As we continue to prepare for the B21 Panel at the SBC next Tuesday, we would like to hear from you! What kinds of questions would you like John Piper, David Platt, Kevin Ezell, Albert Mohler, and Danny Akin to answer? You can submit the questions you have by leaving them in the comment field below. Please tell us which panelist the question is for and your question.
If you have not signed up for our panel yet, you can register here.
We look forward to reading your questions!
Comments 0
To any of the panel:
Where does the real divide in the SBC lie? Is it generational, methodological, or theological? And can that divide be bridged soon?
To the panel:
I am a disabled veteran called to special needs ministry. I am encouraged by some of the recent blogs from Dr. Piper, and I am wondering since we share the same heart, is the SBC in the future going to consider disability ministry in areas of training, domestic missions, as well as international missions? This really is a burden when I see that the disabled world-wide constitutes a population equivilant to the 3rd largest nation on earth, and in the United States, the disabled population is equal to the populations of California and Florida combined. Sadly, this group is statistically the largest unreached people group who either are not approached due to lack of training by ministry and missions individuals or have turned away because of lack of ministry available to them. As someone who has been in seminary, training concerning this matter is very rare if not non-existent at least from the classes I have had relating to family, pastoral, and children’s ministry. Is the SBC going to consider this serious issue in the near future?
For any on the panel,
If it is true that we have heard the call for a more meaningful church membership, then should we not expect at least in the short term to see membership numbers that decline? Since meaningful membership requires more rigorous examination before entrance into the church and a more active pursuit of church discipline this seems in the short run logical. Further why do we use baptisms alone as the metric for our success as Southern Baptists? Wouldn’t a more helpful metric be baptisms over against missions involvement or evangelistic witnessing since such a tool would measure discipleship. With baptisms alone being our metric we count re-baptisms and their like, and do not take into account the negative overall population growth in many of our rural church areas.
Excellent question!
I am also concerned about whether baptisms translate into church membership…if you compare trailing baptism numbers with membership growth (adjusted for demographic loss to death), they don’t!
What method do you use to evaluate your church’s health? Do you use an evaluation form of some kind? and if so, may you share it?