COURSE CORRECTION

The Southern Baptist Convention is composed of nearly 46,700 churches that voluntarily cooperate together for advancing the Gospel to the ends of the earth. That is the largest Protestant group in the US, with over 12 million members, and beyond 4 million who attend worship on a weekly basis.

Each year, the churches that will, send messengers to the annual meeting to help direct the denomination and its entities. When you have that large a group with each church being autonomous, you will get some crazy uncles in a meeting that large.

It is also challenging to navigate the currents of culture--a tide that is against the ship of Zion--and maintain a steady course of truth and love. Doctrinal drift is ever a danger and all the mainline denominations have faced it, gave up fighting it, and now fully embracing it.

Only one that started drifting made a course correction, returning to the truth of God's Word to steer us, and the fuel of evangelism and missions to fuel us--and that is the Southern Baptist Convention. I was a young preacher when "the Battle for the Bible" was waged and won.

But, it is never over. We must be ever vigilant. The sneaky snake called Satan subtly slithers in and the venom of error begins to poison the churches. Over the last decade, many have become concerned that perhaps we have not been as watchful as we ought. The recent meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention should encourage us that a course correction is happening to again bring us steadily back to Scripture. I am not suggesting that the SBC had gone into heresy, but that some Baptists--especially in leadership--had become lackadaisacal.

So, no matter what you read online or hear on the TV, you can be confident that your missions support is making a difference for the Kingdom, whether those dollars are directed to the Haywood Baptist Association, the Baptist State Convention of NC, or the SBC. If you would like a good overview of the recent meeting, click on this link: https://www.brnow.org/news/wrap-up-southern-baptists-approve-historic-budget-new-president-constitutional-change/?mc_cid=8322d33333&mc_eid=20350843a1

Yours for the Whole Word to the Whole World,

Dennis Thurman, Mission Strategist