A Kentucky Baptist pastor has penned a question-and-answer book about the Baptist Faith & Message 2000 to encourage other pastors and teach church members more about its contents.
Seth Carter, senior pastor of First Baptist Church Paintsville, said he was first prompted to consider writing about the BF&M 2000 from a resolution that passed in the Kentucky Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in 2023 that encouraged pastors and other church leaders to preach more frequently on it.
“So many church members were unfamiliar with it,” he said. “I began to act on that in church and after having more intentional conversations finding that to be true in our church. A lot of people knew we had it but that didn’t know what was in it.”
‘More digestible’
That’s how it started for Carter, who began an intentional effort to teach on the BF&M more consistently.
“I wanted to write a catechism to make a long statement of faith more digestible,” he said. “I thought a question-and-answer to be less intimidating. I looked to see if anyone else had done that and couldn’t find one anywhere. That’s when I started working on it.”
His finished product, “Firm Foundations: A Question-and-Answer Guide Through the Baptist Faith and Message,” is a 49-page paperback that asks 150 questions and gives the answers in short form.
The BF&M 2000 is a statement of beliefs adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention in 2000. Before that SBC churches used the BF&M 1963.
The first version was written in 1925. It outlines key tenets of Baptist theology, including the authority of the Bible, the nature of God, salvation and the purpose of the church.
‘Offensive weapon’
“It’s an offensive weapon in teaching us what we believe,” Carter said. “It’s also defensive in guard against false teaching. There are 18 articles altogether. With our non-reading culture, most people are not going to sit down with it and read through it.
“That’s one of the things that prompted the project,” he noted. “We’d give a whole copy to everyone who took our new members class and asked them to read through this document. Hardly [anyone] would read through the whole thing. That prompted me to turn it into a smaller question and answers book.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Mark Maynard and originally published by Kentucky Today.
