Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to attend an event sponsored by the Louisiana chapter of the Conservative Baptist Network featuring Pastor Mike Stone, anticipated 2021 nominee for president of the Southern Baptist Convention.
The next morning, Pastor Mike graciously made the time to sit for a brief interview with me, which I’m making available to you today for informational purposes, especially if you’re Southern Baptist.
I’m sure there are some theological topics on which Pastor Mike and I don’t see eye to eye, so this isn’t meant to be an endorsement of anything that conflicts with my theology as outlined in my Welcome and Statement of Faith tabs, nor is the fact that Pastor Mike is appearing on my blog an endorsement of any of my theology that conflicts with his positions. This interview was simply a service both of us are providing to you so that you may know where Pastor Mike stands on the issues I asked him about.
That being said, as a brother and sister in Christ who share a passion for the sufficiency of Scripture, a disdain for so-called “soft-complementarianism,” and a desire to see the Southern Baptist Convention straighten up and fly right, I feel certain we have far more in common than not. I found Pastor Mike to be a warm and caring brother, and I commend him for taking a firm, biblical stand on some issues which, sad to say, will not earn him any brownie points in certain sectors of the SBC. That takes guts, and I respect that. I thoroughly enjoyed our chat.
Listen in on the audio player above or on my YouTube channel (audio only).
I know some of y’all like transcripts when I post audio. I was not able to transcribe Pastor Mike’s portion of interview, but you may read my questions – as well as a post-interview addendum to Pastor Mike’s answer to question #2 – here.
Many thanks to Pastor Mike Stone, the Conservative Baptist Network, the Louisiana chapter of the Conservative Baptist Network, CBN Steering Council member, Pastor Lewis Richerson, and Benjamin Lesley- producer, for making this interview possible.
Michelle Lesley 
Your question about re-wording the BFM to clarify about women not preaching is spot-on. If there is no precise wording and clarification then there could easily be an event or service where a guest speaker is a woman, and that could be justified as a gray area technicality because she doesn’t hold the office of pastor. I respectfully disagree with his answer.
Do you know the viewpoints of the other potential nominees in general, i.e. whether conservative or progressive?
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I agree, Robin. I don’t know if you saw the addendum to his answer in the link I provided, but he did clarify that if someone else were to propose a change, he would support it.
The other nominees are Ed Litton, Al Mohler, and Randy Adams.
From what I’ve seen from Ed Litton (including his nearly gushing farewell to Beth Moore), he’s a progressive. I would strongly recommend against voting for him.
Al Mohler has been receiving criticism for the past couple of years for flirting with wokeism and allowing CRT to be espoused at Southern. He will probably win due to name recognition and the position he holds.
I don’t know a lot about Randy Adams, but when he was being considered last year, I really appreciated his desire to implement some sort of online voting for the annual meeting. I get the impression his stances would be closer to Mike Stone’s, but I honestly just don’t know much about him.
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Rev. Stone may simply have the attitude that there are so many fires to put out that would take precedence over trying to re-write that section of the BFM this year, so he doesn’t feel the need to initiate it. That’s only speculation on my part. There are fires to put out in the PCA this year, also, and I wouldn’t be surprised at a departure from the denomination of some conservatives after the General Assembly in June. Do you feel something similar could happen in the SBC since there is already a group that has formed (that you cited) of the concerned conservatives? From what I read online in some twitter feeds and other blogs and social media, the progressive faction in these two prominent denominations is not backing off, and there may not be a strong enough pushback from the conservatives. You, yourself, recently wrote something to the effect of not having as much incentive as last year prior to the convention that the progressives can be stopped (my paraphrase) when someone asked you for a convention preparation list. I found that profound that you wrote that since you research deeply and thoroughly. But sometimes, it’s just not worth the huge amount of time it takes to be apprised of all that is being done wrong in the Church these days.
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I think you’re probably correct about Pastor Mike wanting to put out the biggest fires first. That was the impression I had as well.
I couldn’t predict what might happen in the SBC. My feeling is that unless some extremely major sinful thing happens, like a resolution being passed that approves of homosexuality or women pastors or abortion or something like that (none of which I can see happening any time in the foreseeable future) there won’t be a sudden mass exodus of churches. I think what will happen is continuing incrementalism. The SBC will continue taking small steps toward progressivism, and there will be a steady stream of doctrinally sound churches and individuals out the back door. But I could very well be wrong.
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