The Waynesboro Baptist Church came to birth on January 8, 1880. It did not become known as the First Baptist Church of Waynesboro until somewhere between 1928-30. This shift in names during the time in which the shift happen is important both historically and theologically. What we are going to see in this very brief sketch of the history of this church is that she would have been born like most other Baptist Churches in the South as a biblically-rooted and theologically sound church whose moorings would have been shaken and reshaped by the emerging tide of liberal theology that was coming to full force in the middle of the twentieth century. This liberal theology in Baptist life had its impact most fully in the larger Baptist churches in urban areas and the First Baptist Churches in county seat towns all across the south. It was emerging between the two wars but did not have its fullest impact until the time from the mid1960’s to the late 1980’s when many seminary graduates, particularly with Ph.D. and Th.D. degrees were bringing their liberal theology to SBC churches most often couched in sermons that were so replete with resplendent language that people could not hear WHAT was being said because they were so enamored by HOW it was being said. But we get ahead of ourselves. Let’s go back to the beginnings of Baptists in the south to see how we got from strongly biblically based churches to the erosion of this base through liberal theology.The Baptist movement in our part of the world came primarily as a result of the movement of two men and their families from Virginian through North Carolina, South Carolina and into Georgia. The first was Shubal Stearns; the second was Daniel Marshall. These two men brought with them a passion for evangelism coupled with a particular theology that they believed was proclaimed in the Bible. They were what we would call today “modified Calvinists.” They believed in the absolute sovereignty of God so much so that no person could be saved apart from the work of the grace of God. But they also believed in the full responsibility of humans so much so that if someone wasn’t saved it was due to their rejection of the Gospel. They were not “hyper-Calvinists” who were the prelude to Primitive Baptists who believed so much in God’s sovereignty that they did no evangelism and missions, but neither were they “Armenian” so that they believed salvation to be totally by human choice so that the work of worship was to move people by whatever means to make that choice. They were true Calvinists, cut out of the cloth that Calvin would have owned. They believed in the sovereignty of God in salvation but with a passion for evangelism that had a profound impact on the way they worshipped. It was lively. It was enthusiastic. It was energetically directed toward the goal of giving glory to God while calling sinners to be saved. These men represented what is known in Baptist life as “the Sandy Creek Tradition.”

They represented one of two major traditions in Baptist life in the South during the late eighteenth and nineteenth century. The other is known as “the Charleston Tradition.” The two were very close theologically, but very different in terms of practice. The former focused on worship for the glory of God that called sinners to repentance. It was worship that exalted God in the context of an evangelistic emphasis. The latter focused on worship that glorified God as defined by intentional and intensive formality. For example, the former would have an “opening prayer,” while the latter would have an “invocation.” The former might sing all kinds of music in worship while the latter used formal hymns and anthems. The former might include shouting and dancing, the latter would be so quiet that a button dropping to the floor from a shirt would be heard throughout the room. Quite expectedly, the former attracted the farmer in the country while the latter attracted the banker in the city. The former turned farmers into preachers while the latter wanted a preacher who was at least educated to the level of the banker.

What is most important to recognize, however, is that these practical differences did not produce divisions between the churches, because the theological orientations were basically the same. The Sandy Creek tradition may have boisterous worship and the Charleston tradition may have something closely akin to liturgy but when the preaching came, they preached with the same conviction with the same commitment to the same truth. Neither tradition doubted the absolute truth of God’s Word. This was the way the church was from the latter part of the eighteenth century through most of the nineteenth century, and then the scene began to shift.

The birth of the Southern Baptist Convention contributed more than a little to this shift both in terms of the reason for its birth and the ecclesiastical results of its birth. Prior to 1845 Baptists in the north and the south were united. They were Biblicists to the core whose theology was more oriented to John Calvin than to any of the other reformers. It was their commitment to basic Biblical Truth and Calvin’s theology that produced their ecclesiology which was a congregational form of church government overseen by elders and deacons. The peculiarities of the Baptists consisted in their strong stand on religious liberty matched only by their aggressiveness in missions and evangelism. It was this issue that was to be the secondary cause of the split between Baptists in the South and Baptists in the north. The primary cause of the split between the two bodies was slavery.
Although it is still today a source of embarrassment to Baptists in the South or “Southern Baptists” we did not emerge into being in May of 1845 out of some great moving of the Holy Spirit. We came to be because of pride. The Mission Boards that oversaw the appointment of missionaries was located in the north. A southern slave owner applied for appointment as a “home missionary.” He was denied appointment on the basis of his holding slaves. He chose to fight his failure to be appointed and to make the holding of slaves the issue of debate. Baptist leadership in the north held their ground basing what they believed on what the Bible taught. Baptist leaders in the south argued that it was not wrong to “hold slaves” so long as those who were slaves were treated properly. The battle was joined not just between south and north but between powerful men on both sides of this issue who were not accustomed to not getting what they wanted. The slavery issued quickly became the cover for the larger issues of pride and power. When it became clear that the powers in the south were going to lose on principle, they called a meeting in Augusta, Georgia in May of 1845 and the outcome was the birth of the Southern Baptist Convention. What must not be forgotten because it was not lost on the men of power who were the leaders in the birth of the SBC is that the issue that gave birth to the SBC was lost in the desire for control of the church and the convention due to pride.

Thus, it should not surprise us that from 1845 through the middle of the twentieth century the primary form of church government among Southern Baptists was what it has been among all the congregational churches in the new world: it was a congregationally participatory form of government led by elders and deacons. But for those men who had led the fight with the Baptists in the north over the slavery issue, the issue for them in the fight quickly became the issue for the future. The issue was control. And what followed was a shift in church government across the SBC that came about the same time that another shift was coming. One could not have come to be without the other. The other shift was away from the absolute authority of Scripture as Scripture began to be seen as more the work of men seeking to understand God than the Word of God given to give explicit direction to men. Since the both Testaments of the Bible are so explicit about the proper government of the church, the only way that Baptists in the South could by the 1920’s begin to move away from elder/deacon led churches was that the churches were being led away from Holy Scripture as their sole authority. Liberal theology was beginning to creep into the church and a generation later (late 1950’s), it would begin to flood into the church, and would remain as the force in Southern Baptist life particularly in urban churches and county seat town First Baptist Churches until the middle of the 1980’s and what is known now as the “conservative resurgence” began (the conservative resurgence actually had its beginning at the SBC annual meeting in Virginia Beach in 1976).

Remember that I argued earlier that the two basic traditions that shaped Baptist life in the south, the Sandy Creek and Charleston, brought vastly different expressions in worship but were not dramatically different in theology. These traditions remained in Baptist life and do until today. What has changed is that they now represent not only different practices in the worship and work of the church, they represent radically different theological orientations. The end result is a deep divide between the two that is virtually irreconcilable due to the radically different perspectives on the Bible as the Word of God. Prior to the middle of the twentieth century the difference between the Sandy Creek Tradition and the Charleston tradition was the difference between “ardor and order” (McBeth). But from the 1950’s forward the difference is between positions on and perspectives of the Bible as the Word of God. Most of the Sandy Creek Tradition see the Bible as the inerrant, infallible, fully sufficient Word of God. Most of the Charleston Tradition see the Bible as a book written by humans to help us understand God, but they would not see it as inerrant, infallible, and fully sufficient. Remember that those in the Sandy Creek Tradition liked emotion and enthusiasm in worship with a passionate preaching of the Word of God that pushed the point for people to be saved. The Charleston Tradition did not enjoy emotional and enthusiastic worship. They wanted order and formality with a preacher whose words demonstrated both his intelligence and his familiarity with the Bible enough to say what it said without going to far. For example, this person would preach the passage about Jesus calming the storm and suggest that He can calm our storms but would show his intelligence by offering scientific explanations about what happened that day knowing that nobody in his congregation would be foolish enough to believe that a man spoke and a storm stopped! The Sandy Creek folks would just say it, “Jesus spoke and the storm stopped because He is the Lord of nature,” and the whole church would shout “hallelujah.”

Life among Baptists changed in the 1980’s. FBC Waynesboro began less than a generation after the birth of the SBC. From her earliest days until the middle of the twentieth century she was served by men who would have been of the Charleston tradition prior to the middle of the twentieth century. These men would have been men who believed in the absolute authority of Scripture and preached it as the Word of God. The difference would have been seen in the style of worship, more order than ardor. But this church like all other churches in the SBC began to change in the middle of the twentieth century under the influence of liberal theology. The Bible ceased to be seen as the inerrant and infallible Word of God. Those who saw it as that either left and went elsewhere or endured because they liked the order rather than the ardor. This state of affairs would remain the case with only an occasional interruption when the church called a pastor or two that were more Sandy Creek than Charleston and these men did not last long. The Lord called them elsewhere!! We find now in the SBC the Charleston tradition only in a few urban churches and some county seat town First Baptist Churches. Most SBC churches who do not affirm inerrancy have affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. This new entity is an attempt to preserve the Baptist Principles of religious liberty, local church autonomy, priesthood of the believer etc. in a Southern Baptist Context while being clear that those who participate with the CBF do not affirm inerrancy which means that they do not affirm Scripture as the sole authority. For example, the CBF supports women as pastors arguing that the stance of the Bible on this matter was the result of the oppression of women in the first century world and though not yet made public, there are private discussions underway even as these words are being written concerning the stance of the CBF on homosexuality believing that what the Bible says about this issue was culturally conditioned as well.

FBC Waynesboro is today a unique and peculiar blend of both the Sandy Creek and Charleston Traditions. We affirm without apology the absolute inerrancy, infallibility and total sufficiency of Scripture. We believe in ardor within order in our worship. We are passionate about seeing souls saved and joining God in His work of declaring the Gospel to every ethnic group. We practice congregational government in the context of leadership by elders and deacons. This means simply that the church is not governed by majority vote. The church is led by men who seek God through His inerrant Word and seek to make decisions about matters in ways that honor His Word and exalt His Name. We seek to keep the congregation informed about decisions that are made and invite them into the process on issues of major consequence, e.g.; the call of a pastor, the purchase of property or the construction of new facilities.

FBC Waynesboro has been taken by the Spirit of God from a beginning that would have been rooted in the authority of the Word of God through a season where the Word of God was just one factor in who we were and what we did to a time that is closer to who we were when we began than we have ever been. May the great God who called us into being preserve the integrity of our biblical and doctrinal commitments and prosper us in our desire to bring glory to His Name by being a faithful witness to the nations.

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