Interest in the convention

It is interesting to me to see what others around the country who are outside of the Southern Baptist Convention believe to be the crucial events of our upcoming annual meeting. Those of us who are involved in the life of the convention seem to be caught up in issues pertaining to Private Prayer Language, baptism policies and the exclusion of certain individuals from active participation in the convention. It seems, however, that those outside the convention seem to be focused on other issues entirely. I have been interviewed twice in the past week. The first interview was for an article that appeared over the weekend in the USA Today. The second interview was by Focus on the Family for their "Family News in Focus" news piece that was released on radio stations across the country today. Both interviews, interestingly enough, were focused on our convention's failure to achieve 1,000,000 baptisms last year and our response to it at this year's meeting. There was also some interest in the resolution about public schools, but essentially zero interest was expressed about the issues that we have spent copious time going round and round on.

I'm curious as to what the rest of you who read this think about the upcoming meeting. Are we focusing on the wrong things or has the rest of the world simply not paid enough attention to notice what is really important in our meetings? Have we missed the boat and made minor, insignificant issues to be ones that are capturing too much of our attention?

To read the USA Today article, click here.

To listen to the Focus on the Family broadcast, download here (running time, aprox 6 minutes) or click on the player below.

[audio:http://friesville.net/audio/family.mp3]