April 4, 2023 Show with Virgil Walker on “A Tsunami Warning for the Southern Baptist Convention”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father, James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer, George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister, George Norcross, and sports legend, Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs chapter 27, verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this fourth day of April, 2023.

I'm so thrilled to have back as a returning guest my friend Virgil Walker, who is also one of my favorite guests on this broadcast. He is an author, and he's the executive director of operations at G3 Ministries, and also the co-host, along with Daryl Bernard Harrison, of the Just Thinking podcast.

Today, we're going to be promoting the 2023 G3 National Conference, but we're also going to be addressing a very controversial and important theme, a tsunami warning for the Southern Baptist Convention.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Virgil Walker.

Hey, thanks for having me. Can you hear me all right?

Oh, I hear you perfectly well, brother.

Good, good.

G3 Ministries and the Upcoming National Conference

Well, first of all, tell our listeners there may be a very rare occasion where we have listeners who don't know about G3 Ministries. It would actually shock me if they didn't know about it, but you never know.

We do have sometimes new listeners, even listeners that are not Christians who discover this program by God's providence. So tell us about G3 Ministries.

Yeah, G3 Ministries is the ministry of Dr. Josh Bice, really from birth out of Praise Mill Baptist Church. Praise Mill Baptist Church, and that's P-R-A-Y. I have to tell people that, because I think when they hear us say Praise Mill, they think P-R-A-I-S-E Mill, and it's actually Ephraim Pray, P-R-A-Y, who the church is actually named after.

It was his mill that was given over. That said, a lot more info than you wanted to know. That said, it's a ministry birthed out of that space and place. Dr. Josh Bice had the idea of doing a theology conference at our local church, and for years, starting in about 2013, was the first conference they'd been planning for a year prior to that.

But 2013 would have been the first conference that actually launched there at the church. It was packed full from the very beginning. We could fill 700 seats, and we had more than 700 people register for that particular event.

And that kind of continued until 2017, when we went to the convention center, where we were planning to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. We had about 2 ,500, 2 ,800 people show up there at that event, and it's just exploded from there.

More than 3 ,500 the following year, closer to 4 ,000, 4 ,500 the year after that. By 2020, we were teaming at about 5 ,500. And then, of course, in 2021, the last national conference, we had more than 6 ,500 people at that conference.

We've got speakers, many of whom are guests on your show, Josh Bice, James White, Dr. James White, Voddie Bauckham, Paul Washer, Stephen Lawson. I mean, the names just go on and on and on, and just some fantastic speakers.

This conference has transformed from a conference-based ministry that produces content to a content-producing ministry that hosts a biennial conference. And so, we have a number of resources that are available to pastors, to church leaders, and the like.

You can go onto G3MIN, G -3-M-I-N dot O-R-G, to find those free resources. Things from curriculum for people who are doing homeschool to pastors and churches who are involved in different aspects of discipleship.

We have a G3 Press. We're producing fantastic books and the like from that space as well. We have a G3 app where you can download conference information. I mean, it's just, the list goes on and on and on as the ministry continues to grow by leaps and bounds.

All of this by God's grace, and we're excited about what's happening. Our next conference will be September 21st through the 23rd here in Atlanta. It is on the doctrine of the sovereignty of God. It's gonna be a fantastic conference.

You're gonna be there, of course, Chris as well, and a number of different vendors from all over. It'll probably be one of our largest vendor spaces as well. We'll have more than 100 plus some odd vendors.

We anticipate somewhere in the neighborhood of about 8 ,500 people at that event, and it's gonna be a fantastic, fantastic time for us to gather together.

Yes, and as always, I am so excited about it, and folks, I am not exaggerating. I'm not using hyperbole. Anybody who knows me personally knows that I love the G3 conference, and I get really revved up about it and pumped up and so on, however you wanna describe it, and as always, the lineup is monumental.

I have never, ever been at a conference that has such a long roster of speakers, and not only a long roster, but every single speaker is just the highest quality that you can find in the church today, and you've listed some of those men that will be there this time around in September.

Let me repeat some of them. Votie Baucom, Stephen Lawson, Paul Washer, Phil Johnson, who I just had on the program, I think it was yesterday I had Phil on, James White, Mike Riccardi, Justin Peters, Ken Ham, Owen Strand, James Coates, the Canadian pastor who was arrested for refusing to shut down his worship services during the COVID mandates that were being laid down, Scott Annual, my guest today, Virgil Walker, and his co-host on the Just Thinking podcast, Daryl Bernard Harrison, Scott Brown, and Susan Heck, and I've interviewed most of these folks, and intend to get all of those that I have not interviewed for this conference back on the show as soon as the Lord will allow, and please, folks, if you intend to be there at this conference, please, if you haven't already registered, use the discount code G3ISIR, that is the Iron Trumpet's Iron Radio discount code, G3ISIR, and you will get 30 off the registration fee.

That is going to obviously help you and your wallet, and it's going to help me, and because it will further ensure that G3 Ministries will continue this relationship that we have of advertising on Iron Trumpet's Iron Radio.

So please go to g3men .org, g3men .org, to register and use promo code ISIR, that's actually G3ISIR, G3ISIR, and let our listeners know, especially for the sake of those who are unfamiliar with your podcast that you co-host with Daryl Bernard Harrison, let us know about Just Thinking.

Yeah, Just Thinking is, again, the ringtound of Daryl Bernard Harrison. Man, I tell you what, all these great folks who lead out in these ministries, I just have a tendency to just kind of hitch my wagon alongside of, so it's a joy to be connected with Daryl, and as we do the Just Thinking podcast, we've been doing it a little over five and a half years, and it really has been phenomenal to see the impact that it's had in the body of Christ as we tackle a number of different cultural issues through the lens of a biblical worldview on that show, and we've got an episode coming up here really soon where we'll be addressing the issue of spiritual warfare, and so we'll be talking about that at great length, unpacking the doctrine from a biblical lens, and just making sure people understand what it actually is and what it is not.

There are people calling spiritual warfare things that are not, and then missing the opportunity to properly identify what it actually is and how it actually functions, and so we'll be doing that as well, but Just Thinking, like I said, over five years, more than six million downloads of people, not only just around the country, but around the world, literally, and we've been enjoying doing that, the impact of it, and seeing how God has been using it.

Great, and if anybody who wants to begin to listen to that podcast, the Just Thinking podcast, you can go to their website, justthinking .me, M as in Michael, E as in Edward, justthinking .me, and you'll also find out everything you need to know about that podcast.

A Tsunami Warning for the Southern Baptist Convention

Well, you wanted to discuss something that has a very provocative theme today, a tsunami warning for the Southern Baptist Convention, and let me do some damage control immediately by making sure that our listeners know that neither Virgil nor myself are trying to broad brush everyone who is involved or who is pastoring a congregation in the Southern Baptist Convention.

There are many fine folks in the Southern Baptist Convention, many fine and dedicated pastors, especially those affiliated with the Founders Ministries like Dr. Tom Askell, who is the president of that valuable organization, but at the same time, just because of the fact that there are wonderful, biblically solid people involved in any denomination, fellowship, organization, doesn't mean that we should shy away from open public criticism when there are things terribly amiss with the leadership of those kinds of organizations and denominations.

So tell us where you are coming from today. What is this warning that you wanted to declare on the program today?

No, absolutely. Thanks for the opportunity to have this conversation. I think it's important to note, as you did at the very top, that where this comes from is not just a desire to see things fall apart or to see things not go well for the SBC, but more importantly, you issue warnings to those that you care about, those organizations, those people, the entities that you care for.

I titled my article, all of it's based upon an article that I've written on the G3 platform. You can go to g3men .org and go to a blog. The blog is titled A Tsunami Warning for the SBC. And I began by explaining how in March of 2011 that there was a 9 .1 magnitude earthquake that had rocked Japan there in 2011.

What was interesting about that particular earthquake was the magnitude of the tsunami that actually followed. Those that were a part of that area of the world recognized that there are multiple earthquakes that happen rather often.

This particular earthquake that happened about 81 miles off of the Tohoku area out in the Northern Pacific, they didn't have much time before the tsunami approached land. And once the earthquake magnitude, like I said, 9 .1 massive earthquake hit, it shifted the tectonic plates in the ocean, creating some say a 130 foot wave that actually raced toward the shore at a pace of speed of about anywhere between 300 and 500 miles per hour.

This is a damaging wave that actually hit the coast. It would eventually take the lives of more than 20 ,000 people in that part of the world. And so this was phenomenal. I thought about the impact of that, A, earthquake, B, the wave that took place.

And in light of what's happened in the Southern Baptist Convention and how often there have been magnitude nine or more earthquakes that have happened that have rocked the SBC at its core and thereby creating these waves of impact that begin to take place.

And one of them that I've identified and I've used it as a tsunami warning is Rick Warren, who recently his church, his Saddleback Church was disfellowshipped from SBC circles, primarily because of the fact that he had made the decision in May of 2021 to install three women as pastors at his church.

Once he was disfellowshipped, the process of disfellowship was, it took a long time. In fact, Chris, we had actually talked about some of this on your program a while back, what the SBC was thinking, how they were navigating this particular issue of women pastors.

We were, as culture was asking the question, what is a woman? You had the SBC asking the question, what is a pastor? As a result of that, I think that the push with regard to that by February of 2023, they rethought, some of the leadership rethought the idea of disfellowshipping Saddleback Church and made the decision to do so.

Rick Warren went, would go on the Russell Moore show and exposed the fact that he thought this was unfair, stated his reasons and rationale for why, and we'll get into that at greater detail here in a bit, but made the decision that he is going to actually fight this decision.

And he intends to do so at the upcoming SBC convention in June. And this will probably be something that goes to the floor of the SBC. I titled this a tsunami warning for the SBC because I really do believe that the environment based upon the previous earthquakes within the SBC, within SBC circles, previous earthquakes really have softened the targets, if you will, for a massive wave to overtake the SBC and an egalitarian wave, if you will, to take over the SBC and move them from their current position, which is a biblical one, to one that is not biblical.

Now, isn't this just a fruit of a danger that is inherent to a church or group of churches or pastors or individuals being a member or members of an enormous organization like the Southern Baptist Convention that is multifaceted?

There's a seemingly a wide spectrum of theological viewpoints and how churches function within that paradigm. And of course, most would insist that all would be within the framework of at least adhering to the bare minimum of what the scriptures would require to identify a true church.

But it seems to me that there's an inherent danger whenever something gets so massive.

Yeah, yeah, I think you're spot on with that as it pertains to the size and the scope of the SBC. Now, in years past, they boasted somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 plus thousand churches, some 21 to 30 million members.

And while the numbers have dwindled a bit, they are still a massive entity currently boasting about 47 ,000 churches, some 14 .5 million members. One of the reasons why this subject is important and why all the subjects related to the SBC seem to come up in news cycles is because of the size and scope of this denomination.

It is massive. It has a massive following. And as it goes, so goes a lot of what's known as Christian conservatism, right? When Trump got elected, what was blamed was evangelicalism. And when they say evangelicalism, in large part, what they mean are Southern Baptists.

Not that Southern Baptists encompass all of quote-unquote evangelicalism, but on the basis of sheer numbers and size and scope alone, I can't think of any one denomination. In fact, there's not any one denomination that is larger, has more churches and has more people involved than does the SBC.

So one of the reasons, again, why it's important to culture what happens in and with the SBC is because of its size and scope. You combine that with the manner in which organizations like the SBC gather.

How does an organization that large find that many people affiliating with it? Well, the way that they do so is to the point that you just made. They have to ensure that what they believe covers a wide range, a large tent and a big umbrella, so that more people can say what they agree with rather than what's disagreed with.

And so for Southern Baptists, that document is known as the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 or some in SBC circles know it as the BFNM 2000. This is a document that says, here's what we believe. Here's where we stand on these issues.

And if we're in healthy cooperation with one another, this is what you must believe. This is kind of like mere Christianity, if you will. It's the basics of belief that are required for someone to be a Southern Baptist church.

As it pertains to this particular subject, women pastors, women preachers and the like, here's what the BFNM says about that. It says this, a New Testament church of the Lord Jesus Christ is an autonomous local congregation of baptized believers associated by covenant and faith and fellowship with the gospel.

Getting closer to where they talk about it, they say this, each congregation operates under the Lordship of Christ through democratic processes. In such a congregation, each member is responsible and accountable to Christ as Lord.

Its scriptural officers are pastors and deacons. And here's the key. It says this, while both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by scripture.

And so that's what the BFNM, the Baptist Faith and Message actually says. I think the sentence is clear. While both men and women are gifted for church service, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by scripture.

And so if you understand the language there, you understand that the office of pastor should be separated for men, biblically speaking, that's absolutely clear in the passages and Timothy and in Titus and the like.

And so this issue should not be in question. However, there are Southern Baptist churches who have made a decision to ignore both scripture and this particular BFNM, this particular statement of faith, if you will, and have ordained women in the role of pastor.

Defining Pastor, Role, and Office in the SBC

Now, is there any defense of the hierarchy of the Southern Baptist Convention that involves a key word you mentioned there, that there are churches that are in defiance of what the Southern Baptist Convention requires of churches, and that would be an exclusively male headship in the church.

For one, that's not the only thing, but how do you respond to the fact that people in the hierarchy are maybe saying, well, as you yourself said, these churches are defiant to what we are saying is required of them?

Yeah, well, there are things that are happening on two levels. One is within the autonomous churches. So within the local churches, what you're having happen is a separation of title or office of pastor and role of pastor.

They're taking language and doing, again, what a lot of folks who lean liberal, folks who are progressive in their ideological framework, what they try to do is they try to change the definitions of words so that they can get around maybe what either scripture says or what a statement of faith actually says.

You see this culturally with the language around marriage. We all know that marriage for hundreds, for thousands of years has always meant one man, one woman in covenant union for life. That's what always has been the definition of marriage.

Well, when we wanna change, when culture decides it wants to change the definition of marriage, they insert their own language. Well, marriage can be between two men or marriage can be between two women.

And they restructure what's been typically defined in a specific way. Well, that's the case here as well. What's being done at local church levels in an effort to get around the idea that the qualified men are able to be in the office of pastor is they take in the word office and they said, well, there's an idea around office.

And then the separate idea that we can have is role or function. So we're allowing women to function as pastors or to be in the role of a pastor without maintaining the office of pastor. Well, that's just a language mumbo jumbo.

For the purpose of obfuscating what's actually clear in the text. You don't have an office without operating in a role. You don't have an office without functioning in that office. And so those two, those ideas aren't separate but what they've done is they've separated the language at a local level so that local churches feel comfortable trying to maintain their relationship with Southern Baptist while diminishing the actual office and role and function of pastor.

The second thing that's happening, Chris, is at the SBC level where the leadership is concerned. Last year, you had the credentials committee come back after having taken a year from 2021 to 2022 to examine not only Rick Warren's church, and they did this primarily with Warren because he was one of the largest SBC churches in the country, but they've examined all those churches and came back.

And even though the statement that they had in the Baptist faith, the message was clear, obviously over the course of a year, there were those who were on the credentials committee who had a difficult time based upon the idea that I just put forth, the role, function, and office.

These ideas have been separated. So you have people on the credentials committee who still seem to be a bit confused as to whether or not a woman could serve in the role or office of a pastor. And so they came back in 2022.

They, the credentials committee, came back and on the floor of the convention that year in June made the statement that they needed another year in an effort to determine whether or not the language in the Baptist faith and message actually made it clear that only men could serve in the office of pastor.

So again, I thought that was ludicrous. I wrote about it as did many others. There was kind of a back and forth about it on the floor of the convention. This was the year that Rick Warren actually showed up on the floor of the convention and laid out his case.

He did so in a very pragmatic way. He did so in a way that really engaged the sentimental crowd and as a result, had more time by which to maintain fellowship with the SBC. I mean, it took from June of 2022 until February of 2023 for the credentials committee to come back with the proper ruling, which they should have had more than six, eight months prior where they told Warren that he and Saddleback Church would no longer be in cooperation with SBC churches.

Well, we're going to our first commercial break. If you have a question for Virgil Walker, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state and your country of residence and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter and I could readily understand if somebody is listening who has a question and they are in the Southern Baptist Convention and they don't want to identify themselves for one reason or another, I can understand that.

But if it's a general question, please give us your first name, city and state and country of residence. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Virgil Walker right after these messages.

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And before I go to any of the listener questions that have come in, I just want you to lay out in addition to the problem with egalitarianism wreaking havoc in the Southern Baptist Convention, what are some of the other major issues that you and like-minded brothers in Christ have that makes them so stirred up with dismay that they are offering, just like you are, a warning to their brothers and sisters in Christ in the Southern Baptist Convention?

Yeah, as I looked at the landscape of evangelicalism and particularly the SBC in the last few years, it's been interesting to witness what's taken place. I go all the way back to 2018 and I know most people kind of hang their hat on what took place in 2019.

But for me, I think the issue of wokeism, the issue of social justice had simply begun to kind of give us some ideas around how it was gonna unfold back in late 2017 and of course in 2018. In 2018, the SBC and its organization, the ERLC, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission had teamed up with the Gospel Coalition to put on this event called the MLK50, so Martin Luther King's 50th anniversary.

This was the 50th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King Jr. And so they wanted to talk about his I Have a Dream speech, everything that surrounded civil rights and take a closer look at it to see if it had indeed impacted culture as a whole, the church in particular.

The leaders of the event, I named in my article were men like Charlie Dates and Eric Mason. Eric Mason, of course, has written a book called Woke Church by Jackie Hill Perry. Those are an incredible roster of speakers that were a part of this event.

Each speaker that got on the platform seemed to wanna promote this woke idea that Jim Crow was bad, which I think everyone agrees Jim Crow is bad, that the fight for civil rights, the right to just be seen or judged rather not by the color of your skin but by the content of character, that that was something worth fighting for and I think we all agree there.

I think what became problematic was when what they tried to do, what many of the speakers tried to do was they tried to re-problematize or problematize issues during the civil rights movement and act as if or at least present as if those same issues were at play today in 2021 or that time in 2018.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Blacks, comparatively speaking, from the time of the 1960s, 1965, 1968, blacks have more freedoms today than ever before, blacks have greater wealth, greater opportunities, greater means of getting around and doing nearly everything they want to do.

There's no comparison between today or at least that day in 2018 to the time of King and the civil rights movement. They were fighting for voting rights but each speaker tried to make this, try to draw this narrative that things were not just as bad as they were but had even been worse today than they were in that day.

This should have served as kind of just a tremor, a part of an earthquake, the thing that happens before the tsunami, but it did not, most ignored it for the most part, very few evangelical leaders really spoke out against it, a handful did but the vast majority did not.

By 2019, what you had was many that were advancing social justice were claiming that there was no such thing called social justice, there was no such thing as critical race theory, there was no such thing as these issues that we were seeing were shaking the SBC at its core.

2019 shows up and of course, within SBC circles, you had the big issue which really kind of shook everyone to their core which was the Houston Chronicles published a six-piece series, a six-part series that dealt with the allegations of sexual abuse within the Southern Baptist Convention.

Now, keep in mind that this Chronicle expose actually covered 20 years of history and what they found were 700 cases of sexual misconduct in the SBC of which and again, keep in mind the size of the SBC in light of the number of cases.

The SBC had 47 ,000 churches and 14 .5 million members. Never wanna make light of any situation of sexual misconduct, I think all of those need to be examined at great degree to determine A, what happened and B, if there's anything that needs to either change or if people even need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law based upon any kind of misconduct as it pertains to male-female relationships or anything alternative in those regards.

But what you had is the pressure of the Me Too movement combined with the pressure of the Church Too movement. Me Too was followed because of Judge Brett Kavanaugh's appointment to the Supreme Court, Church Too as a result of this article that comes out.