We’re less than an hour away from the final session of the 2006 Southern Baptist Convention. And if the rehearsal is any indication, it’s going to be loud. Casting Crowns will be performing.

This morning, Tom Ascol, of Founders Ministries, moved that the messengers be allowed to vote on whether or not to consider his resolution on integrity in church membership. You can find the text of the resolution at Founders blog.

The resolution dealt with truthful reporting of membership numbers; in other words, don’t count the members you haven’t seen in years and who show no interest in maintaining a relationship with your church other than to keep their names on the role. It was an important resolution that was declined by the Committee on Resolutions for some reason, despite the fact that they allowed resolutions on the consumption of alcohol, illegal immigration, North Korea, etc. It is sad that really important resolutions didn’t make it past the committee. It didn’t make it past the messengers either, unfortunately.

But, aside from the defeat of the motion, what was far more troubling was the reason the committee have as to why they declined the motion in the first place. Dr. Tom French said that we “would not want to cull the Sunday School membership roles of people who we’re not attending because they represent the greatest prospect for evangelism.” Really? In other words, we shouldn’t hold our members accountable. Well, I actually think we should.

This is an important issue that I hope is revisited. Pray that it will be. At least if we’re going to consider altogether unnecessary resolutions let us consider meaningful ones as well!

I’ve posted some negative stuff on the convention so far because that’s what I immediately reacted to. But, there was a lot of good stuff, too, to be sure. I’ll post on that soon. We’re about to begin.