Akin: SBC’s future ‘hopeful’ if committed to Great Commission

‘Shameful’ to use Acts 1:8 to justify not getting more resources to unreached nations

Oct 8, 2009
By JAMES A. SMITH SR.
Florida Baptist Witness

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JACKSON, Tenn. (FBW) – With “seismic changes” creating an “unprecedented” historical moment for the Southern Baptist Convention, Danny Akin is not optimistic about the future of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination but he is “hopeful” – if Southern Baptists will fully commit themselves to the Lordship of Christ and His Great Commission.

If, on the other hand, Southern Baptists are not moved to a complete commitment to missions, “We don’t deserve a future,” Akin concluded in an Oct. 8 address on the future of the Southern Baptist Convention at Union University in Jackson, Tenn.

Citing the promise of Rev. 7:9-10 in which heaven will be populated by vast multitude of all peoples, Akin said, “The question that stares Southern Baptists in the face is this: will we join hands with our great God in seeing this awesome day come to pass or will we find ourselves sitting on the sidelines watching?”

Akin spoke at Union’s conference, “Southern Baptists, Evangelicals, and the Future of Denominationalism.” The Oct. 6-9 conference is being held in recognition of the 400th anniversary of the Baptist movement.

Akin is president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., and primary author of the “Great Commission Resurgence Declaration,” which later resulted in the Southern Baptist Convention’s authorization of a GCR Task Force that is currently studying the SBC to seek greater effectiveness in fulfilling the Great Commission. Akin serves as a member of the GCR Task Force.

Noting the “spiritual stakes are high,” Akin said his “conversations and experiences” in recent months have “only heightened and made even more clear where the dangers to our future lie.”

Akin launched the GCR movement in April with a chapel address at Southeastern Seminary outlining “Axioms for a Great Commission Resurgence” and invoked several of the same themes in his Union address.

Akin asked conference participants to consider “eight points of observation” that he asserted are necessary for the SBC to have a hopeful future.

Lordship of Christ

As with his axioms address, Akin first asserted that Southern Baptists must “return to our first love and surrender ourselves fully to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.”

Akin said he has “experienced significant grief” that this matter received so little attention in the wake of his axioms address. While Southern Baptists passed over this issue claiming they already believe it, Akin asked, “Do we live it? Is Jesus Christ really our passion and priority?”

Citing Jesus’ final words in Matt. 28:18-20 and Acts 1:4-8, Akin said a “right reading of Scripture will not set these statements in opposition to or at odds with one another. Any appeal to Acts 1:8 to justify not getting more personnel and resources to the unreached nations is wrong headed. Actually, it is shameful. Most of our Jerusalems have a Gospel witness. Large portions of the uttermost parts of the earth do not.”

Southern Baptists need to think and act like Jesus, Akin said. “If we fail here, we will fail everywhere.”

Inerrancy, sufficiency of the Bible

Praising Southern Baptist leaders like Paige Patterson, Adrian Rogers and Jerry Vines who led the Conservative Resurgence during the 1980s and ‘90s to oppose the “poison of liberalism” in the SBC, Akin said these “heroes of the faith” should be honored and not forgotten – and newer generations of Southern Baptists need to be told of their sacrifices.

However, Akin added, the “war for the Bible is not over and it will never end until Jesus returns.” He warned younger generations “not to squander away precious theological ground” essential for a “healthy and hopeful future” for the SBC.

Those who would deny the “full truthfulness of the Bible” should leave the SBC, Akin asserted.

“We love you and pray for you, but we do not want you infecting our people with a spiritual disease that is always fatal to the Church of the Lord Jesus.”

Expository preaching

Akin bemoaned the fact that the Conservative Resurgence has not wrought a “revival of biblical exposition in our churches.”

Seminaries must teach the expositional model of preaching and “pastor/theologian” models are needed who will “preach the whole counsel of God’s Word – book by book, chapter by chapter, verse by verse, phrase by phrase, and word by word.”

Such preachers, according to Akin, will not be boring – which he said would be “sinful” – but will be “on fire as heralds of the unsearchable riches of Christ. Nothing is more exciting than theology. Nothing is more relevant than doctrine.”

Southern Baptists will only have a future that is “rooted in the Word. If Southern Baptists experience a Great Commission Resurgence it will find its life blood in the Word,” he said.

BFM 2000 as healthy, sufficient guide

Saying Southern Baptists agree doctrinally on “quite a lot,” Akin listed 15 central truths of the Christian faith affirmed by Southern Baptists’ confession of faith, the Baptist Faith and Message, which was last revised in 2000, noting the list was not exhaustive.

However, Akin also listed a number of theological details on which there are diversity of viewpoints among Southern Baptists, citing as examples the number of elders, precise nature of congregational governance, continuance of certain spiritual gifts, the timing of the rapture, nature of the millennium, and Calvinism “of course.”

Akin invoked Al Mohler’s “theological triage” model of addressing theological differences among Christians within and outside of denominations. Mohler is president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., a member of the GCR Task Force and the person who made the motion at the 2009 SBC annual meeting calling for the creation of the Task Force.

Such a “theological triage” rank certain theological issues as “first order” – matters on which there can be no compromise, “second order” – matters that are important to church life, but not essential to the Gospel, and “third order” – matters for “fruitful theological discussion and debate” but do not threaten fellowship within churches or the denomination.

“I’m convinced we have an adequate and healthy theological consensus for coming together for the purpose of fulfilling the Great Commission,” Akin said of the BFM 2000.

Demographic, racial reflection of America

“Southern Baptists were born, in part, out of a racist context and have a racist heritage. This will forever be to our shame,” Akin said, and even while noting the SBC “repented” of its racism in 1995 during the sesquicentennial of the denomination, “there is still much work to be done.”

Southern Baptists must confront the “sobering reality” the SBC “remains a mostly middle-class, mostly white network of mostly declining churches in the South.”

Akin said it is “mind-boggling” there is a “lack of urgency and concern” about this matter among Southern Baptists.

“Starting at home we must pursue a vision for our churches that looks like heaven,” he said.

Southern Baptist men, in particular, must have a greater commitment to the Great Commission “like our sisters have been doing for generations.”

Akin said men should be “ashamed” that so few men are serving on the mission field.

Rethinking SBC structure

Addressing the subject that has been the source of much speculation about the work of the GCR Task Force, Akin said the SBC’s structure needs to be reconsidered “at every level” to “maximize our energy and resources for fulfilling the Great Commission.”

He rejected the notion that Southern Baptists are a Great Commission people because only 2.75 percent of the $12 billion collected by churches last year “ever left the borders of the United States” and because church planting in unreached portions of North America “is little more than a trickle.”

An “undeniable truth,” according to Akin, is that Southern Baptists need “aggressive, visionary leaders who are daring and courageous, men who understand the times and are willing to attempt great things for God and believe great things from God.”

Southern Baptists have “built bureaucracies and little kingdoms that are the primary objects of our affections, concerns and reasons for existence. We are slowly dying but refuse to admit the patient is even sick. The amount of time, energy, personnel and resources we keep at home, especially in the deep South, is hard to explain or accept for a rapidly growing number, and I fear how we will justify ourselves when we stand before our Lord,” Akin asserted.

“I want to challenge us to do simple Convention. We must streamline our structure, clarify our identity and maximize our resources,” he said.

“Hard questions” to consider immediately, according to Akin, including changing the name of the SBC, overlap and duplication in structure and programs, and the mechanisms for church planting.

Akin rejected as “simply untrue” the idea of dismantling the Cooperative Program, while noting Southern Baptists should be open to studying CP and “making improvements if possible.”

Including the entity he leads as a candidate, Akin said, “For a revolution, for a revival, to occur we need to kill and bury all sacred cows; we need to be willing to put on the altar for sacrifice our dreams, goals, ministries and entities if doing so will further the Great Commission.”

A “three-legged stool” that will excite and inspire Southern Baptists is church planting in unreached areas of North America, “pioneer missions around the world, and theological education that permeates every sphere of our Convention,” according to Akin.

Churches as missions agencies

“The local church is to be ground zero” for the mission of God, Akin said, asserting missions “is at the heart of the church’s identity and essence.”

Therefore, every church should be a church planting and Great Commission church, he said.

“Pastors must be seized by a vision for the strategic importance of their calling as the head of a Gospel missions agency called the local church,” and not accept the “shibboleth that everything we do is missions.”

Gospel-centered cooperation and methodological diversity

While there are “essential and non-negotiable components of biblical worship and work” there is “no specific biblical style or method ordained by our God,” Akin said in calling for a future of the SBC in which cooperation is “Gospel centered and built around a biblical and theological core.”

Different “contexts will demand different strategies and methods,” he said, noting Southern Baptists must cultivate the “mind of a missionary” and ask, “What is the best way to reach with the Gospel the people I live amongst?”

Akin added, “It is foolish to gripe about organs, choirs and choir robes, guitars, drums, coats and ties. It is also a waste of time. It is time to move on with the real issue of the Great Commission.”

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