MAINSTREAM MESSENGER
Vol. 3, No. 4 Sept. 2000 Editor: Bruce Prescott
Give an Authentic Baptist Witness
By Dr. Bruce Prescott
Baptists are at a crossroad.
The Southern Baptist Convention has adopted the Rogers/Mohler Baptist Faith & Message (BFM).
The effect of the SBC’s action is to elevate the Bible above Jesus and to elevate a creed (the 2000 BFM) above the Bible.
No Mainstream Baptist that I know can affirm the 2000 BFM in good conscience. The SBC is now Baptist in name only. Only an act of God could redeem it.
The next step of the Fundamentalist’s takeover strategy is to get the 2000 BFM adopted by your local association.
Most associations in Oklahoma have articles in their constitutions requiring member churches to affirm the 1963 BFM and/or reserving the right to refuse to seat messengers from churches that depart from the 1963 BFM.
You can be sure that someone is planning to make a motion to revise your association’s constitution to read the “2000 BFM” at your annual associational meeting this fall.
Once your association adopts the 2000 BFM, all the churches in the association will be forced to decide for or against the 2000 BFM.
Sooner or later, associations that adopt the 2000 BFM will refuse to seat messengers from churches that refuse to adopt it.
This means that the two decade long struggle for the Baptist soul is about to get very personal to you and your church.
It is extremely urgent that all Mainstream Baptists work to insure that their church sends its full compliment of messengers to their association’s annual meeting this fall.
Most associations hold their annual meetings between late August and late October.
Please contact your pastor or church office and find out:
1) When your association conducts its annual meeting.
2) What you have to do to be elected by your church as a messenger to your association’s annual meeting.
3) How many messengers your church is entitled to send to your association’s annual meeting.
Then, work to get others committed to go as messengers to your association’s annual meeting.
Mainstream Baptists need to help people become fully informed. That is why we are sponsoring more than twenty Baptist Faith and Message forums throughout the state. We believe that Baptists who are fully informed will oppose efforts to authorize their local Baptists associations to use the 2000 BFM as “an instrument of doctrinal accountability” and impose its dictates on their churches.
It is imperative that you carefully study the differences between the 1963 and the 2000 BFM and try to help other Baptists, in your own church and in other churches, to understand them.
The Mainstream Baptist organization is prepared to assist you as you work to inform your church and its messengers about the implications of the 2000 BFM. Please send us the names of the messengers and other key leaders of your church and we will send them copies of our newsletter and of the Takeover book. Or, we can send copies of the newsletter and Takeover book directly to you and you can distribute them.
Mainstream Speaker’s are also available to speak to your church and/or Bible Study groups.
Mainstream Baptists must also be prepared to get messengers to the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma meeting and oppose any efforts to have BGCO endorse the 2000 BFM. Please make plans to attend the BGCO meeting on November 13-14.
Information about the annual Mainstream brunch or lunch will be announced in future issues of the Mainstream Messenger.
You and your church are now on the frontline of the struggle for the Baptist soul. The truth is, the 2000 BFM is the mechanism by which Fundamentalists plan to take control of local churches. The decisive nature of this struggle assures that all Southern Baptists will live with its outcome for a generation or more.
The present moment is the most important moment in our lifetimes for Mainstream Baptists to give an authentic Baptist witness.