Tom Messer to speak at Florida Baptist Convention

Christa Brown sent a head's up that Tom Messer, current pastor of Trinity Baptist Church, will be speaking at the Florida Baptist Convention. Trinity, which used to be in the Southern Baptist Convention, appears to be two stepping its way back in!

Messer will be speaking on 'Transition: Leading the church to adapt for greater effectiveness'.

You can see his picture just below Richard Land, who will be speaking, ironically enough, on the 'Persecution of the American church: welcome to pastoring in a persecuted environment.'

What some call 'accountability' others call 'persecution'. In a subculture where paying your taxes is regarded as 'persecution', I think some women who recently got stoned for adultery (some, for even wearing pants) in the Middle East might beg to differ.

Link: Official website for Florida Baptist Convention.

Christa Brown's article: Tom Messer is speaker for Florida Baptist Convention.

Here's my comment which can be found underneath Christa's article:

I'm really not shocked anymore. Kinda just a bit numb. I'd like to see a convention where every preacher who has ever been accused of molesting children, or covering up molesters, appears on the program. We might moving toward that anyway.

The more they put their heads in the sand, the more this seems to be a reality.

I remember being totally shocked when Jerry Falwell publically admitted he recommended First Baptist Church over Trinity Baptist Church. The recommendation was for Tonya Flynt, who just wrote a book accusing Larry Flynt, Falwell's good friend of molesting her as a toddler.

Everybody denied Falwell and Flynt were friends, until Falwell died, then we learned they were in fact friends. Still, I was thinking, "The guy's independent! Why would he recommend a Southern Baptist church over his own 'non denominational' denomination?"

So. . .I actually called Tonya and mentioned the Gray situation. Remember, this is years before Gray had been arrested. I told her I thought it was really odd he recommend this church over Trinity UNLESS the rumors were true. That Gray molested children, and he did not want to gamble on sending someone, known for speaking out loud against her molestation, to a church pastored by someone involved in that particular crime.

She might have had children during that time also. I'll have to look into that. When you look at this way, Falwell might have spared Larry Flynt's grandchild from possible Gray abuse. Isn't that interesting?

Somewhere around this time frame, Falwell went into the Southern Baptist Convention! In fact, I have a Christian newspaper in the garage where that is a headline. There's an article about Falwell joining the Southern Baptist Convention.

So. . .once upon a time, when Southern Baptist Convention preachers got in trouble, they used to leave and become independent and blame their separation on 'liberalism' and 'apostasy'. Today, when independent Baptists get in trouble, they now seem to RETURN to the Southern Baptist Convention.

Guess birds of a feather must stick together?