Akin's Axioms for the Southern Baptist Convention
WAKE FOREST (BSCNC Communications) - Jacob Green is as honest as he is unconventional. The new 27-year-old Senior Pastor of Bethesda Baptist Church in Durham, N.C., was visibly moved after a chapel sermon by the president of the seminary he attends - Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest. Green is young, single and now at the helm of a large Southern Baptist congregation located directly adjacent to the growing Research Triangle Park in the Raleigh/Durham area of North Carolina. Following Dr. Daniel Akin's sermon, something changed in this thinking. "I am ready to put my money where his mouth is," Green said after the address. "I would rather come and listen to Dr. Akin preach in chapel than go to the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention," he said. "Even as a young pastor I've learned and seen first-hand just how much red tape there is within the Baptist bureaucracy. I want that to change."
Yet it was not Akin's comment about the restructuring of the SBC which was of ultimate importance to Green. Rather, he points to Akin's passion for the Great Commission that has enlisted him in what has become a movement termed the Great Commission Resurgence. The name itself was actually coined almost four years ago by Thom Rainer, president of LifeWay Christian Resources (the denomination's publishing house) after LifeWay Research released a report revealing that Southern Baptist churches were no more evangelistic in their ministry after the Conservative Resurgence than before. The Conservative Resurgence is a grassroots movement within the SBC that started when theological conservatives took leadership of the denomination's boards, institutions and agencies. While few Southern Baptist leaders are willing to say exactly when (or if) the Conservative Resurgence has ended, the universally agreed starting point is 1979 when the late Adrian Rogers, then senior pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tenn., was elected the convention's president.
Since that time, a steady stream of leaders holding to the doctrine of biblical inerrancy and championing Christian orthodoxy have dominated the convention's landscape resulting in a total re-making of the Southern Baptist denominational engine. What has not changed, however, are the numbers. While the Conservative Resurgence was predicted to usher in a new age of opportunity for Southern Baptists, the opposite seems to be taking place. The very institutions and agencies supported by the Cooperative Program (the SBC's funding vehicle since 1925) are waning as they are being abandoned by young people who care little for the machinery of the organization. Baptisms are declining, financial support is diminishing, cooperation is disappearing and the denomination has been characterized by Alvin Reid, a professor at Southeastern Seminary, as being at a tipping point.
What Akin has been trumpeting before the Southern Baptist Convention as the Great Commission Resurgence has largely been left undefined under the aegis of general platitudes to which most (not all) loyal Southern Baptists would agree. Even Morris Chapman, current President and Chief Executive Officer of the SBC Executive Committee, said in 2004 at a Baptist Identity Conference at Union University that the SBC "needs fine tuning." He went on to say that "the Convention may require an overhaul, not in its polity, but in its programming and processes by which it functions daily."
On this day, however, Akin laid out an agenda that will surely be met by some with adulation and hearty agreement. Others, not so much. In the immediate aftermath of the address Cadon Fouts, a student at the College at Southeastern said, "What he said was God-centered and biblical; I don't see how anybody could disagree. Daniel Griffon echoed the same sentiments, "He was gospel-centered, he was back to the Book, reaching the lost and not concerned with tradition." Some students such as William Simmons evidenced a more personal application from the address. "When Dr. Akin spoke of repentance, I was convicted of my own laziness," he said. "I wonder how many other sins we should all consider and personally and corporately repent."
Akin stepped down from the platform and the SBC blogosphere ignited in rapid response. Traffic on the Southeastern Seminary blog - Between the Times - soared with hits from all over the world. If Akin wanted buzz about his remarks, his goal was achieved. The Facebook statuses of students, faculty and group pages all pointed to Akin's axioms as a blueprint for the future. By early afternoon, the reality had crystallized among many - something of significance had taken place which would unfold in a long and arduous process. The Southern Baptist Convention is simply too big to accomplish all that Akin set forth without drastic changes taking place among the infrastructure that Southern Baptist churches support through the Cooperative Program. How this will be received among the churches and among other SBC entities remains to be seen.
It was not that Akin spoke incendiary statements simply for the purpose of provocation. The alignment taking place among those who support these ideas was unmistakable as some of his first words spoke of the input and the endorsement - "fully and completely" - of what he was about to say by current SBC President, Johnny Hunt; R. Albert Mohler, Jr., President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; and Thom Rainer. With that, Akin launched into what Ed Stetzer termed the nailing of "some theses to the SBC door" with Acts 1:8 - the Great Commission itself.
What followed was a comprehensive outline of the rudiments of the Great Commission Resurgence. It moved from general themes to specific application to the Southern Baptist Convention. When Akin spoke of the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the requirement that all endeavors must be centered in the gospel, it became clear that he was referring not to local churches per se. Rather, he saw the denominational infrastructure as something vastly different from the local church. At one point he said, "Our churches do not exist to serve the Southern Baptist Convention. The Southern Baptist Convention at all levels exists to serve the churches." The local church, therefore, was at the center of a massive re-ordering of priorities for the entire denomination; it is from the local church that the resurgence must begin. Each pastor of each Southern Baptist Church, according to Akin, should view himself as the leader of a missions sending agency. Once embraced in the local church, this same passion for the Great Commission can, and in Akin's opinion, will reverberate throughout the convention.
Axioms one through four addressed cardinal doctrines which all orthodox Christians would confess regardless of denominational affiliation or distinctive. The Lordship of Jesus Christ as regulative for all human thought and action; the gospel as the driving force for all denominational initiatives; the inerrancy and infallibility of Holy Scripture as the foundation for all faith and practice of the church; and the Great Commission itself as understood in light of the Great Commandment to love God and others all formed what was a theological hub for Akin's thoughts. Definitively Akin said that a Great Commission Resurgence was not simply a "moral reformation."
Axiom five dealt with the still controversial Baptist Faith and Message 2000. The floor of the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting has become quite contentious in recent years over the role, purpose and authority of this confession. Some see the BF&M 2000 as the capstone of the conservative resurgence. Others do not. Akin outlined key theological doctrines to which all Southern Baptists would agree referencing Albert Mohler's now famous theological triage which orders Christian doctrine in ways which clarifies the boundaries of cooperation. In a moment of truthful levity regarding Calvinism he said, "we are not in full agreement about Calvinism and how many points one should affirm or redefine and affirm!" The entire chapel erupted with laughter.
Axioms six and seven linked together the home as the source of human vitality and the place where godliness is most clearly observed and developed. He heralded the birth of children and placed a priority of missions with his now classic statement: "It is time for little boys to sit down and men of God to stand up."
Axiom eight is where many are certain to focus as it touched not only the structure but the funding of the entire denomination. During this explanation and application the entire student body seemed to become more vocal with adulation and even applauded at some points. Compared to other denominations, the SBC is an organizational behemoth with boards of trustees, agencies, commissions, seminaries, and committees. Daniel Montgomery, pastor of Sojourn Church in Louisville, Ky., was recently overheard telling someone to publish an "SBC for Dummies" book just to navigate the various levels of SBC life. Jan Vezikov is graduating next month from the seminary and plans to plant a church in Boston. "I have been assessed six times by different people, each time from almost every level in SBC life," he said.
Akin is aware of this fact and publicly addressed the overlap and the redundancy of a "bloated and bureaucratic" SBC. Stating that it was easier "to move some things through the federal government than the Southern Baptist Convention," he called for a "simple convention" in the same manner that Thom Rainer has taught the concept of "simple church." Akin then went on to say:
"Overlap and duplication in our associations, state and national conventions is strangling us! If folks in the pew knew how much of their giving stayed in their state they would revolt and call for a revolution! Praise God we live in a state where our Convention leaders are trying to do something about this. Their tribe must increase! We waste too much time and too many resources and many are fed up saying, 'enough is enough!' The rally cry of the Conservative Resurgence was we will not give our monies to liberal institutions. Now the cry of the Great Commission Resurgence is we will not give our money to bloated bureaucracies."
Axioms nine through eleven highlighted the critical requirement for expository preaching, churches who plant churches, the meaning of and requirement for contextualization in ministry, and a new consensus around gospel doctrines. Akin also shared a new conviction for the revitalization of existing churches which are now experiencing steep decline. He quoted Tim Keller on the meaning of the term "missional" and finally ended the address with a call to repentance, humility and prayer before God as the requirements for any movement forward as a denomination.
Akin is not the first Southern Baptist seminary president to present axioms before Southern Baptists and the world. Almost 100 years ago, Edgar Young Mullins, the brilliant president of Southern Seminary who in 1908 penned the Axioms of Religion: A New Interpretation of the Baptist Faith, offered a new vision to Southern Baptists. Unlike Mullins, Akin has not sought to redefine the faith believed by Southern Baptists. He has, however, sought to redefine the Southern Baptist method of ministry through its vast organizational structure.
Akin's statements left many wondering if state conventions will agree and work towards the development of a simplified approach of cooperation that may lead to a "simple" convention? Will local associations reform and refocus? Can a consensus be achieved among "Baptists" who are known far and wide as a contentious lot? Can personal agendas and the SBC corporate image be changed to reflect a more pastoral and Christocentric focus? Only time will tell if the denomination Akin serves can actually mount such a resurgence.
Visit www.sebts.edu for the transcript and video of Akin's message.
Photos courtesy Southeastern Seminary.
