Now, what does it mean?

LifeWay Christian Resources’ report on their survey dealing with the viewpoints of pastors on private prayer language will be the talk of the town at our SBC annual meeting. Understandable. The main assertion?that 50 percent of SBC pastors believe PPL is a gift of the Holy Spirit?comes as a surprise to many. The lengthier discussion will entail the meaning and significance of this finding.

We don’t know how many of these pastors actually practice PPL. Is their answer one of tolerance rather than conviction? Is it based on an exegetical conviction or on an anecdote? We don’t know.

Here are two things we can reasonably say, based on LifeWay’s report:

• A surprising number of SBC pastors are open to the theoretical idea of PPL.


• Southern Baptist pastors are less open to PPL than are pastors of other Protestant denominations. That’s interesting. We can actually think of several other things that SBC pastors are less open to than are other Protestant pastors.

But we can’t infer these things from the report:

We can’t infer that there is a general acceptance among Southern Baptists of PPL as a biblically based gift. We don’t know what the laity think of the matter. We also don’t know what the difference might be between the response of pastors to an academic question and their response to a Sunday School teacher who advocates for PPL in the church. That might be where the tolerance and acceptance part company.

We can’t infer that the assertion that PPL is a biblically based notion is truer than it was before the release of the report. An opinion held by many, while important, is not, by itself, an argument. If, for example, you find that 51 percent of SBC pastors teach a different interpretation of election than you do, does that change your mind about election?

We can’t authoritatively infer the reason for the opinion held by the 50 percent. Is it a sign of the cultural times? Is it a result of a more ecumenical wind blowing across our denomination? Is it a sign of spiritual renewal? No one who does not have more information than we currently do should assert any such things.

My point is that this report is a great discussion starter. A deacon at my church who doesn’t likely read Baptist Press stopped me Sunday to comment on the report findings. It’s of widespread interest among our people. We’ll talk about it for a few weeks without any doubt. Few of us are likely to change our minds.

It’s not a debate ender, though. Those on the “we told you so” bandwagon are going beyond the data if they believe their arguments have been recently shored up.

We’ve discussed charismatic practices in the SBC during the whole course of my ministry. Many of us see a threatened introduction of “unbiblical” practices into the life of our churches.

Others agree, sort of, but also fear that the pendulum has swung so far as to close off any openness to the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of Southern Baptists. Extreme positions are, by definition, threats to productive dialogue.

The bottom line for now is that we will still struggle to find that reasonable and biblical position between the extremes and we’ll continue to disagree over where it is. Nothing happened to change that tradition when LifeWay released the results of a survey last week.