An Open Letter to Southern Baptist Leadership:

Dear SBC Leaders,

I have a thing or two I need to get off my chest:

I have been a full-fledged Southern Baptist for about 2 months, and I have to say that I am growing ever more aggrivated with Southern Baptist leaders who profess to have gone to seminary or "Bible college" and they are still too ignorant to know the difference between an Arminian, a Calvinist, or a hyper-Calvinist!! I have written Rants about this before, but I think the problem is growing worse! I am also ever more amazed at the number of Southern Baptist leaders who do not seem to know anything about the theological heritage of their own denomination!

From Pastors to leaders of Theological seminaries, there is an ignorance that abounds! I am afraid it is a willfull ignorance too, and that's what bothers me the most. I have no problem with a person who is simply not aquainted with the facts, but I think it is shamefull when a preacher stands before a crowd of people and perverts the facts about a system of Theology just to make his point seem correct. Oh yeah, and for a Seminary President to not know basic theological terms is an abomination!

Even while I was still an ordained minister in a Pentecostal-Holiness denomination, I knew the differences between Calvinists, Arminians, and hyper-Calvinists! I knew that the Southern Baptist Convention's roots were in Calvinistic theology. And to top it all off, God was even using me to "Reform" the theology of a couple Southern Baptists - even before I was a member of a Southern Baptist church!! One would think that some elementary understanding of these topics (and even denominational history) would be mandatory for a person being ordained as a Baptist minister, or selected as a leader in a Baptist Seminary.

I'm not asking you to blindly accept Reformed Soteriology. I'm just asking for everyone to use the terminology correctly!! It's not too difficult guys! You can go on the internet, log onto Founders.org, read for about 30 minutes, and come out with a fairly decent understanding of the correct definition of Calvinism, Arminianism, and hyper-Calvinism (and maybe a little SBC history too!!!).

Here's the bottom line gentlemen: If a former Pentecostal minister - such as myself - can simply read books and figure out some of these things, having never gone to college or seminary, then surely, those of you who have "doctorates" ought to know a little more about this stuff than I do!

Soli Deo Gloria.

Rhett Kelley