TONGUE WAGGING

Those who want to go to San Antonio for a resolution that speaking in tongues in not Biblical might be shocked by a survey on that subject from LifeWay Research. Remember that anything with "LifeWay" on it is SBC stuff, like the old Baptist Book Store, which is not the LifeWay store. (Even the convention does not want people to know it is Southern Baptist.)

Anyway, this survey revealed that about half of Southern Baptist pastors believe the Holy Spirit gives some people a special prayer language from the Lord. Dwight McKissic has a lot more support than Paige Patterson thought he did.

This survey included 405 senior pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention and 600 non-SBC senior pastors. (No word on whether the non-senior pastors had to ask the senior pastors how to respond.)

43 percent of the pastors said the Holy Spirit does not give a private prayer language. So, it looks like Dwight beats Paige on the numbers at least.

Seven percent didn't know (and said "I'm not a theologian, just a pastor.) I'm surprised that number wasn't higher. Also, no word on how many pastors couldn't be reached for the survey because they were out playing golf.

In keeping with those numbers, 41 percent of SBC pastors identify themselves as "cessationists". The definition of that may have been skewed, however, as they discussed "those who believe the spiritual gifts, including tongues, have ceased." Cessationists don't generally believe all spiritual gifts have ceased, just the miraculous ones.

Seven percent of those surveyed said they were not Cessationists and believed the Union should stay together.

I have to say I'm not sure it is worth the time and attention of the convention to discuss this issue, especially under the guise of coming up with a rule to prevent it. Baptists are divided over it and it is not a primary issue. However, it might detract the Fundamentalists from trying to kick out the Calvinists. That would allow me to teach Sunday School for another year.