Explaining Guidepost/Sexual Abuse Task Force Recommendations in the SBC

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Welcome, once again, to the Conversations That Matter podcast, I am your host, John Harris.

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It is summer, it is summer, summer is upon us and I've been doing some work as I can outside because it's just so nice.

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I love the summer, but despite, I think it was three days ago, something like that, I had a sunburn, a wasp sting, and what else?

00:35

I think I had some poison ivy on my hand and I thought, yeah, it's summer. But despite all that, summer is a great time to be out there and while you're out there, you're gonna want to make sure that you have something to hydrate you because it's so easy to get dehydrated in the summer.

00:51

In fact, my wife and I just went through an experience with dehydration that perhaps maybe

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I'll fill you in on later on if we have time or in a future episode. In fact, she was sick for a big part of last week, which is one of the reasons

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I did not get to do some of the podcasting I wanted to do. But dehydration is a serious thing and so what you need is some iced tea, that's right, some iced tea.

01:17

And one thing I don't like in an iced tea, I'll just tell you up front, and it goes for hot teas as well, I don't like it when it's weak.

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So go out and get you some Gold River Company sweet tea, some green tea, some iced tea for the summer months.

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Keep yourself from dehydrating. Now, I wanna get to the topic at hand before I talk about anything of the personal nature, just because this is,

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I wanna get to it, this is important, this is something that people have asked me to talk about. I did do some interviews last week with some folks, four different people, about this particular issue, but people still want, some people at least, to hear just my take on it.

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And so I'm gonna give you that in this episode. And it is about the Southern Baptist Convention's task force to investigate sexual abuse in the convention and the

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Guidestone Report that accompanies this, and, or Guidepost, I'm sorry. I get confused, because Guidestone, I think, is a company the

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Southern Baptist uses for financial things, anyway, it's Guidepost. Independent, outside, secular, very secular, we'll go into that, a company that they paid to do this, cooperative program, money went to, unfortunately.

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And so I wanna talk to you about it, I wanna give you my take, I wanna bring you through some things to help you better understand this issue.

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And for those who are messengers going to the Southern Baptist Convention, I wanna break it down in the most simple way I can. I wanna give you the moving parts,

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I wanna give you the relevant information so that when you walk in to that convention center, you'll know, you'll have at least a better idea about what's going on, what issues are at stake.

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Can't cover everything, it's a long report, and there's a lot of moving parts, but I wanna give you what I think are the relevant pieces of information in this.

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So let's get started here, let's just go through it. I have a slideshow here, for those who are patrons, you will have access to this.

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I'll put the link in the info section, and you can download this and use it however you want. I wanna point out before we get started,

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I don't think you'll hear this anywhere else, but I started, what I did was I did a Google search, and you can, in certain search engines,

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Google included, you can put a, you can restrict the date in which it's searching, so it will filter out articles that are newer or older, depending on what range you want.

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And so I decided, I want up through 2021, what was said about guideposts in the, in relationship to the

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Southern Baptist Convention. And so I saw that, and this might not be exhaustive, but I saw that several of the

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Me Too advocates that have worked with or are part of the denomination in some way, there's some affiliation there, were very negative about guideposts, which

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I thought was interesting, that guideposts was viewed in a negative way, that the

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Southern Baptist Convention should not be utilizing guideposts. Well, why? Well, here's an article headline from Julie Roy's Red Flag Surface about firm hired to investigate

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SBC's handling of abuse. That was June 17th, 2021. You have

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Dwight McKissick, who is one of the known, more progressive -minded pastors in the

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Southern Baptist Convention saying, "'It is scandalous to allow the executive committee "'to appoint an investigative team independent of the

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SBC.'" So scandalous, using guidepost solutions was scandalous. "'It merits protest,' he said.

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"'This kind of wrong, raw -in -your -face, "'insensitive treatment seems to be reserved "'for women and minorities. "'Only males making decisions for female victims "'is horribly wrong.'"

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Yes, that's right. So they shouldn't use guidepost solutions. Boz Tevidian, who actually, and I'm not certain,

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I should have probably looked it up whether he is currently a Southern Baptist or not. I do know, though, that he did have an affiliation with the

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Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission's, that's a mouthful, Their Caring Well Initiative, and he contributed to that.

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And so he says, "'This is a major problem "'if this is the same guidepost solutions "'hired by the SBC executive committee "'to conduct an independent review of their response "'to sexual abuse disclosures.'"

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And he posts from an article about an individual in the financial world,

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Strauss Kahn, if I'm saying that right, I think Strauss Kahn, and how he hired guidepost solutions.

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And that issue seems to be part of a larger issue that you can see in this

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Twitter thread, if you're watching, from a guy named Wade Moulin. Hopefully I'm pronouncing his name right, too, or Moulin.

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I'm not sure. But he does this whole thread, and Wade Moulin has written a book, essentially, from a more

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Me Too perspective. So he's one of these advocates. All the people that I'm putting here are, on some level,

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Me Too advocates. And his basic thrust is that this guidepost solutions organization has been hired by a number of Christian organizations, like the

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Summit Church, RZIM, and, of course, now the executive committee. But his concern is that they've historically served wealthy individuals and corporations.

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And the insinuation here is that, with the intent to shield them, with the intent to try to protect them against outside lawsuits, to investigate those making claims, to discredit them.

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And so he goes through a number of outside firms that have hired guideposts, or organizations that have hired guideposts, to help them navigate accusations of sexual misconduct.

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And so I wanna just say, off the top, before we even get into this, just look at the people who, at first, the crowd who was negative about using guideposts.

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And now guideposts, their report is just championed, as if it's almost unquestionable to some.

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You really have to take their recommendations seriously and everything they say seriously. And if you don't, then you're on the side of the abusers now.

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Well, it wasn't that way less than a year ago. Guideposts was, for some, a bad organization.

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It was an organization the Southern Baptist Convention shouldn't have been in league with. And the reason was, was because, well, they're gonna help cover things up.

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That's the reason. Now, I wanna show you something a little later, but there's essentially a crisis now with guideposts and the

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Southern Baptist Convention using them related to their view on the LGBT issue. But you're not seeing the same kind of rhetoric from these kinds, this crowd and these people.

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They're not opposing guideposts. And this is a trend. You're not seeing Dwight McKissick's language here. It's scandalous to use guideposts because of their affiliation with LGBT, their support for that kind of sexual ethic.

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So I just wanna point this out, that we got some hypocrisy, or if it's not hypocrisy, it's just plain evil.

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We have some really broken moral compasses at play here.

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If it's such a problem half a year ago, and now, well, not so much of a problem, even though obviously their sexual ethic is way, way off.

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All right, so let me give you just a few highlights I want you to remember. And I've skimmed through, it's a long report.

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And some people, in fact, one person at least emailed me and said, yeah,

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I read every page. And I'm like, well, you probably sat there a while. I started reading it and I decided,

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I'm just gonna kind of go through the relevant parts here and skim where I can. And I had to do that a lot in grad school, so it's not a problem.

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But a lot of it is details on basically interviews that they conducted with quote -unquote survivors and just details in specific situations.

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And what I wanna give to you is just kind of big picture stuff here as much as possible. So this is some of the things that I think are relevant for us to understand moving forward that the

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Guidepost Report contains. It accuses the executive committee, these are my words, it accuses the executive committee of a pattern of covering up or avoiding reform in order to protect against liability.

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That's basically what's going on with the Guidepost Report. Credible, and these are quotes, the rest are quotes here from Guidepost.

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The term credible is defined not as manifestly false or frivolous. So giving an example here, the investigators found

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Dr. Johnny Hunt to be, or did not find Dr. Johnny Hunt to be credible in their interviews with him.

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So what they mean is that he, there's maybe a little bit of an arbitrariness to this, but they don't believe

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Johnny Hunt was accused of sexual misconduct. He says he didn't do abuse, but he did do some misconduct. And so he actually is accused of abuse in some way, basically forcing himself on someone else.

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And the Guidepost reporters or the investigators are saying, you know what, we don't find his testimony to be credible.

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We find the couple accusing him, their testimony to be credible. But credible, the standard that must be met is just as not manifestly false or frivolous.

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That's all it means. So you can see how you're already opening

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Pandora's box here. It's a hard definition to work with because it is so loose.

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And that's one of the problems with this report. And that's one of the complaints some people have with this report is that you have a mixture of people that are most of them not new.

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It's really stuff the Houston Chronicle unearthed or someone unearthed and sent to the Houston Chronicle in I think 2018.

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So you have some credible, if you wanna call it that, not according to their definition, but according to a legal burden of proof was met and people were put away or convicted.

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And so you have people like that. And then you have people that just have credible accusations against them.

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So it's very hard to tell who's, you'd have to go through with a fine tooth comb, who's actually legitimately has been convicted here in a court of law.

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Who's just been accused. And if they've been accused, then how do we know whether or not there's anything to this or if this is a false accusation or there's partial truth, partial falsehood in it, it's murky.

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That's really what I wanna tell you, it's murky. And part of it goes back to the definition that they're using. Now, the committee on nominations, the report says, should consider, this is one of the recommendations, having a gender balance on the

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CC, which is a committee they want to implement with at least four of the nine members, if membership numbers stay the same to be women in order to have enough representation to speak to female submitters and survivors.

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So these few bits of information, I think give you a picture that you're gonna wanna remember.

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The first is that there's a lot of murkiness and vagueness to some of these accusations.

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I mean, with a Johnny Hunt thing, I've read his response and I've read the accusations against him and it's kind of winds up in a he said, she said.

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And it's something from years ago. It's very hard this far in the future to go back and piece those things together.

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It's almost in the realm of what a historian would do, not an investigator, but a lot of these things are like that.

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And so you have the murkiness of the whole situation and then you have really what's given away here is that there is a kind of a standpoint theory understanding that Guidepost has.

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Well, if you put your committee that's gonna be responsible for investigating these things or intaking these complaints of sexual abuse, if you make sure that committee is composed of at least four of the nine members being women, well then you're gonna have a perspective there that's gonna be able to deal with abuse.

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And you're gonna have that perspective missing if you don't have those people there. And so it becomes important, not necessarily to hire the most qualified or not necessarily to, obviously this is a secular company.

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It's not like they're looking to pastors to navigate these kinds of things. It's gonna be, well, who's gonna represent the women here?

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Because women are the ones getting credibly making these accusations primarily.

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And so it gives you, this is the me too stuff. This gives you a window into how Guidepost is approaching this. And it's the same way that me too would approach this, that whole movement.

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And it isn't the way, and I'll talk about it later in this particular podcast. This isn't the way biblically to go about these things, which is part of the big problem here.

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Now, Johnny Hunt made a whole statement. I thought about reading it. I'm not going to for the sake of time, but I'm including it here for those who are patrons that want to read his statement or you can just look it up yourself.

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It is on posted on Twitter. Johnny Hunt posted it there. And so he contradicts some of what he says is sensationalized by the

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Guidepost report. And he admits to what he says is wrong, but then says, this is going way beyond.

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He never abused anyone. And part of me would like to almost, I was actually initially planning on doing a podcast to just delve into this issue.

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And how do you deal with a situation if it's what Johnny Hunt described? And maybe we'll do that in the future.

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I don't think right now this is the pressing issue though. So I'm going to move on and just give you some of the recommendations that Guidepost gave.

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Here's what they gave. They want the SBC to establish a permanent administrative entity to oversee comprehensive long -term reforms concerning sexual abuse.

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So permanent, permanent administrative entity. So an extra, this is bloated bureaucracy, right?

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We're going to have another entity that's going to try to implement these reforms. And what are some of these reforms?

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Well, create and maintain an offender information system is one. So instead of leaving this to law enforcement and getting people to pass a background check when they're hired, you would have an extra barrier here of, well, what kind of list does the

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SBC have about people who have done abuse? And here's the question though, what's that going to be based on?

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Is it going to be based on credible accusations according to Guidepost's definition? Remember, this is important.

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Go back to what a credible accusation is according to Guidepost. Credible is defined as not manifestly false or frivolous.

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That's all it is. It's not manifestly false or frivolous, kind of a vague definition there.

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And so this is the kind of thing that could be dangerous if you start accepting accusations that can be very subjectively accepted.

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And this is what the whole Me Too movement seems to be based on, that it's going to be a guilty until proven innocent situation where someone has to defend themselves against these things when there really isn't proof.

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So create and maintain an offender information system, provide a comprehensive resource toolbox. So you're gonna have training and education, all this stuff.

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Create a voluntary self -certification program for churches who have implemented these best practices.

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So you're gonna have certain churches that have gone through the right hoops, maybe implemented the Caring Well stuff.

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And remember, the Caring Well stuff, I've talked about it. I'd write about it in Christianity and social justice, religions, and conflict.

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Caring Well is not a, it is a Me Too arm in the Southern Baptist Convention.

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It is not pastorally driven. It is driven by quote unquote survivors as if they have special information that will help pastors who have the

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Bible navigate these things. It is, so there's a Gnostic element.

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The material itself even argues against innocent until proven guilty based on 1

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Corinthians 13 passage that love believes all things. I mean, rips it right out of context.

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It's gonna be that kind of thing that churches will have to jump through, I'm sure, in order to receive this kind of certification.

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And so what does it make a church look like if they don't go through this certification process? And they say, well, we don't agree with that.

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We believe in a more biblical approach to this. Well, they're gonna be in trouble because they're not gonna have that protection, that extra layer of protection, and there's gonna be some suspicion towards them.

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Well, if there is an accusation made, well, did you go through these hoops? So you can already see, I'm just looking down the road and saying, this is what

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I would foresee happening. Another recommendation, improve governance controls, including the use of enhanced background checks, letters of good standing and codes of conduct to voluntary strength in hiring practices, improve governance, restrict the use of non -disclosure agreements.

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Now this one I actually like because this is an issue with every entity so far as I can tell in the

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SBC is they do give you these NDAs or NDA equivalents to sign that you won't speak badly about the organization you just worked for and they'll not tie financial benefits to it, which is terrible.

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And this has been a problem and this is probably a good thing that this needs to stop. So it's not all bad, but silver linings.

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This is one good idea, but it's in the minority here of all the other ideas that many of them just seem to be creating another kind of bloated bureaucracy, top -down governance in an organization that's supposed to believe in the autonomy of the local church.

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We have adopt a declaration of principle, setting out fundamental standards regarding how sexual abuse allegations will be handled at every level of the

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SBC. That means on the church level too. Have a sincere apology and a tangible gesture.

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Listen to this one, a survivor compensation fund for sexual abuse survivors. So the

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SBC, the churches who give to missions and education and theological training are now that money is going to go partially to a fund for people who were abused, perhaps in a church that you're not part of, most likely.

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And your money though is going to go to compensate them as a tangible gesture. Well, your church wasn't part of that.

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You weren't responsible for that. You're just in the SBC if you're a church because you want to participate in the missions and the church planning and the education.

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And now your money is going to be going to this when you had no control over those other churches and what they did.

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I mean, this is a way of centralizing the SBC. It's a way of pushing churches out because there's no incentive if more and more money goes to these kinds of things.

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This spells doom for the SBC. Here's another one. Empower their special committee they want to develop here, this commission to better communicate with survivors and churches by providing trauma and sexual abuse training for the members of the committee.

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Improve the online reporting portal. Consult with experts. You wonder who those experts are going to be.

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I mean, if Guidestone or Guidepost is an expert, who are the other experts? Is it consultants from the

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Me Too movement? Consultants from psychology, from the world? Who are they going to be? So that's a concern, to what extent?

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Now, the initial reactions here, here's just a few I saw. One was

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Danny Akin at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, where I went and have my MDiv from, decided let's basically take down everything related to Paige Patterson and Johnny Hunt.

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Even though with those two particular cases, you have a lot of questions about things that happened years ago and what actually happened.

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There's a lot of he said, she said, but we're just gonna treat it like they're guilty. Take all this stuff down, despite whatever contributions they made to the convention and to Southeastern and building it.

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Just poof, they're gone. And I think it says something about they wanna, I'm trying to find it in here.

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He wrote something about trying to create a kind of like a shrine or a location on campus to support the victims or the survivors.

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So that's what it's gonna be replaced with. So a lot of grandstanding. This doesn't really do anything tangibly to help actual victims, but it's part of the cancel culture stuff.

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And then you have this letter from Steve Gaines at Bellevue Baptist Church. And it's a lot of it is just really just how emotional he is over this report.

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And so a lot of this isn't, he's not doing really anything different than what they were doing, but it's just, there was a lot of grandstanding on social media when this report came out.

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And I'm not part of this, I'm not an abuser, I'm not. But let's apologize for all these other people's sins and act like it's systemic to the denomination.

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And one thing is for certain in my mind is it's not. Yes, there's going to be abuse.

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With an organization as big as Southern Baptist Convention, of course there's going to be. And if you're going with what the Houston Chronicle reported over the past 30 years,

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I don't remember, someone did the math, I remember a while ago. I mean, it's like less than 1 % of pastors in the denomination, but okay, it's bad.

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You don't want even 1, 110th of a 1%. You don't want anyone that's an abuser in your denomination, of course.

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But we don't live in a perfect world. And we should expect that there's gonna be tears among the wheat. There's gonna be false teachers.

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There's gonna be, all the issues that were navigated in the New Testament are still present.

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And so this is an area that's awkward to get into, but what should the percentage be? What kind, when do you say, okay, this is above normal?

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This is, what is it for the average population as far as percentage of abusers?

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What about other denominations? So compare apples with apples. But if you're just focused on, look at these abusers, then, and some of them, we don't even know if they're credible or not, if they've been credibly accused, then it's, and that's only where you're looking, then of course you're gonna think it's this horrible problem.

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And look, in some areas, it may be a problem. In some churches, it may be a problem. I'm not saying it's not. I'm just saying, if you look at the big picture of the entire denomination, all the little churches all around, some churches, it's not, it's just not.

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In many churches, probably the majority of churches, it's not a problem. In some, it is. And so, but what this, the reaction to this does is say that, well, like, kind of like we're all guilty though.

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Every church is guilty. And yet at the same time, myself,

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I am doing this gesture. I am washing my hands of all this. Look, I'm taking down these names. I'm, look at me.

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And so there's a lot of virtue signal stuff going on here. And so, frankly,

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I just find it just somewhat disingenuous. This isn't really tangible stuff, but we're gonna get into some of the tangible stuff because the commission that created the task force that hired

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Guidepost took some of these recommendations and they have their own recommendations. And so we'll get into some of those.

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Now, the Gospel Coalition also reacted to this. And I'll just read a few, a little bit of this. How should

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Baptists and Christians respond to the SBC task force report on sexual abuse? Here's what they say. The report details how abuse victims call for reforms and crafted plans for centralized sexual abuse database of the convention over 15 years ago.

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Leaders rejected the plan in itself. That's a scandal. So there's a scandal, it says, because leaders rejected the plan.

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Well, here's the thing. Why did leaders reject the plan? Was, were leaders concerned that this would create some, make the

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SBC executive committee and the SBC itself something that it's not, by usurping this autonomy of the local churches and consolidating things into now more of a

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Presbyterian type model. You know, if that's their concern, if it's, we're gonna create something here that's never been created, this was never the intention of the

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SBC, then you might see some legitimacy to it, but it doesn't matter what their motive. It's just, it's scandalous.

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Lawyers and leaders feared ascending liability, putting money design designated for emissions at risk by establishing public databases like for mechanisms of accountability between autonomous

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SBC entities and autonomous churches. Yet the behavior detailed in the report shows little regard for the greater liability those who mistreat victims will incur when they stand face to face at the final judgment with the

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Lord. So here's, they're pitting it, you know, you're concerned about the money. You should be concerned about the

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Lord. And yeah, I agree. In principle, who doesn't? Every Christian agrees with that. Here's the deal though.

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I mean, to pick a ridiculous example, should I be somewhat liable for churches in my region?

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30 mile radius. Should I be liable if the assemblies of God church, of which I don't share, let's say,

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I have different pneumatology, I have a different, really in some ways a different soteriology. There's a lot of differences

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I have. Should I then take upon myself, since I'm a Christian, and they're Christians, their liability? Well, no, obviously not.

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That's crazy, John. Well, someone could say, well, you're just concerned about the money. You should be concerned about the judgment of it.

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Well, but it's not in my purview. So the assumption here is that the executive committee, it is in their purview.

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This is something that they should and can address. This isn't a local church matter alone.

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This is something that the SBC executive committee must address. If you have an abuser in your church, a predator in your church, and something goes awry, the

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SBC executive committee should be somewhat liable. That's the assumption behind this you're gonna keep finding. And that's the thing that is going to be a fight at the convention perhaps this year.

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In moments like these, we're all tempted to say, this doesn't pertain to me. We're tempted to ask, is that my problem?

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It's an echo of the excuse spoken east of Eden. Am I my brother's keeper? The answer to the question was always yes.

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So much mistreatment and abuse has happened because Baptist refused to look, refused to learn, refused to listen. Well, again, is that a blank check?

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Am I always my brother's keeper? Who's my brother? Who's the one that I actually have responsibility for?

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And that's the crux of this. And it's not argued for, it's just assumed. Some will be tempted it says to say, this is just a few bad apples or most of them that was in the past.

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Humility requires us to honestly admit we have no clue how much of this continues now. Well, there's some truth. Yeah, of course.

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We don't know a lot of it's covered up. This report limited in scope is the first word on abuse in our convention, not the last.

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More will come out. Now that's probably true too. We're gonna have more agitation for this kind of thing.

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We must listen and learn. We must also speak up a source of clear pain throughout the report is how often abuse victims stood alone as they fought for reforms.

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To walk away from the SBC now is to walk away from victims. To walk away now is to walk away from our responsibility.

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Because I think what the gospel coalition and Griffin Gutledge who used to work at Southeastern who is writing for them here, what he is getting at is that, yeah, there's an incentive here to be part of the

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SBC. Why would I wanna be part of an organization of which I don't really have control, but now churches of which

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I just don't have control over, I'm gonna be liable for their misconduct, potentially.

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I would leave in that situation, but he said, well, don't leave because then you're rejecting, you would be, I guess you'd be in league with the predators if you did that.

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That's what would be the case. So gospel coalition weighs in. Tom Askell weighed in at his reaction.

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I thought this was really good. This is what he says. Now he had some of the same concerns I do, but this is what he said about what would be good to have happen.

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The report makes clear, he says, that the staff hid vital information from the executive committee trustees, even deceiving them at points, which is in clear violation of the bylaw.

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So he's saying, look, staff to the executive committee, we're hiding things. There wasn't communication there. That's not how that's supposed to work.

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The trustees of all our entities need to receive better training to understand their fiduciary responsibility to hold the entities accountable to the churches that make them possible.

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We desperately need to implement structural board reform so boards provide meaningful oversight to their entities. We should strictly require that conflict of interest be disclosed, that there's recusal when they need to have recusal, that, let's see, that forensics audits happen periodically.

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This is stuff that would actually make sense. This is stuff that could potentially, and it wouldn't violate the autonomy of the local church.

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It wouldn't open up litigation against the SBC that would violate that autonomy.

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This would just be, you know, let's make sure that we don't have corrupt individuals with the incentive to cover for their buddies inhabiting these board positions.

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And that would be a good, wise thing, whether or not the issue is sexual abuse or another issue. It might be financial issues, but that's not part of the guidepost recommendations.

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And that is interesting. Tom Askell highlights this, but Guidepost left it out. Now, since then, and I'm gonna get into some of the recommendations that were adopted by the task force that the executive committee appointed.

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But since this whole thing and the debate that's ensued online over this, this is what's been taking place.

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And as I sit here on June 7th, this is what's taking place. Yesterday, Guidepost Solutions posted this.

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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.

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We celebrate our collective progress toward equality for all, and are proud to be an ally to our LGBTQ plus community.

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And there's a big rainbow flag. Now, in the report, there is a comparison made, which is very interesting to me.

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And this is what the comparison says. We have reviewed, this is Guidepost, all of the sexual abuse related submission to the

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CC during the audit time period, the credentials committee. Below are some of our observations of the credentials committee's timeframes.

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Okay, so the credentials committee responsible for, accountable to the executive committee, be responsible for making sure that we don't have, let's say pastors or churches that are violating the

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Baptist faith and message in the convention. So women pastors, you know, that violates the Baptist faith and message.

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So that kind of thing. Now, they must do a pretty poor job because there's a lot of SPC. In fact, the other day,

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I was searching for something unrelated and found, oh, that's an SPC church with women pastors, but I do digress.

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They compare it to, they look at, it says the shortest time that the credentials committee took to process a sexual abuse inquiry was three months.

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The longest time was 29. So the average time is 9 .6 months. Okay, so it takes 9 .6 months when there's an inquiry into sexual abuse for the credentials committee to yield a verdict or something like that, or to complete the process.

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Now, in contrast, they say, look how long it takes the credentials committee to make final recommendations on sexual abuse, or sorry, on issues related to LGBT.

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Let me see if I can find the exact quote here. Okay, so here it is.

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Calvary Baptist Church hired a married lesbian couple as co -pastors in 2017. Calvary was dissociated from the

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SPC in the early 2000s and was only associated with a local state convention.

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But in February, 2017, just one month after the executive committee's discovery of Calvary's leadership, they were disfellowshipped, or there was a threat to disfellowship the local association if they didn't disfellowship

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Calvary. So here's the point, here's the big picture here. Let's not get lost in the details. The big picture is, hey, it takes you guys 9 .6

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months to investigate sexual abuse allegations and come up with a verdict, and it only takes you a month to reach a conclusion on married lesbians that are in violation of the

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Baptist faith and message, but have become pastors at a church and disfellowshipping them.

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Well, here's the thing. That's clear cut, guys. That's a clear violation of the Baptist faith and message, and there's no he said, she said.

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Well, I deny that this accusation's true. We only have male pastors here that are straight.

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That's not what's going on. If you have a church that's brazenly violating the

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Baptist faith and message, then there's no need for more investigation into it. So this is just poor, this is dumb on the part of Guideposts.

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They clearly don't understand SBC theology, or they do understand it and they're against it, and that would make sense since they just posted yesterday their support for the

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LGBTQ normalization. Now, what's interesting more to me is the reaction to this, because they conducted the report.

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So you have Andrew Hebert, who is on the sex abuse task force for the SBC, that hired

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Guideposts. And he said that, look, we just hired them to do an investigation because of their reputation.

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As a world -class investigative firm, we did not choose them because of their theological or political agreement. We do not agree with their recent tweet affirming

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Pride Month. Okay, great. I mean, I'm glad you don't agree with them, but does it not escape you a little bit that this affirmation of LGBT normalization is in the same basic category of sexual perversion in a

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Christian ethic, that the whole issue of sexual abuse is part of it?

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I mean, these are related things that you just hired a firm that can't think straight morally when it comes to sexual ethics to investigate you and give you, not just investigate, but give you recommendations on sexual ethics.

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Let's listen to them. They know about sexual ethics and they'll help us navigate this. By the way, they don't share our sexual ethics.

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That's my point. Does that irony not escape you? Now, Bart Barber, I was gonna play this video.

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I don't think we have time, but Bart Barber, he's running for SBC president against Tom Askell. He posted a whole video, it's about five minutes long.

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Let me just summarize for you. Basically, he does all this moral equivalency, rationalization.

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He says, well, the SBC hired this guidepost solutions organization, and we don't agree with them because they don't believe a man is a man and a woman's a woman, and we know that a man is a man and a woman's a woman.

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But then he says, but you know what? Basically, the people who are against, in his mind, the recommendations or the report, and all of that's connected to that, from guidepost solutions.

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Those who are skeptical of it, they're just trying to cover up abuse.

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Those people are the ones that are problematic. And you know what? They're morally equivalent to guidepost. So guidepost has a bad ethic when it comes to sexual perversion and LGBT.

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But you know what? Those who don't want to receive guidepost's recommendations, they are just as bad.

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That's the argument he makes. And he also does another moral equivalency in his tweet thread, which this video is contained in, where he says, and I'll just read it, that he learned about guidepost's statement on LGBT.

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And he said, if we're going to accept the rationalizations given for working closely with atheists like James Lindsay, it would seem that anything would be possible.

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And then Megan Basham from the Daily Wire says, hey, hold on, I think we need to note here that Lindsay does not affirm pride ideology.

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And then Bart Barber says, well, fool says in his heart, there's no God. We have a book. It says that's preeminently important.

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Well, here's the deal. This is where there's the category error going on here.

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James Lindsay was not contracted ever by the Southern Baptist Convention to investigate their belief in God, or to see whether or not their view of the

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Trinity is orthodox. That would be absurd. He's an atheist. He doesn't have the same beliefs that the

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Southern Baptists have, right? That would be absurd. Guess what James Lindsay's done? Further, first of all, he's never been contracted by the

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Southern Baptist Convention. Secondly, he's only been at some conferences that Southern Baptists have also been at, in which, so I think what,

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G3 Ministries, maybe. Maybe they've contracted Lindsay, okay? But that's not the

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Southern Baptist Convention. To inform them about wokeness, about social justice.

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Because guess what? He's an expert on that stuff. Now, I'm just gonna say this up front now, and take this as you will.

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I like James Lindsay. As a person, I really do like James Lindsay. I've talked to him on several occasions.

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I wouldn't say that we're, we're not close or anything. It's been a few years, I think, since I had any exchange with him.

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But in fact, once I even had dinner with him. And so I like him as a person.

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I think he's done a lot of good work in many areas. In fact, I quote him, I think, maybe two or three times in Christianity and social justice, religions and conflict.

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And so I wanna say that about James Lindsay. That said, there is part of me, that does get a little uncomfortable with, like, okay,

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I understand he does understand this issue well. And it doesn't seem to be many others in Christianity who have done the level of research.

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At least at the time he was doing some of this, some of the speaking. There weren't others in prominent levels, at least, doing a lot of the same research.

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And so I understand you bringing someone like him in to do some consultation. But the fact that he is an atheist, he's not an

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Orthodox believer in Christ. I just, there is a little bit of an aversion

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I have to that. Like, and I'm not saying it's a sin. I'm not saying that at all. And I understand,

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I get why he would be a good guy to do this. And I think a lot of his, but it has to be stated upfront.

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And I think it has been stated upfront. I think people are not under any illusion that he, I think he even states clearly, look,

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I'm an atheist. I'm here to help you guys with this. So there's nothing innately, I can't see anything innately morally wrong with having someone like that advise you.

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If I, it's almost like, in some ways, I suppose it's like having someone teach me about mechanics or something, who's an atheist.

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They can teach me about mechanics. But this is a moral issue. And the social justice issue is a moral issue.

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So there is part of me that gets what Bart Barber's saying. Like, hey, couldn't we get someone who's a

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Christian to come in and do this? But here's the thing. Bart Barber is making all these categorical errors by equivocating the two, because they're just not equivalent.

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The Southern Baptist Convention never hired James Lindsay, and James Lindsay wasn't coming in to investigate our doctrine of God, or the

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Southern Baptist Convention's doctrine of God, ever. So it's not related. Yet Guidepost was brought in to do just that, to investigate issues related to sexual misconduct when, in fact, they have a broken moral compass on sexual ethics.

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So Bart Barber, in my opinion, swing and a miss. Tom Askell's response is basically, this is who we gave our tithe dollars to.

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He said, I and 47 ,000 other Southern Baptists, plus millions of faithful members, feel betrayed. We paid millions to an

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LGBT -affirming and proud organization to guide us on moral and spiritual matters. I mean, he's spot on, in my opinion.

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Why in the world did we do this? And this is the effect of this. The lawyers are lining up.

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Here's a sponsored ad on Facebook. Alert to Southern Baptists, sexual assault victims, who are sexually assaulted by a minister or leader.

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A minister, a pastor of the Southern Baptist Convention. Do you want compensation?

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Our law firm will represent you. How about on Garage Sharp, law firm.

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Southern Baptist Convention of Sexual Abuse Investigation. Hey, get in on the lawsuit we're gonna do.

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I mean, Leaf Cabracer, Hyman and Bernstein, another law firm. Massive Southern Baptist Church sexual abuse cover -up in cases.

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We're looking at class action lawsuits here, guys, because of this, because of this. And the reaction of the committee is gonna be, that I'm about to show you, is gonna be pivotal for this.

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Now, as far as I know, the task force is already in violation. Less than 30 days out from the convention is when they presented their report, when in fact it was required, the task force itself was required to do so more than 30 days in advance.

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But I don't think anyone's calling them on it. So this is what their recommendations are.

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And the reason that what I just said is relevant, by the way, is because Southern Baptists who are showing up need time to digest this and understand this.

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And so that's why, hey, let's give them at least 30 days. Well, they haven't been given that, but here's some of what's being said, by what the task force wants to do.

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Let's hire a designated trained person or independent contractor to receive reports of abuse for the credentials committee.

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So let's, an extra layer here, an extra money going to investigating these things.

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Let's put aside $3 million to be allocated to the cooperative program or to this initiative.

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Let's implement a bunch of training. And so you have some of what

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Guidepost was recommending being implemented here or recommended here. Let's study the Guidepost recommendations and then have a report next year at the convention.

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Let's serve as a resource in abuse prevention. And so let's put all these resources out there.

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Let's work with the executive committee and credentials committee to select an independent firm or firms to assist in credentials committee by providing factual findings for complaints of non -cooperation due to sexual abuse.

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So this is gonna be the creation of another hierarchy in a way that's going to police these things.

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And there's going to be, and money's going to be involved in this. And what direction this is gonna take at the convention is gonna be interesting.

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Now, here's the last part of this I wanna highlight. Let's put a ministry check website up for those who have been convicted or had civil judgment against them for sexual abuse, but also those who have been credibly accused.

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Names of pastors, and so we're gonna have a list. This is where things can get dicey.

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These are rules that are being made, standards that are being put up, a whole new system that now the local churches are going to be under and expected to abide by.

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And now this is the kind of thing that can open them up for the Southern Baptist Convention as a whole for class action lawsuits.

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If it happened at an SBC church, well, whose job is it to police that? Well, it's the credentials committee.

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And did they do their job? Maybe they didn't. That's gonna be the issue moving forward.

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Here's the danger. I wanna quote Josh Abatoy from the American Reformer. He says, the new administrative entities, policies, and procedures would become binding.

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And as much as any SBC measure can be said to be binding on local SBC churches throughout proposed changes to be made to the credentials committee.

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Under Guideposts proposed construct, the credentials committee would be empowered to make a determination that an

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SBC church is not in friendly cooperation with the SBC, that it must be disfellowshipped. If the credentials committee determines that such a church is not cooperating with the new administrative entity.

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Further, the composition of the credentials committee would be altered to require that no less than four out of nine members be women, which

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I talked about that issue. Let's see, because the credentials committee would have significantly expanded workload, its staff would be correspondingly increased.

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The sexual abuse task force report also calls for a creation of a survivor compensation fund overseen by an independent special master to provide compensation for abuse survivors.

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The effect of the fund would be to distribute liability for abuse cases, cooperative program giving by the small local churches will in part be awarded to the fund in order to pay for abuse compensation by other churches.

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Additionally, the report expressly calls for the sale of SBC assets in order to fund the survivor compensation fund.

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So you wanna be part of a denomination that's selling off its assets, that redistributing money to this fund that now you're liable for, and now class action lawsuits could potentially happen.

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This is the reaction we're getting, and this is just a small sampling from some of those on the more Me Too side on Twitter.

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You have Julie Roys saying that in a fiery comments, Joe Knott, a member of the SBC executive committee, claimed that taking steps to prevent abuse in churches will lead to ruin.

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Right, because again, they're not getting to the root issue. They're just assuming their cure for this issue, their way of handling it is the only way of handling it, that this must be something consolidated and then dealt with at this level, at the top of the

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SBC. This isn't something to remind local churches, hey, call the police, that's their purview.

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This isn't something to, I mean, that's gonna be part of it, I'm sure, but it's gotta be so much more than that.

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And if you're not on board with all of it, well, you just must be covering for abuse. That's the insinuation. Rachel Denhollander, interesting that the task force and survivors are getting blamed for the cost of cleaning up the mess.

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And she's replying to Denny Burke. If you have some concerns about this, some of which

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I've just talked about, well, you are blaming the survivors. You have

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Jared Wilson. I did not have wanting to warn churches about the abusers. Is liberalism on my Baptist bingo card at all?

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And Trevin Wax, being Baptist bingo battle strategy. Just say fill in the blank is liberalism and that's what you get momentum for whatever you want to happen or whatever you want to stop.

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So they're just, ha, ha, ha, let's make fun of anyone who has concerns because well, they're just against warning churches of abusers.

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They can't be this stupid. They cannot be this stupid. But this is how it's framed. That if you have any concerns about this, that if you think this will fundamentally change the

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Southern Baptist Convention, open them up to a bunch of liability, cause churches to exit in massive numbers.

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If you're worried that you're gonna have people who are innocent unfairly accused and their names smeared and lawsuits even resulting in that when their names get put on lists because it's supposedly a credible accusation, when you stack committees with members just because of their gender and not their qualifications.

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And if you have any concerns of any of that, well, you're just crying wolf that it's liberalism or you're just supporting, you're just against supporting abusers.

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This is the kind of logic we're getting. Now, let me give you for you some biblical things to think about.

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Biblically, two or three witnesses is how truth is established. There is a due process here.

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Credible accusations do need to meet this. You need lines of authentication here. Also, you need to think about consensual verse forced here.

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Deuteronomy 22 says this, if a man is found lying with a married woman, then both of them shall die. Shall die.

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I mean, that's pretty harsh, John. Well, that's what the Bible says. The man who lay with the woman and the woman, thus you shall purge the evil from Israel.

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If there is a girl who is a virgin engaged to a man and another man finds her in the city and lies with her, okay, in the city where there's people around, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city and you shall stone them to death.

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The girl, because she did not cry out. Well, here's what the Me Too movement says today. Well, hold on.

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That person was in a position of privilege and power over me. It was a man. It was a leader. It was a pastor.

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If I cried out, no one would believe me. I'm sorry, but this is what biblical justice demands. And I am sorry.

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I really am, because I know that those situations are real. We live in a world that's filled with sin.

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There is no perfect world. We got to remember that there is no perfect world. And when you try to make it a perfect world using imperfect men by consolidating more power, that creates more potential for sin.

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But if the woman in the city does not cry out, so there could have been people that would hear her.

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This could have been reported and she refused to do it. And the man, because he has violated his neighbor's wife, let's see.

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Okay, she did not cry out. Then they both get stoned to death, because it's adultery.

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It's not rape, it's adultery. But if in the field, the man finds the girl who was engaged and the man forces her, so no one's around in this case, and lies with her, then only the man who lies with her shall die because you shall do nothing to the girl.

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So here's where the superior physical ability of a man is acknowledged here, that if it's somewhere where there's no evidence, except we know that it happened, but there's no evidence that this was consensual, that it looks like this was, or I should say that this situation could have very well had been the man forcing himself, then guess who dies?

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It's the man, it's not the woman. So the woman's reporting it, but there was no one there to hear her cry out.

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You shall do nothing to the girl. There is no sin in the girl worthy of death. For just as a man rises against his neighbor and murders him, so is this case.

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When he found her in the field, the engaged girl cried out, but there was no one to save her. If a man finds a girl who is a virgin, who is not engaged and seizes her and lies with her, and they are discovered, then the man who lay with her shall give to the girl's father 50 shekels of silver and she shall become his wife.

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Because he has violated her, he cannot divorce her all his days. The Bible does make these distinctions. And of course you need to, for modern times, think about, okay, we have cell phones, we have most of the people doing this, it's not out in a field somewhere.

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It's going to be in a location where there's gonna be someone around if you cried bloody murder, most of the time, not all the time.

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You have to take those things into account. You have to take into account cameras and all the other ways that we have for authenticating things into account.

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But there is a process here. That's just ignored. Guidepost doesn't understand this. Doesn't seem like even some of the

53:43

Me Too people in the Southern Baptist Convention understand this. And that justice was dealt with swiftly at this time.

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This is, we're looking at stuff 20 years ago in some cases, trying to reconnect the dots.

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You also have the government sphere versus the church's sphere. Romans 13 says the government bears the sword. It's the government's job to investigate these things.

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You have a high standard in scripture. He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous, both of them alike are what?

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An abomination to the Lord. So condemning the righteous, abomination to the

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Lord. And that's the potential here when you just accept accusations.

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And then of course, statute of limitation. Now here's something, I just wrote that. I didn't put verses next to it. You do find some, the principle in scripture of statute of limitations.

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That's the whole idea with the avenger of blood and waiting until I think it's the high priest dies in order to leave the city of refuge.

54:39

But in Western, in our jurisprudence today, we've kind of developed this statute of limitations.

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And the only point I wanted to make with this is that the farther away you get from the event, the harder it is to piece it together.

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And some of these events are being brought up like they're fresh. Like it was just yesterday and we just don't have all the information. And yet we're relying on people's memories from these times.

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And it should have been a situation where, look, someone cried out that it was reported right away.

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And someone thinks that they can come by decades later and report something. And we just have to take me seriously now.

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I didn't do it for all those years, but now you have to take me seriously. We need to have a little bit of skepticism with that kind of thing.

55:22

Even, and it could be true. That's the thing. Some of this stuff could be true. That's possible. But there's no way to find out often.

55:30

These are the things that I would like to see discussed. That what I'd like to see part of this discussion and they're not. And that's one of the things that grieves me about this.

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And this is one of the things that you're gonna have to remember going to Anaheim if you're a messenger. This is where the battle lies.

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Are we going to go with what biblically scripture talks about? Are we going to go with a high standard with lines of authentication, due process?

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Are we gonna go with the truth? Are we gonna go with, well, we need standpoint theory here to help us out.

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We need to make sure that we believe women, that this loose definition of what credible is is what we use to figure out whether something is true or not.

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We need to change the very nature of the Southern Baptist Convention. These are all things up for grabs. And so it's gonna be for that reason, an important convention in some ways.

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So anyway, I hope that's helpful for everyone who's going to the convention to help you all understand this better and navigate it.

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And I'll give you some more personal updates and things later on in the week. I've been very busy lately with a number of things, things related to this podcast and some of the work that I've been doing.

56:41

But I'm gonna leave you with that for now since we're almost an hour in. I wanna say just in closing that if you go to worldviewconversation .com,

56:49

there are a number of places I'm gonna be this weekend and next week, speaking mainly in,

56:55

I think, Wisconsin. I think it's all Wisconsin. So if you live in Wisconsin, I'm gonna be all over your state next week speaking and I would love to see you.

57:04

So we're gonna, right now I'm scheduled to preach about Gideon and we're gonna talk about,

57:09

I think, the Me Too movement and then just some general social justice stuff and we'll take questions and we'd love to just meet you.