Update to the Conservative Baptist Network Steering Council
A productive several weeks.
by Rod D. Martin
September 19, 2020
Dear CBN Leadership Friends,
First, THANK YOU to all of you who attended our first-ever CBN Bible Conference in Memphis this week. It was a rousing success, not least in attendance: we counted 340 present (not shockingly Baptist Press counted just 200, but otherwise wrote a good story), but it goes up a LOT from there, with 764 watching Mid-America Seminary’s livestream, and a whopping 8,200 watching Mid-America’s Facebook Live video.
That’s 9,304 people that we know of, and we still don’t have final numbers on CBN’s separate Facebook Live feed, or on future views by any of the online outlets, which we expect to continue going up. All told, I’m expecting 12,000 will see the conference. We’ll be putting out an announcement about that soon.
For anyone who hasn’t watched, obviously you should. The sermons by Lee Brand, Mike Stone, Chuck Kelley and Brad Jurkovich were world-class: any of these guys could and probably should be a future SBC President. Watch them and see what I mean. Wow.
I simply cannot thank Mid-America – Mike Spradlin, Lee Brand, Nathan Cole, et al. – enough. They were incredible, especially when a transformer blew out, leaving the entire area without power, and the MABTS team kicked into gear to save the day (God ultimately brought the power back in time for the event, but we’d have been good to go either way). We have no better friends than our friends at Mid-America, and we all owe them a deep debt of gratitude. Be sure to tell them you love them.
Second, if you missed our (Brad, Mike Stone, Mike Spradlin and I) appearance on Todd Starnes’s national radio show Thursday morning, go listen to it now: it’s posted on his website and well worth a listen. We had the entire second hour and Todd really promoted CBN well (as he always does).
Third, several of us met all Wednesday afternoon, off-the-record, with the SBC Executive Committee senior leadership. They wanted to know our concerns in greater detail and to ask us questions about how we see ourselves within the SBC. We were more than happy to share with them, and believe that meeting went quite well.
Fourth, we are picking up steam everywhere. Following on the heels of the Georgia state chapter announcement, we are about to launch several more: you’ll hear about those shortly. Also, all of us are speaking at multiple conferences, both getting the word out and promoting additional alliances with CBN, including Brad and me at the Falkirk Center’s conference at Liberty University last week and at the “Great Awokening” (note the spelling) conference in early October in Tampa. If you know of groups who need a CBN speaker, please let us know.
Finally, I want to remind you as our movement picks up steam, our SBC, which is to say, the Baptist in the pew, needs three vital things from us:
Hope: Hope that there’s an SBC left to fight for. Hope that there’s a way forward. Hope that someone, you and I, will stand and fight for them.
Education: Education as to what the Cultural Marxist ideas of Critical Theory (especially Critical Race Theory) and Intersectionality are. How they conflict with the Gospel. How to respond to others who don’t understand, or who do understand perfectly but from an antagonistic point of view.
Organizing: Organizing to win key votes in our entity boards. Organizing to elect good Presidents who will make good appointments. Organizing to turn around the SBC’s massive decline in baptisms and membership. Organizing for the Great Commission, in all of its parts.
I have been honored from the beginning to serve with you toward these ends. They are worthy ends, worthy of our time and our treasure, our tenacity and our triumph. We serve Christ, yes. But we also serve that sweet little old widow lady, sitting on the next to the last pew, writing out her $5 check in her shaky hand, placing it in the plate, week after week, faithfully. Her widow’s mite is what built this Convention, what built all its entities, what funds its seminaries, what fields its missionaries. Our trustees and their employees owe their fiduciary duty to her, to the Baptist in the pew, not to any celebrity pastor or entity head.
It’s for her we fight. It’s her whom we represent.
So fight on. We should not be managing the decline of a great denomination, talking about what we’ll do with 14 million, or 10 million, instead of 15 million Southern Baptists (or Great Commission Baptists, or whatever the term will be next week). We should be fishers of men, actively pursuing that next Great Awakening, striving toward 30 million Southern Baptists, and 60 million, and more.
But before you go fishing, you have to untangle your nets.
That’s why there’s a Conservative Baptist Network. And that’s why I’m honored to serve with you.
For the cause,
