Tennessee Baptist Convention Update - Belmont Settlement

Yesterday's news of the settlement between the Tennessee Baptist Convention and Belmont University made the news across the country through the day and into the night. Here is a sampling of those reports:

• Associate Baptist Press included comments from Clay Austin, the Study Committee Chair,

  "One of the things that we must learn from this is that relationships are extremely valuable and that they are sometimes fragile, and I hope that we have learned that, as we have worked together as brothers and sisters in Christ, we will not always agree."

• Baptist Press points to a decisive meeting last week where the final agreement was hammered out,

  "From the very onset of the meeting, there was no pride from anyone demonstrated nor felt in that room," said Jerry Massey, pastor of First Baptist Church of Paris, Tenn., and president of the TBC Executive Board. "The four of us came humbly before God, confessing to him that we needed his help, for we do not know what to do."

• The Baptist & Reflector will wait another week before releasing the full story, but found space to print one side of the story,

  "Porch stressed that the convention did not force Belmont University to leave. “Belmont chose to write themselves out of the Tennessee Baptist Convention story."

• Concerned Tennessee Baptists mentioned the decision in a Tuesday session update and mentioned the service of the Belmont Study Committee,

  "Let us move forward. Those who did not serve on the Belmont Study Committee should be eternally grateful and those who did will be eternally worn-out. The committee did what they believed was in the best interest of the Convention."

• Perhaps the best quote in a blog comes from a post titled, Let's Just Kiss and Say Goodbye,

  "This was a case where two sides go their separate ways, but it doesn’t have to mean they can’t still be friends. If the Baptists and Belmont are sincere in their goals of ministering to people and sharing the Gospel, they can’t do that effectively by harboring any grudge towards each other."

• Mainstream Baptist sees this as a Sad Day for Baptists and Another Black Eye,

  "The greed of our leadership has stained us all with a huge red "G" on our collective foreheads."

• The Tennessean offers a few more details as to how the agreement came to fruition,

  "I think it hit both sides about how much good energy was being wasted that could have been used to advance the Kingdom," said (Mike) Glenn, a trustee and member of the school's negotiating committee with the convention."

  
  
• Very little discussion seems to happening across the non-Baptist blogs. There is an announcement and comments on Music City Bloggers. The announcement does appear in a few blogs and news papers with little additional commentary: Religion Claus , TennViews, NewsChannel5.com (Nashville), The Chronicle of Higher Education, and the Nashville Business Journal.
  

The Baptist Faith & Message 2000 issue seems to be the most contentious issue at the the convention this year. Jeff Wright reported on the discussion and the 407-400 vote not to change last year's decision to focus on the BF&M2000. Jeff includes a fair assessment of how that vote might be interpreted. Time permitting, I will re-visit that discussion in another post.

...and no news from Will in Guatemala,
TBC Elder