- 00:00
- Somebody asked me to document some of the issues that I have with the Southern Baptist Convention. Over the years,
- 00:05
- I guess I should have done that, kept up with that. I've written a ton of articles, a lot of posts, written a lot of things about it, but it's easier for me right now to just video.
- 00:15
- I just got home from a ball game, sitting in my chair. So I'm gonna do that and try to lay out some issues, and I'm gonna try to keep this really, really brief.
- 00:23
- So what are the problems as we go into New Orleans in 2023? Well, the first I would say is kind of an old order issue.
- 00:30
- This has been going around for a while. Jim Elliffe has brought attention to it. Tom Askew has brought attention to it, and that is unregenerate church membership.
- 00:39
- So we have churches, particularly big churches, that say have five, six, 800 people coming and five, six, 8 ,000 people on the roll.
- 00:48
- We don't have a good ecclesiology. And reforms, as we've tried to push reform in this, it's really been met with ridicule and scoffing and no desire to change.
- 01:01
- Similarly, we don't hold the pulpit as sacred. We have men who plagiarize sermons, or we have men who preach rather weakly,
- 01:12
- W -E -A -K -L -Y, not just every Sunday, but weak, not in the power of Christ and in the gospel.
- 01:20
- The gospel is diluted in so many ways. I watched a video a couple years ago of a guy saying gospel's like guacamole.
- 01:28
- You gotta change the package, but it stays the same. Just pragmatism, just foolishness.
- 01:35
- I submitted a resolution last year about taking seriously the pulpit, and it was rejected by Bart Barber and the resolutions committee, just encouraging pastors to pray and to do due diligence in their study, to take the pulpit seriously.
- 01:52
- So these are some things that have been hanging around for a while, and then, of course, in the last couple years, you have the sex abuse scandal and all that.
- 01:58
- But the reality is, it's come out in court documents now that the Southern Baptist Convention has not covered up sex abuse.
- 02:07
- And so the things that we're doing right now and throwing money at all these reforms and giving money to, or that we gave money to the godless institution like Guidepost, who supported
- 02:17
- LGBTQ causes, using God's mission money for these sorts of things, it's just wicked.
- 02:25
- Not that we don't need to be serious about sex abuse. Of course we do. Tom Askel has been on the front lines of that.
- 02:32
- Mike Stone on the front lines of that. Guys pushing for being serious about this. But being serious about this does not mean that we need to be doing the things that we are currently doing, which our own executive committee has said is unsustainable.
- 02:46
- So we're throwing money away towards something that's unsustainable and it's not actually helping who we all care about, which is people who have actually been harmed through sexual abuse.
- 02:58
- Then, of course, you have the bad ecclesiology that crops up in NAM and pragmatism and affinity -based churches and women pastors and training, poor training of these pastors.
- 03:12
- So you have some churches, of course, that it's just a children's pastor or whatever.
- 03:18
- And people are like, is that that big a deal that a woman's a children's pastor? Well, it shows a disregard. Frankly, it shows a disregard for women, but it also shows a disregard for the office of pastor.
- 03:29
- And so it's like we don't understand the two offices of the church, pastors and deacons.
- 03:34
- And so we throw this title around pastor rather flippantly because we don't get it. We don't understand what the church is.
- 03:41
- We've ignored the sufficiency of scripture in so many numerous ways. The North American Mission Board partners with FBC Orlando.
- 03:50
- I've heard that from the trustees on the phone with the trustees. They partner with FBC Orlando. FBC Orlando is baptizing open homosexuals.
- 04:00
- It's just an absolute mess. CRT influence has invaded in the seminaries.
- 04:06
- It's just frustration after frustration after frustration. I think
- 04:12
- I've covered most of the things, but these are the things going into New Orleans that Southern Baptist must be concerned about.
- 04:19
- On top of all that, you have the Mike Law Amendment, which should just be obvious. We shouldn't partner with churches who have women in the role of pastor, and yet that's receiving pushback.
- 04:28
- Saddleback shouldn't be in the Southern Baptist Convention anyway with the pragmatism and leadership of Rick Warren, but especially with them ordaining women as pastors.
- 04:39
- That should be non -negotiable. It shouldn't even be a thing, but now we're gonna debate that.
- 04:44
- We're actually gonna vote that. We don't have open repudiation from our leadership. The idea here is that we've created this big tent money conglomeration institution where it's all about keeping the machine going, and so guys like me and guys like Tom Buck and other faithful brothers that point these things out, we're just called troublemakers, so this'll give you a little bit of a list, and if there's a way that I can help beyond that, let me know.
