Ben* was a talented young man who joined our church staff as a part-time music leader. He was finishing his college work and planned to serve churches the rest of his life. He was good, and we loved him.

He was also green and impatient. Time is so frustrating to 20-year-olds. He quit school because he had too many important things to do. He stayed with our little church for a few months before moving on in search of broader opportunities. Within a year, Ben was out of local church ministry and raising a family. While I’m happy he’s walking with the Lord, I think of him with a bit of sadness. One thing that short-circuited his ministry was impatience, an unwillingness to submit to the discipline of preparation. That happens too often.

Consider a common medical procedure, removing a wart or maybe a CT scan. If you go for something like that you hold still while medical personnel approach you with strange instruments. You let them inject things into your bloodstream, and if they say, “drink this,” you will usually drink it.

What if these smart people had skipped med school? What if they were too busy to read medical journals or keep up with the vagaries of drug interactions? I for one would be less enthusiastic about holding still or drinking whatever nasty concoction they hand me. That holds true for other professions and trades. I’d even want the guy who comes to repair my satellite dish to have been to training adequate for the job.

Shouldn’t that be true of ministry also? I recently saw an exchange on Facebook where a commenter said that the call of God alone was sufficient for a person to be a minister. Years before, I attended a conference breakout where the presenter said that an illiterate new believer who knows Jesus knows enough to oversee a church planting movement. Really?

That’s not biblical, friends. Paul saw Jesus, heard his voice on the road to Damascus and then, though already a religiously educated Jew, spent three years preparing for his ministry as an itinerant, bivocational church planter. He counsels Timothy to select men for pastoral duties who were able to teach and not recent converts—an implied endorsement of preparation at least. He’s more explicit when he tells Timothy to work at rightly handling the word of truth. Maturity, preparation, study and proven commitment are qualifications for ministry leadership as surely as integrity and gentleness.

I’m currently serving on my church’s pastor search team, and we are working through qualifications for pastoral leadership. We’ve discussed how much emphasis to put on education. I tend to think “more” rather than “some” on that subject, and I think that training should be of a certain type.

It should be legit. On previous pastor searches, our team has had to look up schools on resumes and then ask for help to sort out diploma mills (no significant study, no accreditation, etc.) from actual academies. This shows something of a potential pastor’s heart and integrity I think. If he’s willing to claim a degree from “Bob’s Seminary and Bait Shop,” he’s cut corners in other places.

It should be legit, part 2. These days, a search team is nearly required to call seminaries and universities to see if a candidate actually has the degree he claims to have earned. It’s shameful but true that this happens. Here also, if he’s lied about this, he’s lied about other things.

His education should have been difficult. I agree with those who say that one benefit of an on-campus seminary experience is that it makes a student suffer a bit. It matures us, teaches us patience and gives us experience in submitting to a program broader than our interests or vision. These experiences have corollaries in “real life” experiences to come. This is not a hard and fast rejection of online learning; online has a place. But it does raise a question that should be asked.

His education should be pastorally oriented. As gently as I know how to say it: either our seminaries should stop training youth and college ministers as if their work is programmatic rather than pastoral, or our churches are going to need to require youth ministers to upgrade their skills before becoming pastors. It happens every day. Just about any education can provide some maturity and growth in a person, but if you want him to have learned how to handle the Bible and a bit about pastoring a church, he should have a Master of Divinity (MDiv) or a comparable degree with an emphasis in biblical studies and pastoral ministry. Seminary deans or registrars will be thrilled to answer questions about the dizzying array of degree programs offered today. Don’t hesitate to ask the candidate a lot of questions if something is unclear. Again, ask him why he made the educational choices he made. If his motivation was simply to get done sooner or avoid learning Greek and Hebrew, it reveals something of his attitude toward ministry.

Formal education is not all there is to ministry preparation, not by a long shot. But it is a quantitative indicator, as informative as his past experience and references, in telling of his ministry qualifications. I’d not reject a man based solely on his level of education, but I’d hesitate to call a pastor who considers education to be of little importance, whether he says it plainly or shows it by his history and habits.

*Nope, his name is not really “Ben”       

NASHVILLE  After nearly an hour of discussion, the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee’s officers withdrew a recommendation to propose granting representation on three key SBC committees to Baptists in pioneer regions. EC leadership promised, however, to make an alternate proposal with the same goal but addressing logistical concerns raised by EC members.

In other business during the EC’s Feb. 22-23 meeting Nashville, the committee recommended a change in the method for asking questions of entity leaders during SBC annual meetings; approved a one-time transfer of funds from the North American Mission Board to the International Mission Board to assist IMB personnel leaving the board during its “organizational reset;” and withdrew the convention’s fellowship from a South Carolina church whose pastor performed a same-sex wedding ceremony with the deacons’ approval.

The initial recommendation on “representation from new states and territories” would have asked the SBC’s legal counsel to present a recommendation to the EC’s Bylaws Workgroup for consideration in June on providing “representation on the Executive Committee, the Committee on Nominations, and the Committee on Committees for the following states or defined territories: the Dakotas, Iowa, Minnesota-Wisconsin, Montana and Puerto Rico-U.S. Virgin Islands.”

The recommendation also proposed “limit[ing] to four the maximum number of members which any cooperating state or defined territory shall be entitled to have on the Executive Committee” and “request[ing] Baptist Press to report the foregoing information to Southern Baptists so that any comments in response to the proposal [could] be included in the background materials for the Executive Committee’s consideration on June 13.”

Currently, EC representation for any state or territory is capped at five members, with Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas having maximum representation. According to SBC Bylaws 18 and 30, having 15,000 members in cooperating Southern Baptist churches qualifies a state or territory for initial representation on the EC, the Committee on Committees and the Committee on Nominations. When a state or territory reaches 250,000 church members, it qualifies to have a second EC member. Each additional 250,000 church members qualifies a state or territory for an additional EC member up to the maximum.

The recommendation would have granted one EC member to each pioneer state and territory listed while maintaining at present levels the representation of states and territories with 1-4 EC members.

The recommendation was affirmed by EC officers, the Bylaws Workgroup and the Administrative Committee. However, when the matter came before the full board, trustees raised questions such as:

• Why does the proposal reduce EC representation from states whose Baptists support the Cooperative Program with some of the largest financial gifts?
• Why does the proposal specify a set number of EC members from each state and territory rather than establish a formula to determine representation?
• To what extent is the reduction of EC representation from certain states driven by a need to limit the EC’s spending?

After 40 minutes of discussion, SBC President Ronnie Floyd, who serves as an ex officio EC member, asked, “Could we simply say the will of the body would be that it is our intent to study seriously, without involving the negative of taking away [EC members], if possible, to give representation to every state convention, period?”

EC President Frank S. Page said he believes “the big issue” is granting EC and other committee representation to Baptists in every state and territory. He asked that all recommendations and amendments be withdrawn so that officers and staff “might … come back with a cleaner way to say, ‘We want to add five’“ EC members from the states and territories mentioned in the recommendation. He said EC staff can, if instructed to do so, re-appropriate funds to allow five new members without reducing any state’s current representation. The committee opted to follow Page’s advice.

Entity questions at SBC annual meetings

In a separate action, the EC recommended amending SBC Bylaw 26 regarding questions to SBC entity leaders from the floor during the annual meeting, which will be presented to messengers during the SBC’s June 14-15 sessions in St. Louis.

Intended to provide consistency in the time allotted for messengers to ask questions, the proposed amendment would stipulate that segments for questions “provide no less than four (4) minutes times the number of entities included for discussion during that time.” The total time in any segment, however, “need not be evenly apportioned” among the entities included in that segment.

The bylaw amendment was drafted, as stated in EC resource materials, “In the interest of promoting greater transparency, amenability to the constituency, and a broader understanding of the work of the Convention’s entities.” A chart included in the background material noted that the average length of time allotted for questions to each SBC entity over the past 20 years has been about four minutes per entity, spaced across multiple sessions of the annual meeting. The new proposal will allow for consolidating question and answer segments to specific times on the agenda.

NAMB funds transfer

The EC approved a one-time transfer from NAMB to the IMB of up to $4 million, with three conditions which must be approved by NAMB’s trustees:

• The transfer must be drawn from the reserve portion of NAMB’s unrestricted assets.
• The transfer must not “negatively impact the performance of NAMB’s ministry assignments.”
• The transfer must be “designated to the IMB for the specific purpose of assisting transitioning IMB missionaries who have accepted the IMB’s Voluntary Retirement Incentive (VRI) or its Hand Raising Opportunity (HRO).”

NAMB President Kevin Ezell told Baptist Press NAMB’s “main motivation [for the gift] is that we’re family.”

“We’ve walked down this path before,” Ezell said. NAMB “let 817 people go in a transition. I know how hard that is along with trying to balance a budget. We look at the IMB as a sister entity. We are a family. When families hurt, you make sacrifices for family.”

S.C. church disfellowshipped

The EC’s decision to withdraw fellowship from Augusta Heights Baptist Church in Greenville, S.C., acting on behalf of the SBC ad interim, was based on “public information provided by the church which amounts to clear evidence of the church’s affirmation and approval of homosexual behavior,” according to the recommendation.

Article III of the SBC Constitution stipulates that “churches which act to affirm, approve, or endorse homosexual behavior would be deemed not to be in cooperation with the Convention.”

Background material provided to EC members stated Augusta Heights pastor Greg Dover “sought and acquired approval” from the church’s deacons to perform a same-sex wedding ceremony and did so Oct. 10, 2015. Dover told EC staff in a letter the congregation “does not have a marriage policy, or any official position or doctrinal statement on issues of homosexuality or same-sex marriage.” The church, Dover said, “does not wish to end our relationship with the Southern Baptist Convention.”

Augusta Heights, which also has been disfellowshipped from the South Carolina Baptist Convention and the Greenville Baptist Association, was invited to send representatives to the EC meeting but did not do so.

In other items on its agenda, the Executive Committee:

• approved a 2016-17 Cooperative Program Allocation Budget of $189,000,000 for recommendation to the SBC during the June 14-15 annual meeting in St. Louis.

The proposed budget maintains current allocations to the convention’s ministries, including 50.41 percent of receipts to IMB and 22.79 percent to NAMB, for a total of 73.20 percent allocated for mission ministries nationally and internationally.

The convention’s six seminaries will receive 22.16 percent. The seminary enrollment formula for funding will be: Golden Gate Seminary, 2.15 percent; Midwestern Seminary, 2.65 percent; New Orleans Seminary, 3.82 percent; Southeastern Seminary, 4.17 percent; Southern Seminary, 5.06 percent; Southwestern Seminary, 4.07 percent; and .24 percent to the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives, a ministry overseen by the seminary presidents. (Cumulative numbers may not match the sum of individual seminary percentages due to rounding.)

The budget proposal maintains a 1.65 percent allocation to the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

The SBC Operating Budget, the only CP-funded facilitating ministry, encompassing the SBC annual meeting costs and the work of the Executive Committee, would receive 2.99 percent of the budget. 

Throughout five decades in the ministry, including 12 at Houston’s Sagemont Baptist Church, Buddy Griffin said he always wondered what Sunday morning services were like at other churches.

After all, on most weekends, he was serving at his own church. 

So when he retired from Sagemont at the end of 2013, Griffin set out to learn about other congregations, turning into a “secret church shopper” and visiting more than 100 congregations of all denominations—from cowboy churches to charismatic ones, from Episcopalian to Baptist to Lutheran. Griffin took detailed notes and compiled his research into a book titled What in HEAVEN Is Going On At Church? that will be released by Tate Publishing April 5,

Griffin’s research may have been birthed simply out of curiosity, but it also had a more serious goal: to help churches improve how they reach visitors, particularly those who are not saved. At about half of the churches, no one even spoke to him. At another 10 or so churches, he couldn’t find a visitor’s card, not even upon request.  

“I looked at it from the perspective of being a lost man. If I walked onto this campus, would I want to come back?”

Buddy Griffin, author, What in HEAVEN Is Going On At Church?

“I looked at it from the perspective of being a lost man. If I walked onto this campus, would I want to come back?” Griffin, who served as men’s minister and prayer pastor at Sagemont, told the TEXAN. “My goal was to provide first-hand information to pastors and churches to advance the kingdom of God.”

Griffin went through the same routine at each church. He would get to the parking lot about 25 minutes early, park away from the main entrance, and then walk toward the door. Upon entering, he would walk around the lobby, acting as if he were a visitor looking for information about the congregation. He then would go sit in the first eight rows of the church.

“I had a rule that I would not speak to anybody unless I was spoken to,” Griffin said. “I would see if anyone would speak to me after the service, and I would hang around in the lobby.”

Then, Griffin would walk back to his car and take notes, marking down information he categorized into three points: 1) the Word (was the gospel preached?), 2) the Warmth (was he made to feel like he could fit in?), and 3) the Welcome (did he receive a friendly greeting?). 

In too many churches, Griffin said, either Christ wasn’t the center of the service or Griffin was not greeted—or both. In one memorable instance, he arrived at the wrong time for the service and asked someone if there was a class he instead could attend. Once finding it, he was abruptly told it was “full,” so he turned around, found the fellowship hall, and sipped on coffee and read his Bible until the service started. 

But other churches excelled at making him feel wanted. One congregation contacted him on Sunday afternoon, thanking him for coming. Another one actually visited him on Sunday night. (The longest a church took to contact him was 62 days.) 

All total, he visited 100-plus churches of 28 different denominations, making sure they were comprised of various races and nationalities. Griffin always sent the data to the pastor, with a letter and a picture of himself. Most pastors, he said, were thankful for the information. 

Griffin said he learned a lot during his secret shopper research, both negative and positive. 

Some congregations—mostly “high church” ones—are “so in love with tradition” that it has replaced Jesus, he said. Still other churches focus so much on money during the service that it seems to be their “biggest concern,” even for visitors. 

“It was very obvious sometimes,” Griffin said.

Yet Griffin made discoveries that encouraged him, including “how big God really is.” 

“I had some preconceived views of denominations, and I don’t know where I got them. I’m sure we all put people in boxes,” he said. “Every pastor, if they could go through what I went through, we’d be so much better—so much more loving and kind.”

For more information about the book, email Buddy Griffin.