"Patterson said being a pastor of a local church is now the toughest assignment in all of history. "It's worse than being a high school football coach on the high plains of Texas," he said with a knowing grin.Personally I believe it is much tougher to be a good pastor than any kind of football coach...just as it was probably tougher being a seminary president than a pastor in the early 1980's when covert hatchet jobs and yellow journalism were the order of the day. I would suggest that if blogs had been around in the early 1980's that good men like Duke McCall would have at least stood a chance against the prevailing winds of whisper campaigns common to the hallways of Southern Baptist Convention meetings of that era. Dr. Patterson is much more familiar with that type of "rugged individualism" than he is with blogging. It is comforting to see Paige Patterson's
"Because we have encouraged the rugged individualism rather than a Spirit-filled and Spirit-led congregation, we are now reaping the results," he continued, noting 21st-century technology allows dissatisfied church members to attack the pastor with impunity by launching a blog, an online digest (my emphasis).
"We have lost our way on integrity," he said, adding, "We need to make clear to our people, and the seminaries need to join you in this, what congregationalism means and what it doesn't mean."
Dr. Patterson is right, to a degree. It is quite easy to start blogging with impunity (although blog technology began in the 20th century, not the 21st century)...considering the Patterson-Pressler era of Baptist politics, it does make me wonder if Dr. Patterson remembers how dissatified conservative leaders
2 comments:
Patterson was at SEBTS as I finished my ThM and I found him to be as cold and calculating a manipulator as any lieflong politician. He and his cronies ruined the greatest Theological Seminary in the United States.
You are right. He speaks from first hand experience about the loss of a moral center. If we had had blogs back in the 80's when he and his lot were ruining our seminary he would have been on the business end of a solid whipping. And he probably knows it, which is why he denounces those who speak out.
Dr. Jim,
It is becoming more difficult to ignore the blogging community. Responsible individuals who see things being swept under the rug have an easily accessible (democratic) means of asking tough questions of leaders on the local, state, and national levels. There are abuses in the blogging community just as there are abuses in the press and in leadership. At least with blogs, impunity is diminshed by the very nature of the technology. A contrary point of view has at least an opportunity to be heard (and not squelched).
Thank you for taking time to add to this discussion.
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