Religion
Related: About this forumSouthern Baptist Convention Will Lay Off Hundreds of People as Part of God’s Sovereign Plan
Whats striking is how theyre trying to let everyone down gently by saying this is all part of Gods Plan:
God is not surprised by these financial realities. He has reigned sovereign over the IMB for 170 years, and He will continue to reign sovereign over the IMB for years to come. God has reigned sovereign over the direction of each personnels life to this point, and He will reign sovereign over these lives in the days to come. Because He is sovereign, IMB leadership encourages all of its personnel to seek Him, and ask Him how and where He is guiding each of them for the sake of His name. IMB leadership believes that, without question, God will continue to lead every one of its personnel on mission. It is expected that the 600-800 people who step aside from the IMB in the next six months will not be stepping onto the sidelines of mission, but instead will be moving into a new phase of involvement in mission.
Thats one way to put it.
Youre fired! But dont take it personally. God just wants you to work from home now without pay. Even though we might have been able to prevent this by not spending $210 million more than we had over the past six years. But Jesus didnt come by to say no, so we figured it was cool.
Im sure God will also wipe away the tears of everyone whos about to be let go.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2015/08/28/southern-baptist-convention-will-lay-off-hundreds-of-people-as-part-of-gods-sovereign-plan/
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)the money flowing again. I am a former member of a SBC church, became tired of the knife in my belly of the ministers pushing ideas contrary to my early teachings of how Jesus loved everyone. Chase off the contributors and there is less collection in the plate.
cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)giving their time and money while actively working against the equality the laity wants.
onecaliberal
(32,489 posts)procon
(15,805 posts)Maybe god should be more surprised that the church leadership didn't get layoff notices too, or voluntary pay cuts, and maybe get rid of some ostentatious bling to save these jobs.
No one should be surprised by their financial woes. Attendance is off, and for good reason, so its understandable that the pay to pray revenue is diminished. God didn't create their financial crisis. People are getting laid off because the church hierarchy decided to align themselves with partisan politics, writing off half the country in the process. It should come as no surprise that aggressively promoting an extreme social agenda that alienates young people, women and gays will result is a loss of revenue. These layoffs were predictable, and they are the result of greed, bigotry, hate and prejudices that is cutting into their business profit margin.
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)Nice phrase. Says it all. clap: :
bvf
(6,604 posts)Good.
onager
(9,356 posts)June 2015 report from Christianity Today:
A former IMB trustee, who helped put in a place a ban on speaking in tongues more than a decade ago, questioned the new policy, saying it "implies a yall come, lowering-of-the-bar openness.
The article notes that the SoB's lost about 200,000 members last year. Having recently relocated back to the South, I see this all around me. And as a former SoB myself and current atheist, just laugh at it.
Baptists are mostly losing out to the big non-denominational Fundie churches. I hear a lot about acrimonious splits within families. The old folks want to go to their traditional church. The kids and grandkids want to go to the mega-church because it has cooler music etc. The youngsters seem to usually win.
Adding insult to injury, the Mormons have also poached a lot of Southern Baptists in the past few years. Why's that? Dunno, I'm not a Sophisticated Theologian.
More from the CT article:
The truth is, we have less people in our churches who are giving less money because we are winning less people to Christ, and we are not training them in the spiritual disciplines of our Lord, he told Baptist Press...
Translation: we have to find more suckers and fleece them even harder. Otherwise we'll be trading in our Cadillacs for Kias.
The SoBs are getting some new members, ones who probably have no problem reconciling all those Biblical contradictions:
And I've recently read, on this very board, that millennials are just FLOCKING back to church these days. So this statement must not be true:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2015/june/southern-baptist-decline-baptism-church-plant-sbc.html