Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

Mike Smith:
Bruce, you sponsored resolutions in 2004 and ’05 at the Southern Baptist Convention regarding education. This year, you sponsored a new resolution that encouraged Southern Baptists to develop an exit strategy from public schools. Tell us more about it.

Bruce Shortt:
The title of this year’s resolution was “Resolution on Developing an Exit Strategy from the Public Schools that Would Give Particular Attention to the Needs of Orphans, Single Parents, and the Disadvantaged.” The inspiration for the resolution came from an op-ed piece by Dr. Albert Mohler, who’s president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. In that article, Dr. Mohler wrote that it’s “time for responsible Southern Baptists to develop an exit strategy from the public schools.”

One purpose of the resolution was to point out that the president of our flagship Southern Baptist seminary acknowledges that the spiritual, moral, and intellectual pathologies of the government school system are now so severe, that the Southern Baptist Convention as a whole should be developing an alternative to the government schools. But the main purpose of the resolution was to begin the process of getting the SBC to understand that by creating a Christian education alternative to the government schools, the SBC would be embarking on the most important evangelism initiative in its history. One encouraging sign is that Dr. Frank Page, the new president of the SBC, recently said in an interview that his prayer was that more churches would start Christian schools, both for families who can and for those who cannot afford Christian education.

Mike:
Bruce, next time tell us what happened at the convention. And until then, I’m Mike Smith.