Dictionary.com says:

1 A Pharisee is member of an ancient Jewish sect that emphasized strict interpretation and observance of the Mosaic law in both its oral and written form. 2 A hypocritically self-righteous person.

As I studied the IMB BOT Briefs, I can't help but wonder are we becoming pharisaical? We call ourselves people of the Bible, but we keep adding rules and regulations for people to serve in our churches, seminaries and on the mission field. I thought the Bible was our guide. We had the Baptist Faith and Message 1925, then 1963 and now 2000. Now, I'm all about being relevant, but why do we think we need to keep changing our rules? The Pharisees name means "to separate." It seems that the new rules for the IMB are meant to separate. Over the last 2 decades we have become separtists. We have fired fine people from our seminaries. We have made fools of ourselves by boycotting Disney. All that did is make those who don't understand Christianity think we hate "Mickey Mouse." Now we are making the qualifications for being a missionary even narrower. We are excluding people who are in our churches from serving God. We are alienating ourselves from other like-minded believers. We are not accepting baptisms from certain churches if we don't like their theology. God help us! We are becoming elitist and snobby. We are becoming Pharisees!