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The Independent Baptist Fellowship International (IBFI) is an Independent Baptist fellowship.
The founding of the IBFI resulted from a controversy involving Arlington Baptist College of Arlington, Texas, an affiliate of the World Baptist Fellowship (WBF) after Raymond W. Barber, then President of the WBF, lost a lawsuit against the college. [1] The lawsuit was an attempt to force the Arlington Baptist College to recognize its parent/child relationship to the WBF, revert to its original name, Bible Baptist Seminary, and return to the original intent of its founders, J. Frank Norris and Louis Entzminger. He claimed that by seeking accreditation, the Arlington Baptist College was straying from its original purpose of training preachers. Barber moved forward with the lawsuit even though an investigator found that the Bible Baptist Seminary Board of Directors had created a new junior college in conjunction with the seminary, the seminary was allowed to die and the Arlington Baptist Junior College became the Arlington Baptist College.
Although it was not a major issue during the controversy, Barber charged the Arlington Baptist College with teaching the doctrines of grace, often called Calvinism, and said that some of its faculty members were "hyper" Calvinists. [2] It was a strategy that worked, bringing together a strong following who shared his concerns. Barber's actions resulted in his becoming a catalyst that drew 271 disenchanted pastors and missionaries together to create the new organization on May 10, 1984, at Fort Worth, Texas. [3]
IBFI was careful to incorporate all of its institutions into one unit. It created a Bible institute, Norris Bible Baptist Institute, a monthly publication, The Searchlight , and a mission agency, all of which were under one corporation and headed by a board of directors. It elected Raymond Barber, Randy Cotton, Arvie Jernigan, Bill Slayton and Jack Warren as its first board of directors. [4] The early years were aggressive, drawing support from 327 churches for its school, publication and 21 missionary families. [5]
After a few years of tremendous momentum, the organization began to have internal squabbles. Barber was elected to the office of the president year after year without any challenge whatsoever. Finally, someone stood up in a meeting and nominated another pastor to that office. In a ruse, fifteen minutes before his term expired, Barber resigned. Again, his strategy worked. He was reelected by a Landslide vote. But that incident proved to be a foreshadow of things to come. In "A View of the Norris Phenomenon", [6] the author points to the common problem of egocentricity among fundamentalist leaders as the cause of IBFI's decline. In less than seven years, Barber had badgered Jack Warren, editor of The Searchlight, and Young Houston, director of missions, into resigning.
Most of the original pastors soon left IBFI for various reasons. A new group of ministers, who were mostly anti-organizational, came into the ranks. The Bible institute became a seminary, the mission agency was reduced to a clearing house and the by-laws were replaced by a document that disenfranchised the supporting churches. Financial problems began to plague the organization and enrollment in the seminary consistently lagged between 10 and 25 students. A deal was eventually made for Crown College in Knoxville, Tennessee, to take over the seminary. Critics blame the questionable funding of an expensive building on IBFI property, called the "Raymond Barber Conference Center", for the fellowship's ultimate failure. [7]
In its prime, Arlington Baptist College had a consistently expanding enrollment that was close to 1,000 students. [8] Twenty-five years after the split, total enrollment for both schools was under 200 students annually.[ citation needed ]
Reformed Baptists are Baptists that hold to a Calvinist soteriology (salvation). The first Calvinist Baptist church was formed in the 1630s. The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith was written along Calvinist Baptist lines. The name “Reformed Baptist” dates from the latter part of the 20th Century to denote Baptists who have adopted elements of Reformed theology, but retained Baptist ecclesiology.
The Baptist Bible Fellowship International (BBFI) is a conservative Baptist Christian denomination. It is headquartered in Springfield, Missouri.
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John Franklyn Norris was a Baptist preacher and controversial Christian fundamentalist.
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Arlington Baptist University is a private Baptist Bible college in Arlington, Texas. It is the official education institution of the World Baptist Fellowship and it offers both undergraduate and graduate degree programs.
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The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) is a Baptist theological institute in Louisville, Kentucky. It is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. The seminary was founded in 1859 in Greenville, South Carolina, where it was at first housed on the campus of Furman University. The seminary has been an innovator in theological education, establishing one of the first Ph.D. programs in religion in the year 1892. After being closed during the Civil War, it moved in 1877 to a newly built campus in downtown Louisville and moved to its current location in 1926 in the Crescent Hill neighborhood. In 1953, Southern became one of the few seminaries to offer a full, accredited degree course in church music. For more than fifty years Southern has been one of the world's largest theological seminaries, with an FTE enrollment of over 3,300 students in 2015.
Beginning in 1979, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) experienced an intense struggle for control of the organization. Its initiators called it the conservative resurgence while its detractors labeled it the fundamentalist takeover. It was launched with the charge that the seminaries and denominational agencies were dominated by liberals. The movement was primarily aimed at reorienting the denomination away from a liberal trajectory.
Heartland Baptist Bible College is a private independent Baptist Bible college in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Before 1998, the college was located in San Dimas, California, and was known as Pacific Coast Baptist Bible College.
The First Baptist Church of Manila, also known as FBCM or FirstBap, is a church established by the pioneering of the United States missionaries in the early 1900s. The church had, at first, U.S. missionaries for its pastor, but consequently, with the independence of the Philippines on July 4, 1946, the church had its first Filipino pastor, the late Pastor Antonio Ormeo. FBCM's current senior pastor, who took Pastor Ormeo's place, is Pastor Ebenezer T. Nacita.
Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary is an independent Baptist seminary in Allen Park, Michigan, operated in association with the Inter-City Baptist Church in Allen Park. The institution, which was established in 1976, enrolls men for graduate programs in preaching and pastoral theology, leading to the Master of Divinity (M.Div) and Master of Theology (Th.M.) degrees.
The Toronto Baptist Seminary and Bible College is a Reformed Baptist theological college in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The seminary trains pastors for the Sovereign Grace Fellowship of Canada, the Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches in Canada, and other Baptist churches in Canada and elsewhere.
Manahawkin Baptist Church, also known as the Free Church of Manahawkin, is a historic Church in the Manahawkin section of Stafford Township in Ocean County, New Jersey. The Church was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 3, 1973, for its significance in education, military history, and religion.
The Hawaii Pacific Baptist Convention (HPBC) is a group of churches affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention located in the U.S. state of Hawaii and other pacific regions. Headquartered in Honolulu, it is made up of 138 churches on 11 islands in 6 Baptist associations.
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