Still, 53 recruits is 53 recruits. Who else is having this kind of success in the SBC right now? Almost nobody, that’s who. J.D. Greear coasted on similar success straight to the SBC’s presidency. I can well imagine Jordan Easley doing the same thing in a few years.
Something has to give, when it comes to panicking businesses in decline. They must pick something to cherish and do it right. Sometimes that’ll mean forging ahead with a new customer base they can actually please and which can actually support them as a business. Other times, it’ll mean taking extra-good care of their existing customers. And evangelicals haven’t yet figured out where to land there.
When Christians write parables or allegories, they never worry about their characters not acting like people at all. That’s not the point of the story. The story is meant only as a framework to use to defeat strawmen.
Yesterday, we talked about how strange Ronnie Floyd’s VISION 2025 initiative seems. He wants the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) to put into place all this expanded room for more members, but doesn’t include any specific plans to get more members. I theorized at the time that maybe he planned to poach regressive evangelicals from other, more sensible denominations during this pandemic. Well, today we’ll see that this does indeed appear to be exactly what the SBC’s top leaders are counting on. They’re deliberately sowing division to bring vaccine denialists and QAnon- and Trump-addled Christians to their very regressive banner.
Hi and welcome back! Recently, the news site of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) had a major victory to report: a megachurch in a small town in Georgia reported 114 baptisms on one Sunday. That’s a pretty big boast, considering the SBC’s in a major decline and has been for Read more
Hi and welcome back! Sometimes, it’s fun to reveal the real meaning of all the Christianese that evangelicals use. Because oh, they use a lot of it. And the more Christianese you see in use, the less the Christians involved have to say that’s real and true. So when I say that Read more
But I’m attached to this CARM post we’ll cover today. It’s just such a nonstop, rollicking Gish gallop of zinger attempts. Evangelicals greatly respect zingers, perhaps because they’re so unrelentingly bad at them. So this post promises us some entertainment.
Out of everywhere evangelicals seek to make sales, Japan might be one of their most resistant evangelism markets. But three dishonest evangelical couples have recently decided to use some beloved Japanese art forms to lure in unsuspecting marks: cosplay, fake collectibles, and a manga-style comic book called Manga Messiah.
Hi and welcome back! We’re quickly approaching the end of our Beach Reach training. Now, our trainers need us to know how to perform follow-up with our sales marks. Whether we failed or succeeded — though, let’s be honest here, we largely utterly failed — to make any sales, follow-up Read more
Hi and welcome back! Lately, we’ve been talking about Beach Reach. That’s the short-term missionary trip organized by the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). For two weeks, they unleash bright-eyed young volunteers on a Texas beach during Spring Break. There, they perform various acts of charity for partying college students — Read more