Slip Sliding into Fundamentalism
by Dr. Bruce Prescott
At the recent national CBF General Assembly people around the country were shocked to learn that many active CBF members have become dissatisfied with the direction in which First Baptist Church of Norman is headed. Most considered FBC Norman to be one of the flagship churches in CBF – and for good reason.
Dr. Lavonn Brown, retired pastor of FBC Norman, was a founding member of the Board of Directors of the Baptist Cooperative Program, Inc. which, after further organization and expansion, became the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in 1991. That means he was one of around a dozen key leaders whose influence and initiative were instrumental in launching CBF. Dr. Brown’s prominence within CBF circles is evidenced by his serving as a member on the personnel committee that called the organization’s first Coordinator, as chairman of the Relationship with Friends Task Force, and his election to be CBF’s Moderator in 1996-97.
CBF drew upon more than the pastor of FBC Norman for leadership. Dr. Dan Hobbs served on CBF’s Coordinating Council, was a founding member of the CBF Foundation board, chaired the Educational Resources Committee, and served on the Board of Trustees of Associated Baptist Press (ABP) while also serving as a deacon at the church. Jerry and Darlene Hobbs, retired SBC missionaries, served as Special Envoys to Thailand for CBF’s Global Missions organization while members of the church. Nathan Brown served as student minister at the church with the financial support of national CBF and CBF Oklahoma in a partnership with FBC Norman. Bob Stephenson has served on CBF’s Coordinating Council and as a member of the Board of Trustees of ABP while also serving as a deacon at the church. Bud Vance served as a member of the Board of Trustees of ABP and Dee Vance served on the Board of Trustees at Central Baptist Theological Seminary while both of them also served as deacons at the church. In addition to the connections with long term members of the church, Dr. Rick McClatchy, formerly Coordinator for CBF Oklahoma (CBFO) now Coordinator for CBF Texas, and Dr. Bruce Prescott, with Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists, both served on CBF’s Coordinating Council before becoming members of the church. Supplementing these ties were links with numerous members, several more deacons and some staff members at FBC Norman who have been active leaders in the state’s CBF Oklahoma organization. In stark contrast to the number of leaders that CBF drew upon from the church, over the last twenty-five years, except for a prominent member of the most recent pulpit committee who served on the Board of Trustees of Southwestern Seminary, the SBC has called upon few members of FBC Norman for service.
The church’s financial commitment to CBF has also been substantial. More than two-thirds of church members who have signed giving cards, designate that their mission money should go to CBF causes and more two-thirds of the church’s mission giving goes to CBF causes.
With such strong support for CBF within the congregation many people have been surprised to discover that the church’s most recent pulpit committee had no members with strong CBF connections. So what happened? What put FBC Norman on a trajectory to slide into Fundamentalism?
Here is my assessment. I think four things led to the slip-sliding. The first slip bears all the footprints of the Peter Principle. The Peter Principle refers to the common problem of promoting people with promise and potential beyond the level of their competence.
The pulpit committee that called Dr. Brown’s immediate successor was dominated by church leaders who were connected with CBF. Their search brought forth a pastor with much promise and potential who had been very active in forging ties between CBF and the smaller church that he served. CBF members assumed that he would be equally as committed to preserving and strengthening FBC Norman’s ties with CBF. Instead, he set out to repair and strengthen ties between the church and the Fundamentalist dominated local association and state convention while actively undermining the efforts of the state CBF organization. By the time CBF members realized what he was doing in regard to denominational relations and began to openly resist it, he was swapping the hours in which services with different worship styles were being conducted. The Peter Principle must be the best explanation for why anyone would try to force a congregationally governed Baptist church that had existed for more than a century, with a large choir and an outstanding orchestra, to move traditional worship to 8:00 AM and contemporary worship to 11:00 AM – without taking a vote of the congregation. Predictably, it was a disaster from which that pastor never recovered.
Before this pastor resigned, the church had already divided into at least three factions – CBF loyalists, SBC loyalists and denominationally indifferent contemporary worship advocates. While opposition to swapping the hours of the worship service styles was strong in both the SBC and CBF camps, CBF members were most insistent in disapproving of a decision-making process that by-passed a vote of the congregation. Then, after the time change failed and the eleven o’clock service in the Sanctuary returned to a more traditional style, CBF bore the bulk of the ire from disappointed non-denomination-alists who thought a contemporary worship style would unify the church.
When that pastor resigned, CBF leaders within the church encouraged the congregation to call an “intentional interim pastor.” Intentional interims are trained to guide churches as they work through divisions, establish their identities and determine the characteristics and qualities they are looking for in their next pastor. SBC loyalists within the deacon body saw an opportunity to ally with disheartened contemporary worship non-denominationalists and they made the most of it.
The second slip occurred when church leaders refused both CBF lay leader’s request for an “intentional interim” and the church’s retired pastor’s advice that an expert on conflict resolution be brought in to work with the congregation to help it heal divisions within the church before the church called another pastor. Under the urging of SBC loyalists, church leaders pressed the congregation to nominate candidates to serve on a pulpit committee.
The third slip occurred when the deacons screened nominees with strong ties to CBF off the pulpit committee. Nominees with strong links to CBF were replaced with nominees who had received considerably less congregational support, under the guise of balancing the committee to assure adequate age and gender representation.
When the deacons brought their slate of nominees to the congregation for approval, then CBFO Coordinator Rick McClatchy asked the Deacon Chair how the deacons could be considered to have fulfilled their charge to see that the pulpit committee was “representative” of the church when more than two-thirds of the congregation designated that their money go to CBF causes and none of the members of the pulpit committee had strong ties to CBF. The Deacon Chair responded that representation for CBF on the committee had been considered and that they believed the committee being nominated was representative.
Shortly after the congregation approved the deacon’s pulpit committee and still disturbed by the Deacon Chair’s determination that CBF representation on the committee was unimportant, CBF leaders requested a meeting with the interim pastor (not an intentional interim), the Deacon Chair, the Chair of the Personnel Committee and other key leaders of the pulpit committee. At that meeting it became obvious that the pulpit committee was determined to look for someone who would not be aligned with either the CBF or the SBC. When asked whether Dr. Brown could have been called under those criteria, they dodged the question and refused to acknowledge that, in effect, they were repudiating the kind of leadership that Dr. Brown had given the church.
Concerned that the church was being led step-by-step toward Fundamentalism, Mainstream Baptist leaders within FBC Norman organized luncheon prayer meetings for moderate members of the church to discuss prayer concerns and pray for the church and its pulpit committee. We had four prayer concerns. We were concerned 1) about the lack of representation by CBF on the pastor search committee, 2) about patterns of actions that demonstrated confusion about congregational authority in decision making, 3) about the willingness of some within the congregation to demonize those speaking out against the ongoing injustices committed by the leaders of the SBC, and 4) about the qualities that would characterize the candidate the pastor search committee would bring to the congregation. We prayed specifically for four things. We prayed 1) that the members of the search committee would be sensitive to the concerns of the CBF members in the church, 2) that staff and lay leaders would be forthright with the information necessary for the congregation to make wise decisions and would trust it to do so, 3) for God’s blessing on those who had courage to speak out against injustice in the SBC and had been demonized for doing so, and 4) that the pulpit committee would bring a candidate that would respect and build on the labors of Dr. Lavonn Brown [defined explicitly as a pastor that 1) publicly advocates women’s ordination, 2) supports giving options and sending offerings to CBF, 3) actively participates in CBF, 4) models courageous leadership on denominational and moral issues, and 5) personally disavows the 2000 BF&M and states so publicly.] (Complete documentation is on the Mainstream Baptist website at www.mainstreambaptists.org)
After leading these prayer meetings, the Mainstream organization refrained from making public comment about the make-up and agenda of FBC Norman’s pulpit committee. One layman who was well-grounded in Baptist heritage and well-informed about the takeover, a member of the church since 1946 and prominent within the Mainstream organization, wrote a series of letters to members of the church under the letterhead of his personal business. Concurrent with those private letters and at that layman’s request, in June 2003 Dr. Rick McClatchy, then Coordinator of CBF Oklahoma, sent a letter to members of the church apprising the church of the progress CBFO had made in working to assist FBC Norman in implementing a goal of its 2001 Vision Plan. That goal was to start a new church in Norman. Dr. McClatchy also debunked the anonymous rumors circulating around the church saying CBF promoted a “homosexual agenda” and worshiped a “mother god.”
The layman’s letters discussed different issues. He discussed concerns about 1) the type of pastor the church would call, 2) the 1963 and 2000 BF&M controversy and the influence of the 2000 BF&M on the LifeWay literature that the church was using, 3) the church’s identity within the Norman community and its relationship to the broader ecumenical community, 4) the divisions within the church over worship styles, and 5) concerns about the growth, missions and stewardship of the church. The layman’s final letter to the congregation offered some suggestions for resolving divisions within the church before calling its next pastor. It also warned that should the church ignore these concerns, it risked losing a Trust to which the layman had made FBC Norman the beneficiary.
After the layman’s last letter circulated, the Chairman of the Deacons, the Chairman of the Personnel Committee, and prominent members of the Pulpit Committee asked for a meeting with CBF and Mainstream leaders within the church. At that meeting, church leaders were apprised that although the layman’s letters expressed his personal observations and convictions, many moderate members of the church concurred with most of his convictions and conclusions. In the course of that meeting a prominent member of the Pulpit Committee stated that CBF people dominated the last pulpit committee and that this time SBC people were in charge. When challenged about the results of the Fundamentalist takeover on the SBC he replied, “Ten years ago there was a takeover of this church (FBC Norman) by CBF, now we are taking it back.” The meeting ended with the Deacon Chair and the Personnel Committee chair trying to reassure moderates that they would find a pastor acceptable to them.
While the pulpit committee worked, moderate leaders within the church focused on generating financial support within the church for Houston and Charlotte Greenhaw. Charlotte is the granddaughter of “Preacher” Hallock who had pastored FBC Norman for forty-six years and the daughter of Edgar and Zelma Hallock who served as SBC missionaries for forty-five years. Houston and Charlotte had been serving as SBC missionaries for 23 years, but refused to sign the 2000 BF&M. CBF and Mainstream leaders within the church worked out a partnership between CBF, FBC Norman, and the Baptist General Convention of Texas that sent the Greenhaws back to Brazil to stabilize and transition the mission work they had begun there. Although backing for the Greenhaws within the congregation was overwhelming and interest in their work intense, support from the Missions Committee chair, an SBC loyalist, was tepid. When the church, after much urging, neglected to relay the Greenhaw’s reports from the mission field to the congregation, Mainstream Baptists began publishing the Greenhaw’s reports in newsletters to church members.
The first report from the Greenhaws was published in December 2003. Just a day before going to print, the congregation received word that the pulpit committee would soon be presenting a candidate for pastor. A last minute article was added reminding the congregation that Mainstream Baptists had specific qualities we were praying for in a new pastor and noted that our praying led us to expect “a spiritual leader whose personality is characterized more by principled conviction and wisdom than by enthusiasm and charisma.”
The second report from the Greenhaws was published in February 2004. That report dealt with Charlotte’s reaction to the SBC’s defunding of the Baptist World Alliance (BWA), an organization in which her father had been a very active leader. An article was also published expressing a Mainstream lay leader’s misgivings about FBC Norman’s new pastor’s refusal to repudiate the 2000 BF&M. His advice was that the church “clearly and publicly declare that we are an independent and autonomous Baptist church that is no longer to be viewed as a “franchise” of any denomination – whether SBC, CBF, BGCT or CBAmerica.”
Unfortunately, neither the church nor the new pastor paid much attention to this layman’s advice. The fourth slip came shortly after the new pastor arrived. Within weeks, he was reforging ties between FBC Norman and the Baptist Student Union at the University of Oklahoma. The OU BSU director, a member of the committee that drafted the SBC’s 2000 BF&M, had previously led a large group of BSU students out of FBC Norman and had been steering students away from the church for more than a decade. When the congregation’s University Minister (with 19 years tenure at the church) objected to working with the BSU, the new pastor gave him a deadline to find another place of service.
Sadly, FBC Norman’s new pastor may be more of an unwitting dupe than a willing co-conspirator in what appears to be a plot by a few deacons to move FBC Norman back to the SBC. He fit the bill for being neither closely identified with the SBC or the CBF, but he might as well have been an SBC Fundamentalist. Uninformed and uninterested about the controversy that has divided Southern Baptists for the past quarter century, he came from CBAmerica. Conservative Baptists are Fundamental Baptists who split off from the American Baptist Convention in the 1940’s. The pastor-as-ruler style of church leadership comes natural in that denomination and is tempered only by the advice of elders (male only) who are chosen by the pastor. He has little comprehension of the servant-shepherd model of pastoral leadership that characterized Dr. Brown’s ministry and he has little patience with the kind of committee oriented congregational governance that once prevailed at FBC Norman.
To his credit, the new pastor at FBC Norman did lead his CBAmerica church in Oregon to ordain some women as deacons. That credit, however, is offset by the liability that was generated when he and the pulpit committee deliberately, it appears, misled the congregation into believing that deaconship at a CBAmerica church in Oregon was equivalent to deaconship at FBC Norman.
The role of the diaconate at FBC Norman is more akin to the role of elders (male only) at the CBAmerica church. Deacons at the CBAmerica church are more akin to the ushers who take up the offering at FBC Norman. This discrepancy became evident at a meeting the new pastor had with Mainstream and CBF leaders before the congregation voted to call him. At that meeting the prospective pastor and leaders of the pulpit committee were advised that integrity required that they inform the congregation of these discrepancies, but none did anything to correct the misperceptions that had been generated on this issue.
An exodus of moderate members leaving the church began within a month of the new pastor’s arrival. T Thomas, the new Coordinator of CBF Oklahoma, was soon pressed to move the launch date forward for CBF’s new church start in Norman by several months. At six weeks, the new start had grown to seventy persons and had named itself NorthHaven Church. Within four months, the congregation called its first interim-pastor, Dr. Lavonn Brown, and was looking for larger facilities in which to worship. Already, the church is having a regional outreach, drawing people from Moore, Midwest City and Southern Oklahoma City, as well as Norman.