Guidepost Solutions Report and the Future of the SBC

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This is a special weekend edition of Conversations with a Calvinist, and we're going to begin right now.

00:27

Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.

00:29

My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist, and I am welcomed today by my new friend and fellow pastor, Daniel Kendall, and he is the pastor of Antioch Baptist Church in Gainesville, Florida.

00:42

Hi, Daniel.

00:43

Thank you for being on the program with me today.

00:45

Hey, Keith.

00:46

Thanks a lot.

00:46

I really appreciate it.

00:47

Yes, sir.

00:48

And I want to give a little history as to why I asked you on the program today.

00:54

I have been, as many have been, watching the unfolding that is going on in the Southern Baptist Convention, specifically with the report that came out this week in regard to the abuses that have been hidden and are now coming to light.

01:10

And I actually posted a request, if there was anyone who might be interested in coming on and talking with me about this particular issue, because I am not a Southern Baptist.

01:21

I sort of stand on the outside, but I do feel a kinship with the Southern Baptist Convention because, one, I went to a seminary that is a Southern Baptist seminary.

01:31

Jacksonville Baptist Theological Seminary defines themselves as a Southern Baptist institution, and I do feel connected to the historic Southern Baptist Church with men like John Broadus, and James Pettigrew Boyce, and Basil Manley, those men who were the founders, if you will, of the Southern Baptist Convention.

01:51

And so when I see what has been defined as the largest Protestant denomination in America, and I'm not even sure that's fair to say because people sometimes argue it's not a denomination, you know, but leaders within the group have called it the largest Protestant denomination in America.

02:09

When I see it struggling in the way that it is, it causes much pause in my heart and concern, and I know many other people have that as well.

02:18

So for a moment, Daniel, what I'd like to ask you to do is just sort of tell us about yourself, about your church, a little bit about the history of where you're coming from, and why you were willing to come on the program today.

02:29

I've been at Antioch since I was 23 years old.

02:33

I don't know what they were thinking when they called me, but that's where God had me.

02:39

I've been there 14 years.

02:41

God has been very, very gracious.

02:43

A little bit of the history of my personal history that also ties in the history of the church, that ties into the subject, as we were talking before we started recording, my uncle was actually on the list of names that was released this morning.

02:57

I remember as a kid, before I even knew what pornography was, or sex was, or anything like that, my dad's sitting down and telling us that our uncle was going to jail.

03:10

And as I've gotten older, I've learned more and more and more.

03:14

He actually used his position as a pastor to molest a 15-year-old girl that he was counseling.

03:23

And then from there, went on to child pornography when he got out, went back to jail, got out, and he's actually in jail right now for child pornography.

03:32

From there, as a pastor, that's something that's always been an issue for me, just thinking of the pain that my cousins and my whole family went through.

03:41

So as a church, we are very, very vocal and outspoken concerning sexual abuse.

03:47

And because of that, a substantial number of people have come to our church who have been sexually abused.

03:53

Off the top of my head, I could probably almost get to 10% of our congregation that I personally know of have been abused.

04:01

Most of them is by family members, not by clergy.

04:05

But a few years ago, a local Southern Baptist pastor molested a kid, ended up in the dissolution of the church.

04:14

And right now, about a third of my congregation came from that church.

04:20

So it's one of those where I've been dealing with this issue for years, and it's been one of those where we've been outspoken about it.

04:30

And that's why a lot of those people who have been hurt from those situations, because there's been other church situations, have come to our church.

04:37

It's been something where it's not—I mean, I focus on preaching the gospel, but part of the gospel is caring for the weak and abused, and they feel safe coming to our church, because of the way we've been outspoken about this issue.

04:50

Amen.

04:50

Well, it's a blessing to know that there are places where people can go and feel safe and feel like their story is not absolutely unique to them, where they feel like they can be loved and appreciated and not put in a place of where nobody's going to talk to me or nobody's going to deal with me because I'm broken or I'm abused or I'm hurt.

05:12

I can tell you a really neat story that happened about two years ago along those exact lines.

05:16

A family came to our church, and at the time, we were going over training for how to identify abuse, what you're supposed to do, how you're supposed to handle that.

05:28

And the family had abuse within their home, and a couple of their kids had been abused by a family member.

05:35

And when the young lady disclosed that, all the ladies in the church obviously gave her a hug.

05:44

They were just encouraging her, and she actually came to faith in Christ.

05:48

And part of that is because Christians, and I use that term very loosely, at other churches, as soon as they heard of what had happened in their family, then they were the unclean.

05:59

We can't talk with them.

06:00

We can't be around them.

06:01

And it was just such a testimony to the good people of our church that the love of Christ is for broken people, and surrounding someone who is hurting and broken with the love of Christ brings wholeness, as opposed to the ostracizing, covering it up, etc., etc.

06:21

I sent you a video.

06:23

Now, I know this isn't Southern Baptist, but I sent you a video and you said you had seen it where a pastor announced that he had sinned, that he had committed the sin of adultery and had done so for many years, and he was asking for forgiveness, and the church applauded him, which I found odd, but I get it.

06:43

They're trying to show forgiveness.

06:45

But then the young girl that he had abused stood up and she said, it started when I was 15 or 14 or something, and she says, why don't you tell him the whole story? And he backpedaled, argued, she came up onto the chancel, tried to talk, and the church still surrounded him, still supported him, and sort of blackballed her.

07:11

And that was excruciating to my heart to see.

07:16

Oh, it made me furious.

07:19

Absolutely furious.

07:21

That the church would side with him.

07:22

And there's a church in Jacksonville a few years ago where the pastor, it became known that he was a sexual offender with children, and so the church barred children.

07:31

Did you hear about that? Oh, yeah.

07:32

I have mentioned that in our congregation as, what's from the pits of hell? Exactly.

07:39

I mean, Jesus literally talked about a millstone and, you know, tying it around this person's neck, but we're going to keep him as the pastor and we're going to make our church a child-free zone because of that.

07:51

Yep.

07:52

Put people in the parking lot to turn away families with kids.

07:54

So it wouldn't, well, I think the exact phrase was so it wouldn't violate his probation.

08:00

Wow.

08:01

Wow.

08:02

This is a brave new world.

08:04

I mean, it's a sick world.

08:07

It is.

08:07

Sick world.

08:08

It is.

08:09

Absolutely.

08:11

Well, when we talk about the situation regarding the Southern Baptist Convention, as I said before, not being a Southern Baptist, I am not privy to any of the inner conversations.

08:24

You are Southern Baptist.

08:26

Your church is still part of the convention.

08:28

That's correct? Yes, that's right.

08:30

Okay.

08:31

So you would have more information than I do, but let me ask you this just to start out.

08:36

Has this been a conversation that's been ongoing for a while or is this a surprise to you all as well that this report? No, I think, I mean, we can get into the ins and outs of the whole report here in a little bit, but the reason for this report is because the average Southern Baptist and we can talk about polity in a little bit to help people understand, the average Southern Baptist for the last 20 years has been saying, y'all are hiding something.

09:07

Y'all are hiding something.

09:08

We want to address this and no matter how much the person, the people in the pews and the regular pastors have been saying, this is a problem.

09:17

We got to fix it.

09:18

There has been this appearance of indifference from people high up within the convention.

09:24

So this report stems from basically 20 years plus of your average Southern Baptist saying, guys, we got to do something and eventually, I mean waving attorney client privilege is insane.

09:42

That's the nuclear option and about 90% of the people in the Southern Baptist convention in terms of the average church members pastor said we want the nuclear option.

09:52

We're tired of the stonewalling.

09:54

We don't care what happens.

09:56

We want this fixed now.

09:58

I remember that partially because this was at the last.

10:02

When was the meeting of the last was the last convention meeting? So it had been June of last year.

10:07

Okay, and I remember that coming out about the waving of attorney client privilege.

10:11

I didn't I didn't quite understand everything that was going on.

10:14

But what it's incorrect me if I'm wrong what it seemed to be was the the convention members the people who are supposed to decide what the executive committee does the convention members were saying.

10:26

We don't want you to be able to hide anything.

10:27

We don't want you to be able to have your privileged conversations with your lawyers.

10:32

We want everything on record and the executive committee went against the will of the people and said no we're going to maintain that attorney client privilege.

10:41

Is that is that am I so so let me back up and kind of explain the way the Southern Baptist Convention works.

10:47

I think that would help people understand.

10:49

Sure.

10:49

So please every Southern Baptist Church is 100% an independent church.

10:54

So we're an independent Baptist Church.

10:57

So the Southern Baptist Convention is that we are of the conviction that we can do more for the kingdom of God if we link arms with like-minded brothers and sisters.

11:09

So what we do is we pool all of our resources so that we can train pastors and seminaries and send out missionaries and plant churches.

11:20

So, you know every the Southern Baptist Church down the road with 15 members.

11:24

They support close to 4,000 foreign missionaries because of the cooperative program.

11:30

So the convention only exists so to speak once a year and that's in June when we have a meeting and all of the authority is in the local church congregation and each church can send what are known as messengers and all the authority is vested in them.

11:48

What they say goes there is not a top-down structure.

11:53

So the day-to-day operations of the Southern Baptist Convention is run by the executive committee.

11:59

The executive committee is a full-time staff and the way the Southern Baptist Convention works with like seminaries, International Mission Board, all of that is they have a trustee system and these trustees are representatives of the local churches to ensure that this, I think it's like 25, 26 people in the executive committee that they run the day-to-day operations the way the committee members wanted to.

12:24

So when it came to the waiving of attorney-client privilege, that's insane.

12:30

Nobody in their right mind does that.

12:31

That is legal suicide.

12:34

But the reason it got that way is because there was within the executive committee, not necessarily the trustees, but the executive committee a stonewalling that when we said, hey, we want to registry where we know of all the Baptist pastors who've molested people.

12:53

We can't do that.

12:55

And again coming from the executive committee.

12:58

So in that whole debate on attorney-client privilege, it really was the executive committee not the trustees.

13:07

So the committee would prepare the report for a trustee.

13:12

The trustee reads over the report, prays about it, thinks through it, comes and makes a decision.

13:17

The trustees for the executive committee were done a disservice by the executive committee itself.

13:23

They did not, even though they had several months to come up with an option that would be legally protected, that would work through all those things, they just basically told, and what I'm saying is kind of a summary, but they dumped on the trustees literally day before over a hundred pages to read and said we can't waive attorney-client privilege and expected them to make a vote right then and there against the will of the churches who had sent them that they were representatives of.

14:01

So that's where the whole fiasco of are we going to do it? Are we not going to do it? Are we going to not going to do it? But it ended up being very good because what we found out on the report is a lot of the people who were against waiving attorney-client privilege, there was a reason.

14:17

And it's because they were going to be named for covering up all of the abuse, stonewalling, etc.

14:23

And so when attorney-client privilege is waived, a substantial number of people resigned.

14:29

So now that the report's out, the report's largely dealing with people that have no position in Southern Baptist Convention anymore.

14:37

Like there's literally nobody to fire, you know, like it's that they all resigned or quit for the most part.

14:44

Okay, so well that paints a little different picture and it puts it in a different light because now we're thinking, you know, when we get to the question of where do we go from here, you know, or is there anybody to punish and is punishment necessary? Is it doesn't need to happen, you know, so those are questions.

15:07

Those are real questions.

15:09

But like I said, largely almost everybody that was named with one exception.

15:14

He resigned the week before the report came out.

15:17

Almost all of them had either retired or resigned or quit or whatever before the report came out.

15:23

So the report is detailing and naming names of people.

15:29

Like for example, the lawyer for the convention that advised the executive committee.

15:36

He was behind a lot of the, well, we can't do this because it was sending liability.

15:41

You waive attorney-client privilege, you find that out.

15:43

But as soon as attorney-client privilege is waived, he says, we're not going to serve the convention anymore.

15:47

So you have to go get a new lawyer.

15:50

But and I get the argument that he was making because as a lawyer, your job is to protect your client from lawsuits.

15:57

Yeah, we're pastors.

16:00

We're Christians.

16:01

Our job is to protect people who are being abused.

16:06

Who cares about the lawsuits? Now the lawsuits, we want to try to avoid those.

16:09

But if you do what's right and you punish and you turn over and you fire and you, you know, turn it over to police, let the police investigate.

16:18

You don't have to worry as much about lawsuits because you did what's right.

16:21

If you do background checks, if you don't put people in positions, if you don't hire pedophiles, that's the way you protect yourself, you know? Yeah, absolutely.

16:31

And that brings up another quick thought.

16:34

And I want you to sort of give me your bird's eye view comparison.

16:38

I know that somebody like me looking at this from the outside, I would say, you know, I remember about 20 years ago or so.

16:46

There was a major scandal that came out within the Roman Catholic Church that yes, that priests were molesting children specifically and that instead of the church doing something about it, they would move that priest to another diocese or something.

17:07

And therefore a lot of people, a lot of Protestants specifically, oh, look at there.

17:12

That's an example, you know, the Catholics don't have the, you know, a right understanding of the church.

17:19

Anyway, they don't have a right understanding of the gospel.

17:21

And here they are showing their devilish side.

17:24

I mean, I heard all kinds of stuff, you know, people saying, here they're showing their demonic side and it shows itself in expressions of child molestation.

17:34

But then we come back, we say, okay, but as Baptists, we believe we have the gospel.

17:38

We believe that we have at least a biblical understanding of church structure.

17:45

Yes, but even though I know some of our friends in the, maybe the Lutherans and Presbyterians might disagree with our structure, you know, of congregational polity, we at least would say we believe we have a biblical church structure.

17:58

We believe we have the biblical gospel and yet it's now at our door.

18:03

Yes.

18:03

Do you think that there is any similarities between what happened in Rome or with the Roman Catholics and what has happened in- Yes and no.

18:12

The similarity is wherever you have children and vulnerable people, perverts and abusers are going to be attracted.

18:20

If you look at the statistics with the public school system in the United States, the Roman Catholic Church does not even compare to the amount of child abuse that has taken place in the public school system.

18:32

It is not even close.

18:33

The public school system blows them all out of the water.

18:36

Yeah, I was not aware of that.

18:38

Is it, I mean, it's that bad, huh? Yes.

18:40

I mean, and so what you have though is everybody views it as the religion causes the action.

18:48

Whereas if you have a teacher who molests students or you have, there's been a big in the news that you have a lot of female teachers that are attractive being with, you know, 14 year old boys and stuff like that.

19:00

Oh, yeah, I guess that's true.

19:01

I didn't even really think about that.

19:03

You view that as a rogue teacher.

19:06

You don't view that as the entire system being corrupt.

19:09

So wherever you have kids and vulnerable people, you're going to attract abusers.

19:13

Beyond that, there's a massive difference with the Catholic Church and what happened in the Southern Baptist Convention.

19:20

And it's this, the Catholic Church, you have folks, bishops, archbishops, all of that who move the priest.

19:28

If a Southern Baptist Church fires a pedophile, calls the police, and has them turned in, the Southern Baptist Church across, you know, the country is a completely autonomous, independent organization.

19:46

And if that pedophile, after he gets out of jail, puts out his resume, it's up to that congregation to do their due diligence.

19:56

Now, would I track down, if we fired a guy who was a pedophile, or we kicked someone out of the church who was a pedophile? Man, I would contact the next church he goes to and say, hey, you don't want this guy in your church, or, you know, etc., etc.

20:08

Like to me, but that's on me as an individual.

20:13

So you have that, where you have the churches that would fire the guy, turn him in, and if you look through the list of the names that was released, a substantial number of them, the list that was released this morning, it's like 200 pages of people, not necessarily pastors, but pastors, deacons, there were some women on the list, some people who had molested people in nursing homes.

20:33

But if you look at it, a substantial number of them were on that list because they had been arrested, they were on the news, they had been convicted, etc.

20:43

What you have is you have a couple congregations who, for whatever reason, you got a pulpit committee, they don't understand anything other than asking a couple questions.

20:53

I mean, and so you have somebody come in, you call all the people that are on his resume.

21:00

It's up to you when you put on your resume where you can tell them what you got fired from your last church.

21:04

You know, like if you're going to put names for references down, you're not going to put people down who know you're a pedophile.

21:11

So unless that church searches to find out his criminal record, especially when you're going across states, I mean, I don't know how to find out what took place in Nevada.

21:23

I don't know how to search their legal system.

21:26

Then you have it where the church may innocently think that they are hiring a charismatic, great, godly man.

21:38

And by charismatic, you don't mean like speaking in tongues? Charismatic personality.

21:43

The way they have access to children is because they're very trustworthy.

21:47

They're very friendly, personable, etc.

21:50

Absolutely.

21:51

So that's the difference.

21:52

It was not someone high up saying, oh no, he's a pedophile, but we want him to have access to kids.

21:58

Let's move him.

21:59

It was an individual church firing somebody.

22:04

And then he, on his own, goes to a church up the road.

22:07

Now, there were a couple of bigger name people back in like the, I don't know, early 2000s that had somebody that they recommended, but they weren't privy at the time to all the information.

22:25

Some of them were, mishandled the abuse and recommended them.

22:29

But that was in a pastoral level.

22:31

That was never in the executive level because there is no, there's no ordaining council for the Southern Baptist Convention.

22:39

You're ordained by the local church.

22:40

So the Southern Baptist Convention can't certify a preacher, can't revoke his ordination.

22:45

They can't do any of that.

22:47

That's all in the local church level.

22:49

So the way the scandal came out was local church individuals would know, hey, this guy molested me.

22:57

And now he's a music minister at another church.

23:01

They would call the church and the church would roll their eyes as, you know, you know, they go ask him.

23:06

Oh, it's just a rumor.

23:07

Those people, you know, you know how Satan tries to destroy us.

23:09

And they believe him because of him being personable and trustworthy and all those things.

23:15

So the survivors would then call the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, be like, guys, you got a church that hired a pedophile.

23:23

How can you take money from that church and give it to missions? And that's where everything stonewalled was within the executive committee.

23:31

There was about two people that, you know, the weakest link in the chain that stonewalled everything.

23:37

And that's where the churches kept saying, guys, we got a problem.

23:41

We can't have another Southern Baptist Church hiring a convicted pedophile for their youth pastor.

23:46

You just can't do that.

23:47

We don't want to receive their funds.

23:50

We don't want their missionaries.

23:52

You know, we don't want anything to do with them if they're going to hire abusers.

23:56

And then the response.

23:57

So they would refer to the executive committee.

24:00

You know, you look through our bylaws and you figure out something that can be done.

24:03

So next year comes around.

24:04

We look through our bylaws.

24:06

There's nothing we can do about it.

24:08

Does that make sense? Yeah, no, absolutely.

24:10

And it begins to make me ask the question and maybe it's a good question.

24:17

Maybe it's a bad question, but it kind of makes me begin to wonder, what is the level of guilt then that is really to be laid on them if they really wasn't anything they could do? So there is things they can do and that's the whole thing.

24:34

So, for example, the Southern Baptist Convention has been asking for like, I don't know, maybe even since the 90s, a guy by the name of Wade Burleson put forth a motion to have a public database of Southern Baptist pastors that have been convicted.

24:50

So like, so you have.

24:52

And that doesn't, that didn't exist until this report? It existed in private and the people who had it privately publicly said, we can't do one that's not feasible.

25:04

The report that was released today is the private database that they held for 20 years or 12 years or however many years when they started doing it while completely telling us we can't do it.

25:16

So that's where the guys, this is feasible.

25:20

This is feasible.

25:21

This is feasible.

25:23

Like, why can't we just have a website where when this Southern Baptist pastor gets arrested and fired that the members of that church can call? Now, if a local congregation doesn't want to look in that database, there's local congregations that don't even use the sex offender registry, you know, that's on them.

25:43

But then at least we as a collective body have done what we are able to do with the authority we have, which is literally no authority over other independent congregations.

25:55

I can't help.

25:56

Good.

25:57

It just came to my mind.

25:59

This is the important question.

26:00

Is there a database that has all Southern Baptist ordained pastors in it? Is that, does that even exist? No, not really.

26:08

Because there's probably a database that is close, you know.

26:17

So, for example, there's a, being part of the Southern Baptist Convention, they do things with insurance and retirements.

26:24

So you probably get some of that there.

26:25

But like, if we, when we ordained our elders, we didn't tell the Southern Baptist Convention.

26:31

Sure.

26:32

Yeah, that's a good business.

26:34

It's a good point.

26:34

They can't tell us no.

26:37

They can't tell us yes.

26:38

They don't certify them.

26:40

If we as a local congregation believe that they're qualified, we ordain them.

26:46

Yeah, that's interesting because when I was, when I was ordained, I was ordained by the church, the church that I was serving in.

26:51

And that's biblical.

26:53

Yeah, and, you know, I was told because at a certain point, I did get a job offer to go to a Southern Baptist church.

27:00

I didn't go by God's grace.

27:01

I'm still where I am.

27:02

But I got a job offer to go to a Southern Baptist church, but I was told I would have to be reordained in that church, which I thought was, I was willing because it didn't matter to me.

27:14

But, but I didn't know if that meant that put me into a registry or maybe that was just that church's rule that you had to be.

27:21

If you had somebody that was ordained a Catholic priest.

27:27

Yeah, and they wanted to come serve as an elder in your church.

27:30

You go.

27:31

Okay.

27:31

Well, we need to go over like, yeah, redo it.

27:34

And so when it comes to the Southern Baptist Convention, we have different beliefs than some, you know, fundamentalist independent Baptist.

27:42

We have different beliefs and say Church of God, Assembly of God.

27:45

And if a local congregation that's Church of God says you're qualified.

27:52

I don't know that we as a church are comfortable with the Church of God enough that we would recognize that without doing our own due diligence.

27:59

In which case when we do our due diligence, we ordain, but there is no, if there is a database, it's an unofficial because of, you know, that you have your retirement with guidance.

28:11

And what's interesting, you mentioned the elders.

28:14

That's true.

28:14

Because not all Southern Baptist churches have distinguished elders and some, you know, would distinguish between whether they're elders or pastors.

28:23

Like in our church, our elders are pastors, our pastors are elders.

28:25

There's three men.

28:26

They're all ordained.

28:27

Yeah, and that's part of the issue is because we are independent.

28:34

We are autonomous.

28:35

The Southern Baptist Convention has zero say-so on anything we do.

28:41

And any reporting we do to the Southern Baptist Convention is entirely voluntary on our part.

28:47

Now, this is where some of the issues came up with the report and some of the things, the issues, the church were pushing to is that is a two-way street.

28:56

The Southern Baptist Convention is entirely autonomous and gets to choose its members.

29:02

And they have the ability to, the same way you can remove someone from your church from church discipline and say, you know, you're not a part of the body anymore.

29:11

The Southern Baptist Convention has the same autonomy.

29:14

You know, and that was part of the issue is, you know, the Houston Chronicle report named 10 churches.

29:21

And so there was a push.

29:22

Okay, let's, let's remove these 10 churches.

29:24

If they have a pedophile in the pulpit, then they can do, they can keep having in the pulpit.

29:30

That's between them and God, but we don't want their money.

29:33

We don't want them burying our name.

29:35

We don't want them, you know, to me, the Catholics, I disagree with Catholicism, but I have no authority over them.

29:43

That being said, if a Roman Catholic wanted to join my church, They're going to have to become Protestant.

29:50

They're going to have to, you know, believe in like what you teach.

29:55

Yeah, exactly.

29:56

So that's kind of the issue there.

29:58

I remember a few years ago, listening to Al Mohler on the dividing line, him mentioning that there was a church that had ordained or was supporting homosexuality and that the church at the Southern Baptist Convention removed them.

30:15

And that was like a big deal because they were saying, well, you were supposed to be autonomous.

30:19

We were basically do what we want, but there was still a line.

30:23

Yeah, and that's the thing.

30:24

And that was part of the issue that a lot of people raised.

30:29

Russell Moore, in response to this, wrote something really bring it out, like, and this is one of the things actually in the report, how fast the Southern Baptist Convention acted when a church ordained a lesbian versus what they didn't do when a church hired a convicted pedophile and gave them unrestricted access to kids.

30:51

Oh, wow.

30:52

And that was the issue that people like myself, the regular Southern Baptist pastor, church members, like guys, this is nuts.

31:00

This is crazy.

31:02

If you can kick them out of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is again, kicking them out.

31:07

Like if we got kicked out of the Southern Baptist Convention, it literally changes nothing about our church.

31:12

Yeah, we just give our money elsewhere.

31:14

But like if you can do that when the church and you can do it so fast, why can't you do it when like the video you showed, which was wasn't Southern Baptist, like if that video was of a Southern Baptist church, I would fully expect that church to be kicked out of the Southern Baptist.

31:31

This fellowship is what the term they use, not friendly cooperation immediately, like immediately.

31:38

And they will for different things, but over this issue, for whatever reason, which we found in the report, the reasons they drug their feet off.

31:47

You and you would think this would be the reason.

31:50

I mean, like if there's a reason for a church not to be welcome, that would be that they are supporting a pastor or pastors who are abusing people.

32:02

Exactly.

32:03

And that's what you think is what the vast majority of Southern Baptist thing.

32:08

That's why I mean, again, waiting attorney client privilege is insane.

32:13

That's a nuclear option.

32:14

Why do you think about 90% maybe 95% was a voice vote? Why do you think the overwhelming number of Southern Baptist Convention and the Southern Baptist Convention last year to do it? Because we don't want pedophiles in pulpits associated with us.

32:32

We want nothing to do with that.

32:34

And the fact that it was getting stonewalled and taking so long.

32:37

We want, okay, there's a problem somewhere.

32:39

Somebody's hiding something.

32:40

We want to know what it is.

32:42

We want the person gone.

32:44

We want to deal with it because this is ridiculous.

32:47

Absolutely.

32:48

And that that may be the quote of the show right there.

32:51

We don't want pedophiles and pulpits associated with us.

32:53

I mean, that how simple is that exactly? I mean, it's like, it's like, why are we even having this conversation in the sense of this should be a no-brainer and that that was the whole frustrating thing with the whole Southern Baptist Convention.

33:07

This gets into a whole bunch of other politics and other nonsense, but that was where the frustration.

33:13

I mean, for an entity to waive attorney-client privilege, you're basically putting up a billboard saying, please come sue us and take everything we have.

33:24

Like that's what you're doing.

33:25

And the fact that the vast majority of Southern Baptist said, put up the billboard.

33:31

Because honestly, if it's my kid, I would rather you sue me and take everything I have and leave my kids alone.

33:40

You know, like if it's my wife, sue me, take everything, but don't touch my wife, you know, and I think that's the mentality that the average Southern Baptist has.

33:52

And so when you begin to look at these entities and that what was discovered in the report is it really was two or three people that were the weak link in the chain that derailed the whole thing.

34:04

Now, were you actually at the do you go to the convention as a representative? I go to the Florida Baptist Convention.

34:12

We were talking before the show about, you know, I tell everybody, you know, we're Southern Baptist with our hand on the door and that's because we're Christians.

34:20

We follow Christ.

34:21

We're an independent congregation.

34:23

If the majority of the Southern Baptist Convention, if they vote to renounce Christ, we're gone, you know, anything that we can't live with.

34:32

That being said, what I see out of this report is I see a willingness of the vast majority of Southern Baptist to do whatever it takes to make our churches safe for children, for women, for the disabled, for the weak.

34:51

And if that's what they're doing, then I want to go full bore in.

34:56

Yeah.

34:56

Now, now.

34:58

This is a report that is not actionable yet.

35:02

What actions take place? We may find out that there was just a bunch of talk and no action, which case we're out.

35:08

But if they want to, if they want to address this issue, how can we as Christians not say we're a hundred percent behind that? Yeah, you know, like that's our duty, you know, and I think we have failed.

35:21

We need to move forward and do something to reconcile.

35:24

We need to repent.

35:24

We need to acknowledge the truth.

35:26

And that was part of the things the messengers wanted is they wanted the untouched report released publicly.

35:35

The reason you do that is because we want the truth.

35:41

We want to repent.

35:42

We want to confess.

35:44

We want to acknowledge.

35:45

We want to make it right.

35:47

And that was the demand of the messengers is we don't want the executive committee going through this report and tell us what no, we want the full thing.

35:55

Give us all the footnotes.

35:56

Give us all the emails.

35:57

Give us everything.

35:59

Yeah.

36:00

Now, I have seen, I have several friends on Facebook and in real life who are in the Southern Baptist Convention, some of them, many of them pastors, and I've seen at least a couple of them who have made the point of giving a public response to the report.

36:22

And what I have seen is their response is, well, it usually starts with grieving over what has happened and those things, but then assuring their people that this is not how we do, you know, we do thorough background checks and we do, you know, we, we make sure our children are, you know, cared for appropriately and any act of abuses is, is brought to the proper authorities immediately.

36:50

All that sounds good to me.

36:53

Do you think that that you think every church should be doing that? Are you guys putting out something like that? Or is that something you felt the need to do? So we have never released like a public statement or anything.

37:06

The elders have worked on one from years ago that is more going to be part of like membership classes type stuff.

37:15

But our, our approach to this issue has been to be so upfront and open honest with it that if you have nefarious purposes, you won't even want to visit our church.

37:27

Yeah, like we, the Southern Baptist Convention did a curriculum on caring well for the abused and it was for church leaders.

37:35

I took the entire congregation, including kids through it.

37:38

Like because it's not just going to be the elders know this material.

37:41

I want kids to know what's inappropriate.

37:43

I want them to understand.

37:44

I want everyone to understand like in all honesty.

37:50

We excommunicated someone because they didn't report child abuse like now there was more to it.

37:55

But like that was the beginning of it.

37:59

What like we don't play like we're not we're not doing that.

38:03

And when it comes to excommunication, there's a lot more to it than that.

38:07

But in essence for those who are not familiar with church discipline at the end of the excommunication is you are not my brother in Christ.

38:16

If you're not going to be open and honest care for the abused Etc.

38:21

We want nothing to do with you.

38:23

Yeah, we want nothing to do with you.

38:26

Now there again, there's more to it than situation than that.

38:28

But it's one of those where in terms of making a statement, like we have on our website, you know, all children's workers are background check.

38:36

We you know, we have a lot of internal things.

38:39

We haven't really toyed with what to say publicly in part because we've just made it very clear continually like the reason a lot of people come to our church is because they were abused and they're looking for a place of refuge.

38:56

Yeah, you don't need you're in a situation where you don't you don't need to add anything because you've been very clear already and a lot of these churches that are doing it have probably been clear, but they feel that if they feel the way that possibly people within the congregation and I feel that to me, it's one of those where I'm like, you know, how much do I say don't say to me? It's one of those.

39:20

We're very open.

39:21

Like if anybody has a question, we'll tell them everything.

39:23

You know, there's there's nothing to hide here.

39:26

Yeah, that being said when we gather we want to preach the gospel.

39:30

We want to encourage the hurting and you know, follow Christ, you know, not get involved in the ins and outs of all of the type of things.

39:39

Yeah, absolutely.

39:41

I do have a follow-up then to that because you said something a minute ago that is struck me and and this is getting a little off topic, but I do think it's important and that is on the issue of reporting abuse.

39:57

Obviously, I believe reporting abuse, but but I have seen specifically churches where the leadership within the churches have counseled people not to report abuse, but rather to allow the ministers or the elders or whomever, you know, is the people in charge to allow them to seek to somehow counsel through or and I and I the argument is typically something like, you know, you don't you don't bring your you know, you don't bring God's people before ungodly courts and therefore we should have a internal court system within the church that handles this or something to that effect.

40:40

What are your thoughts about that? So I've actually preached and taught on this that mindset comes from a very wrong understanding of human government, a wrong understanding of God's law and a wrong understanding of civil lawsuits.

40:59

The passage in first Corinthians 6 is talking about civil lawsuits.

41:04

There's criminal law and there is civil law.

41:07

It is not talking about criminal law.

41:09

It is talking about civil law.

41:11

If you go back in the Old Testament, things like physical assault and things like sexual assault were punishable by the government.

41:21

Romans 13, the government has been given the power of the sword.

41:25

That is the power.

41:26

It's not a power to raise the army.

41:27

That's the power to punish those who do evil.

41:29

It's very clear in Romans 13.

41:31

So as a Christian, what Romans 13 is telling me is that I am supposed to submit to the government anything that falls under their jurisdiction and God's law that is any physical violence or any unwanted non-consensual sexual contact that is supposed to be submitted to the government and the government is supposed to punish it.

41:54

So when people say, oh, well, you know, we're not supposed to take our brothers to court.

41:59

If he murdered your family, you wouldn't call the police? If you saw somebody robbing the bank, are you going to wait and see if they're a Christian? You know, like that's civil law.

42:11

That is not criminal.

42:13

And the idea is generally, and this is the ironic thing of the whole Southern Baptist Convention mess.

42:19

The ironic thing is we don't want to take this to the government.

42:23

We don't want this because it will tarnish the reputation of Christ.

42:26

That was the argument of the people who hid all this stuff from everybody in Stonewall.

42:33

You're going to tell me right now doesn't tarnish the name of Christ? I was going to say, yeah, they have that they aim more than anybody.

42:43

I was going to say that their aim has been foiled because their aim to not tarnish the name of Christ.

42:48

Now, there's now there's unbelievers who are seeing because this is being shared all over Facebook.

42:52

This being shared all over Twitter, you know, at SPC report.

42:55

All these different things are just all over the place.

42:58

So the idea that it's not being tarnished.

43:00

And again, I know I agree with you with the distinction between the Roman Catholic and the Baptist and the hierarchical structure in everybody's mind.

43:09

It's Catholicism 2.0.

43:11

It's just we're just as bad that we have tried to hide it.

43:15

No, I 100% agree with you.

43:17

And and that's the difficult thing in our world is everyone reads the headlines.

43:22

Nobody bothers to get to know the reality.

43:25

And that's where I think for me, I agree with pastors who are putting out public statements, but I think for me our church has made such a public stance on this issue for so many years that if you don't know where we stand, then you do not know us at all.

43:42

It's just something, you know, we I've said it from the pulpit multiple times.

43:48

If you ever get abused, if you ever get accused of abuse, I don't care if it's an elder.

43:53

I don't care if it's me.

43:54

The very first thing we're doing is calling the police.

43:57

No questions asked.

43:58

Yeah, you know, because it we just don't play with that.

44:03

That's right.

44:03

That's right.

44:04

Now I do have a sort of a and we're going to draw to a close soon because I know that you are and you've been very gracious by the way.

44:11

Thank you for coming on so quickly.

44:14

We just met a week.

44:15

We just met on the phone a week ago.

44:17

So yeah, I'm very thankful.

44:18

And I'm thankful to the Terezi family for introducing me to you.

44:22

They're the ones who Jennifer contacted me when I said I was looking for somebody who would be knowledgeable and you certainly are and I'm thankful to her for giving giving me your number.

44:33

So I want to ask and this may sound like it's coming out of left field, but I think this would be a good place to draw.

44:41

Okay.

44:42

So I know that within the last few years within the Southern Baptist Convention, there's been a lot of arguing over the issue of wokeness and all of those things and we could do I could have you on again and we could talk about that.

44:59

But I but just by way of comparison, do you think that that that that is a distraction from the more important thing that is the abuse or do you think they're both equally important and maybe that's unfair to say equal because No, no, no, no, no, no, that you you've actually uncovered something that very few people have uncovered.

45:19

Okay.

45:20

Here's the reality.

45:22

The people that were accused of being woke were the ones calling for this investigation and the ones accusing them being woke were the ones stonewalling the investigation.

45:36

I'm not saying no, I'm not.

45:39

Yeah, I'm that's the who the two sides are and I'm not saying who is a closet liberal and I'm not saying who's teaching critical race theory and I'm not saying who's a closet pedophile.

45:54

That being said there has been an awful lot of mudslinging from the one group that's really muddy after this report came out.

46:05

And to me it really I do not know a single Southern Baptist pastor that I would even come close to saying is woke.

46:15

I don't know a single Southern Baptist pastor that would espouse critical race theory as the gospel.

46:20

Like everyone says is antithetical to the gospel.

46:23

Now, you're going to find people who are going to twist certain words and and I've been sent, you know, I had church members send me the video clip in the video clip that starts and ends mid-sentence, you know, the 22nd clip out of someone's two-hour, you know lecture type thing and I'm not going to say that these people have not become liberal.

46:39

I'm not going to say that they're not woke.

46:41

I'm not going to say I don't know.

46:42

I don't know their hearts.

46:43

I haven't listened to everything they had to say.

46:45

I'm going to say this Russell Moore and J.D.

46:48

Greer were accused of being woke and they were the ones that demanded this investigation.

46:53

Russell Moore ended up leaving because of the way the executive committee treated him.

46:57

The people who called him a liberal were glad he's gone is the same group of people that the Stonewall everything that the members of the executive committee were part of.

47:08

It just seems like a very convenient coincidence.

47:12

Yeah, I can't tell you what the truth is.

47:14

I can just tell you that people who were throwing all the accusations were the people against the investigation for the most part.

47:21

There's there's some overlap in there and you can't you can't play it in the politics and say this group is this and that groups that yeah, everyone's an individual but Yeah, and I and I'm sure you and I would both agree that there are issues with wokeness.

47:36

There are issues with CRT as you said that's antithetical to the gospel.

47:40

That's not what we should be promoting.

47:42

But when you create a boogeyman and that becomes the focus it does easily take your mind off of what the real issue is.

47:51

It's the it's the straw man the the red herring.

47:56

That's yeah, the and and and I'm not I don't know Russell more but Russell Moore was one who left the Southern Baptist Convention over this issue and the more he pushed the more he was called a liberal the more like Southern Baptist.

48:16

He was the poster child of Southern Baptist life until he began to push on this issue an issue of racism and as soon as he pushed on it, you are a woke liberal.

48:28

Now, I mean, there's some Trump pushing in there as well.

48:30

But like this was the issue.

48:31

He survived Trump.

48:33

He didn't survive pushing for an investigation to abuse.

48:37

Wow.

48:38

That's a powerful thought and and it's a it's difficult to think that these are things that are that are behind the scenes.

48:50

We don't we don't know everything.

48:52

And again, as you said, everyone's an individual.

48:54

We don't know individual motives and we do know that there are good and godly men who want to see God's Church flourish and the kingdom of Triumph and and sometimes people think they're doing what's right and they're doing what's wrong and don't don't realize it until they've you know, at some point they are enlightened to to their error and I do hope that some of that has is going to come out but I want to say Daniel.

49:22

I want to say again.

49:23

Thank you for coming out of the program and and I do I look forward to getting to know you better and hopefully maybe having you on again.

49:31

Maybe next time it'll be when you come to town.

49:33

We can actually sit together in the studio and maybe maybe we can maybe we can talk about something a little more fun than this.

49:41

I've thoroughly enjoyed myself and would love to speak more about this.

49:45

I think that the main thing though that I would like to convey is if you are watching this and you have been abused what has happened to you God hates it is wrong and those who are true followers of Jesus Christ are on your side.

50:03

Not the side of your abuser.

50:05

We despise abuse.

50:07

It has no place in our Church.

50:09

And if you come to one of us or if you go to a true Christian, they will get you the help that you need.

50:18

They will not run from you.

50:20

They will embrace you and they will walk through this pain with you because that is what Jesus Christ did.

50:26

He came to this earth to love hurting and broken people.

50:29

He died on the cross so that they might be redeemed and made right with God the father and he rose again from the dead to give him a new life.

50:36

That message is why we support you.

50:41

Amen.

50:42

Amen and and to close out the show.

50:45

I do want to ask because you are you are down in Gainesville and there may be people who listen to this who are nearby if there is somebody who wants to contact you directly or come and visit your church.

50:54

How would they how would they find out about where you are and how to do that? Yeah church at Antioch.com.

51:00

Church at Antioch.com.

51:03

All right, sir.

51:04

Well, thank you again Daniel for being with us.

51:06

Thank your family for giving giving you to us and look forward to next time.

51:11

I appreciate it Keith.

51:13

And yes, sir.

51:14

And audience.

51:15

I want to again.

51:15

Thank you for being with us on this special weekend edition of conversations with the Calvinist and I want to remind you that if you have a question that you would like me to address on a future episode or if you'd like me to have Daniel back and for us to talk more about this subject, please email me at Calvinist podcast at gmail.com.

51:33

And if you're watching this online on YouTube or Facebook, feel free to leave a comment.

51:38

I'll get back with you as best.

51:40

I can share this with others so that they would be encouraged and admonished as well.

51:44

And as I said always keep in mind that if you are in a situation where you are being abused there are people who love you people who want to support you and reach out don't stay silent.

51:56

Thank you for listening to conversations with a Calvinist.

51:59

My name is Keith Foskey and I've been your Calvinist may God bless you.