WWUTT 455 Q&A Southern Baptist Convention?

The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant denomination in the US. They just held their convention this past week and no matter what church background you come from, there are lessons learned there that can apply to any church when we understand the text.

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Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. The Southern Baptist Convention was this past week in Phoenix, Arizona, and I got a couple of emails asking if I would comment on the convention.

Rose from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania says, Hey, Pastor Gabe, keep up the great work. Question for you, will you tell us what the news is from this week's

Southern Baptist Convention? And then I also got this one from Matt in Illinois, Hey, Pastor Gabe, thank you for your ministry and the hours that you put into the teaching of the

Word. It is a blessing. I want to ask you to talk about your feelings on the SBC.

Do you see a downward spiral in the teaching and overall discernment within the denomination?

We attend an SBC church and while they are Orthodox, there are many things that give me cause for concern.

They are an Arminian church, which can lead to rushed affirmation on someone's salvation.

They want to include a drama team in the worship. Preaching is topical with a PowerPoint during the sermons with unnecessary pictures that distract from the sermon.

We are doing a small group study with Andy Stanley entitled Go Fish. I'm not a fan.

Is this something that's bigger than just a few churches? I fear it's growing. Well, Matt, yes, it's very common in Southern Baptist churches, and I do not understand the

SBC's embrace of Andy Stanley. He is not Southern Baptist. His dad is.

And so that's probably the reason why he gets grabbed in so many Southern Baptist churches. But you know, he'll even get precedence at certain

Southern Baptist conventions and gatherings or not conventions, conferences.

That would be the better word. And yet he's he's not Southern Baptist. North Point is a non -denominational church, and Andy Stanley is opposed to any kind of expositional preaching.

And so studying an Andy Stanley work will actually lead you further away from the Bible, not toward it, especially when

Andy is saying some of the things that he says about not needing to teach from the

Bible. And you're probably witnessing some of that in the study. It is that you are going through. But these problems, including

Andy Stanley's influence, are experienced in a lot of American evangelical churches. It's not just in the

Southern Baptist Convention. What are my thoughts about the direction that the convention is going?

Is it a downward spiral or are things rather improving? Honestly, I think things are improving.

And because things are improving in the Southern Baptist Convention, there is going to be a fight to hold on to the stuff that's really bad that the convention needs to do away with.

Anytime there are improvements being made in a church like you can go as small as being one local church or you're talking something as large as the

Southern Baptist Convention altogether. Anytime there is going to be a shift in a direction back toward sound doctrine, there's always going to be a fight to hold on to the bad things that need to be gotten rid of.

And that's that standard in any kind of spiritual battle that we encounter those kinds of things.

It's never smooth. It's never going to be it's never going to go the way that you would hope that it would go that everybody's going to go, oh, yeah, return to sound doctrine.

Amen. And then just jump right on board with that. It never goes that way. And so we are experiencing some conflicts in the

SBC as some are still clinging to the old way and don't want to give way to to a shift into sound doctrine.

The two thirds of the convention that remains Arminian are blaming the third of the convention that's Calvinist on some of these problems.

But the Calvinists are not the problems, as as Tom Buck pointed out on the dividing line with Dr.

James White earlier this week, the Calvinists are just exposing the problems that the SBC already had.

But when you when you consider our universities, the Southern Baptist Colleges, a number of the presidents are on the more reform side of things.

Dr. Albert Moeller, who's been the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the flagship institution within the

Southern Baptist Convention and the students that are coming out of SBTS, are largely big fans of Moeller.

And so I think that as the generation progresses, you'll probably see a shift more in into the reform side of things, into sound teaching and expositional preaching.

Also, I see David Prince is another one. Daniel Aiken down at Southeastern, just down the road from me at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

You've got Jason K. Allen, who's the president of the college. Also Jared C. Wilson, who works there and the for the church conference and ministry that comes out of MBTS.

So so there's a lot of great things going on in the SBC that is moving things more in the direction of sound teaching and preaching.

I would say that the biggest triumph of the Southern Baptist Convention 2017 in Phoenix, Arizona, was the example of verse by verse expository preaching.

That was the biggest triumph of SBC 2017. Not the alt -right vote.

Nope. That had the most attention. But the example of expositional preaching was what was,

I thought, the biggest, most awesome thing that I observed in the convention this past week.

I didn't get the chance to attend, but I did watch it online. The emphasis of the conference was on prayer.

I think it was the preaching. The preaching was gorgeous. We did not have the

Rick Warren, Ed Young Jr., Stephen Furtick, topical preaching, eisegesis bomb that you would expect from from the bigger

Southern Baptist churches, because all those guys are Southern Baptists, by the way. But that was absent from the convention.

We had solid expositional preaching, and that is something to get excited about.

Roger Spradlin, when he preached on Wednesday, his entire sermon was about why we needed to return to expositional preaching and was preaching out of Second Timothy.

All scripture is God -breathed and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work, something that every

Southern Baptist church needs. And I hope that that we can we can set a trend.

We can set an example for other evangelical churches to follow as well. Now, while I think that was the biggest triumph of the convention this past week, of course, the thing that got all the attention was the vote denouncing the alt -right.

And that vote was held on Wednesday. It was supposed to be presented on Tuesday. At least everybody was hoping that it was going to be brought to the floor on Tuesday.

And it was not. And that created a certain outcry. And then it was it was ultimately voted on Wednesday.

Well, first of all, let me address this. What is the alt -right? Because some people are probably going, I don't even know what that means.

And there were people at the convention that clearly didn't understand what the alt -right was or the threat that it poses.

Well, alt -right is short for alternative right. It's a fringe movement obsessed with white nationalism.

That's that's the gist of it. They are not conservatives, even though in the very name alt -right means to suggest that they're on the right, like the radical right.

But they're not right anything. I consider them as dangerous as any liberal social justice movement.

But but anyway, so the the vote that was supposed to be presented on Tuesday to denounce the alt -right did not even come to the floor for a vote.

And that not only I mean, stirred some anger within the convention itself, but there were

I mean, it got media attention. And even people who are part of the alt -right started championing the

Southern Baptist Convention as heroes for not voting to denounce the alt -right. So all things considered,

I'm actually glad that it was not voted on Tuesday and instead was presented for the vote on Wednesday.

Why am why do I appreciate that it waited a day? Because by missing the vote

Tuesday, everybody got to see just how venomous the alt -right really is and why it was necessary for the

Southern Baptist Convention to denounce it. I think if that vote was held on Tuesday, we would not have understood clearly at least a whole convention would not have seen just how venomous that side of things really is.

So for that reason, I think we can we can celebrate that the vote was held on Wednesday, that it was practically passed unanimously, at least from what

I saw on the live feed online. I could not see anybody raising a card or a vote to oppose it.

Seemed like it was a pretty unanimous acceptance among the convention.

And when I mean acceptance, I mean the acceptance of Resolution 10, which denounced the alt -right, not acceptance of the alt -right.

That's confusing language, but I hope I hope all of that made sense. Anyway, the

Southern Baptist Convention started on a platform of slave ownership, the right to be able to own slaves.

There was in the mid -1800s, an elder named James E. Reeve, who was a slave owner and he wanted to be able to be a missionary.

Well, the Foreign Mission Board would not grant him that appointment because he owned slaves, which makes total sense.

I mean, the guy owns people as property. He wants to be able to go into another country that his slaves were probably taken from and witness to those people with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That's that's a complete paradox, so completely antithetical to the gospel.

Nonetheless, there were some churches in the Deep South that wanted to be able to own slaves and also appoint missionaries.

So they broke away from the Baptist Association that they were a part of. And the Southern Baptist Convention was born.

So because that's the origin of the SBC, there's still some deep wounds and racism does still exist in the

Southern Baptist Convention. It is necessary for us to recognize that so we can root it out and destroy it because it is contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ for any church to be racist or segregated.

Now, because those wounds exist in the SBC, we have matters like the alt -right vote earlier this week.

And there was the thing concerning the Confederate flag last year. And while it's good to make those kinds of stances so that we can we can mend and heal those wounds within our convention,

I'm concerned that social justice rhetoric would weasel its way into the convention through issues just like this.

I hope that the heart behind denouncing the alt -right or voting to condemn the

Confederate flag and all those kinds of things. I hope that is from a right and genuinely pure heart, not one that is being influenced by the rhetoric of the culture, particularly

Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter is inherently opposed to church involvement.

So to join with BLM is to add a voice to an agnostic and even anti -religious cause on the

BLM website among the 13 guiding principles of the Black Lives Matter movement.

And this is this is on their website. Among the principles they have listed is that they are queer affirming and transgender affirming.

And I would add to that, though they don't say it on their website, they're pro abortion as well.

A matter that claims as many black lives in America each year as crime, cancer, heart disease and car accidents combined.

If you believe Black Lives Matter, there's your fight. Planned Parenthood is racist to its core.

Its founder, Margaret Sanger, heralded eugenics and wanted to extinguish the black race. And most

Planned Parenthood centers to this day are located in minority neighborhoods targeting minority families.

And Black Lives Matter will defend Planned Parenthood. The BLM movement is completely antithetical to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and Christians should have no partnership with it or even echo their rhetoric, nor should

Christians have anything to do with any social justice movement which are prejudiced by their very nature.

And don't just take my word for it. Let me hand it over to another Southern Baptist preacher with a little more clout on this issue than I have,

Dr. Votie Bauckham. This is from the last message that he preached at Spring Family Baptist Church in Spring, Texas, two years ago.

This was July of 2015, before he and his family moved to Africa, where Dr. Bauckham presently serves as dean of theological education at African Christian University in Zambia.

In this message, Dr. Bauckham was preaching on Second Timothy 4, 1 through 8, where Paul says,

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

Dr. Bauckham gave examples of myths in our modern context, and one example that he gave is social justice movements.

Here's here's the clip. For a while now, young people, young Christians in America have been lured into the social justice movement.

Now, if the social justice movement went by its actual name, young Christians would not have been lured into it because the social justice movement is actually cultural

Marxism. Under a new name. There's no such thing as social justice, people.

In fact, in the Bible, justice never has an adjective. There's justice and there's injustice, but there's not different kinds of justice.

Something is either just or it's injust or it's unjust. So the social justice movement.

Which is about putting people into various constituencies and then having people in these various constituencies and identifying people only by their constituencies and treating people according to their constituencies and having as our highest goal, creating a certain level of equality between certain groups of people.

It doesn't fit within the context of biblical Christianity, because within the context of biblical

Christianity, we recognize that there are only two races of people.

There is the race of the first Adam and the race of the last Adam. Amen. Those are the only two races of people.

And we understand that what we need is justice, period. And so let me give you an example of how this is playing out in terms of people running along in the myths and us being in deep trouble.

There are people who were killed in South Carolina and there's a tragedy. It's an absolute tragedy.

And all of a sudden we have flags being taken down all over the place. And it's interesting for a number of reasons.

Number one, it's interesting because this is buying into a platonic idea of reality. The platonic idea that believe that things are evil.

Not people, but things. So let's go after things and we're going after flags. Here's the other problem.

Major Nidal Hassan killed more people in Killeen in the name of Islam than were killed in that South Carolina church.

There was not the outcry that we saw because of the South Carolina church. Just the other day,

Marines and sailors killed by another man in the name of Islam.

How many people have been killed recently in the name of the Confederacy? And we're running to take down flags.

But how many people have been killed recently in the name of Islam? And we don't say a mumbling word.

Why? Because our reaction has less to do with our genuine love for people than it does with our desire to advance a particular narrative.

Folks, that's beneath us as Christians. I'll say it again. That's beneath us as Christians.

It's another area where we're wandering off into myths. And so, again, while I believe that the denouncement of the alt -right is good, that does not mean that the heart behind it is always right because we can wander off into these myths or try to perpetuate a certain kind of narrative rather than having a genuine love for people.

So the only way in the Southern Baptist Convention that we are going to heal from the wounds that have existed from the beginning of the convention is the gospel of Jesus Christ is right preaching and teaching from the gospel.

When necessary, there are certain things that are going to need to be addressed. We can't just ignore the problem of racism and expect that it's going to work its way out.

I've experienced firsthand in my own church that when you say to a congregation, as it says in 1

Timothy chapter 4, have nothing to do with irreverent silly myths, you get a bunch of people nodding their heads. But once you name an irreverent, silly myth, then people get offended.

The Daniel plan and the Daniel diet, thinking that Daniel chapter one has something to do with right and healthy eating.

That's an irreverent, silly myth. And suddenly everybody who has the Daniel plan on their bookshelf is offended that you just said that.

But but that that's just providing you an example. Unless you specifically target the problem, people are not just automatically going to figure out what the problem is because you preached a verse out of the

Bible. So there are times and places where we are directly going to have to confront the problem.

But at the center of all of this needs to be right teaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ and a genuine love for all people of all races, of all nationalities, of all cultural and ethnic backgrounds, of all languages and tongues to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It is out of a genuine love for people that we will heal the wounds that have been caused by sinful people.

And let me be even more specific. It's not just about taking the gospel to all different groups of people.

It's also a desire to worship with all different people from all different kinds of nationalities and races and even languages.

Because when you go back to the beginning of the Southern Baptist Convention, you had people who probably genuinely desired to share the gospel with everybody, but they wanted also the right to be able to own slaves.

So there was not any real and true unity that was brought about by the gospel.

The gospel is what unifies. And we have to be a people that desires that unity, that desires to have here on earth what we are going to be in the eternal heavenly kingdom.

And that is a people of God made up of every tribe, tongue and nation on earth.

May God's will be done on earth just as it is in heaven. But all of this is accomplished by our adherence to the gospel of Jesus Christ, which repairs the divisions that are caused by sinful men.

Titus 3 -3, we are told that before Christ, we were hated by others and hating one another.

But when the goodness and loving kindness of God, our savior appeared, he saved us not by works done by us in righteousness, not by the denouncement of the alt -right or the removal of the

Confederate flag, but by his love and mercy. And that is how we are going to have the unity that we must have in Christ our

Lord. May we follow an example that would set that was set forth at this convention for verse by verse biblical preaching and teaching, not the

Andy Stanley model who has said that expositional preaching is cheating. No, on the contrary,

Andy Stanley needs to repent of his false method and return back to preaching the whole counsel of God, as we should all do.

And as I've been dedicated to doing on this podcast and will continue to do next week as we get into a study of Third John.

So Rose and Matt, thank you for your questions. Next week, I hope to be able to answer some more questions. And I'll try this coming week also to respond to a lot of these emails

I've received over the last couple of weeks. And I'm I'm behind on my responses. So I apologize for that.

If you want to submit an email to the program, our address is when we understand the text at gmail .com.

God bless. We'll be back with Third John on Monday. This is when we understand the text with Pastor Gabe Hughes.

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