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TechnoratiA recent study that found half of Southern Baptist pastors believe in private prayer language stirred debate within the largest Protestant denomination in the nation as some questioned the methodology and the timing of the release.
Tim Rogers, pastor of Yadkin Baptist Church in Statesville, N.C., believes the results of last week's LifeWay Research study are skewed, citing the lack of participants who are Southern Baptist.
"The 20 percent less of SBC (Southern Baptist Convention) Pastors certainly does not seem adequate if this report is, as it reports to be, a survey of the SBC and what they believe about PPL (private prayer language)," Rogers wrote on his latest blog post.
The LifeWay study involved 405 Southern Baptist senior pastors, 600 non-SBC Protestant senior pastors, and 1,004 Protestant laity.
Scott McConnell, associate director of LifeWay Research, however, says all three groups represented were "good sample sizes."
When survey respondents were asked, "Do you believe that the Holy Spirit gives some people the gift of a special language to pray to God privately?" half of SBC pastors said "Yes" and 43 percent said "No" while the rest responded "Don't know."
"We're just reporting facts," said Ed Stetzer, new director of LifeWay Research. "Fifty percent of the people we asked in a well-done, well-crafted survey have answered the question 'Yes, we believe that.'"
Malcolm Yarnell, assistant dean for Theological Studies at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, argued the question is unclear as to its meaning. Among some of the questions he raised, Yarnell posed the greatest problem with the survey question is "its blatant assumption that a 'gift' may be used 'privately.'"
"Paul is quite clear in 1 Corinthians 12:7 that a spiritual gift is for the common good, and he spends much of chapter 14 arguing that speaking gifts must be used only for public edification," stated Yarnell. "Not only is such an equation ('gift' with 'privately') indicative of either an inappropriately constructed or insufficiently educated survey, it suggests an implied contradiction of the Pauline doctrine of spiritual gifts."
LifeWay’s Stetzer explained there is a distinction many make between public vs. private prayer language and "as we asked the question in the survey, I think some would make a distinction between the two (public vs. private).
"I think the broad sense of the public vs. private use is an important distinction."
Yarnell further questioned the timing of the study's release just weeks before the Southern Baptist Convention is scheduled to hold its annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas, June 12-13, when representatives of SBC churches vote on resolutions presented from the floor. One of the resolutions that may be presented is on the issue of private prayer language, which has been a popularly debate topic in the denomination in the past year.
Statesville pastor Rogers also raised suspicion over the date of the release. "Would anyone in their right mind not agree that the timing of the release of this report is strange?"
The issue of the gift of tongues or private prayer language, however, has not been as prominent as it is now, Stetzer indicated.
"I don't think anyone's asked this question before (in the SBC) and part of the reason is it never was the issue that it was before," said Stetzer, who hopes the survey will add to the ongoing discussion on the topic. Continue >>
