Contested presidential race highlights differences in SBC

Posted: 5/26/06

Contested presidential race
highlights differences in SBC

TAYLORS, S.C. (ABP)—Ronnie Floyd, pastor of the largest Southern Baptist church in Arkansas, and Frank Page, a South Carolina pastor with a record of strong financial support of the denomination’s budget, each will be nominated for Southern Baptist Convention president at the June 13-14 annual convention.

Floyd is the favorite of the SBC’s established leadership, which has controlled the presidency 27 years. Page was recruited by a group of Southern Baptist young conservatives who say the convention’s establishment is excluding too many people.

The group also criticized Floyd for his church’s weak support of the Cooperative Program, the SBC’s central budget that supports the denomination’s ministries and agencies.

Ronnie Floyd	Frank Page

First Baptist Church of Springdale, Ark., where Floyd has been pastor 20 years, gave $32,000—or 0.27 percent of its $12 million in undesignated receipts—to the Cooperative Program last year.

During the same period, First Baptist Church of Taylors, S.C., where Page is pastor, gave $535,000—or 12.1 percent—of its $4.4 million in undesignated receipts.

Floyd has served as president of the SBC Pastors’ Conference, chairman of the SBC Executive Committee and a member of the special committee that restructured the denominational agencies supported by the Cooperative Program. He won the endorsements of three SBC seminary presidents—Paige Patterson of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Danny Akin of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and Al Mohler of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary—all loyal to the current SBC leadership.

The endorsements prompted a rare warning from Morris Chapman, the SBC’s chief executive, who said it is inappropriate for agency leaders to become in-volved in SBC politics.

“Nominating or being nominated for an elected officer of the SBC, or endorsing a nominee for an elected office, in my opinion, les-sens the importance of the work to which the entity head has been called,” Chapman wrote in his blog, morrischapman.com.

“When a president of an entity publicly endorses a potential nominee or nominates a candidate for elected office, he potentially alienates some who otherwise hold him in high esteem, because they differ with the person he has embraced publicly for an elected office.”

“Today, political strategies, agendas and power politics threaten to distract us from empowered possibilities of a people who rely solely upon God’s guidance,” Chapman wrote.

The “potential for conflict exists if the president of an SBC entity is at the same time the president of the Southern Baptist Convention,” he added. The president serves ex officio on the SBC’s most powerful agency boards, including the SBC Executive Committee, which votes on funding for the agencies, Chapman noted.

In a news release announcing his candidacy, Page praised Floyd and gave assent to the movement that ousted moderates in the 1980s. He said the differences that prompted his nomination are not about theology or personalities but “methodology—how we do missions and how we do convention work.”

Page described an SBC establishment that has lost touch with those who put it in power.

“There is a serious disconnect between the leaders of our Southern Baptist Convention and the rank-and-file layperson and pastor,” he wrote. “Some perceive that there is a well-oiled machine, filled with power-hungry politicians, running the show, while the vast majority of loyal, supportive people are left without any voice and/or influence. While this observation may or may not be true, there is a serious perception of disconnect and distrust.

“Many of us are tired of seeing the same names on committees year after year,” he continued. “Many of us are losing patience with the perception that a few people control everything in the Southern Baptist Convention.”

Compiled from Associated Baptist Press reports by Greg Warner and Robert Marus