sbc anaheim – Michelle Lesley

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.

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:

Additional Resources

Watch the entirety of SBC22 on Baptist Press’ YouTube channel

Thinking Out Loud at A Word Fitly Spoken

Californication: Anaheim, the SBC, and Spiritual Adultery by Allen Nelson

The Liberal Drift of the Southern Baptist Convention (Part 1) (Part 2) by Gabriel Hughes SBC22 Recap – Encouragements and Disappointments with Tom Ascol and Graham Gunden

Is it time to leave the Southern Baptist Convention? And, what’s a secondary issue? by Elizabeth Prata

Will Egalitarianism Rule the SBC? by Josh Buice

Will Feminists Win the Pulpit? by Virgil Walker

Hi friends. Just a little announcement to let you know that the blog is going to look a bit different for the next few weeks.

Starting today and running through about June 10-ish, as we Southern Baptists anticipate the annual Southern Baptist Convention (June 14-15) I’m going to be exclusively running articles that are connected to the SBC and the various issues that have arisen therein over the past several years.

This is another watershed year for the SBC, and it is imperative that Southern Baptist women educate themselves on the issues and vote biblically – if you’re representing your church, and millions of other Southern Baptists, like me, as a messenger.

But even if you’re not, you still need to know what’s going on at the national level in your own denomination¹, because it will eventually trickle down into your own church, if it hasn’t already – via the seminaries, the LifeWay curricula your church uses, the next IMB or NAMB missionary who speaks at your church, etc. – autonomy of the local church notwithstanding.

If you’re not Southern Baptist, I would still urge you to pay attention over the next month. Because the SBC is the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S., the well worn cliche, “As goes the SBC, so goes the rest of evangelicalism,” usually proves to be true. Don’t worry, I’m not going to bore you (and me!) to death with the intricacies of SBC polity. These articles will be primarily issues driven – issues you’re probably already seeing in your own church or denomination, or soon will.

So…buckle up, buttercups. Here we go…

¹Yes, I totally understand that the SBC is not technically a denomination, but until somebody comes up with a better word, “denomination” it is.