« Did He Just Say That? - MBC Day 2 | Main | Make Your Freedom Count: GO VOTE! »

The Pot Calling The Kettle Black: MBC Day 3 - The Conclusion

November 03, 2006

Amidst the numerous technical problems, disorganization, and confusion, we finally made it to the last day of the convention. On Wednesday we take care of a lot of business by voting on resolutions, motions, and several other things. First we voted on the Vice President... well, we didn't really. Only one person ran for the Vice President position and thus someone cast the one vote for the convention as a whole. It still blows my mind that only one person runs for these positions as if it is 'set in stone' who is going to be the leadership. Maybe it is. Anyway, we will move on. The majority of the motions that were made were either considered out of order or referred to a committee for review. We ended up voting on three or four of the motions made.

One of those motions was whether or not the convention should have a set rotation of cities that it goes to each year. We would rotate between Kansas City, Springfield, and St. Louis. While it seemed like a good idea to me there were others who didn't think so. Then someone amended the motion to include Cape Girardeau in the rotation. This amendment passed, but just barely. The convention was pretty much split half and half on this issue and the amendment only carried by a few votes. So then we prepared to vote on the amended motion and the original person who made the motion decided to withdraw it right as we were voting on the amended motion. A friend brought up the question of whether or not that person could withdraw an amended motion. Here is what Robert's Rules of Order has to say:

"When a question is before the assembly and the mover wishes to withdraw or modify it, or substitute a different one in its place, if no one objects, the presiding officer grants the permission; if any objection is made, it will be necessary to obtain leave to withdraw,* etc., on a motion for that purpose. This motion cannot be debated or amended. When a motion is withdrawn, the effect is the same as if it had never been made." Robert's Rules of Order #17 Withdrawal of a Motion

No objections were made to the withdrawal of the motion and thus it was allowed to be withdrawn. This means that "the effect is the same as if it had never been made" which means whatever amendments made to it would disappear because you cannot amend a non-existent motion. At least that is how I see it. Maybe there is a different rule for an amended motion, but I haven't found it yet. Could it be that the amended motion now belongs to the person who amended it and not the person who originally submitted the motion? That would mean that the person who amended the motion would have to be the one to withdraw it and not the person who originally made the motion in the first place. That doesn’t sound right either. Maybe someone could shed some light on this.

While voting on the motions we ran out of time. I think the majority of the MBC messengers thought we had run out of time for the particular motion we were dealing with. I think people were tired of debating that particular motion and so we voted on extending time and it was voted down. Unfortunately what we thought we were voting on wasn't the case. We were actually voting on the time extension for the entire order of business. Which means all discussion was cut off completely for the rest of the motions and resolutions. We just had to quickly go through them one by one and vote yes or no with no discussion and no questions because we had voted not to extend the time. This is the kind of confusion I've been talking about. The chair and the parliamentarians should be leading the meeting and making sure these things are clear, but they were not communicating well and it caused more confusion and disorder than anything else. When I first started going to the conventions 6 years ago I remember that each time we voted, the chair would make it clear, "this is what you are voting on". That wasn't the case this year. We finally realized the confusion, voted to extend the time and we were able to discuss the resolutions. However, during that short period of time that we were all confused we were forced to vote on a couple motions that were not discussed.

The other staggering thing about the Missouri Baptist Convention is the number of people that attend. By Tuesday evening there were 1,157 messengers representing 468 churches. The state of Missouri has a little over 2000 churches in the Missouri Baptist Convention with roughly 600,000 members. Only 1,157 people show up to conduct business, that is only 468 churches out of over 2000. We had roughly a 23% church representation in the convention and about a .2% membership representation. Whatever we vote on at our convention is not a majority decision. I wonder what would happen and what would change if all 2000 churches showed up with all the messengers they could have and all their members as visitors. That would show the true mindset of Missouri Baptists. As each year passes and the numbers slowly trickle away, where will the convention be in just a few years?

There is a noticeable lack of younger Missouri Baptists being a part of the convention. Where have all the young people gone? It's staggering to realize that there are very few Missouri Baptist pastors in the state of Missouri under the age of 29. Have we done something to run them off or are we just doing nothing to draw them in. Being from the "younger crowd" and attending the convention with a couple other younger guys I can say with confidence that what we did this year does not appeal at all to the younger crowd. Maybe that should be a consideration for us.

I have participated in the convention as a messenger every year for the last 6 years and I have always found myself fascinated with it. While I'm fairly new to the convention as a whole, I've always enjoyed it. I liked the leadership, I liked the things we do, I liked seeing all the different things Missouri Baptists are involved in, and I like it that we have the freedom to come together as an organization and make decisions regarding the future of Missouri Baptist. This year I came away feeling as though the convention has died just a little. I have certainly come away with a certain amount of lost zeal and support for our convention. Someone reminded me this week that if the convention were to fall it wouldn't change the church. We will still be in our towns, we would still do ministry, and we would still preach the word, reach the lost, and disciple the people. I realize that when we come back home the larger majority of people who attend do not know anything about the Missouri Baptist Convention nor do they feel any connection to it whatsoever. Especially the younger ones who have very little knowledge of what the convention is and why we have SBC tagged to the name of our church. That could very well be the reason we have only 1,200 Baptists out of 600,000 showing up at the meeting.

I don't know where it is headed. I don't know what is going happen. I do know this. I hope something changes. I hope some younger people get in there and are allowed to be active in the convention, and I hope some leaders start standing up and running for the different offices. I hope we stop going with the flow and just electing whoever was "selected" to be in office and start realizing that we need some people to step up and go against the status quo or one day we may wake up and find our great convention either lost or so utterly irrelevant that it no longer has any purpose.

Comments

Posted by: Michael
November 4, 2006 08:37 AM

I believe in doing things well but sometimes technical problem are beyond anyones control speaking from personal experience.

Posted by: Pressed
November 5, 2006 09:02 AM

There is a difference between a few technical problems and problems that happen all day long for three days straight that could have been prevented. Mics not turned on, EQ not set, DVD's not working at all, glitches in DVD's, microphones not turned up, voices being off on the images on the screen, and numerous other issues. As I understand it they were not even ready when the first worship leaders showed up on Monday evening. There is a difference...

Posted by: Kevin
November 6, 2006 09:06 AM

I was there and I agree with you about the lack of young people. But in addition to that, there was a lack of minorities (a couple of African Americans and a handful of Hispanics) and virtually no women in any leadership positions. Additionally I saw very few lay people in positions of leadership, too. In a previous post, you mentioned about a 1,000 pastors getting together. So, it seams that the convention is about a bunch of old white pastors (or what the comedian Jerry Clower used to call the "hired help"). It reminds me of a song we used to sing in college:

Jesus Loves the little Baptists
All the Baptists of the World
White and White and White and White
They are precious is his site
Jesus Loves the little Baptists of the World

This may not be true in general. They are plenty of Baptists other than Southern Baptists, but it sure to seem to hold true in the MBC.

Posted by: Michael
November 6, 2006 04:07 PM

You are correct. That does sound like that someone did not have their act together.

Posted by: Scott Lamb
November 9, 2006 02:39 AM

I echo your sentiments about the lack of younger pastors at the convention (or even just in the convention for that matter). I don't know the cause. I am hopeful it is b/c there is a groundswell of young men on the international mission field, and thus not stateside.