Outgoing Southern Baptist President Takes Swipe at Bloggers

In my last post I explained how bloggers recently had a major and unexpected impact on the politics of the Southern Baptist Convention. The response of Baptist officials was typical. Even as mainstream media pundits bash the bloggers, so did the outgoing Southern Baptist President.

Here is an excerpt from the sermon of Bobby Welch, who just finished his term as president of the SBC, as reported in BPNews.net:

Welch said he’d been wondering about Southern Baptists and that if “we’d spend less time on these websites that we’d be able to spend more time witnessing?

“Do you think if we spent less time blogging we might have more time to do some baptizing?

“Do you think if we spent less time fumbling around with those computers we might have more converts?”

Welch advised the crowd not to gloat that he’s chiding “them bloggin’ boys. Why, you run around with that wireless telephone up in your ear all day long like a pacifier.

“You think if we’d spend less time with those wireless telephones and more time on the street we wouldn’t win more people to Jesus?”

The article did not mention whether or not Bobby Welch said anything about how the bloggers had impacted the election of the next president, a man Welch did not prefer, apparently. I expect he left this out. But I find it curious, and telling, that in the aftermath of the SBC election, Welch decided to go after the bloggers.

It would be easy to dismiss Welch's opposition to blogging as the ravings of an icon of an aging generation. The world has changed, and Welch is not happy about it. Somebody moved his cheese, as it were. But I want to pause and think about what Welch said. His questions deserve serious answers, I believe, even if he meant them as rhetorical slaps in the faces of uppity Southern Baptist bloggers. Moreover, I think Welch isn't entirely out of line in what he says. In my next post I'll begin to look critically at his comments.