SBC "One Size Fits All"

“One Size Fits All”: An Idea Whose Time Has Come and Gone!

The last 25 years of commercial DBMS development can be summed up in a single phrase: “One size fits all”. This phrase refers to the fact that the traditional DBMS architecture (originally designed and optimized for business data processing) has been used to support many data-centric applications with widely varying characteristics and requirements.

In this paper, we argue that this concept is no longer applicable to the database market, and that the commercial world will fracture into a collection of independent database engines, some of which may be unified by a common front-end parser. We use examples from the stream-processing market and the datawarehouse market to bolster our claims. We also briefly discuss other markets for which the traditional architecture is a poor fit and argue for a critical rethinking of the current factoring of systems services into products.
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Unless you are a Database Manager and a Software Application Developer like me (Yea... I'm a Computer Nerd in my other life) then the above paragraphs probably mean absolutely nothing to you.

But as I read this paper by Michael Stonebraker it occurred to me that much of what Michael was saying about the database market is also true about the SBC... “One Size Fits All” is an Idea Whose Time Has Come and Gone!

Like it or not Southern Baptist are a diverse group of believers... and as someone recently said concerning the diverse group gathered at the 2008 Annual Convention in Indianapolis, Indiana “We are all Conservatives”. Being a Southern Baptist Conservative does not mean that we all agree on everything but as Dr Danny Akin recently commented at this Convention “there will be no retreat from or compromise of the great theological truths and Baptist distinctives that unite us.”

A call for diversity and unity within the SBC is not a call for the inclusion of Liberals who reject the inerrancy and sufficiency of the Scriptures (that battle has long been won)... it is however a call for the full inclusion of other Conservatives who differ (sometimes passionately) on third tier issues like alcohol, baptism, and church polity.

A “One Size Fits All” ideology is nothing less than an attempt by some in the SBC to Lord-it over their fellow Southern Baptist Believers. A “One Size Fits All” ideology says I am in charge and I am going to impose my will and my convictions upon all Southern Baptist. A “One Size Fits All” ideology is a dangerously delusion that leads to the narrowing of the parameters of cooperation. And history shows us that a “One Size Fits All” ideology has destroyed many denominations in the past.

If the Spirit of Cooperation among Conservative Southern Baptist is not regained, and the “One Size Fits All” attitude of the Fundamentalist that has been quietly gaining ground in the SBC is allowed to spread and prevail in our institutions (IMB, Florida Baptist Convention) then history will look back on the SBC and wag their tongs... the SBC will become a byword for arrogance and what might have been... but now is lost.

For the SBC “One Size Fits All”: is an Idea Whose Time Has Come and Gone!

Grace Always,
Greg