David Morrill Reports on SBC22

Conversations That Matter

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Hey, everyone, welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast, travel edition here. I got kind of a not hotel room, but this is kind of a monumental day for the

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Southern Baptist Convention. And so I wanted to bring you some comments on it. And so David Morrill has been very gracious in being willing to join me to discuss this

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David's work you can find at protestia .com. He was there at the convention.

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And so being in the room, it definitely makes a difference. So David, thank you so much for just being willing to do this.

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Thanks for having me, John. I want to ask you, what are your thoughts and what are your we'll start with a big

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Eva question type type loaded gospel coalition type question. What are your feelings?

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How do you feel? About the same. It's kind of, it's what

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I expected, honestly saying, you know, it's, I was at the

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CBN breakfast this morning, and it was good to hear some of the some of the CBN leaders kind of talk and it was it was good to be in that in that era of optimism for sure.

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But then to get in the hall and realize that the overwhelming what I think the overwhelming majority of messengers writer, largely ignorant on the details of these issues, or they were connected enough with the institution of the

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SPC, that they have skin in the game to keep the status quo. And of course, Bart Barber is the status quo.

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Yeah. Well, can you just walk us through what are the defeats and are there any silver linings that happened today?

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So I know, obviously, Tom Askew lost, but what other things happened that were significant? Well, one of the one

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I thought one of the most significant things was, there was there was some batting back and forth on the credentials committee dealing with Saddleback.

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And then Rick Warren is in the room. And for some reason, given the microphone for as long as he wanted to have it to preach a little mini sermon about Rick Warren, and about Saddleback Church.

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Most pointedly, he said that, you know, in typical Rick Warren fashion, the

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Saddleback Church has, it was something like had more influence or saved more people or something that all the seminaries combined or, you know, some very stuck up Rick Warren thing.

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And yet other people that needed to talk about things that I thought were important, like Jennifer Buck, were cut off. And Ed Litton was very much controlling the microphone to his own benefit.

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There was a gentleman there that kept, he kept tacking on plagiarism to everything, which I thought was very funny.

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And, but, but of course, Ed Litton was shutting that down immediately. You don't want to have that conversation. And it was, it was exactly what

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I expected. But it was a little, you know, as far as the silver lining, it seemed like the room was at least the vocal part of the room was leaning towards the the

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CBN, Mike Askell, or I'm sorry, Mike Stone, Tom Askell side of the debate.

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And then yet when the vote hit, it was like, like nobody, nobody cheered for Barbara's nomination the way they cheered for Tom Askell, when

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Mike Stone was presenting the nomination. And yet when the vote hit, it was like it was just a fait accompli.

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Everybody knew Barbara was going to win. Yeah, including yourself, apparently.

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I know. So so the Saddleback Church issue was involving women pastors and the credentials committee, apparently separating the office of pastor from the function of pastor and really putting their own spin on the

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Baptist faith and message. I thought that was kind of ridiculous. But they couldn't. They weren't able to overcome that on the convention floor, which is interesting.

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Because it's so odd to my mind. Right. I don't I don't think there was any way that the platform was going to allow that conversation to go where it biblically needed to go.

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Because it would have wound up with a straight, plain, obvious indictment of what Saddleback Church is doing.

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So we we have Southern Baptist churches right now that are they have women pastors.

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But what they do is they change the title, of course, of pastor to something else. So she's a director or she's a minister or something.

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She's still doing really the job of a pastor. We just don't call her that. And Saddleback flipped that on its ear or turn it upside down where they're they're having women pastors ordaining women pastors.

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But then they claim, well, she's not really in the office of pastor, even though we call her that.

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It's it's it's backwards. But it really fits with the Rick Warren, you know, purpose driven market church, innovative version of this, where even the language is up for debate.

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If it's effective, you know, the pragmatism, pragmatism wins the day, of course. What about this issue of the sexual abuse task force?

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I know that was supposed to be the big issue coming into the convention, and it did seem to become the biggest one, perhaps.

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And the thing that confused me is the chairman of the committee indicated that the standard of proof of due process would be met and included in this process of the list they're forming of all these accused sexual abusers, allegedly.

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And he also said that this wouldn't change Baptist polity at all. And I, I was confused by that, because what

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I read from the recommendation seemed like it would do that. But can you just interpret that, parse it out for us?

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And then was there any pushback? Was the pushback just shut down? There was some pushback, but it seemed like the it seemed like the messengers in the room were largely there were largely ignorant of the details.

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So what happened was, you know, Guidepost, the woke LGBTQ supporting firm that was hired by the sex abuse task force, and it really, they might have officially been hired by the president of the

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EC, but either way, they presented a whole list. I mean, close to 30, could have been over 30 recommendations to the

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Southern Baptist Convention. And the task force basically boiled it down to two recommendations that they actually wanted to bring to the convention floor, which were, they were more or less a, like a ministry checklist website, where I guess ministers are going to be put on there if, if they are convicted or credibly accused or, or something like this of abuse.

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And then the other, the other recommendation was basically to study the Guidepost stuff and present what they think about it to the convention next year.

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And Bruce Frank, who was the, he was the chair of the abuse task force, basically was just, he was just making the claim that this won't affect

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Baptist polity, but I'm not sure how it can't affect Baptist polity. You're going to wind up holding churches financially liable in some way, at least through their cooperative program giving for the misdeeds or the poor ecclesiology of other churches and other churches not doing what they're supposed to do in terms of mutual accountability and, and regenerative membership and church discipline.

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And that has the potential of getting a lot of churches to say, we're not going to subject our church giving to that, to the misdeeds of others.

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And I think that would be appropriate in saying that. Yeah. So, so, so that was overwhelmingly passed, those recommendations from what

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I understand. And I know obviously the day before Cody Bauckham didn't win the president position of the, of the pastors convention.

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Is there anything that we can point to that, were conservatives able to get anything out of this or did they lose everything?

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Mostly lost everything. The resolutions that have been presented so far are pretty much nothing burgers and boiler plate kind of stuff.

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Tomorrow it'll be a little bit more interesting. But I, but I think what we've, the silver lining for me is that we've really confirmed that everything that we've suspected about the

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SBC is true. You know, every, everything as far as how far it's gone.

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And I mean, it's to the point where the institutions and the leaders involved, they don't even agree on terminology anymore.

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They don't agree on what a pastor is. They don't agree on the definition of conservative. Bart Barber calls himself a conservative and then has a whole list of issues and beliefs that really theologically speaking are not conservative.

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And, but that's okay with the people in the room. You know, he, he, he won the runoff, something like 61 % of the vote.

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So if there is a silver lining, it's basically, I think that, that conservatives and conservative churches, at least, at least it's obvious what's going on.

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I think it's, it's made it clear what's going on. There's not, there's not a lot of confusion for those that want to want to be aware.

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Any diagnosis on how we got to this point? I know there's probably a million things you could say, but especially most immediately, was there something in a failed strategy that was implemented or, or could there have been something done that would have gained

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Tom Askell the victory in your opinion? Well, I would argue, and maybe it's just because of my, my polemical side, but I would,

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I would argue that a lot of conservative pastors and members of the CBN and things, they're not direct enough at calling out false doctrine when they see false doctrine.

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They're too quick to, to assume that people teaching clear falsehoods are brothers. That, that's always annoyed us about some of the guys that are on the

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CBN side is like, you just have to call this out. You have to, you have to, you have to have the conflict where the conflict is.

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It doesn't, it does no good to call guys like Dwight McKissick brother and have conversations on that basis or not call out false doctrine for what it is.

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You know, they're, they're all, they're all still shaking hands and hugging and things like this all the time. It's like, do we really believe these issues of life and death or not?

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I, I believe that they are, you know, false gospel is a life and death issue. Yeah.

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Same. I, that, that's one of the first things that, I mean, I've been saying that for a while, so I guess I'm a broken record, but these issues are so fundamental that they destroy the very basis of Christianity, some of them, and to treat people who are advocating them like they're, they're brothers to, um, to, to soft pedal it, to, to, uh, fight about more surface level things just hasn't done us any good.

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Um, so, so you're going to be there tomorrow. I take it as well. Yeah. Okay. What's, what's going on tomorrow?

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I mean, are people leaving now or are they? Well, maybe the people that have flown in all the way to Anaheim probably don't have plane tickets or whatever until some, you know, tomorrow night or the next, like I'm flying out tomorrow night and then probably people are leaving on Thursday or whatever, but it wouldn't surprise me to see half the people in the convention hall that we saw today.

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There was so much attention and so much of a flashpoint on the SBC presidency and probably for good reason, because it's, it really is indicative of, of where things are going.

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And it's an easy, it's an easy contest to understand. It's much easier than trying to work through the resolutions of emotions or, um, you know, some of the, some of the other issues that the presidency is, is very binary and it's easy for people to understand.

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And now that that's over and very clearly, I mean, just overwhelmingly, if we can trust the vote and I think we can going one way, um, there'll be a lot of folks that, that they're going to have hard conversations when they go back to their churches for sure.

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You know, for those, for those of us on the more conservative side, that's going to be, that's going to be the next conversation is what does this tell us about the

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SBC? Should we even be involved with this anymore? What do you, what's your prediction for the next year at the

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SBC? What do you think will happen? Do you think that it'll be a big split? I don't see a big split coming this year.

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Bart, Bart Barber is, he's so vanilla. Bart, Bart, Bart Barber will not rock the boat one bit.

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He never has. He's always been the go along to get along institutionalist of the SBC. And despite the fact that those of us that look deeper into what he preaches and believes see a lot of problems,

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I mean, serious problems with a lot of what he believes and teaches. And, um, part of the, part of the danger with him is he's not overt.

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He's not as overtly false as some other guys. He's able to pepper it over with, with, uh, an affable personality.

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And that, that can be a little dangerous, but I don't see him. I don't see him rocking the boat at all. Which means that the conservative

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Baptist network guys are going to live on to fight another year. But, but other churches or churches that aren't necessarily, um, as, as militant about this as they are, are going to have to decide whether, um, they're comfortable sending money to the cooperative program, knowing, um, the direction it's going in, especially in light of what may happen with the sex abuse task force in light of the fact that they might recommend next year that we have some sort of a cooperative program.

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Um, can I call it a slush fund to pay off lawsuits? You know, that's, that's very much what it could end up being, which turns

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Baptist polity upside down. Now, all of a sudden, now all of a sudden, we're not much different than Episcopal's with regard to, you know, uh, authority coming from the top towards the church.

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And that's, you know, Baptist believe very clearly that the church, the local church is the ecclesiastical authority.

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There's no, we don't have a media between, between us and, you know, cry it's the church and Christ.

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It's not the church and then a committee and then this person and then a Pope and then Christ, you know, that's important to Baptist.

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At least at least it used to be. Yeah. I'm not so sure anymore. I, I, I almost wonder if the stage wanted to promote, uh, the acceptance of Pato Baptist into the convention, if they would vote for it, to be honest with you, it just seems to me like, uh, the doctrine doesn't seem to matter as much.

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Um, what's the sense there right now, as far as, I mean, there's a feeling of, of defeatedness among the conservatives and, and is there a lot of gloating going on?

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What's, what's the temperature of the. No, it seemed to me that the conservatives, like I talked to,

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I talked to Tom Askell very briefly and I mean, he seemed optimistic, but I think,

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I mean, he's a mature enough, you know, leader, uh, within the conservative Baptist movement that he's going to put on a good face, even if he's really disappointed, but you know, there were, you know, they're going to live to fight another day.

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They're going to keep going. I mean, Rod Martin said at the, um, at the breakfast this morning that, you know, he wasn't going anywhere.

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They're going to be here next year or the next year and the next year and the next year, which I'm not there for sure. I, you know, the

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SPC is a parachurch ministry, um, at best, assuming that it's functioning well and doing what it's supposed to do.

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Very optional, you know, as, as, as, you know, a lot of us like to say,

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Christ did not die for the SPC. Right. And, and, and if, if, you know, God's will can go forward with or without it, for sure.

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We have to, we have to, um, we, we have to have a decision within our conscience as the spirit leads us to decide, is this something that we can really be a part of without, without sinning anymore?

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You know, and it's gotten to that point, I think. Well, it would seem to me that if you carry this on year after year, which is already what's been going on.

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I mean, I, I kind of got off the wagon. I think my end point was last year and that was even in my opinion, a year late, but that's just because COVID canceled, uh, they, they canceled it for COVID the one year.

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But, uh, that was the point where I made a video eight reasons to leave the SPC. And I just thought, you know, this is what's going to happen.

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People are going to filter out, trickle out really every year as there's a defeat. And then you're going to put in all these, this time and resources into trying to show up to change the convention with an army that's smaller and smaller.

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And I hate to say. Meanwhile, meanwhile, NAM and NAM is a planting churches in their mold in the very woke mold of NAM.

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So, so as conservative churches may leave, um, they're being replaced by NAM plants, which

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I mean, if you've seen their, their recruiting material and their church planting material, it's about as woke as it gets.

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The send stuff, especially. Well, um, I appreciate you being there and just kind of, you're there more to keep an eye on things as a press.

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Do you have a press pass? Is that what you're. I do somehow. Hey, how did you slip in?

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Okay. Eventually they're going to smoke me out. Well, um,

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I appreciate you being willing to share. I mean, if you have any thoughts that you want to share that I didn't ask about, go right ahead.

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No, it's, it's, it's what I thought was going to happen, kind of happened. I'm, I'm a little disappointed because there's always, you know, you, you want to see the people that you align with theologically win.

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And I am a committed Baptist in terms of Baptist polity and, you know,

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I'm a congregationalist and, and so the structure of it all makes a lot of sense to me. But it's still an organization filled with fallible human beings and there's enough money and enough influence floating around that it can be, if the churches aren't strong enough to stand up, it can be easily corrupted.

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And when you have a convention, you know, you have a meeting where, what is it? Something like 7 % of churches are even represented.

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You know, the ones who are the most motivated to show up are the ones who are the most motivated to keep things the way they are and, and to keep the status quo.

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And that's not a, that's not a recipe for stopping a downgrade and there's a definite downgrade.

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Oh, obviously. So, I mean, it's, it's even in little things that you see, like changing the word sin in a hymn to what they sang, brokenness or something.

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But I tuned into the pastors. Were you at the pastors conference or no? Did you go to that? No, no, I flew in last night.

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Oh yeah. Well, I watched part of that and I just was like, this is just, it's not good preaching first of all.

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But secondly, it's, it's completely vague and it's, it's a call. The theme seemed to be like a call for unity, but we didn't know exactly what it was that was making us disunit, unified, except maybe like,

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I think one of the pastors was saying being too pro -life, being too into your family and maybe loving the

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Bible too much might cause like what? That was a, that was the weirdest one that I heard.

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I think was one of, one of the pastors said something about that Jesus needs to be at the center of it.

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And sometimes we can, we can make the Bible, you know, the center of it and the Bible, the idol. I like, so you're pitting the word against the word, huh?

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It doesn't make any sense. You know, just your triage, you know, what are the problems?

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You're in California, you're next to Disneyland and pride month. I don't get it. Like, I feel like I would have enough things to talk about right there, but their, their problem is being pro -life.

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But anyway, yeah, no, I agree with your assessment a hundred percent. And yeah, thank you for being willing to share this and people can go to,

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I'm sure you'll be writing about it, protestia .com, right? Right. I'm trying, I'm, I'm basically trying to, as much as I can, live tweet the events as they happen on a protestia

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Twitter account, if anybody's on Twitter. And then, and then we're writing, we're keeping the articles churning on the website to try to keep, keep folks informed exactly what's going on there.

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Like we, we had an article about changing the lyric to the, you know, to the hymn as an example, even though we're trying to write about even the little details that we're seeing.

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Yeah. Yeah. Well, I appreciate it. Keeping the rest of us informed. God bless. Until next time.