Some of you may have heard of the recent drama at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SWBTS). For those of you who have not, Rev. Dwight McKissic spoke at their chapel on Tuesday, August 29th. Baptism and the filling of the Holy Spirit was the topic of his sermon.
When you are talking about this topic from the Bible you will almost always be confronted with the concept of speaking in tongues. Mr. McKissic was no exception to this rule. He talked about tongues and endorsed the use of tongues as a spiritual gift by the Holy Spirit. During his sermon he made mention of the current policy set in the International Mission Board (IMB) not allowing any missionary the right to serve in the IMB if they practice the use of tongues or a private prayer language. The policy can be found at: http://www.imb.org/core/story.asp?storyID=3834&LanguageID=1709
There are some who completely disagree with this move by the IMB and Mr. McKissic is one of those people. In his sermon he talked about the use of tongues and that he himself was a practitioner of tongues in his private prayer life. He believes that this policy disqualifies a lot of Baptists who would make excellent missionaries. I have to agree.
So why did I title this blog “Roman Baptists”? Well, it is a little play on words. After the sermon, SWBTS discontinued the ability to download his sermon for free. They did this for two reasons (according to their website). First they did not want to look like they support him in questioning the authority of the IMB and second they fear that his views might be “harmful to the churches.”
Basically it reminds me of Catholicism (at least old-school Catholicism) – if you don’t agree with them, they’ll shut you up. Basically they feared that your views might tear down their institution so they did what was necessary to protect their “precious” institution.
Read an article about this here.
Read SWBTS statement concerning Mr. McKissic’s sermon here.
Read Mr. McKissic’s sermon here.
Read a letter Mr. McKissic wrote to Dr. Patterson (the president of SWBTS) concerning this issue here.
Seems odd to be referring to the “authority of the IMB.” The entire SBC is a voluntary organization of cooperating, independent local churches. Any authority they have is delegated to them from the churches. And it seems that the appropriate thing for them to do is exercise this delegated authority on behalf on and not over the local churches. Seems the same should be true of the SBC seminaries, and a full hearing of a Pastor McKissic should be given.
Excellent point!