we need desperately emphasis on quality in local churches, in our denomination, and in our denominational institutions and agencies.
We cannot indefinitely have the quantity without improving the quality. This is true of our evangelistic results, and of the work of our churches and denomination in general.
Fifth, there seems to be a tendency toward a controlled press. This may be an accomplished fact rather than a tendency. It is, potentially, extremely dangerous.
State denominational papers are owned and controlled by state conventions. They evidently cannot live without convention support.
We should help the editors of those papers to maintain as much independence as possible. This should include resistance to efforts in some states for the papers to be controlled directly by the executive committee or board. We should be grateful for courageous editors who speak as prophets of God through the pages of their papers.
Let us not forget that a press controlled by a state convention or by an agency of the Southern Baptist Convention is a threat to our churches and our denomination.