What Happened at FBC Naples?

Conversations That Matter

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:01

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris, and as you can see by the background behind me there,

00:08

I am not in my wife's laundry room today. I am in a hotel room in Nebraska, and across the river behind me is

00:17

Iowa. I'm in Sioux City, and I'll tell you why in just a moment, but I'm using the hotel light here, so it's washing out my face.

00:24

A little more white privilege this episode, unfortunately, so you'll have to put up with that and put up with a little fatigue.

00:30

I'm doing this late at night. I've got an early flight tomorrow, but I've been living this way for the past week and a half or so, and so I want you to know, especially those who are my supporters, kind of what

00:41

I've been up to, and I think it will encourage you. And after that, we're going to talk a little bit about something long overdue, and that's the

00:49

First Baptist Church of Naples, Florida. I went there in December, and I haven't really given a report on this podcast, and I think

00:58

I need to. I know there's a mini -documentary Enemies Within the Church is going to be putting out about this, and that's taken,

01:04

I guess, a little longer than was anticipated. Hopefully, it'll be out in the next few weeks, but I figure

01:10

I'll just give you kind of my perspective. It'll be a little different than the documentary anyways, and for those who don't know, that situation is just kind of a heartbreaking situation.

01:22

The leadership of First Baptist Church of Naples, a mega -church in Florida, decided to write an open letter to the

01:28

Southern Baptist Convention last year condemning former members in their church of racism and repenting for it, and it's all a lie, because I went down there.

01:37

And the fact that this church is in a large Republican donor base area in a swing state of Florida, I mean, you sway a 10 ,000 -person church, you can sway a national election.

01:49

And so there are not just theological and denominational ramifications, there are political ramifications for some of these things that are going on in the

01:58

SBC. So we're going to talk about that a little bit, but first things first, let's talk about kind of what

02:05

I've been up to, and hopefully it'll encourage you. Number one, I was at CPAC about a week and a half ago,

02:11

Conservative Political Action Conference, which by the way now, apparently, I found out about this two days ago.

02:18

One of the attendees came down with coronavirus, so I've been keeping an eye on my own symptoms, and I don't think

02:24

I have it, but the way the media is portraying this coronavirus, you'd think though, it's a black death, and if I get it,

02:34

I'm dead. But I don't have it, thankfully, at this point. But I was there with Judd Saul, director of Enemies Within the

02:42

Church, to raise money for his film, to help him out a little bit, he's a friend. And if you want to help out with that, by the way, you can go to enemieswithinthechurch .com,

02:50

and I think they're kind of in the homestretch at this point, they just need a little more to get them over the hurdle,

02:59

I think it's like $60 ,000 or something like that. So anyway, that's where I was a week and a half ago,

03:06

I talked a little bit about that in my last podcast, but last week I was at the Shepherds Conference in Sun Valley, California, that is

03:16

John MacArthur's church, for those who don't know, and I was amazed a little bit at the amount of people who recognized me there,

03:27

I probably had 20 people at least come up to me and say, hey, thank you for what you do, and appreciate the podcast, and every once in a while you get someone looking at you that you think maybe recognizes you and they can't place it, or maybe they disapprove,

03:44

I don't know, but by and large, overwhelmingly, it was just very positive. And one person in particular,

03:51

I wanted to pass this wisdom along, a pastor of a small agricultural area kind of church, wants to introduce his people to the concepts of critical race theory, egalitarianism, intersectionality, and they realize that there really aren't resources on this.

04:08

And I noticed that at the publishing tables, I was asking even people over there, is there any plan to write anything about this, and there isn't really at this point.

04:16

I just know of one other person and myself who plan on doing something over the summer to write on this in kind of a bite -sized format for working class people in church, like a

04:26

Sunday school or a Bible study, you can't go anywhere and get that at this point.

04:33

And so this person, this pastor, took three Sunday nights, and he had done two by the time he talked to me, and he's showing the

04:41

By What Standard documentary from Founders Ministries, that's Tom Askle's ministry, and he is showing it to them, discussing it, and giving them a sheet that they can look at during the documentary, and its definition.

04:55

So if there's a word that comes up like complementarianism, they don't know what that is, they can look it up. And I think this is just a really great way to use what's available out there.

05:03

Use the Founders Documentary, especially if you're Southern Baptist. Before the convention, you're going to want your people to know what this is.

05:11

So show them that, give them a definitions paper, you know, it doesn't take long to create one yourself, just watch the

05:19

Founders Documentary, listen for words that they may not know, write them down, get the definition, and then discuss it.

05:25

And I was encouraged to hear, you know, a couple different churches where pastors have already addressed this topic, and that's great news.

05:34

One person in particular kind of broke my heart, he came to me and was just talking about one of their children, essentially, who is getting into the social justice movement and has moved them away from Orthodox Christianity, questioning fundamental beliefs and teachings of Christianity, which

05:58

I've heard in other instances as well, that this is kind of a slippery slope.

06:04

You start, and here's why, you start accepting the ethical presuppositions that social justice advocates bring, like equity, and then you look in the

06:19

Bible and you realize this doesn't match, God isn't really equitable. Not in the way that I think it should be, or the

06:28

New Left idea of equity, and so you start, you bring in another standard to judge the word of God by, and then pretty soon you're wondering, okay, is

06:36

God even just? Well, is the word of God maybe even true? Is this all a lie?

06:41

Because the word of God presents God in this way, and this contradicts the ethic I'm getting from social justice, so it's just a sad kind of, a sad news to hear when you hear something like that.

06:57

But encouraging, I was able to pray with this man, this pastor, and I think it encouraged his heart, and there were others

07:06

I met there as well who, some of them spending an hour or two hours just talking about these issues, answering questions, providing resources, and one thing, an observation

07:18

I had that was interesting, there were several people who came to me who were,

07:29

I guess I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this, people in minority communities from the standpoint of the

07:36

United States, maybe not in the standpoint of L .A. L .A., the majority culture is Hispanic, but people who are

07:43

Hispanic, people who are Asian, people, you know, African Americans, all sorts of different people coming to me, and one of the things

07:52

I realized, especially talking to a Hispanic person in particular, is that this movement, it really does,

08:03

I think, target certain demographics over others, which is kind of maybe a duh thing when you think about it, but it really does put those, at least along the ethnic lines, the racial lines, those who are in majority culture, which they would always assume, even if you're in a minority area, majority culture is always white, it's the oppressive culture, and so the assumption is that the people that are in that culture need to have guilt because of what their ancestors done or what they are benefiting from as far as privilege is concerned, and they need to try to platform, redistribute their privilege or finances to others because it's not equal, and that's a problem, and so there's this guilt, right, that is kind of given to people that look like me, you know, that we're guilty, but to understand it from the perspective of someone who is not in that position, who's being told that they are owed something, that life has not been fair to them because of the color of their skin, and now it's up to others to compensate for them, it's kind of, honestly, degrading to them, it's like you're not really capable, you need the help of others, and it's circumstances outside of your control who have landed you in this horrible plight where you are, and it really sows the seeds of resentment, right, and we knew this, but seeing from the perspective of faithful men and women who love the body of Christ, who don't feel that way about other members of the body, and then to see how they react, how the social justice message is hitting them,

09:53

I just thought that was kind of fascinating. They're more angry and motivated about it than many others.

10:03

It's hitting them in such a way that some of them recognize it, the ones who do recognize it in those communities recognize it.

10:10

You're trying to play on my vices, not my virtues. You're conjuring up, trying to conjure up things in me that Christ says is sinful, like envy and greed, and so, anyway, not sort of being on that end of it,

10:31

I hadn't always seen it that way, but hearing from others at the conference who have been essentially the victims of this movement in a way, that was just a fascinating perspective.

10:48

So, anyway, there's that, but I did talk to a number of pastors there, and I'm just very encouraged that there is, the people, the working class, and the small -time pastors especially, they are against this movement.

11:05

That is the sense I'm getting, and I think you find less and less fight. The more academic, the more associated with larger institutions, bigger churches, that's where the passion is diminished, but the passion is red hot.

11:24

People are upset that this movement is progressing the way it is and not being answered adequately, and I'm encouraged by that, and I think you need to be encouraged by it too.

11:34

I went to the conference for the sole reason of encouraging others, and I was able to do that, and I was able to be encouraged as well, and it was good.

11:44

I was able to go with my father. He came out. He is a TMS grad I've mentioned on this show, and so he was with me, and I think it was just a good thing for him to be there and sort of see all that, and got to talk with some of the names that you might recognize,

12:05

Daryl Harrison and Virgil Walker from the Just Thinking podcast. I got to spend a little bit of time with them, and it wasn't that long.

12:13

It was probably 20 minutes, you know, but it was really good talking with them, and Phil Johnson.

12:19

I talked with him a little longer, I think, and that was a fascinating conversation as well and really encouraging to me.

12:26

He was very commending, and I appreciated that, and I appreciate what he does.

12:36

I should appreciate the men who were there, by and large, and saw some other folks, saw some folks from Living Waters, saw

12:44

Justin Peters, and met him, and so anyways, encouragement all around, and I appreciate you all who support me and enabled me to do this.

12:53

I paid for my ticket to go out there, and it's with your generous support that I'm able to do that, and of course on your prayers as well, which

13:01

I appreciate. So that's what I was doing a big portion of last week, and then right now, why am

13:07

I in Sioux City? So I flew out on my way back home to Virginia to Sioux City for a day to spend with the

13:16

Enemies Within the Church guys, and we talked about a few things, one of them being the social justice movement and evangelicalism that took place in the early 1970s, and I've been doing some research on that, and so we did some interviewing on that and the connections to what's happening today, and I'm going to withhold some of those for now because I want to systematize some of that material and put it in a later episode, but some of the connections are pretty interesting.

13:46

I'll put it that way, and we'll talk about that in a later episode. So that's why

13:51

I'm in Sioux City, but I was just actually having dinner with Judd Saul and Kerry Gordon and some others, and they're going full steam ahead with the documentary, and good things are happening.

14:04

So I wanted to make you aware of those. Now, to the meat of this, oh, by the way, before I get to this,

14:12

I don't know if you saw it, if you're listening, but the resolutions committee for the Southern Baptist Convention was announced today, and I didn't recognize all the names, but those who are more in the know than me in the

14:24

Southern Baptist Convention assured me that there were no rock -ribbed conservatives on the committee, and someone said in this chat group

14:34

I was part of, they said, well, Bruce Ashford's on there. He might be a rock -ribbed conservative, and I thought, well, if Bruce Ashford is the one you're looking for for being the conservative, then

14:43

I can guarantee you don't have a very conservative group. So it's going to be interesting to see what happens with the

14:50

Southern Baptist Convention this year. I mean, I don't know, I could be wrong.

14:56

Are they going to repeal Resolution 9? I kind of doubt it, but they have to address this, I would think, somehow.

15:01

So we shall see. But there's a lot going on.

15:06

It's kind of been flying past me as I've been going to these various conferences and encouraging folks and trying to get some things done.

15:17

It's not like earth -shattering news. It's kind of, the little bits and pieces I get every day are, it's kind of more of the same.

15:27

The NAM, North American Mission Board, I had seen Capstone Report put something out the other day, and I think

15:36

Randy Adams, another guy who's running for president of the Southern Baptist Convention, had put a blog together, and I think

15:43

Capstone was reporting on it. But essentially, the long and short of it is a lot of money is being reallocated to planting churches, more than it was 10 years ago.

15:56

And there's less money coming in, but there's now more money per a church plant. And so the question is, what are you doing with these church plants?

16:05

Why so much money? And this factors into what's happening at FBC Naples a little bit as well.

16:11

And I'm going to explain that, because NAM has its fingerprints all over this thing. And I don't know exactly what's going on.

16:19

I'm not in NAM, but something fishy is going on. It appears that way, at least.

16:25

But yeah, so some corruption seems to be possibly being exposed.

16:31

I mean, the way the ERLC, Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention, is reacting to having oversight and being audited is just, you know, they do not want that.

16:43

So where are they trying to hide? What's going on? It's very interesting to see the way things are playing out right now.

16:51

And then you have a lot of people that want to be moderates. That's where they're comfortable. Al Mohler, Danny Akin, really all the seminary heads, the entity heads, they just want everyone to get along, which is impossible.

17:07

You have two different factions, and so they are trying to desperately come around the

17:13

Baptist faith and message to hold these two diametrically opposed groups together in the same convention and act like, well, the controversy is not really that bad.

17:22

Yes, it is. It's actually worse than that. But they are trying to strike a more moderate tone, and I've seen many evidences of that, especially at Southeastern, actually, within the last week.

17:35

I saw, man, I probably shouldn't go down this path, because I'm going to start commenting on it. I saw that Neil Shenvey was speaking there against critical race theory, which, you know,

17:48

I had commented a little bit about what I anticipated would happen in the last episode, and I think what

17:53

I said stands. My suspicions stand about what they were up to with that.

17:59

But then they had another chapel later in the week, and I got a report about that, that Southeastern now was, I think one of their professors was speaking out in favor of complementarianism, and it was pretty hard stuff.

18:11

Like, he was really going full bore complementarian, and so it's interesting.

18:17

It's like, there seems to be, without any kind of retractions, apologies, explanations for all the crazy stuff that's happened there, it's just like, well, nothing liberal ever happened here.

18:30

We're just concerned as you are about these ideas, which is a farce. It's not true at all.

18:37

But it's possible that some of the professors there are getting a little bit more bolder. I don't know.

18:43

Or this is the administration, which is probably more likely, or a combination of the two, the administration trying to kind of save face, and they are awakened now to the fact that there is a conservative group of people who are watching them, and they want to appeal to them as well as to the liberals who exist at their seminary currently.

19:05

So there you go. That's kind of my, without getting into specifics, that's kind of the broad outlook on kind of what's happening in the, that's the

19:15

Southern Baptist Convention, the Southern Baptist Convention update. And we're almost 20 minutes in, and I haven't started

19:21

Naples. So let's do it. Let's start talking about First Baptist Church Naples. So there's going to be a lot more,

19:29

I think, specifics once this mini documentary comes out, but I'm just going to give you kind of from my perspective what's happening.

19:37

So Hayes Wicker was a pastor at First Baptist Church of Naples for 27 years.

19:45

And in fact, this is an interesting tidbit, Chuck Colson, Prison Fellowship Ministries, he had attended there.

19:54

And this is a quote from last year, this was in the, this is the vice president for the cooperative program,

20:01

Southern Baptist Convention, says, over the past 27 years, this church has been an anchor church for Florida Baptists.

20:09

So it's a big church. It's an important church to the convention.

20:15

And Hayes Wicker was forced out in 2019 and banned from campus. Now, here's what

20:21

I found out when I went out there. Not only was he banned from campus, he was escorted out by security.

20:29

And he was accused of nefarious financial activities, but it was never defined what it was.

20:36

So people just assumed it must have been really bad. Turns out it wasn't. It was like, you know, buying a coffee on the church credit card, not thinking about what card you were using, that kind of stuff.

20:46

But they made it out like there was this big scandal. And it just simply wasn't true. And so this is what kind of started off kind of the ball rolling in the direction to where, you know, eventually some corruption really got going and some members, ex -members were called racist.

21:06

But I want to start at the beginning here, because there was a man there for 27 years, a pastor that was loved there.

21:13

And for whatever reason, it was an elder -led church. And in 2016, it ended up going from elder -led to committee -led.

21:20

How that happened, I do not know. That's a weird transition. But it looks like power was taken more out of the hands of the senior pastor and given to these committees.

21:31

Neal Dorrell, chairman of the search committee, so the person looking for the next pastor, according to a 2009 report in Naples Daily News, handed out pay raises to key county employees days before leaving his job as county manager in 97 to become president of the first stadium

21:50

Naples development partnership. Dorrell was arrested in 2001 on charges of racketeering.

21:57

He received three years of probation and a $10 ,000 fine. So this is a weird thing to me.

22:04

This guy ends up being, you know, and of course there's forgiveness in Christ and so forth, but some of the members there

22:10

I was talking to were like, we're like, you know, how did this guy get into the position where he had this much authority in the church when this was his reputation?

22:21

And apparently these weren't the only brush -ups he had with the law, but he, he's a, you know, previously a criminal and it wasn't even all that long ago, but now he's, he has this very important responsibility of finding the next pastor for a church of 10 ,000 people.

22:38

So, you know, this gives you just a little insight into maybe some of the problems that they were going through.

22:44

Now to make matters worse, after Hayes Wicker was booted out of the church by the leadership, there was some, some key changes that were made in January, 2019.

22:57

And this is a typo, by the way, Pastor Edy, it's not Pastor Edy, it was Hayes Wicker. Pastor Hayes Wicker was escorted off campus by security.

23:05

And then after that, this group now, now check this out, this group called Oxano. Now this sounds like deep state stuff.

23:13

I was like, Oxano, I've never heard of Oxano. Well, this group named Oxano, which by the way, if someone's out there with a lot of free time and wants to research

23:21

Oxano and send me their research, I would absolutely love that because I don't have time right now.

23:26

But this group, Oxano, ends up coming and consulting with the church. And it's got, it's, it's, it's got like 20 employees or something.

23:37

It's not like a small company. And I was, I was shocked that this thing existed. I had never heard of it.

23:42

And they used one of the things, the tools they use, because one of the deacons, former deacons had told us that wasn't privy to everything going on, but knew they had used this book called

23:50

Next by William Vander Blomen, if I'm pronouncing that right. And here's just one little sample paragraph from that.

24:00

Check this out. The average age in a congregation tends to be the pastor's age minus about five years, unless certain exceptions are put into place.

24:08

Those age deluders might include younger worship leaders, a mixed age preaching team, a worship host who is very different age from the senior pastor, or other young faces who are regularly on the platform.

24:18

The same principles using race rather than age can also help a church that's trying to become more ethnically or culturally diverse.

24:26

This is the kind of information that is chalked, that this book is chalked filled with.

24:33

It's just, this book is about diversifying your church, making your church more successful. It's a church growth strategy book is what it is.

24:41

And I did, I remember I did some keyword searches when I was hearing about this, and I'm looking for, you know, sin, law, repentance, words that aren't used, if ever, hardly at all.

24:52

And then, you know, words like love, it's like, boom, like tons of, of, so, so it's kind of, it looks like kind of a classic church growth kind of strategy that they were trying to implement.

25:02

But here's, here's the weird thing. Pastor Edie, who was the, kind of the guy, he was kind of filling that void that Hayes Wicker had left when he, before they had tried to find out, find a new pastor.

25:19

He wanted to do away with Operation Christmas Child and weddings at the church. And I was talking to the person who formerly was involved in some of these ministries, and it was just, it was interesting because I was like, why would they want to do away with that?

25:32

And we were just kind of trying to figure it out. And it seems like the number one

25:39

Operation Christmas Child, I guess, Pastor Edie had a problem with that because it took away from the local things the church could be doing.

25:48

It was, it was sucking resources from the church to Samaritan's Purse. And, which is interesting because the pastoral staff ended up voting themselves pay raises, even though they're losing money, they ended up voting themselves pay raises after they got rid of Hayes Wicker.

26:05

So they're making a portion of the congregation upset by doing that. Their giving's going down, but yet they're gonna vote themselves big pay raises.

26:14

So maybe this is just pure selfishness. We don't want other outside entities taking money. We want, I don't know. But the wedding thing, you would think the church gets paid for that.

26:24

But here's the only way it makes sense to me, and maybe there's another explanation, but it could be that, and this is speculation, not everything

26:32

I say is speculation. This is. But it very well could be that this is an effort to soft peddle homosexuality or just to avoid that issue.

26:44

And with things getting more secular and the litigious society we live in, and if they have previously, you know, kind of in a church that big, you can't bed everyone.

26:56

So, you know, someone could potentially be a member, and a lot of Baptist churches it's very easy to become a member, and they could just come up and they could, you know, say we want to use the church for a wedding.

27:08

And then what are you gonna say? Well, we don't do homosexual weddings here. So that could be why they want to sidestep it.

27:14

I don't know. That's speculation on my part. But these were at least changes that were possibly being implemented.

27:22

And so the other thing that changed was high profile Southern Baptist Convention leaders were preaching regularly throughout the summer at the church.

27:32

So the who's who of the Southern Baptist Convention was there. So they're paying for these guys to fly in, and some of the names that are escaping me at this point,

27:42

I think Kevin Eazell was there, Adam Greenway was there, I think Jason Allen's been speaking there, and I think even,

27:49

I don't know if J .D. Greer went there, but there was a lot of big names I remember looking at the list and was like, yep, that's the who's who of the

27:57

SBC. So changes, and without knowing everything, at the very least, some significant changes were being talked about.

28:12

And the biggest one of all was a gentleman by the name of Marcus Hayes. And eventually the leadership kind of coalesced around this guy,

28:21

Marcus Hayes, Neil Dorrell, the guy who's running the search committee, says, well we want Marcus to be the guy.

28:27

We think God is leading us for Marcus to be the guy. But there were reservations about this process of identifying

28:33

Marcus as the candidate. The search committee thought Marcus Hayes was equipped to handle the church reconciliation simply because he was in a bi -racial marriage, so he was very acquainted with problem resolution, which is a weird qualification to have, being in a mixed marriage.

28:52

He's black, his wife's white, so therefore they must have problems that they're able to navigate. That just assumes that if you have a white person and a black person, there's inevitably going to be tension there, which to me, that's a racist assumption to be honest with you.

29:06

But that was an assumption. There was ambiguity as to whether Hayes would be a teaching pastor.

29:12

A search committee member stated that they did not know if he was coming as a teaching pastor meant, what that meant.

29:21

And so there was even, in the search committee, there was kind of a sense in which they didn't even know.

29:27

They weren't even on the same page as far as what was happening. And then there was a feeling of pressure to vote for Marcus.

29:35

Neil Dorrell literally said, posted on Facebook, and Greg Clydesdale posted, vote for Marcus on their

29:47

Facebook pages. And so the vote was actually presented more as a coronation than a vote.

29:52

You know, this is the guy. And that's a, I don't know, it's weird to do it that way.

29:59

But clearly there was some pressure. There was a big motive to get this guy,

30:05

Marcus Hayes, in there. So some of the other reservations is he did not meet the minimum qualifications.

30:13

Marcus Hayes, there's a picture of him there. He was the campus pastor of a multi -site, multi -campus church.

30:20

And he didn't meet the minimum qualifications. He had to have five years as senior pastor in a church with over 1 ,200 in attendance and multiple staff.

30:28

And he didn't have that. And so the fact that he was being considered for this seemed like a violation already of the rules set in place by the church.

30:38

Why are you bringing this guy who's not even qualified for the minimum qualifications that he's expected to meet?

30:45

And this raised the question in some of the members' minds. Why are they trying to cram this guy down our throat?

30:52

And Marcus himself wanted to bring some changes to the church. You know, making

30:58

Bible study leaders just facilitators. So more kind of an egalitarian thing in a way.

31:06

And you know, you don't have hierarchies in these Bible studies. No one's leading over anyone. It's just we're all discussing the text kind of thing.

31:14

And so there were things he wanted to change that some in the church just weren't comfortable with.

31:19

I'll give you a sample here. This is some of the press that went out for Marcus Hayes.

31:30

And these videos were played in a Sunday service to encourage people to vote for him.

31:37

Hi, my name is Robbie Gallaty. I'm the senior pastor of Long Hollow Baptist Church. We're in the Nashville area here in Tennessee.

31:44

And it is a privilege of mine to be able to recommend my friend Marcus Hayes. Get behind your pastor, support him, lock arms with him and begin to anticipate what

31:53

God's going to do in and through you in the days ahead. I'm Bruce Frank, pastor of Biltmore Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

31:59

I just want to congratulate you on your consideration of Marcus Hayes to be your next senior pastor.

32:05

Again, I want to wholeheartedly endorse Marcus Hayes to be the next senior pastor. And I'm confident that the days ahead for First Baptist Church Naples will be amazing.

32:14

Hey, First Naples family, this is Kevin Eazell, president of the North America Mission Board. He's going to be a fantastic pastor.

32:21

You're going to love him. He genuinely cares and relates to all ages.

32:26

And you have been very blessed by God that he sent you a guy like Marcus Hayes.

32:31

So I'll be praying for you and Marcus as he begins that ministry there and there are exciting years ahead for you.

32:39

You step off the plane. You and you and all of us.

33:25

So you have Kevin Eazell essentially treating this like a coronation.

33:30

You have Neil Dorrell saying you're going to be a leader in the Southern Baptist Convention as if that's such an important thing.

33:37

And the question is why is this guy not being vetted for the local church that he's part of?

33:44

Why is that not the focus? Why is it coming from the highest levels of the Southern Baptist Convention?

33:51

And then he's being promoted to congregation as well. He's going to be a great leader in the SBC. Why is that? And I'm asking this question.

33:57

I'm not giving an answer, but I need to ask why, as we're going to see in a minute, Danny Akin's part of it.

34:02

Well, in a way, his son becomes part of this. But Danny Akin, Kevin Eazell, Marcus Hayes, J .D.

34:10

Greer, they're all in North Carolina. Why in the world are all these people in North Carolina helping make this decision and being very influential in making the decision for a church in Southwest Florida?

34:24

I'm raising the question. So here's the extra step that I just mentioned.

34:31

J .D. Greer endorsing Marcus Hayes. You can read that if you want, but he's saying he recommends him. He's known him, vouches for him.

34:40

So that was read to the congregation on a Sunday. And then some of the reservations,

34:48

I've mentioned some of these. He would change life groups, Bible studies to teaching roles would become facilitating roles.

34:57

He didn't meet minimum qualifications, but he also had some social justice stuff. He says he rejects the concept that a person can look at a person of color and see no color.

35:06

He was pleased to see that those who were previously on the top are now on the bottom when his friend was elected the president of the

35:12

SBC for Colorado, who was black. And so he seems to be reading the world through this kind of racial lens.

35:20

And then, and this is just the beginning. Here's some of his posts on social media.

35:25

And you can pause these if you want to read more, but retweet someone who talks about that his many white people say they're tired of talking about racism, but his relationships say that his brothers and sisters are infinitely more tired of experiencing it.

35:42

And so until my brothers stop experiencing it, we cannot stop talking about it. He likes this podcast that has great theological insight and practical steps towards multicultural leadership in the

35:56

SBC. He's liking this. Let's see.

36:06

He's, he's liking this Ray Ortlund retweet. Retweets Ray Ortlund, who, this is just a weird tweet, picture of a bunch of Klansmen with the word

36:16

Jesus saves over them. And it says, just preach the gospel and you don't need to address other issues. I disagree.

36:21

That approach, though nobly intended, allows burning issues to go unaddressed, flagrant wrongs, uncorrected, needed apology, silence.

36:29

Let's press the gospel into the whole of our lives. So, you know, thinking, well, if you just preach the gospel, then you're going to have

36:37

Klansmen in the church, I guess. Marcus Hayes retweets this. Here's one from Clayton King that he retweets.

36:46

Pastors, let the acts of violence and racism of the past week and the murder of God's image bearers that we've seen stir up a hot fire in your soul as you preach tomorrow.

36:57

It's October 27th, 2018. J .D. Greer, he retweets, do we want to be truly multicultural churches or only multicolored ones?

37:10

Here's some more. This just keeps going. He says, so here's the tweet that he comments on.

37:18

It says, despite eyewitness accounts that Jamal Robertson was wearing clothing labeled security in bright white letters and bystanders were shouting that he was security, investigators claim all the shooter saw was black.

37:32

That is exactly the problem. It seems all cops ever see is black. And Marcus Hayes retweets it and says, sat on many, many levels.

37:41

Jamal Robertson was in my student ministry while I was a youth pastor in Chicago. I had the privilege of knowing this young man.

37:46

My heart goes out to the family, which, okay, I retweet that. He retweets

37:52

Trillia Newbell, who's commenting on a, who herself is retweeting a

38:01

Kamala Harris tweet. So he's retweeting this comment on a Kamala Harris tweet.

38:08

And it was when she made, I guess, lynching a crime in 2018, the end of the year.

38:15

And so, Kamala Harris is certainly a very left -wing politician from California.

38:25

So the question is why? Why all these associations? You start adding them up. He says, arrived today, two great books written by two solid theologians.

38:33

Solid theologians. If you don't have a copy, get one. Urgent Read in Urgent Times.

38:41

And Insider Outsider is one. I'm not as familiar with that. But then there's Eric Mason's Woke Church.

38:47

Solid theologian, Eric Mason's Woke Church. So then you have this comment he makes about same -sex attraction at First Baptist Naples.

38:59

We absolutely believe he is the man to help families live courageously in today's culture, because there is a generation to rescue who are currently outside of our beautiful gates here at First Baptist Church Naples.

39:15

Last winter at Biltmore Baptist Church, a series on the Book of Acts titled,

39:22

Be the Movement, along with two books that were retweeted in Marcus's Twitter account, is something that I would like to address.

39:34

The two books are called Woke, W -O -K -E Church and Insider Outsider. I can confirm to you as your chairman that social media was reviewed in addition with a thorough background check.

39:49

Unfortunately and sadly, there has been, in fact, a concerted campaign of misinformation filled with destructive and divisive content.

40:00

This is an example that was circulated earlier today, attributed to Liz Appling.

40:07

I don't know her. I don't know that I'm acquainted with her. And this is a quote. This was something that she sent earlier today.

40:16

Good morning. It appears that FBCN did not do social media checks on Marcus Hayes because he is a radical leftist, et cetera.

40:27

Check his Twitter account. His Twitter account supports Black Lives Matter, reparations for slavery in America and the

40:35

KKK. This sadly is the kind of bitter misrepresentation and truth that I have been contending with in addition to your committee for months.

40:53

With that said, we stand here wholeheartedly behind our candidate without any confusion or compromise on theology or doctrine or the leading personal references within the

41:06

Southern Baptist Convention that we have checked. Gay and lesbian relationships, this is a big movement.

41:13

I think it is funny because there's only like 3 % in our whole country that live in this community, but they're dictating everything.

41:23

But what I mean by that is we have to, as a church, have to have compassion.

41:32

Let me give you two gospel bookends, compassion, but conviction at the same time.

41:39

So in other words, it's not am I right or am I wrong? I hold to this that homosexuality is, it's a sin.

41:50

Now, if you have, now maybe somebody even in this room, you may have same sex attractions.

41:56

I don't know. I will say that's not a sin, but based on the text, based on like Leviticus 18 and 22, you have

42:06

Leviticus 20 and 13. The Bible is very clear that if a man have a relations with another man, like he should with a woman.

42:15

I know we're getting graphic here, hoping no kids in here. That's an abomination. I'm African -American, but my identity of Jesus is primary.

42:30

It doesn't negate the fact that my pigmentation is still dark. So there's still some norms.

42:37

There's still some things, you know, the whole, you know, just say black lives matter.

42:49

That whole premise, the hashtag, really the black community is saying this, but ours matters.

43:00

And so the militant side of it, I absolutely don't stand for that. I think it's unbiblical.

43:10

When it comes to that, I'm highly conservative. So there you go.

43:22

Conservatives are getting nervous, not just political, but just theological conservatives. Eric Mason, solid theologian, same sex attraction is not a sin.

43:34

You're okay with black lives matter, just not the radical elements. Like what is this?

43:39

And not only that, but you're being crowned down our throats by the top echelons of the SPC, and you want to change the way we do things here.

43:47

So you can see that this would not go over well with some at the church, and understandably so.

43:55

Yet there's this weird kind of reaction which happens when he is voted down, and 19 % of the stories that go out about this church in Florida that disciplines members over racial prejudice.

44:15

And then there's this weird kind of, I'm calling it cult -like behavior, and there's a reason I say that, but some of the members of the church on social media are just angry.

44:23

This 85 % threshold for affirmation was put in there by people that want to control.

44:30

It was unfair, and we need a mob mentality.

44:35

We can just get together and revote. And here's the weird thing though about this, this anger about him not being confirmed.

44:41

I've been going to churches my whole life. It's not unusual for a pastor to not be confirmed. A lot of churches go through tons of pastors before they find the one that they actually vote on and agree upon.

44:52

Why was it so important for this one to work out for the church? I don't know.

44:57

I'm asking though. Very strange in my opinion. But that's the way some felt in the church about it.

45:07

And so, a lot of anger at those 19%. And here, this is some emails were sent to me just by someone in the church dropping the bucket.

45:17

I mean, it could be there's a lot of members that have these kinds of emails, but termination letters. You're no longer part of our church.

45:24

You're part of that 19%. You're vocal against Marcus Hayes. Yeah, you're not part of our church anymore. And if you're gonna reach out to me and try to reason with me,

45:32

I'm no longer your pastor. Stop harassing us. I mean, this is not how, look, if you think this is how a shepherd treats sheep, this is absolutely insane.

45:44

This is negligence on a level that, not even negligence, it's pastoral abuse is what it is.

45:51

This isn't church discipline. This is excommunication. And this is what happens to some of the ringleaders in this 19%.

45:59

Here's the letter from First Baptist Church in Naples to the Southern Baptist Convention.

46:08

Marcus Hayes is absolutely one of the most qualified men, it says. And that a portion of the 19 % that voted against Marcus Hayes did so based on racial prejudices.

46:18

We know this because of the campaign that started just days before by a few disgruntled people in the church. And that campaign involved nothing about race.

46:27

But that's what they're saying. They're saying that our leadership of our church, it's a sickness, it's a cancer, it's sin, what happened.

46:35

We also ask for forgiveness from our fellow brothers and sisters in the SBC, because all women and men are created in the image of God, and this is a sinful cancer.

46:45

And we're gonna do biblical church discipline, which apparently means excommunicating members. That's not biblical church discipline.

46:55

Members are just kicked out onto the street, basically. It's like, yeah, no discussion.

47:00

You're just not part of our church because you're racist, even though they weren't. So this is, the whole thing is just smells of corruption.

47:11

Here's how SBC leaders respond. This is the most fascinating part. Bart Barber, John Eady, and FBC Naples are about to show our entire convention a way forward,

47:22

I suspect. And I don't just mean about race, although that's obviously very important here, about healthy church polity in a sinful world.

47:31

Oh my goodness, if Bart Barber thinks that's healthy church polity, he needs to resign from being a pastor.

47:38

That's not, that is, yeah, all the steps of Matthew 18 and 1 by Micah Fries.

47:45

This is a strong response from the FBC Naples leadership. Well said. Russell Moore, racial bigotry and injustice are not trifling secondary matters, but are objects of the wrath of God.

47:57

The gospel is to crucify such Satanism and bring about a people modeling love, justice, reconciliation.

48:03

This isn't a distraction, but right at the core of mission. J .D. Greer, thanking God for the bold gospel faithful response of the leadership of FBC Naples.

48:13

Sin has to be taken seriously in the church, and racial bias belies our gospel.

48:19

Let us be united and lament that any vestige of this kind of sinful prejudice remains in our churches.

48:27

Wade Burleson, same thing. Jack Graham, even. Same thing.

48:34

The Baptist Blogger. Baptist Blogger insinuates that because Tom Askell's church is in the same area, that's who they're talking about here.

48:44

Southwest Florida has problems. The whole region needs Jesus. They're saying, yeah, this extends this racism.

48:51

Founders Ministries must be involved in that. Dwight McKissick. He thinks the

48:58

FBC Naples should be disfellowshipped. So this is just insane.

49:07

And this is, you know, there's some sources start coming out on places. Some of these, you know, blogs, sometimes called discernment blogs like Reformation Charlotte, Pulpit and Pen, Capstone Reports start running stories about this, and here's just a few things that were revealed in those stories.

49:27

You have them talking about, some sources talking about what happened.

49:33

I was a member of the concern group at First Baptist Church Naples. I was privately critical to some leaders about what was going on.

49:42

They wouldn't meet with this person. They have not done anything remotely racist, and they won't respond, and that's what the leadership's doing.

49:52

They're concerned about bullying in the school to the kids because, look, there's a school on the church property, and cease and desist orders were given to some of the members.

50:02

They can't even come. Their kids are in the school, and they can't even come on church or school property because they're supposedly racist, because they supposedly voted against Marcus Hayes to be a pastor.

50:14

It's insane. It's a terrible situation, and so you have all these reactions.

50:24

The giving's going down, but yet they somehow have the money to hire these lawyers, which, by the way, is from a law firm that has a perfect score with the

50:32

LGBT human rights campaign. It's just insane.

50:39

It's just, it defies, but you can't make this stuff up, and then you have a re -vote, and a re -vote needs to happen for Marcus Hayes.

50:48

While the necessary votes were short, your senior pastor search committee met this past Tuesday and have determined the following.

50:57

First, Marcus Hayes, a highly respected and a well -qualified pastor, remains the man that we believe

51:06

God has called to be our next pastor. Secondly, and I might add, unfortunately, the integrity of our election last weekend was compromised.

51:17

Two members of the counting committee have admitted to leaking confidential early voting results from Saturday night to a lay leader in this church who then used that information, we believe, to compromise the process.

51:35

Third, your pastor search committee has been assured by the deacon leadership, pastoral staff, and other lay leadership that disciplinary action towards church members who have violated our church covenant by causing dissension, disruption, and spreading of misinformation have been taken and are underway.

52:07

To be absolutely clear, though, church leadership does not believe that all who voted no did so based on race, but it is undeniable that race played a part in the final days leading up to this election.

52:24

In addition, this committee would like to affirm with those same leaders that racism has no part in the body of Christ and never more so than first baptist natives.

52:39

I mean, it's relentless. It is absolutely relentless. We played by the rules.

52:45

It didn't work out. Now we're going to change the rules. So that happens.

52:52

Then Marcus Hayes decides he's not going to—he's probably a wise move on his part.

52:58

He's like, I'm not going to do it. I'm not coming back to—even though the search team is begging me to come back, he decides not to do it.

53:08

And then this is Hayes Wicker, their former pastor, who's been kind of absent from this whole conversation.

53:15

He's in North Carolina now. He writes a whole long letter from Hayes Wicker to the church leaders on November 24, 2019, and he says the church is being controlled and manipulated.

53:33

They have consistently denied me, my wife, and many other members of the church the ability to speak with the rest of the leaders.

53:40

And he talks about the own controversy about himself and justifies himself. And then he talks about the

53:46

Marcus Hayes controversy. And he says—and he just takes them to task. I mean, you can pause this and read it if you want, but he exposes what's happening.

53:59

They're making people—giving them ultimatums that they can't step foot on the property of the church lest they be found guilty of trespassing.

54:10

They've been involved in illegal activity by—really, I mean, this is kind of a weird one, but it says,

54:18

John Patterson Jr., upon receiving Eric Yelder's computer when he left FBC Naples, found an iMessage was still accessing his and Kristen's text messages and submitted this information to John David Eady.

54:31

Pastor Patterson was shockingly instructed to investigate the text messages and search for any illegal activity. They're trying to find things, you know, anything they can.

54:40

They'll even invade privacy in order to try to find something with the group that was not okay with Marcus Hayes being a pastor there.

54:53

You know, they're shutting down ministries like the Spanish church, or they're hampering them,

55:01

I should say, which is really not very social justice of them, is it? Church discipline of a couple who had already resigned their membership, so members of the counting committee who had been publicly attacked.

55:17

There's no reason for it. One local church is being privately called First Baptist Church Naples West because hundreds of the members have fled to this church.

55:26

So here's the situation. The church is losing money, losing members, and they're still progressing in this direction.

55:35

You'd think that would cause them to wake up, but it's not, and that's what

55:41

I found when I was there. I'm going to put this in a personal note in a minute. We're almost done here, but Pastor Eady then resigns and Jonathan Aiken becomes the interim pastor at First Baptist Church Naples.

55:54

I'm not sure why Eady resigned exactly, but then

56:00

Danny Aiken's son, Jonathan Aiken, isn't that interesting, becomes the pastor. And Jonathan Aiken has put out there on his

56:08

Twitter basically endorsing social justice as a biblical thing.

56:13

And Jonathan Aiken, apparently, apparently, this is what I was told by the members when I was down there, former members, that they couldn't find anything on him as far as experience.

56:30

There was like one sermon online they could listen to, and he doesn't have the experience to be in a position of leading a church of 10 ,000 people.

56:39

But here's the thing, because he's an interim, they don't have to vote, so you just bring him in. And they're flying him down, or they were at least, from North Carolina every weekend to preach at a church in Florida.

56:51

Now this is weird, guys. This is really strange behavior. But if you add everything up,

57:00

Oxano, this entity that is involved with NAM getting involved, the people that are pulling the strings and endorsing, we're endorsing

57:10

Marcus Hayes, are all in this North Carolina enclave. The fact that the leadership is acting in such a corrupt manner, the fact that there's almost like a personality occult around Marcus Hayes, it all adds up to really, really, really strange behavior.

57:28

And I'm not claiming I have all the answers, but here's what I'll tell you about my experience there.

57:34

I went there, and I talked to a number of the members. And you'll be seeing some of these interviews that'll be very powerful.

57:42

You can't listen to the stories of some of these people and not cry. People who are involved in missions overseas, a woman who escaped basically

57:51

South Africa because she didn't like apartheid, so she left. A person who ran

57:56

Operation Christmas Child on the church. And various ministries like this. People who didn't have a racist bone in their body, in fact their lives say quite the opposite, are accused, tarred and feathered as racists.

58:08

And it's absolutely disgusting. And it's like watching, it's like seeing wounded sheep.

58:19

And you get skittish. You start wondering, am I crazy? You know, people who grew up in the church, who haven't known anything else, were baptized there, served there, being kicked out because of this.

58:33

Because they didn't want to go along, they don't want a pastor like that in their church, which is their prerogative. That's part of their responsibility to vote as members of a church.

58:41

They were trying to sound the alarm, they're getting shut down, and now their leaders aren't even being leaders.

58:47

They're not even meeting with them. They're just excommunicating them. It's not how shepherds act, it's not how sheep act.

58:54

I'm going to just tell you what I think is going on. And is there some speculation in this?

59:00

Yes, but I would consider it more of an educated guess based on everything that I saw while I was down there.

59:07

And everything I just presented to you. First Baptist Church Naples is in a very affluent area, a very conservative area in Florida.

59:20

And with the changes that were being proposed that I knew about, and this Oxano group coming in and providing recommendations,

59:28

I think what was happening is First Baptist Church Naples was going to be essentially the brave new world version of a

59:39

Southern Baptist Church. The blueprint for what Southern Baptist Churches are going to be looking like as we move forward into the next generation.

59:48

To survive the onslaught of secularism, to move to the left, and it seems like there's corruption throughout this, obviously, with the leaders who are involved pressuring this decision.

01:00:02

But this is the new pastor, the new kind of pastor that people want.

01:00:09

And I did watch a little bit of him speaking, and he comes across...Marcus

01:00:14

Hayes is kind of like...he's kind of a youth pastor to be honest with you. Kind of like a fun kind of youth pastor, casual, but multi -ethnic family, and just really wanting to change things.

01:00:32

I mean, I think that one decision that he wanted to implement about changing the hierarchy of the

01:00:37

Church is so interesting. Making Bible study leaders facilitators. I mean, that's telling in my mind.

01:00:45

You're taking away that authority, and you're kind of bringing everyone down to this sort of egalitarian level of, we're just all in it together studying the

01:00:52

Bible. Yeah, someone who studied it and actually is an authority in the group, we don't want that.

01:00:59

So the new kind of pastor, new kind of church, they don't do weddings, we don't do Operation Christmas Child, we're going to be different.

01:01:07

And who knows what other ideas that they were trying to implement, but obviously this mattered. This whole thing mattered to a bunch of people very much, and I don't know why.

01:01:19

I don't know exactly why, but that's my suspicion, is that this was going to be kind of almost like an experiment.

01:01:27

This was going to be the poster child for what the new Southern Baptist Convention Church is going to look like.

01:01:33

It's going to look like a place where you can be homosexual, have those desires, and we're not going to be calling people out for that.

01:01:40

It's not sinful to have those desires. It's where it's going to be politically more left, and we as conservatives, both theologically and politically, should be concerned about this kind of thing.

01:01:56

Because you know if it didn't work out in a place like Florida, I'm sure they're going to implement people like Marcus Hayes.

01:02:03

Nothing against him personally, but his beliefs just they stink. Someone like him is going to be implemented somewhere else.

01:02:10

They'll probably take him and try to sell him to another church in a way, in a sense of here's the guy that's going to make everything 21st century for you.

01:02:22

And there's hundreds of more people like Marcus Hayes out there.

01:02:28

Someone who will probably, you know, friends with people in the higher echelons of the denomination will play ball with them and move the denomination.

01:02:39

It's an influential church in the progressive direction it's already going. So more will come out.

01:02:45

I mean this is tip of the iceberg stuff. You're just getting kind of my perspective on it, but what

01:02:51

I saw when I looked into the eyes of people in Naples, Florida was hurt. I saw it just it's enough to make you cry.

01:02:58

It's enough to make you angry and enough to make you cry. Funny enough when we were, this is this is funny kind of, it's ironic, when we were there they have

01:03:09

I guess an old where their old church building was and we were coming down the street and it was the day they're removing the cross, literally removing the cross from the building.

01:03:19

And it's just like wow if that's not symbolic of what's going on,

01:03:26

I don't know what is. So anyway that's what I did last

01:03:31

December and you're going to be seeing the footage of that. You're going to be seeing the fruit of that come out soon. If any of you have free time to go look up Oxano and what's going on with them, that'd be awesome.

01:03:40

I'd like to know more about this Oxano group. I never heard of them, but yeah that's,

01:03:47

I'm shot at this point. That's all I'm done. That's all the information I could give, but stay tuned.

01:03:54

There's some things I think that are going to be coming in the next few weeks. The Naples video being one and we'll see what happens next week.

01:04:03

I hope that I'll be able to get a video out. I may not be able to right away. If not maybe I'll have a guest host or something.

01:04:10

But something will take place hopefully. So stay tuned for that and I hope this was helpful.