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mark dever on reformation

Mark Dever on Reformation in the Southern Baptist Convention

by Matthew Barrett

With the annual Southern Baptist Convention taking place in Phoenix just the other week, I was reminded of an article by Mark Dever from 1997 titled: “Three Reasons to Hope for Further Reformation in the SBC.” I especially appreciate Dever’s emphasis on the Word of God and inerrancy. Here is the introduction to an article that is very insightful:

It is very encouraging to see what is taking place in the seminaries, mission agencies, and many churches in the Southern Baptist Convention. Wonderful changes which a few years ago even the most optimistic among us could not have imagined are now taking place. Reports of these changes have given me a renewed vision for what God is now doing, and may well do in the future. I have a renewed hope for the reformation of the Southern Baptist Convention.

At the time of the sixteenth-century reformation, the motto of the church of Rome was “always the same.” But some of the Christians who came to understand the truth of justification by faith alone adopted another motto: “the reformed church always being reformed according to the Word of God.” This is the kind of reformation I seek and work for in my own life, and in the church I pastor. And this is the kind of continuing reformation I pray for in other churches and in the various agencies of the Southern Baptist Convention. And it is for exactly this kind of reformation that I have increasing hope. Let me share with you three reasons why.

First, I have a hope for a growing reformation within the Southern Baptist Convention because of the content of the Bible. Our family of churches has gone through a wrenching time in the last thirty-five years, climaxing with a time of particular tension throughout the 1980s. The convention has come through on the other side a bit smaller than we might have otherwise been (though it is still vast), more focused, and explicitly committed to recognizing the Bible as the inerrant Word of God. When I consider what it is that the Bible teaches, I am encouraged. I am encouraged to think that this Word of God has been accorded renewed authority in many of our schools and agencies, for our instruction and conviction, for our salvation and edification. I am encouraged to think that if people happily trumpet the Word of God as being inerrant, at some point they must surely sit down and read what it is that God has so certainly said to us. And whenever we sit down and read God’s Word with faith, God speaks clearly to us.

As has been so often said, God creates His people by His Word. It has always been so, and it continues to be that way. As God’s promises are heard and trusted, God’s people respond and move out in faith. As young ministers are taught that the Bible is completely trustworthy, they will give themselves to study it, and God will honor this in the renewal of their minds and hearts, and in the renewal of the churches in which they serve. Our Convention’s clarity on the authority of God’s Word should inevitably be accompanied by a renewed emphasis on the content of that Word, and therein is a source of great hope for the continued reformation of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Read the rest here.

Matthew Barrett is executive editor of Credo magazine. He also writes at Blogmatics.

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