Will you be attending the Southern Baptist Convention in New Orleans this year? I am interested in any news or updates on the Convention. Do you know where I can get reliable information?
The 2023 annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention will be held June 13-14 at the Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, Louisiana. The actual business and voting will take place Tuesday, the 13th and Wednesday, the 14th. Ancillary events and activities will take place Saturday June 10 – Wednesday, June 14th. (See the Convention website for more details.)
Yes, Lord willing, I am planning to attend, at least the 13th and 14th. I will probably do some pop up “meet and greets” at the convention center for anyone who would like to stop by and say hello. Those were a lot of fun last year, and meeting so many of you was one of the best things about the ’22 Convention. The timing and location of these will be impromptu, and I will announce them only on Twitter, so be sure to follow me to catch those announcements.
Over the past couple of years, I have written detailed articles (like this one, this one, and this one) in anticipation of the annual meeting to keep my readers informed on the issues and events, and to encourage them to vote biblically. Many thanks to those who have contacted me this year to ask about a similar article for 2023, and have kindly mentioned how helpful previous years’ articles were. For a variety of reasons, I’ve decided against writing an article about this year’s Convention. Other than this one, that is. 🙂
I would recommend following these ministries, organizations, and accounts on Twitter (or wherever you can) for reliable information and a biblical perspective (except Baptist Press) about the latest happenings in the SBC:
Baptist Press (website) (they’re slanted progressive, so you’ll have to filter it through a biblical lens, but they do at least put most of the major happenings out there)
I would strongly suggest following these accounts on Twitter rather than another platform because a lot of information comes out in interpersonal conversations rather than just in links to blog posts and such.
One item of business that is unfolding is a proposed amendment to the SBC constitution (not the BFM) that would exclude churches with women “pastors” from being in friendly cooperation with the SBC. This includes women who bear the title of pastor, even if they’re not functioning as pastors (e.g. “Women’s Pastor” “Children’s Pastor”) as well as women who are functioning as pastors even if they don’t bear the title of pastor (e.g. “Worship Leader” “Director of Education and Discipleship”). Churches with women in these positions or bearing these titles would not be allowed to “join” the SBC. If such a church is already a “member” of the SBC, it would be disfellowshipped (excommunicated) from the SBC.
At the moment, it has not been determined whether or not messengers will get to vote on this amendment. There is a letter of support pastors can sign, and you can get much more information at the SBC Amendment website.
The spotlight issue is going to be Rick Warren’s challenge of the Executive Committee’s decision to disfellowship (cut ties with) the “church” he “pastored” for over forty years – Saddleback, in Lake Forest, California. Saddleback currently has husband and wife “co-pastors” at the helm (appointed by Rick Warren prior to his retirement).
Earlier this year, the Executive Committee announced that Saddleback had been disfellowshipped for this reason, causing quite the stir among Southern Baptists in the know. Less than a year ago at the 2022 Convention, the head of the Credentials Committee, which is responsible for assessing whether or not a church seems to be in friendly cooperation with the SBC, proposed that messengers approve a year long study committee so the CC could figure out what a pastor is.
But apparently, they managed to figure it out without the study committee and quickly determined that Saddleback is, indeed, not closely enough aligned with the Baptist Faith and Message (the SBC’s statement of faith) to remain in fellowship with the SBC.
Conspicuously quickly, that is. Some have suggested that this was a strategic move designed to maneuver Rick Warren (or in collusion with him) into challenging the disfellowshipping. If he can successfully convince the messengers (voting attendees) to vote to overturn the decision (and judging from the standing ovation they gave him after his 6 minute, out of order, ode to himself last year, that’s very likely), the four other churches that were disfellowshipped at the same time as Saddleback can push to have their decisions overturned. And, assuming they’re successful, how much time and energy do you think the CC is going to put into any future complaints about other churches with women pastors? (None. That’s how much.) Not long after that, they’ll amend the BFM and remove the part above about women being pastors.
And that’s how the approval of women pastors is going to end up codified into SBC policy. It’s not a stretch. I think the first time I said that the SBC would affirm women “pastors” within five years was last year. Barring a certifiable miracle, I still believe that.
Now, just because that’s going to be the spotlight issue doesn’t mean that’s all you have to worry about. The whole abuse issue (Guidepost, the ARITF, etc.) is going to be another fairly major issue as well. Plus, there are going to be people who are counting on messengers being so distracted by Warrengate and the abuse advocacy grifters that they won’t be paying attention to any other issues. Keep your eyes and ears open, and pay attention. I’d bet my bottom dollar somebody’s going to try to pull a fast one with some sort of unbiblical issue while everybody’s out of the room.
So, if you haven’t already, talk to your pastor about becoming a messenger, get to New Orleans in June and…
Read or listen carefully to anything that’s up for a vote, make sure you understand it correctly, and vote according to Scripture.
Be in the room for every vote.
Vote against anything Rick Warren / Saddleback proposes
Vote forMike Stone for president. (God bless him, he is not only godly but courageous and tenacious to boot.)
Support the constitutional amendment to disfellowship churches with women pastors (read it carefully before voting – sometimes items like this are re-worded from the original)
Don’t just blindly trust whoever’s at the podium or let them tug at your heartstrings. Listen, engage your brain, and think critically, biblically, and objectively about the issue.
…and prepare yourself to lose, and lose big time. I was prepared to lose every vote last year. And we did. And it still took a spiritual and emotional toll.
And it was worth it. I would do it all over again – which I kinda am, since I’ll be there again this year.
It’s worth it to know that one day I’ll stand before the Lord and say (speaking only for myself and my own conscience) about this moment, “Lord, by Your grace and strength, I didn’t give up. I did my best with what You gave me in order to honor and glorify You.”.
Won’t you join me in June in New Orleans?
If you have a question about: a Bible passage, an aspect of theology, a current issue in Christianity, or how to biblically handle a family, life, or church situation, comment below (I’ll hold all questions in queue {unpublished} for a future edition of The Mailbag) or send me an e-mail or private message. If your question is chosen for publication, your anonymity will be protected.
OK, y’all. Dance in the aisles with me. Barring anything out of the ordinary, I’m planning for this post to be my last Southern Baptist Convention-related content for quite a while. Thanks for hanging in there with me over the past few months of my wall to wall coverage of SBC shenanigans, especially if you’re not Southern Baptist (You people are just gluttons for punishment, aren’t you? :0) ).
Thank you for your prayers as (and after!) I attended the SBC annual meeting in Anaheim last month. The absolute best part of the trip was spending time with my daughter (who went with me and represented her church), the other members of my church family who went as messengers, and dear friends from other parts of the country whom I don’t get to see very often.
Also phenomenal was getting to meet so many of you who also attended and took time out of your busy schedules to stop by one of my “pop up meet & greets” to say hello. There are still many good, godly people in the SBC, and it was a pleasure and an encouragement to chat with you.
With my sweet friend, Jen Buck.
coral aloe
yellow hibiscus
She finally got the window seat she wanted!
By now, most of you have probably heard about the more publicized “highlights” of the Convention (such as Rick Warren’s ode to himself – Ick. Don’t get me started.) But I didn’t want to walk away from this whole thing and leave a bunch of loose ends. So let’s box everything up neatly with a little wrap up before we stick SBC22 on the closet shelf way, way, waaaay back there in the corner.
Recently, I had the pleasure of sitting down and discussing my experience at the annual meeting with one of my pastors, Travis McNeely, for his new podcast, At the Crossroads. (You might remember I’ve featured some of Travis’ excellent work before.) Be sure to go subscribe to At the Crossroads on Travis’ YouTube channel or on your favorite podcast platform.
I think the previous episode Travis released – with another of my pastors, Laramie Minga, about his SBC22 experience – is excellent. You’ll want to listen in as Laramie talks about the worship and music aspect of the annual meeting along with his encounter with a female senior “pastor” of an SBC church, along with her two female deacons, who were representing their church as messengers in Anaheim.
In addition to these, if you’d like further details and more perspectives on SBC22, I commend to you the following:
In the past, I’ve received some responses/comments on this issue from Christians who seem very angry that anybody is still in the SBC. While I share your righteous anger at the sin being committed in the SBC (and at those committing it), please don’t let your anger spill over onto your brothers and sisters who are still attempting to navigate this situation in a godly way in the context of their own families and local churches. Angry/accusatory comments will not be published.
“How could any doctrinally sound Christian possibly stay in the Southern Baptist Convention after all of this?”
“I’ve been watching what’s going on in the SBC. I know all SBC churches are autonomous, but, after what I’ve seen, I’m now suspicious of the doctrine of any church that decides to stay in the SBC. As a doctrinally sound Christian, I’ll never set foot in another SBC church.”
“If you don’t like what’s going on in the SBC, why don’t you just leave? If you stay in, you have no right to complain!”
This is just a representative sampling of the scores of comments and questions I’ve received and seen over the past couple of months regarding Christians remaining in Southern Baptist churches, and Southern Baptist churches remaining in the Southern Baptist Convention.
Here’s a blow by blow (see “Additional Resources” section) of the specifics of the 2022 annual meeting of the SBC which took place last month in Anaheim. After reading about it, maybe you’ll be scratching your head and asking some of these same questions.
I’m kinda scratching my own head about how to answer, because, to be perfectly transparent, I have some of these same questions.
I’ve been Southern Baptist since the day I was born. It’s not like I just jumped on this turnip truck last week. I’ve been watching the downward spiral of the SBC for years, and it’s only picking up speed.
I’m neither a prophet, nor the son of a prophet, but I can tell you this (maybe from years of experience studying the culture of false teachers, false doctrine, and apostate churches) – without God directly intervening in a miraculous way, the SBC is not coming back from this. We are not going to turn anything around at next year’s Convention in New Orleans. The biblical side of the aisle will continue to lose and the unbiblical side of the aisle will continue to win. The worldly powers that be in the SBC are going to keep pursuing this course of downgrade until it hits rock bottom. I see unconditional acceptance of female “pastors” happening in the next 5-8 years. Acceptance of homosexuality will be next.
The SBC is *not* coming back from this. We are not going to turn anything around at next year’s Convention in New Orleans.
I hope I’m wrong. No one will rejoice more loudly than I if I’m wrong. But I don’t think it’s going to shake out that way.
So, if it were as easy as pushing a button or snapping my fingers, I, as an individual, would have been out of the SBC about 5+ years ago.
But it’s not that simple, so maybe I’d better explain.
The first thing that’s imperative to understanding why your doctrinally sound friend might be staying in the SBC is our doctrine of the autonomy of the local church. The SBC isn’t technically a denomination, like Presbyterians or Lutherans. We do not have a hierarchy that rules over every church or organization under its purview. The SBC is a voluntary cooperative of individual, autonomous churches.
When we first got started back in 1845, the main idea was for all these little tiny, far flung rural churches to band together to pool their resources to send out and support missionaries, because they couldn’t afford to do so individually. And that’s still one of our main purposes today. But we didn’t set up a governing hierarchy. Each church governed itself as it saw fit according to Scripture and congregational conscience. The leadership structure we now have in place is basically for the purpose of administrating the business (properties, entities, money, etc.) of the Convention as directed by the churches. We are a “bottom up,” not “top down,” organization. The president of the SBC isn’t the “Baptist Pope”. The Executive Committee isn’t an ecclesiastical court. The annual meeting isn’t some sort of SBC legislature handing down edicts that every Southern Baptist church and individual is required to obey. In theory, every SBC church could disagree with and operate in opposition to virtually everyone and everything at the national, state, and local level of the SBC, and still be a member in good standing of all three. Local churches govern themselves.
Next, you need to understand that most Southern Baptists aren’t Southern Baptists because they woke up one morning, did a comparative analysis of the doctrines of all denominations, liked SBC doctrine the best, and, thus, went in search of an SBC church to join. Usually, it’s a) someone was born and raised Southern Baptist and she agrees with SBC doctrine and theology, so she hasn’t been compelled to (or can’t) find a better denomination and leave the SBC, or, b) someone who, for whatever reason, is looking for a new church, and the most doctrinally sound church she can find in her area is a Southern Baptist church (which is not uncommon). For many of us, it’s a combination of both.
In other words, Southern Baptist individuals aren’t Southern Baptist because they set out to join a denomination. They’re Southern Baptist because they joined a local church. And because that local church is a member of the SBC, that individual is now Southern Baptist, too, whether she wants to be or not.
So when you ask a Southern Baptist individual, “If you don’t like the SBC, why don’t you just leave it?” it’s not like asking her to cancel her Netflix subscription and opt for Hulu instead. You’re not asking her to write a letter of resignation to some impersonal national organization and stop paying her membership dues. You’re asking her to leave herlocal church. A church which may have been her spiritual family for decades. A church which might be perfectly doctrinally sound. In her area, it might be the most doctrinally sound church available, and you’re asking her to leave it to go to a less doctrinally sound church, just to cut ties with the SBC.
When you ask a Southern Baptist individual, “If you don’t like the SBC, why don’t you just leave it?” it’s not like asking her to cancel her Netflix subscription and opt for Hulu instead. You’re asking her to leave her *local church*.
So, considering all the Southern Baptists I know and have heard from, and taking all of the above into account, there are three main categories of people who are still in the SBC that I’d like to take a moment to address, and anywhere from three to a scrillion different ways they could biblically deal with being Southern Baptist while seeing all of these godless things taking place on the national SBC stage:
You’re a doctrinally sound, discerning Christian in a local SBC church whose pastor and leadership agree with the unbiblical goings on at the national level. You need to get out of that church, probably immediately, and find a doctrinally sound local church to join. You should strongly and prayerfully consider finding a non-SBC, and honestly, probably a non-denominational (because most of the problems in the SBC are happening in all the other denominations, too, or soon will) or independent church. However, if the best church you can find in your area is an SBC church that’s fighting against the sin and evil at the national level, don’t hesitate to join it and join them in the fight.
You’re a doctrinally sound, discerning Christian in a doctrinally sound local SBC church whose pastor and leadership are fighting against the unbiblical goings on at the national level. If your position is, “I want our church to leave the SBC immediately,” and your pastor’s / elders’ position is, “We’ve prayed about it and searched the Scriptures about it, and for X, Y, and Z biblical reason, we believe God would have us stay in one more year and fight,” and that’s basically the only disagreement you have with them, that’s not a reason to leave a good, solid church. Submit to your pastors’ leadership, trust them, support them, trust God, hang in there, be patient, and be sanctified by this as you watch and pray.
You’re a pastor of a doctrinally sound local SBC church and you’re positionally against and/or actively fighting against the unbiblical goings on at the national (and probably state and local, too) level. How long do you stay in and keep fighting? Obviously, it’s not my place to tell you what to do, but, from the perspective of a church member who’s been carefully keeping apprised of the SBC situation for a lot of years, could I just throw out a few questions you may want to consider between you and the Lord as you pray through the monumental decision of whether to lead your congregation to get out now or to stay in and fight for a while?
–Have you carefully examined your reasons and motivations for wanting to stay in and fight? Are those reasons and motivations drawn from Scripture? Pragmatism? The flesh? Have you considered these Scriptures with regard to leaving?
–What is your exit strategy? Will you stay in until you see how next year’s Convention goes? Until the SBC approves of women pastors? Homosexuality? Biblically, do you not have a responsibility as a shepherd and a Christian to draw a “this far and no farther” line in the sand? Where is that line?
–How much time, energy, and money have you and your church already expended on what will almost certainly be a losing fight? Is it good stewardship of your resources to continue to put them toward this fight? Could they be better spent in another way to get more Kingdom “bang for your buck”?
–I’ve heard some pastors say, “I want to stay in because of our missionaries.”. The sinful ideologies poisoning the SBC have not and will not leave the IMB untouched (and we know NAMB already requires its church planters to preach a false gospel). If it’s not happening already, your missions money may soon be funding the spread of false doctrine. Can you have that on your conscience? If you’re certain the SBC missionaries your church currently directly supports are doctrinally sound, have you looked into how you could support them from outside the SBC? Can you trust God to provide for them if you’re biblically compelled to lead your church to leave the SBC? What about supporting non-SBC, doctrinally sound missions agencies like TMAI and HeartCry?
–Carefully consider the second bolded quote at the beginning of this article. Is it possible your church’s good reputation is being tarnished by remaining in the SBC? “The world is watching!” we’ve been hearing for a couple of years now. Maybe it was said with the wrong motives, but it’s true. And the rest of Christendom has been watching too. Will staying in the SBC lead doctrinally sound Christians looking for a good solid church to pass yours over because they think you agree with the SBC’s sinful shenanigans since you haven’t left yet?
–If you’re going to stay in and fight, may I encourage you to start now? Right now. Today. I love all my brothers and sisters in the “stay in and fight” camp, but the past few years I’ve been extremely frustrated at the general way everything seems to be thrown together in a last minute scramble to rally the troops in the last few months, weeks, and days before the Convention.
Make plans to attend the New Orleans meeting now, raise funds to send messengers now, nominate godly candidates for SBC offices now, and tour them around to local churches all year long to build momentum. And most importantly, educate your church and your local association’s churches on the issues and the biblical response to those issues, now. Don’t wait until April, May, and June of next year, start now.
–Watch and listen to this SBC pastor talk about the issues in the SBC that led to his decision to lead his church out of the SBC. A must watch for every pastor and congregation that’s still in the Southern Baptist Convention:
I just want to know, what’s one good, compelling, biblical reason to stay in the SBC? Because I can think of lots of good, compelling, biblical reasons to leave.
If you have a question about: a Bible passage, an aspect of theology, a current issue in Christianity, or how to biblically handle a family, life, or church situation, comment below (I’ll hold all questions in queue {unpublished} for a future edition of The Mailbag) or send me an e-mail or private message. If your question is chosen for publication, your anonymity will be protected.
This is the last time I’m planning to run this article, since the Convention is next week. Follow me on Twitter for any imperative updates between now and then.
This article was last updated on May 26. Updates since that day include:
March:
Two Three Good Men to Right the Ship has been updated to include information on Javier Chavez for Recording Secretary and the website for the Ascol / Baucham / Chavez slate of candidates.
Blackmailing the Bucks has been updated to include information on SEBTS’ self investigation and exoneration, the Bucks’ refutation of SEBTS’ claims, and the bigger picture hypocrisy and partiality this situation typifies in the SBC at large.
May (These items have all been added to the existing SATF section in “May.”)
Tom Ascol’s and Voddie Baucham’s responses to the SATF / GS report.
The June 1 SATF recommendations likely to be voted on in Anaheim.
The June 8 modifications of the June 1 SATF recommendations likely to be voted on in Anaheim unless they change them again.
June:
Problematic speakers at ancillary convention events
GS publicly affirms perversion.
The 2021 annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention opened the eyes of a lot of Southern Baptists to the sin and corruption infecting our cooperative of churches.
The foremost question on the minds of many doctrinally sound and discerning Southern Baptist pastors and church members is whether or not the SBC is too corrupt to be saved. “Should we shake the dust off our feet and leave the SBC, or should we stay in and fight for fidelity to Scripture?”
If you and your church are choosing to stay in and fight, it is crucial that you be well-informed enough on the issues and the candidates to vote biblically when you attend the 2022 annual meeting in Anaheim. And that also means you’re going to need to know your Bible well enough to vote biblically on those issues.
Because what really hurt doctrinally sound Southern Baptists at the 2021 meeting (and previous years’ meetings) was not just those who were consciously pushing an unbiblical, liberal agenda, it was also the messengers who were ignorant of the issues and the candidates, and just voted according to whatever sounded good on the surface, or just blindly trusted whoever was on stage at the moment.
Representing your church (and millions of other Southern Baptists) as a messenger at the annual meeting is a grave responsibility and it should be treated as such. You’ve got to get informed. Your church and pastor have to get informed. The other churches in your association, and your associational leadership have to get informed.
That’s where this article comes in.
I know it’s hard to keep up with the issues when you’ve got a life you’re trying to live and responsibilities you’re trying to take care of. I want to try to make staying informed a little easier for you, your church, and your association, so please share this around.
This article (initially published in the summer of 2021 and subsequently updated) is a timeline of significant events in the SBC at the national level starting with the 2021 annual meeting and moving forward from there. I’ve tried to keep things brief, so you may need to take what you see here and do some more digging on your own if you want an in depth look at a particular issue.
I’ve also posted a few “Points of Order,” things that aren’t really a current event, but more along the lines of SBC polity or information you might need.
If you think I’ve left out something significant (I’m trying not to get bogged down in too much minutiae), please leave a comment and a link, if possible.
For a recap of the major decisions and happenings of the 2021 annual meeting, please read my article: SBC21: Aftermath, Thoughts, and Where Do We Go From Here? There are lots of informative links at the end of the article in the “Additional Resources” section.
June 2021
Point of Order: Financial Contributions
If you’re staying in the SBC, you might be concerned about your offerings being sent to the Cooperative Program to fund SBC entities which are operating unbiblically. This is a dilemma for doctrinally sound churches and individuals, because, until fairly recently, making a financial contribution to the SBC at the national level was a requirement for being “in friendly cooperation with the SBC.”
So how do we stay in the SBC to fight ungodliness by sending messengers to the annual meeting, yet maintain our financial contribution without funding ungodliness? [Now former – see “October” below] Executive Committee member Rod Martin explains:
I have been repeatedly asked how the formula works that determines how many messengers an SBC church may send to the Annual Meeting. Here’s the deal:
Under the recent constitutional amendment, every church now gets two messengers whether they give or not. Previously you had to give a minimum amount to get any messengers at all.
The previous maximum number of messengers was 10. That number is now 12.
You can get one additional messenger (up to the maximum) for every percentage point of additional giving out of undesignated receipts. That’s fair for every church: if you’re giving 5%, you get five more messengers. If you’re giving 10%, you get ten more messengers. The dollar amount doesn’t come into play.
That said, and I very much disagree with this, you can also get one additional messenger (up to the maximum) for each $6,000 in giving. That means megachurches can have 12 messengers by giving next to nothing as a percentage of their budgets. I think that was a big mistake. But the vast majority of SBC churches are small, so they greatly outnumber those churches, and also, the 12 messenger cap greatly limits the power of those giant churches on the floor.
The “giving” I just described can be through the Cooperative Program, but no longer has to be: it can be to any convention entity. So let’s say you wanted to give all of it to Lottie Moon, or give all of it through IMB but designated for certain specific missionaries: you could do that and get all ten additional messengers. There are many other possibilities as well.
I think this change to our system (which was part of GCR)was a giant mistake, as was GCR generally. However, while I know some people disagree, I don’t think it actually disadvantages smaller churches in practice, and it definitely creates a lot of flexibility for churches to give creatively while also maintaining their maximum possible messenger representation.
On June 16, the second day of the 2021 annual meeting, a messenger mentioned in a question from the floor that the “What We Believe” page of the church Ed Litton pastors (Redemption Church in Saraland, Alabama) contained a heretical view of the Trinity called partialism.
Photo courtesy of onenewsnow.com
Quietly, and almost immediately, the heretical wording was deleted from the website, as you can see in the “before and after” screenshots above.
It’s not just that the wording was heretical. Redemption Church’s statement of faith – the core of its identity as a church – was changed without a vote by the church body. Indeed, without even notifying or consulting the church body. How would that go over at your church?
To date, neither Litton nor Redemption Church has offered any official explanation regarding why a multi-SBC seminary degreed pastor would lead his church to codify a heretical statement of faith in the first place, nor how that statement of faith was able to be altered without input or permission from the church, nor why it took outside publicity to spur the change.
Unofficially, the explanation some claim Litton has given is that the original heretical wording was some sort of typographical error by the person who typed it into the website. (I want to stress that this is hearsay.)
About a week after the convention ended, starting during the week of June 20:
A side by side video surfaced of Ed Litton (Jan. 2020) and J.D. Greear (Jan. 2019) preaching the same (Greear’s) sermon on Romans 1.
The sermon was Greear’s infamous “The Bible whispers about sexual sin” sermon, so there was not only the plagiarism aspect, but, just as when Greear originally preached it, there was outrage over the bad theology contained in the sermon itself.
Greear and Litton each issued statements explaining, justifying, and excusing the plagiarism.
Litton removed 143 sermons from his church’s website and YouTube, leading most to surmise that these sermons probably also contained plagiarism, due to his explanation of his “sermon by committee” paradigm explained in his statement.
The secular news media began reporting on all of this.
Justin Peters posted a very thorough video biblically explaining and providing documentation for all of this:
Almost immediately, three more side by side sermon comparison videos of Litton and Greear surfaced showing even further plagiarism by Litton. Romans 8 sermonRomans 13 sermon* Romans 14 sermon* (The Justin Peters video above includes the Romans 1 sermon side by side video.)
*I am citing Reformation Charlotte for the purpose of these videos only. It is not a site I endorse.
Somewhat simultaneously, some of Litton’s scrubbed sermon videos begin reappearing on his church’s website and YouTube, and both he (in an interview with the Washington Times) and the leadership of his church (in a statement obtained by Baptist Press) issued statements about why the videos had been removed in the first place. The reasons given by Litton and his church leadership did not match.
For another timeline of these events with additional links, click here.
Further examples of Litton’s sermon plagiarism, some instances going back years, continue to surface.
With all the outcry against current SBC president, Ed Litton, and calls for his resignation, you might be surprised to learn that there is no mechanism in place for removing a sitting SBC president. For the office of president to be vacated, he has to resign, die, or be incapacitated.
The only official governing statement about replacing a sitting SBC president is this sentence from Article V of the SBC Constitution:
“In case of death or disability of the president, the vice presidents shall automatically succeed to the office of president in the order of their election.“
Maybe plagiarism and heresy don’t seem like that big of a deal to you. What’s going to happen when a sitting president commits adultery, steals SBC funds, comes out of the closet as a homosexual or transgender, or is discovered to be a child molester, and refuses to resign?
xxxxx
July 2021
EC SATF Named
Prior to the 2021 convention, allegations were made that the Executive Committee mishandled some charges of sexual abuse by SBC pastors / at SBC churches, which the EC vehemently denied. At the convention, a motion was made that President Ed Litton appoint a task force to investigate these allegations. That task force was named on July 9:
The purpose of the task force is to objectively examine whether the EC handled these charges of sexual abuse fairly and appropriately with regard to recommending whether or not the church should be disfellowshiped from the SBC.
You’ll notice many of the members and advisors work or volunteer in the field of victim advocacy. While it is good to have people with experience on the task force, that has to be balanced with their ability to be objective if this is to truly be an independent review.
For example, Rachael Denhollander has been a polarizing figure in victim advocacy because she has a reputation for never having met an accusation of abuse she didn’t believe, or “having an ax to grind” when it comes to allegations of abuse. If anything, she has a reputation for being biased in favor of alleged victims and unable to objectively assess when false charges have been levied.
When someone (such as some of the members of this task force) has made victim advocacy his career or life’s mission, that person is heavily invested in one side of the issue. It raises the question, “How objective can some of these task force members/advisors be?”.
I’m sorry, but there’s just no polite way to say this, and sometimes you have to call a spade a spade. Ed Litton has been caught in two obvious, public lies about the plagiarism fiasco and his wife co-preaching with him.
Kathy’s Co-Preaching:
This is an issue that came up prior to the 2021 convention so it is not included in this article, but I referred to it in this pre-convention article regarding Ed Litton’s wife Kathy:
This man who wants to be at the helm of your entire denomination, violates Scripture by allowing Kathy to “co-preach” the Sunday sermon at their Southern Baptist church here, and here, and several more sermons can be found at their church’s website.
If you try to click on the links above you’ll notice two of them yield no results. That’s because once Ed Litton was publicly taken to task for allowing his wife to preach, he deleted the sermon videos, which is covering up sin, rather than biblically repenting of it.
When first questioned about allowing his wife to preach, Litton explained that this was because it was a sermon series on marriage and family and he wanted Kathy to provide her perspective. (Scripture doesn’t allow for this, but some accepted this justification.)
It has now been discovered that Litton had Kathy co-preach at least one other sermon series in 2013 which had nothing to do with marriage and family.
(If you’re unclear about why this is a violation of Scripture, please click here, here, and here to read up.)
Plagiarism (see “June” above):
In a news interview with his local CBS affiliate, Litton clearly says the allegations of plagiarism came from “unnamed sources”.
(See 2:40 for the “unnamed sources” segment.)
This is patently untrue. Many SBC pastors and others have publicly sounded the alarm about the plagiarism issue, and all the ones I’m aware of have used their real names.
SWBTS/Greenway Provide Cover for Litton’s Non-Repentance
On September 14, during SWBTS’ chapel service, seminary president Adam Greenway interviewed Ed Litton on a variety of topics, first – and most notably – the plagiarism scandal (3:50). Once again, Litton finessed instead of repenting.
You can tell where Greenway stands as he prefaces his question to Litton by disparagingly referring to the “snark” he received from “anonymous social media accounts” when he announced that Litton had been invited. (“Anonymous”? What I saw when I commented on his Twitter announcement was, I’d estimate, well over 90% non-anonymous, concerned, yet frustrated Southern Baptists wanting the plagiarism issue addressed, and for Litton to resign.)
And, of course, you’ll notice that Litton doesn’t repent over this sin, and even characterizes those who exposed his sin as meaning evil against him in the Genesis 50:20 sense. (More here.)
“In a 44-31 vote Tuesday, Oct. 5, the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee (SBC EC) opted to waive attorney-client privilege in connection with a third-party investigation of itself [see “July” above]. Ahead of the special called meeting, six committee members resigned, and Chairman Rolland Slade noted during the meeting an expectation that other resignations may soon follow with the passage of the widely-debated waiver of attorney-client privilege.” – SBC Executive Committee votes to waive attorney-client privilege in sexual abuse investigation at Conservative Baptist Network
Waiving ACP was not necessary in order for Guidepost Solutions (the firm retained by the SATF to investigate allegations of mishandling of abuse cases by the EC) or the SATF to investigate allegations of the EC’s mishandling of abuse cases. It put the SBC in jeopardy of losing its legal representation and insurance coverage, and left individual EC members vulnerable to lawsuits (thus, the aforementioned resignations). And since any compensation paid to abuse victims would have been covered by the insurance policy, it was a very foolish decision indeed.
Multiple EC Resignations
As a result of the EC voting to waive ACP, fourteen committee members resigned effective in late September and October – including President Ronnie Floyd and Rod Martin – due to personal legal vulnerability and frustration.
On October 11, Guenther, Jordan & Price, the Nashville firm which had provided legal representation for the SBC since 1966, terminated its relationship with the Southern Baptist Convention
“The Executive Committee’s board of directors, by a majority vote, has acted to prospectively and preemptively waive the Executive Committee’s attorney-client privilege without knowing the communications affected by the waiver and without knowing the effect it will have on the Executive Committee, the Convention, and those who have served as members or employees of the Executive Committee…For these reasons, we believe our commitment to a certain standard of professional conduct leaves us no choice but to advise you that we are withdrawing from our role as general counsel to the Southern Baptist Convention and the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention.“
On October 28, the EC trustees met and retained Bradley Legal to provide legal services on an interim basis. (See “February” below for more information on Bradley Legal.)
November 2021
A Discussion of the Issues
On November 19, the Conservative Baptist Network hosted a panel discussion centering on problematic issues in the SBC. Led by SBC First Vice President, Dr. Lee Brand, participants included (L-R: Randy Adams, Tom Ascol, Russell Fuller, Rod Martin, and Allen Nelson)
There was a problem with the audio the night of the recording that caused the first 10-12 minutes of the video’s volume to be extremely low. It clears up after that.
UnMerritted Praise
On November 22, James Merritt – multi-seminary degreed pastor of Cross Point church (SBC) in Duluth, Georgia, former SBC president, chair of the 2021 Resolutions Committee, former chair of the EC, former president of the SBC Pastors’ Conference, visiting professor at SEBTS, etc. – posted this tweet regarding his son Jonathan’s sermon at his (Jonathan’s) “church” the day before. Jonathan is openly homosexual, and his “church” is homosexuality affirming, egalitarian, and universalist, among other anti-biblical beliefs:
Obviously, it should go without saying (especially to someone as biblically knowledgeable as a pastor, former SBC president, and SBC seminary professor should be) that a practicing homosexual is not saved and has, therefore, rejected the gospel. How could any sermon he preached be “faithful to the gospel”?
Naturally, his appalling statement received pushback from biblically faithful Christians, and James Merritt once again showed his baser nature by lashing out at those taking him to task.
Likely facing pressure behind the scenes, James Merritt resigned his position as visiting professor at SEBTS (but not his pastorate). For this, he was practically lauded as a hero by SEBTS president Danny Akin…
Someone gave reporter Liam Adams of the Tennesseean James Merritt’s binder from his tenure as 2021 Resolutions Committee chair. The binder contained private emails between Tom Ascol and James Merritt as well as other confidential Resolutions Committee communications and information, some of which was used in an article Adams wrote.
In this video, Justin Peters examines four incidents in recent SBC history that seem to demonstrate a gradual progression toward affirming homosexuality. Two of the incidents took place at First Baptist Church Orlando, pastored by David Uth (president of the 2020 Pastors’ Conference who was roundly criticized for inviting false teachers and a female “pastor” as speakers), one incident involved James Merritt, and another involved former SBC President J.D. Greear.
Following a tweet by pastor and EC member Adam Wyatt singing the praises of new interim legal team Bradley Legal, questions began to be raised about the many ties the firm has to the homosexual and woke agendas. From sponsoring Nashville Pride to a glowing report on Bradley’s “inclusivity” from the Human Rights Campaign, Bradley is proud of its “diversity”.
On February 28, in the middle of a self-aggrandizing video noting his past and anticipated accomplishments, and breaking with decades of tradition, Ed Litton briefly announced he would not seek or accept a second term as president of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Point of Order: The SBC President’s Term of Office
“The officers shall be elected annually and shall hold office until their successors are elected and qualified. The term of office for the president is limited to two (2) years, and a president shall not be eligible for re-election until as much as one (1) year has elapsed from the time a successor is named.”The Constitution of the Southern Baptist Convention, Article V, Point 2
In plain English: There is an election for SBC president (and other officers) every year at the SBC annual meeting, which means we could elect a new president every single year. However, the SBC Constitution allows the president to serve two consecutive one-year terms, and, in recent history, most SBC presidents and messengers have taken the Constitution up on that offer. The last single-term president was Adrian Rogers, who (though later elected to two consecutive terms in the mid-1980’s) served from 1979 to 1980, 43 years ago.
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March 2022
Willy Run?
March 1, one day after Ed Litton announced he would not seek re-election for a second term as SBC president (see “February” above), Willy Rice, pastor of Calvary Church in Clearwater, Florida, announced that he would be nominated for SBC president at the annual meeting in June. (See “April” below)
Calvary follows the multi-site model with three locations in Florida. They also have an “online campus” which they seem to equate with the three physical locations. Though there’s nothing wrong with a church live streaming its worship service, leading people to believe that watching a video of a worship service is equal to being a faithful member of a local church and physically gathering with that church body for worship and fellowship is an unbiblical ecclesiology. The Greek word for “church” in the New Testament is ἐκκλησία, or ekklesia. It literally means a gathering or assembly. No gathering, no church. The Bible commands and assumes that we physically gather as the church.
On March 22, it was announced that Tom Ascol – pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, Florida, and president of Founders Ministries – would be nominated for SBC president, and Voddie Baucham – author, sought after conference speaker, and currently dean of theology at African Christian University in Zambia – for president of the Pastors’ Conference. Javier Chavez (announced March 30) – pastor of Amistad Cristiana Church in Gainesville, Georgia, and president of the missions organization, Amistad Cristiana International Inc. – will be nominated for Recording Secretary. (This is a key position that must be filled with a doctrinally sound man, because the Recording Secretary is also automatically a member of the Executive Committee.)
These men have an outstanding record of fidelity to Scripture, biblical ecclesiology, Christian ethics, and sound doctrine. They have spoken unashamedly against sexual sin, false teachers, Critical Race Theory and racialism, egalitarianism, and the social justice movement. They are dedicated to the bold proclamation of the mercy and grace of God in the biblical gospel rather than the watered down gospel of seeker sensitive easy believism.
There could be no better men than these to begin the hard task of turning the SBC back to faithfully believing and obeying God’s Word. If at all possible, my Southern Baptist sisters, I urge you to talk to your pastor about representing your church as a messenger at the SBC annual meeting in Anaheim in June (along with as many other messengers as your church qualifies for) and vote for Tom, Voddie, and Javier.
You can find more information on all three candidates, the issues, and the Convention at We Have a Book.
On March 23, a third candidate for the SBC presidency was announced. Former IMB missionary, Robin Hadaway. Hadaway served for many years as a missionary in Africa and South America. Following his time on the mission field he spent twenty years at Midwestern Baptist Theological seminary as a professor of missions and in several different administrative positions. He has also served in various offices and capacities in the Southern Baptist Convention.
In late March (spilling over into April, May, and June2), a situation began to unfold in which Tom Buck (and his wife, Jennifer), pastor of First Baptist Church, Lindale, Texas, who has battled valiantly against corruption in the SBC, was maligned, lied to, and threatened with blackmail. The situation involved not insignificant figures in SBC life, including SEBTS professor Karen Swallow Prior, SEBTS President Danny Akin, former 2022 SBC presidential nominee Willy Rice, and others.
This is the same type of “dirty tricks” move from the liberal contingent of the SBC we’ve come to expect over the last few years in the weeks immediately preceding the annual meeting, as they attempt to sully the reputations of those on the biblical side of the aisle in an attempt to influence, or even derail, the SBC presidential election.
The story is both heart wrenching and enraging, and provides insight into just how evil and corrupt the SBC has become at the highest levels. The story is somewhat lengthy and involved, and the timeline intricate, but I urge you to peruse the following pertinent documentation:
On June 8, SEBTS President, Danny Akin releasedStatements from Southeastern on Matters Surrounding the Buck Essay (signed on to by the SEBTS trustees) essentially saying SEBTS had investigated itself, found no wrongdoing on the part of the seminary or any of its employees, that some “anonymous couple” had come forward claiming responsibility for leaking the rough draft, and, therefore, SEBTS would not participate in the third party investigation they had already agreed to.
In response, on June 9, in collaboration with Christian journalist, Janet Mefferd, Tom and Jennifer released a rebuttal, Clarifying Matters: A Statement from Tom and Jennifer Buck, pointing out the blatant lies and hypocrisy of the SEBTS statement.
As I write this on the morning of June 9, Tom is posting further evidence and video clips on Twitter, and many are calling for a motion from the floor requiring SEBTS to submit to a third party investigation of this matter.
This situation is no longer limited in scope to the specific details of the Bucks’ case. This is about the systemic, institutional hypocrisy, partiality, and unequal weights and measures of lauding the SATF’s third party investigation of the EC’s handling of abuse cases via (third party) Guidepost Solutions, whose report itself recommends requiring individual churches accused of mishandling cases of abuse to submit to a third party investigation. But if it’s a victim with a track record of exposing and speaking out against the SBC ruling party’s liberal agenda, the entity that mishandled that victim’s case gets to investigate and exonerate itself? Would any of the churches disfellowshipped from the SBC for botching the way they handled abuse have been afforded that luxury, or is it only the “rich man entity,” so to speak, who is shown that favoritism?
Furthermore, is saying that the investigation of a “survivor’s” claims is a waste of “God’s money” (below) the type of “trauma-informed,” “handle with kid gloves” communication demanded of churches and entities by the SATF/GS report? Isn’t that re-abusing a “survivor”? And, why is it a waste of God’s money for one SBC entity, SEBTS, to submit to a third party investigation, but it apparently was not a waste of over $4 million of God’s money (Southern Baptists’ offering money, don’t forget) for third party Guidepost Solutions to investigate another SBC entity, the Executive Committee?
The sin, favoritism, and hypocrisy is simply too much to bear any longer. Something must be done.
2I have included all information on this situation, regardless of date, in this section for convenience of reading.
April 2022
Willy Run? Apparently Not.
On April 1, potential SBC presidential nominee, Willy Rice (see “March” above) announced that it was about to be made public that a deacon in his church had committed “sexual sin” in his past – prior to his salvation – “that could also be described as abusive” but which did not involve criminal charges. The deacon was removed from his position. (I would like to point out, for clarity, that the 2021 resolution Rice quotes from near the end of the video says that anyone who has committed sexual abuse is permanently disqualified from the office of pastor. The man in question was a deacon, not a pastor.)
On April 6 – likely under pressure from “progressive” SBC leadership because he was the progressive candidate, and abuse is a major plank in the progressive platform – Rice announced he was withdrawing his name as a candidate for SBC President.
On April 7, it was announced that pastor Bart Barber would be nominated for president of the SBC. Barber was appointed by current SBC president Ed Litton (see above) as chair of the Resolutions Committee, and will serve in that capacity at the 2022 annual meeting.
Though he may not consider himself progressive, Barber is the candidate most progressives will likely end up voting for, simply because a) he has greater name recognition than Robin Hadaway, and b) they want the least conservative candidate possible to win.
You can read about Barber’s positions on various issues at Bart Barber FAQs on his church’s website. You may find the following sections to be informative:
Critical Race Theory– in which Barber says it is problematic there is no agreed upon definition of CRT, yet conducts a Twitter poll (which any marginal statistician could tell you is hardly reliable) about this undefined concept of CRT, and uses those results to conclude that CRT is “far from being an urgent issue to address in your church or in the Southern Baptist Convention.”
(Barber also served on the 2021 resolutions committee which quashed a resolution condemning CRT as incompatible with the BFM signed by 1300+ Southern Baptists. Tom Ascol, on the other hand, at that same meeting, made a motion to rescind 2019’s Resolution 9. Read more here.)
Plagiarism– in which Barber asserts that, since the authors of Scripture, young pastors, and those newly converted on the mission field may not have access to advanced theological training, the internet, commentaries, methods of attribution, etc., and, thus, may repeat things they’ve been told by others with no attribution, this excuses someone like Ed Litton – who does have all of those advantages and should know better – from plagiarism. How does Ed telling JD Greear’s personal life experiences as though they were his own fit into that paradigm? It’s not readily clear.
You can read the rest of Barber’s defense of Litton – as well as his opposition to the CBN (Conservative Baptist Network) here. Tom Ascol was, at that same time, vocally decrying Litton’s sin of plagiarism.
Though the content of his interactions with her are benign, Barber seems to have a friendly Twitter relationship with false teacher Beth Moore (here, here).
In 2020, Barber invited Dwight McKissic to be a guest on his podcast, and recorded the episode in the sanctuary of his church. McKissic is an SBC “pastor” (he is biblically disqualified) who plays the race card in nearly every conversation, is a rabid egalitarian, and defends false teachers such as Beth Moore (McKissic suggested that she should be nominated as president of the SBC a few years ago) whenever he gets a chance.
On April 15, the resolutions portal opened for submitting a resolution to the 2022 Resolutions Committee. The 2022 resolution submission window closes May 30.
Resolutions are essentially position statements messengers may have the opportunity to vote on at the Convention. (Parliamentary procedure or committee action may preclude a vote.) I would love to publish the text of, or information regarding as many resolutions as possible so messengers can take the time to read, inform themselves, and especially pray about how they should vote that they may not have once at the convention site.
If you know someone who will be submitting a resolution at the Convention and would like to have it published here, please comment below or contact me as soon as possible.
Resolutions
This is the originaltext that will be submitted to the Committee on Resolutions. Please bear in mind, the Committee on Resolutions has the authority to “reword” these resolutions in any way they choose and then present the edited version to the Convention for a vote. (This was a major issue with Resolution 9 on CRT in 2019. The Committee “reworded” the original resolution so much that the edited version ended up saying basically the opposite of the original version.) The Committee also has the authority to decline to present a resolution for a vote. When you arrive at the Convention, please carefully read the versions of the resolutions you are given before voting on them, since they may have been altered.
A resolution has traditionally been defined as an expression of opinion or concern, as compared to a motion, which calls for action. A resolution is not used to direct an entity of the Southern Baptist Convention to specific action other than to communicate the opinion or concern expressed. Resolutions are passed during the annual Convention meeting.Resources in Resolutions at SBC.net
As I mentioned above, a resolution is akin to a position statement on anything from abortion to a war in another country to National Ice Cream Day if you like. Individual Southern Baptist church members write up resolutions and submit them to the Committee on Resolutions within the allotted time frame. The Committee on Resolutions processes each resolution. Most, they will decline to present for a vote. Some, they will tweak, re-word, edit, beef up, or water down, before presenting. Some, they will present as is. Sometimes, when several similar resolutions are submitted, they will write a new resolution, combining the ideas they like from each, and present a resolution from the committee for a vote. Messengers then have the opportunity to vote in agreement or disagreement with each resolution the Committee on Resolutions presents.
Resolutions are non-binding. This means neither you nor your church nor any other Southern Baptist individual or church has to abide by any resolution. Resolutions serve mainly to make a public statement: This is what the majority of Southern Baptists believe about this issue this year.
Each year, no later than 75 days prior to the SBC Annual Meeting, the SBC president, in conference with the vice presidents, appoints a Committee on Resolutions whose task is to consider and recommend appropriate resolutions to the messengers attending the annual meeting….Only members in good standing of churches entitled to send messengers to the next annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention may submit resolutions.
For more information on how to submit a resolution to the committee click here: Submit a Resolution
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Change of Venue
On April 28, the Executive Committee voted to move the 2023 SBC annual meeting from Charlotte, North Carolina (the site approved by messengers in 2016), to New Orleans, Louisiana. Due to increased attendance over the past few years, it was anticipated that the Charlotte venue would be too small.
SATF Cost
Also on April 28, with regard to the Sexual Abuse Task Force:
EC members were informed that since Oct. 1, a total of $1,661,530 has been paid toward Guidepost Solutions [the independent investigating agency] and $17,478 toward Task Force travel and meetings.
In September, the EC voted to allocate up to $1.6 million toward the work by Guidepost Solutions. In February, they voted to increase the funds allocated to $2 million for the investigation or the “coverage of any other direct expenses without further approval.”
“Baptist Press recently released an interview that Jonathan Howe and Brandon Porter conducted with me…on April 5. Both they and I recorded the interview. They did so indicating that they would edit out the “ums,” “uhs,” and “wells,” etc. from the transcript in order to make the article flow well without losing the contextually understood meaning of my words.
In the interview that they posted, however…my responses were largely left unedited except for the exclusion of certain things I said…There are other misquotes throughout the article…in the interest of openness and transparency, I am making available the full audio below. In it you can hear a more complete and accurate version of the how the questions were phrased as well as my exact answers.”
Tom Ascol, Bart Barber, and Robin Hadaway participated in a panel discussion on issues facing the SBC at First Baptist Church, Keller, Texas, on May 4. The discussion was moderated by Joe Wooddell and Tony Richmond—both of FBC Keller.
Denny Burk, Bart Barber and the ERLC: All Against Abolition
Please educate yourself on this issue if you’re attending the Convention in June.It is a topic likely to be included in votable items.
Just days after the leak of the draft of the SCOTUS majority opinion on the overturn of Roe, HB813, on the complete abolition of abortion in the state of Louisiana, arrived at the House of the Louisiana Legislature for a vote. And it was torpedoed, thanks in part to the ERLC.
Acting ERLC president, Brent Leatherwood (along with dozens of other heads of supposedly pro-life organizations), signed on to An Open Letter to State Lawmakers from America’s Leading Pro-Life Organizations, released May 12 – the same day the Louisiana bill came to the floor for a vote. The letter characterized women who murder their babies as “victims” – denying that they have any culpability for killing their children – and, in an ominous, strong-armed tone, staunchly opposed the bill, and any future similar abolition bills.
In short, if your church gives to the Cooperative Program (and most SBC churches do): your offerings paid for the ERLC to help kill legislation that would have outlawed abortion.
This SBC entity, which you fund with your offerings, ignored the will of the SBC messengers to whom they are answerable. You will recall that last year at the Convention, the 2021 Committee on Resolutions – of which Bart Barber was a member – refused to let an abolition resolution come to the floor for a vote. It was only after messengers demanded it be released from committee that it was brought to the floor and overwhelmingly passed. The SBC grassroots wants abortion abolished immediately.
After the killing of the Louisiana bill, Denny Burk, professor at SBTS’ Boyce College, and associate pastor at an SBC church, carpet bombed Twitter with numerous screeds against abolition (the immediate abolishing of all abortion) and in favor of pro-life incrementalism (gradually chipping away at abortion via legislative restrictions, AKA, the past 50 years of legalized abortion), publishing three blog articles in a week (here, here, and here) which misrepresented and denounced the abolitionist position (which, by the way, is growing rapidly in the SBC, due to Southern Baptists’ disillusionment with the inability of the pro-life movement to abolish abortion), and warning Southern Baptists of dire consequences should they support the abolitionist cause rather than the pro-life position.
Naturally, Southern Baptists wanted to know where the candidates for SBC president stand on the issue.
Bart Barber updated his campaign FAQ page with a number of misrepresentations of, and misinformation about the abolitionist position (which, if I’m not misunderstanding his Twitter feed, were corrected by several people before {and certainly since} he posted the misinformation on his web page), and placed himself squarely in the incrementalist pro-life camp.
Tom Ascolwants abortion abolished immediately. You can read his clear, biblical, and well-reasoned position, which addresses Burk’s points, the ERLC’s sabotage of the Louisiana bill, and the 2021 SBC abolition resolution in his excellent article Toward a Principled Pro-Life Ethic in Post-Roe America
To inform yourself on what abolition actually does and doesn’t espouse, I recommend these resources:
Please educate yourself on this issue if you’re attending the Convention in June.It is a topic which will almost certainly be included in votable items.
Guidepost Solutions, the firm hired by the SATF to investigate the EC for mishandling cases of abuse was required to submit its report to the SATF 30 days prior to the SBC annual meeting in Anaheim (June 14-15, 2022). The report was to be made public one week after receipt, along with the SATF’s recommendations on any action the SBC should take as a result of the report. This took place on Sunday, May 22.
On June 8, the SATF deleted the June 1 recommendations from their website (as you can see if you click the link above) and replaced them with Updated Task Force Challenges and Formal Recommendations intended to clarify issues of funding and polity, according to SATF member, Andrew Hebert. Read Andrew’s explanation of the changes here, or listen to a podcast discussion of the changes here. To see a side by side comparison of the June 1 and June 8 recommendations, click here.
The latest iteration of these recommendations contain the actual actionable items messengers will vote on at the Convention. Be aware that these may be modified again between now and the time you get to vote on them. Before voting, please carefully read or listen to the actual motion(s) presented at the Convention.
I strongly recommend that you make the time to read and understand both the GS report (the executive summary at the beginning, at the very least) and the SATF recommendations if you’re planning to serve as a messenger at the Convention in June, since you’ll be asked to vote on motions or resolutions related to it.
Please do not just blindly trust those on the platform to accurately represent the report, the recommendations, or anything else about the sexual abuse situation in the SBC. Do your homework.
As you read the GS report, do keep in mind that GS is not a Christian organization, therefore, they were unable to view the situation from a biblical perspective, nor were they able to propose biblical solutions to the problems they discovered. Their outlook and analysis of the abuse situation in the SBC, though professional and honest was, necessarily, worldly, and their recommendations based in worldly practicality, not Scripture. As Christians, we must take the information and recommendations GS has given us, and examine them under the microscope of Scripture. We must make decisions about what to do and how to move forward that submit to the authority of Scripture, not worldly “wisdom,” methods, and practicalities.
GS is a non-Christian firm seeking to guide Christians in handling very serious spiritual matters, and the SATF’s recommendations are based, nearly completely, on GS’s recommendations. In other words, instead of the SATF recommending that we look to, understand, and obey Scripture in addressing the sexual abuse issue, they recommend we look to a worldly (not to mention perversion-affirming – see “June”) group of fallen human beings.
Scripture is clear that this is not the way the church is to operate. Consider the applicable principles of 1 Corinthians 6:1-6:
When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? 2 Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? 3 Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life! 4 So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? 5 I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, 6 but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers?
Bart Barber shared his thoughts in a blog article entitled Response to the Sexual Abuse Task Force Report. While compassionate, it is extremely generalized and offers no specific, concrete suggestions as to how the SBC should respond.
1I know this is May, not June, but I thought it would be more convenient to keep all of the SATF report info together in one section.
McKissic’s Motion
On May 27, “Pastor” Dwight McKissic (see “April”) announced on Twitter that he would be making the following motion at the Convention. (Remember, a motion is actionable and different from a resolution {see “April”}, which is non-binding.)
Here is the motion I will be presenting at the annual meeting in Anaheim. Please join me in requesting that @albertmohler and the trustees of @SBTS respond in a way that honors Christ and His bride. pic.twitter.com/suVElvLWUf
In a nutshell, he’s making a motion for SBTS to “study” removing the name of anyone who owned slaves from its buildings, programs, etc. The findings of the study (plus any actions taken or recommendations from SBTS) will be reported at the 2023 Convention.
June 2022
GS Stands with LGBTQ
Guidepost is committed to strengthening diversity, equity and inclusion and strives to be an organization where our team can bring their authentic selves to work.
We celebrate our collective progress toward equality for all and are proud to be an ally to our LGBTQ+ community. pic.twitter.com/i6DKiX36nm
— Guidepost Solutions (@GuidepostGlobal) June 6, 2022
While Guidepost Solutions’ position on perversion was already a matter of public record, this tweet for “Pride Month” drew the ire of many Southern Baptists. Your offering money paid for this, folks.
Every year at the Convention, there are special interest events ancillary to the actual annual meeting: a luncheon by this organization, a dinner by that group, workshops, panel discussions, seminary alumni gatherings, and so on. And every year at the Convention there’s the recurring issue of false teachers and biblically problematic speakers headlining these events.
Last year, I devoted an entire article to alerting you to these speakers. This year, there are not only fewer ancillary events, meaning fewer problematic speakers, but many of this year’s speakers are the same people I alerted you to last year. You can find all 2022 events listed here.
So, briefly, here are a few of those biblically problematic speakers of note with whom I’m familiar and/or for whom “spot check” type information was quickly and easily available:
Brent Leatherwood (see Denny Burk, Bart Barber and the ERLC: All Against Abolition in “May”)
Missie Branch (not much online info available, but she seems to frequently appear alongside those in the “progressive” camp in the SBC, here, last year, etc.)
This event is sponsored by the ERLC, whose controversial and storied history of leaning liberal on social and political issues (most recently, ironically for this event, helping to kill an abortion abolition bill – see “May”) has led many SBC churches to stop giving to the Cooperative Program and re-designate their funds so their offering money won’t be used to further ungodly social and political ideologies and agendas.
I would urge you to exercise extreme caution and discernment should you choose to attend this event or stop by their booth at the pastors’ conference. The fact that this is being sponsored and promoted by SBC Voices should be enough to give anyone familiar with them pause. Other red flags:
One of the major components of the event will be hearing victims’ stories. While we certainly want to give the benefit of the doubt that these stories will all be truthful, bear Proverbs 18:17 in mind, especially if you are easily swayed by emotion. You will only be hearing one side of the story about how these victims’ cases were handled.
“Trauma-informed / trauma-responsive” has come to be code speak for employing worldly psychological means and methods instead of looking to and obeying Scripture as our authority for addressing issues of abuse. The “trauma-informed” perspective is essentially that the Bible, pastoral and biblical counseling, and Titus 2 discipleship are inadequate and insufficient for shepherding and soul care, and these are rejected in favor of non-Christian “experts” in the field of abuse. Where does the Bible tell us to handle any spiritual issue, such as healing from abuse, by looking outside the church and the Bible to non-Christians?
You’ll be given a teal ribbon to wear around the Convention to “show your support” for abuse victims during this time of extreme contention in the SBC revolving around abuse, while others won’t be wearing one. This is, in effect, virtue signaling. The biblical word for this is “pride,” and those sponsoring this event are making provision for that sin. Consider these passages.
The breakout session will be led by Rachael Denhollander, Dave Pittman, and Todd Benkert. I’m not familiar with Dave, but Rachael has a reputation for never having heard a report of abuse she didn’t believe, and Todd was caught lying during the Tom and Jennifer Buck situation (see links in Blackmailing the Bucks under “March’) when he would have considered anyone else in Jennifer’s situation to be a “survivor”.
There may be some helpful resources presented at this breakout session, but be on your guard and be a good Berean. Keep a couple of questions at the front of your mind:
Is what I’m hearing me pointing me to God and His Word as my authority, or to fallen, sinful human beings, worldly methods, or non-Christian organizations as my authority?
Michelle Lesley 