I don’t disagree with you; perhaps it is a little odd compared to the “average” Baptist church; I guess it makes me glad I don’t go to an “average” one. I’ve seen the edges of congregationalism in our assembly, and they’ve always been used for divisiveness and to cause trouble; never usually for good ends.

Certainly. I wouldn’t be a very good Calvinist if I didn’t believe that, on some level, God put the right guy there for that church. It just seems that congregationalism is one of the hills that Baptists are ready to die on, so it’s odd to see it almost subverted like this.

I know that at our church, when our current pastor was called (before my time), it was a similar circumstance; he was asked to come in as a supply while the search committee was doing a bigger search. In the end, they were convinced that he was the right man for the job, and after some prayer, he agreed with them. I don’t think they intentionally stacked the deck in his favor; I think the Lord just led them that way.

So I can’t really speak to what happened in B’ham; however, I’d like to think the best of them, that the Lord used the process tobring the right man to the congregation, even without an “election” between two candidates.