William Wolfe talks SBC & Center for Baptist Leadership

Southern Baptist Convention Drift and the Need for Conservative Renewal

Welcome once again to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. We have a guest on who's been on the podcast before, William Wolfe. How you doing, William? Good, John. Thanks for having me back.

I think the last time you were on, you were not at the Center for Baptist Leadership because it didn't exist yet. So you're gonna talk to us a little bit about what that is, Southern Baptist Convention's coming up, what you hope to accomplish, the ground game, all of that stuff.

I'll let you respond to some preliminary attacks that are being made personally on you, as well as the Center. I wanted to say before I let you do all that, that this podcast has been around since 2019, I guess, and leading up to Resolution 9 and everything that happened.

I mean, this podcast predates that. And I was very opposed to pretty much all the issues that we're currently seeing the left push in the Southern Baptist Convention. And it happened before I even started the podcast.

Some people like to say Resolution 9 was the beginning, but I actually think that this goes back quite a few years, maybe even to the Great Commission resurgence in 2010. I know others will say 95. I mean, everyone's got their dates, but certainly in the 2010s, we saw an increasing amount of enthusiasm for the diversity of the SBC, which meant sometimes it was unofficial, but these racial almost quotas, I don't know how else to say it.

I mean, there was a concern, it seemed like every convention just about for, even if it wasn't in the news, they'd have to have a resolution about something related to a concern over racism of some kind.

And usually it was from a leftist framing. In fact, I think every time I can think of it was. And then of course we had the Me Too stuff that came in. We have now there's a fight over women pastors. And this is the first one, William, I've seen conservatives actually find a little bit more spine as far as like as a group.

And maybe that's because they fought over this in the conservative resurgence version one. This is perhaps conservative resurgence two, at least that's what you want it to be. So I just say all that to say this, that people in this audience, many of them I think have seen this for years and they have battle fatigue if they're in the SBC.

Some have left. There's those in the audience who have still stayed and want to keep fighting, but every year it gets discouraging when they see loss after loss. Last year, maybe the first time they saw something they wanted win, but it was something that I think in their minds was obvious like of course the Southern Baptist Convention has for decades been against women pastors.

So my first question comes from kind of a negative perspective, and that's because of this unique audience and how they've, I think, seen this issue. What kind of hope can you give that for those in the SBC, they should hold on to and a reason for them to come out and fight and that kind of thing?

Liberal Infiltration and the Conservative Catch-Up in the SBC

Yeah, I think that's a great question. And your framing there was helpful. And I think just to pull the camera back and think about how this works just in conservative institutions, whether it's denominations or Christian colleges or even political parties, is that the liberals infiltrate and subvert.

They cross their fingers and swear they're on your team. And as soon as you give them a seat at the table and let them into your organization, they start working against you. Gary North wrote a whole book about this, literally called Cross Fingers, how liberals infiltrated and subverted the Presbyterian Church in America.

And so I think what's happened, John, is that conservatives really have been playing catch up on this fight for the last few years. I think you're absolutely right. It started before 2019. And really we had this period of peace, so to speak, in the Southern Baptist Convention, where I think a lot of guys let their guard down and the peacetime was sort of squandered.

And then on the racial issues in particular, that was really the entry point. That was the entryism into the Southern Baptist Convention. And of course it was because of the Southern Baptist Convention's history and its founding.

And so it was a really critical spot, a soft spot, a vulnerability for winsome oriented pastors and leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention to be infiltrated and influenced by new critical theories and forms of cultural Marxism coming in in the guise of racial reconciliation.

But even as you briefly charted out, we went from racial issues to Me Too issues to egalitarianism. And even now we have climate activism and LGBT compromise happening in the Southern Baptist Convention.

And it just reminds conservative Christians that it always all comes together. The camel's nose under the tent of the SBC was on race. We were particularly vulnerable to that. We didn't deal with it well.

And look at the host of other unbiblical ideologies that have been brought in along with it. And so I say that to say that I wanna give hope to conservatives because we have been playing catch up and that's sort of on us in some ways, but we are, I think, pushing back.

And in terms of showing up to fight, I of course wanna always give credit to the people who showed up to the Nashville Convention in particular in 2021. That was a massive turnout for conservative Southern Baptists who realized something was going deeply wrong with the convention.

And they got close to a big win if they could have elected Mike Stone as president, that would have been a massive win for conservatives. And unfortunately, Stone got attacked and slandered and really drugged through the mud.

And so coming out of 21, I think conservatives have been continuing to regroup and try to pick different targets to fight on. And this one on women pastors is such a big issue. And we did win last year in New Orleans with the first passage of the law amendment.

And another point of hope I would give to conservatives is that, I'd say we've had six years of really bad leadership in the Southern Baptist Convention. I'm not gonna mince my words or apologize for that.

Three years of J .D. Greer, one year of Ed Litton, and then two years of Bart Barber has done nothing to stop the slide. But this year is an open presidential election year. Bart's not running again. We have six candidates and we've got some really good options in Jared Moore and in David Allen as strong conservatives who I think have a real shot at winning.

And so when I look at Indianapolis here, four weeks from today, when the convention starts, I see hope for conservatives if conservatives will do the one thing that we need them to do, which is show up.

Very good.

Well, the center for those who don't know yet is the Center for Baptist Leadership.

What is your position there? Are you the president? I'm the founder and executive director. I guess I could have given myself the president title, but I went with executive director.

Okay, yeah, it's pretty much the same thing, I suppose. And so you have a website. I would, I guess, ask this. Really, I wanna get into the evidence for SBC Drift, the current issues and then strategy, and then some of the opposition that you've experienced.

But I do wanna ask this first though, which I, so I'm jumping the gun a little on this tragedy part of this, but Center for Baptist Leadership is a website. What more than a website are you though? What kinds of things does the Center for Baptist Leadership do that can contribute to this overall fight?

What the Center for Baptist Leadership Does

Yeah, the Center for Baptist Leadership obviously has a website and we publish articles and we have a podcast as well. And we have, and we're doing a lot of organization for conservatives behind the scenes.

But the goal for what I hope Center for Baptist Leadership will be over the years, I mean, we've only been out publicly for just over two months now, is really a reform and change agent in the Southern Baptist Convention with future orientation.

Our mission is to cultivate courageous and uncompromising Baptist leadership for the SBC for the 21st century. We want to help raise up a new generation of leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention at the institutional level, at the pastor level and at the lay member level.

We really wanna help educate, activate and equip lay members to be involved in this because that's really where quite frankly, the power lies in the Southern Baptist Convention. And so we hope to be able to help sort of shift the framing of what it means to be a conservative Baptist in the United States of America and the Southern Baptist Convention and really bring us back Lord willing to a point of prominence for good, Christian conservative good in the United States of America and around the world, while we also evangelize, share the gospel, plant churches.

And so we have sort of two main timeframes in mind with the Center for Baptist Leadership. One is like a 10 year effort, really that's what it's gonna take, a 10 year effort to revitalize the Southern Baptist Convention from within, that's our first line of effort.

And then the second timeline is sort of year over year educating and equipping messengers to come to the meeting and driving turnout so that they know what's going on, they're showing up to vote. So those are our two timelines, year over year with the convention, 10 year timeframe of institutional renewal in the SBC.

And as we thought about our mission at the Center for Baptist Leadership, you can think of a home or you can even think of like a castle or a fort. And so that first one, revitalize it from within, we would say our foundations are failing, we need to reshore up our foundations, our commitment to sound doctrine in the Southern Baptist Convention, whether that's on complementarianism, whether that's on biblical sexuality and biblical sexual ethics, whether that's on the biblical approach to climate issues or a biblical approach to racial issues, or, and quite frankly, ecclesiology, there's still a lot of work to be done in the Southern Baptist Convention in terms of our church practices, our baptismal practices, we've really fallen prey to the seeker sensitive movement that's taken over the United States of America in many ways.

So we wanna revitalize it from within, rebuild our foundations. The second one is we wanna defend it from those who seek its destruction. And that's a little bit of a different line of effort than what I've seen from really any other conservative group out there, which again, we love, Founders loves Conservative Baptist Network, but at Center for Baptist Leadership, we recognize that there are bad actors being paid to infiltrate the Southern Baptist Convention.

So we wanna sort of equip our watchmen on the walls to spot those bad actors before they get in and start causing havoc for us. One great example on that, John, would be the After Party Curriculum, published by David French, former Southern Baptist, Russell Moore and Curtis Chang.

That is an entryway into the Southern Baptist Convention for liberalism. So we want to help arm pastors and institutional leaders to be on the guard for things like that and not let it within the tent.

And then the third thing is to be a better Baptist voice in the public square. And so if we can reshore our foundations, equip the watchmen and the SBC, the leaders, to look out for the flock sort of inside our tent, so to speak, then third and finally, we wanna equip people to go out into the public, out amongst the walls, so to speak, and boldly proclaim the truth of the gospel and the uncompromising applications of Christianity to all of life, cultural, political, in the home, in society.

And so that's what we want to do. And again, that's our vision. Right now, again, we have the website, we have articles, we have a podcast, we've got, I've got great ambitions, John. I would love to have Center for Baptist Leadership chapters on seminaries and Baptist colleges, future Baptist leaders, so to speak, and start trying to get after the next generation.

We hope to publish white papers as we get a little more developed, we get past the convention, we have time, there'll be sort of historical deep dives on major issues in the Southern Baptist Convention.

And then in the next few weeks here, we sort of hope to publish a packet to equip churches and messengers to be prepared for the convention. This is a question I get quite a bit is, hey, I'm gonna talk, I'm a deacon, I'm about to brief my pastors or the deacon board on what's going on at Southern Baptist Convention.

Do you have anything I can use? We wanna be that go-to resource for people to get equipped for issues.

In the Southern Baptist Convention. All right, well, that was a nice thorough answer to the question about the Southern for Baptist Leadership. And I wrote down some questions as you were talking. Let's start with evidence before we get to strategy.

You mentioned, because I do know there will be people, you may be even right wing watch, who knows? They'll be watching this podcast and they might not exactly be the people who normally watch it and are already briefed on Southern Baptist stuff.

So you mentioned climate and LGBTQ issues. I think that might surprise some Southern Baptists who might be used to some of the more critical race theory stuff and the Me Too stuff, but they might be surprised about those issues.

The climate issues, are you just referring to the series at Southeastern? Okay, I wasn't sure if there was something else there.

Well, I mean, I think that's the main one, that's the big one, but as I've learned, at least in my years of working in politics and in denominational issues, if you find a big issue, I can almost guarantee that there's smaller issues elsewhere and in other places.

So I would not be surprised in the same way that many Christians are falling prey to emotionally driven manipulative language on climate issues that yes, we saw one bad, very obvious example at Southeastern, but I'm sure there's more out there too.

Climate Activism and the Gospel at Southeastern

Yeah, one of the things I noticed.

Tracking some of these issues years ago and to some extent still today, I don't focus on the Southern Baptist nearly as much, but there would be just on their YouTube channels or social media feeds. Sometimes there would just be information that people had not watched.

Some of their videos, I went to Southeastern, that's where my degree's from. They would have students in the room and the students would be exposed. These are your future pastors. But as far as online presence, sometimes some of their videos didn't get any views.

No one knew what was really happening because in part, no one was paying attention. Now they've gone underground with some of this stuff as I understand it. But there just aren't people, like the left has all this manpower to watch even a podcast like this to find out if there was a gotcha moment with what William Wolfe said.

But we don't have the resources to go to various Southern Baptist institutions to keep an eye on what they're doing. And so you had some like blatantly obvious things that organizations at the time, like Pulp and Pen or Capstone Report would publish on.

But as far as people doing research and trying to figure out what's actually being taught to students, not a lot of it going on. So I'm just reinforcing what you said that there probably is more material that people haven't detected because of the lack of resources.

But yeah, for those who don't know, Southeastern did a few sessions that they exposed their students to that were blatantly and overtly progressive on the issue of climate change. Even with one session I watched, Jonathan Moo combining its climate change activism with the gospel itself, which there's no excuse for.

That's just getting into heretical territory. So what about the LGBTQ plus issue? Where do you see this infiltrating the Southern Baptists?

LGBTQ Compromise and the Teaching on Sexual Orientation

Yeah, well, I think that the Southern Baptists, like almost all of American evangelicalism have been really taken for a ride for the last decade on what the Bible really teaches about sexual morality, sexual orientation, the ontological nature of being a sexed male and a sexed woman and what that means for our attractions and our desires.

Jared Moore, Dr. Jared Moore, who is running for president of the Southern Baptist Convention, wrote what is so far our most read article at the Center for Baptist Leadership called the queering of the SBC, which the last time I checked, it had over 7 ,000 reads, which is huge for a new organization like ours.

And in it, he walks through examples of how compromised teaching on human sexuality has infiltrated the Southern Baptist Convention. He looks at people like Preston Sprinkle, who while Preston Sprinkle is not a Southern Baptist, his material has been used by many Southern Baptists and promoted at Southern Baptist seminaries.

And one notable individual, Rachel Gilson, works with Preston Sprinkle's ministries and is a PhD student at Southeastern and was platformed at the Southern Baptist Convention 2023 Women's Conference, I think put on primarily for pastors' wives.

But she's the type of person who sort of balks when asked, should we use transgender pronouns? Also how J .D. Greer suggested we could use transgender pronouns as an active pronoun hospitality. And who did Greer get that from?

Who did Greer cite in that original article? It was Preston Sprinkle. But also we've had people like Sam Albury and Living Out Ministries being promoted. And some of the people associated with that and with the Living Out Ministries have done things like encouraging same-sex attracted individuals to have very, very intentionally sort of covenantal committed platonic relationships with members of the same sex and even do things like engage in cuddling.

And there was this list of examples given of ways that same-sex attracted Christians could sort of do things to not act out on their desires, but still, I guess, in some way, gratify them by going to gay clubs or even going to nudist beaches.

I kid you not, that was one of the examples that was provided. And really, whether, you know, those are some of the more extreme examples, but when it comes down to the issue of orientation, you know, Jared Moore, I think, has rightly argued that this is a matter of the lust of the flesh and needs to be crucified.

And he looks at the example of Rosaria Butterfield and when she was living her lesbian lifestyle and met a Christian pastor and couple, that they told her to repent and, you know, forsake these attractions and seek to reorient her attractions in the way that would honor the Lord, so towards the opposite sex.

And Jared wonders that if Rosaria Butterfield was discipled by somebody like a Preston Sprinkle or J .D. Greer or Rachel Gilson or maybe even a Karen Swallow Pryor or others like that, or revoiced ministries, would she be a happily married, you know, heterosexual today, so to speak?

And I'm not sure that that's the counseling that many people are getting. And Jared had a great piece in there where he really walks through theologically how our temptations, whatever they are, are not the same as being tempted like Jesus in particular.

And that's where a lot of this entry point comes in on compromise on homosexual orientation is people say, well, if you're tempted to, you know, lust after the same sex, it's just like you being tempted like Jesus.

And Jared says, no, it's not, not at all, because that is a disordered desire. And whatever temptations Jesus ever had that he never sinned in his, you know, in that moment of temptation, it would have been for a good thing, a rightly ordered thing.

You know, when Satan tempts Jesus with the kingdoms of the world, well, that's a good thing because those are gonna be his anyway, and he resists that. But when you're being tempted to lust after a same sex individual, then you're not desiring a good thing in and of itself.

I'll pause there, a lot could be said, but the bottom line is that really sort of unbiblical teaching on human sexuality and sexual orientation and homosexuality has infiltrated the Southern Baptist Convention and really all of American evangelicalism.

And we're just sort of beginning to turn the tide on that.

It sounds a little bit like the LGBTQ issue in that many of the examples that you cited seem to be more organizations in evangelicalism that people who are Southern Baptists are paying attention to, but it's not like one of the seminaries is overtly necessarily advocating these things, if I heard you correctly.

Like you have Rachel Gilson speaking at Southeastern, perhaps, but it's not, you don't have official stands being taken, or they're not celebrating pride month or anything like that at a Southern Baptist institution from what I understand.

Official Platforming and the Limits of Denial

Yeah, I think it's maybe a little worse than that. So Rachel Gilson was platformed at the Southern Baptist Convention's Women's Conference in 2023. So that's a very official stamp of approval. And what she teaches is unbiblical.

And then also Jared had quotes from individuals like David Prince. The way we've seen this make its way into the Southern Baptist Convention is clips from sermons, really, or where we see Southern Baptist pastors and teachers saying things like, you know, God doesn't wanna make you heterosexual, he wants to make you holy, as if those could ever be divorced from each other.

And so David Prince, former president of, sorry, former chairman of the board at the ERLC has said similar things like that. Patrick Schreiner, who is a professor of New Testament studies at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary has also argued along these similar lines where he's saying that same-sex attraction in and of itself is not sin.

So it is, and we have it at trustees, entity trustees. We have it at our seminaries with our professors saying things like same-sex attraction is not sin. We have someone like Rachel Gilson who is thoroughly compromised in her associations with Preston Sprinkle and what she teaches herself being platformed officially at a Southern Baptist conference for women.

And so it's maybe in between those. Yes, nobody is saying go march in a pride parade as far as I can tell, though, I wouldn't be surprised if somebody has said something like that.

That's the defense they'll bring up those that, you know, we don't officially, we don't do what these Ivy League schools or really now your typical college is doing where there is a barrier, and there is a barrier there, but it's a barrier with some holes in it at certain points.

I should probably mention too, just because someone might call this out, J .D. Greer did reverse his position on the pronoun hospitality later on. And as I remember, it wasn't like the strongest of reversals, but there was a reversal there, at least admitting that maybe he shouldn't have said that.

Yeah, you're right about that. But that, you know, one of the things that bothers me a little bit, John, is that, you know, right now we have somebody like J .K. Rowling who, not a Christian, who just can bluntly speak the truth about calling, you know, transgender women men, which is what they are, right?

A man pretending to be a woman with no hesitation and no apology. And yet when you get Christian leaders like J .D. Greer and others, you give them a similar question, they sort of dance around it, or they say something wrong and then have to retract it.

Where is the bold, blunt truth being spoken about how God made men and women, who we should desire sexually, what is sin and what isn't. And if you're gonna cheer on J .K. Rowling but not say it yourself, well, quite frankly, you're part of the problem.

Conservative Turnout, the Law Amendment, and the SBC Presidential Race

Well, let's shift to strategy here for a little bit and talk about, I mean, I have a lot of questions on this. Let's see. So let's talk about last year a little bit, because last year is where, after a series of defeats, we'll say, there was somewhat of a glimmer of hope that this law amendment got passed.

Of course, there was a committee formed with the support of past presidents in the SBC to examine the issue of cooperation, which this year, I suppose, will be the big fight. And so when we look at that, you mentioned conservative Southern Baptists were the ones who stepped up and made that happen last year, but they're also the people who decided to vote for Bart Barber.

They're also the same, it's the same group we're talking about that decided to vote for this cooperation committee. So how do you view that crowd? I mean, because you're calling them conservative, that they came last year, but I'm not so convinced it was the same or a different crowd.

I'm more thinking it was probably the same crowd. It's just that this is an issue of all the social justice issues infiltrating their way. This is an issue Southern Baptists have fought before, and it's probably more deeply ingrained in their minds that this is a compromise.

And so you have a kind of a split group of people who have a conservative instinct on this topic, but yet they're still voting with the platform on everything else just about it seems. And I would say the defeat of Mike Stone also seems like the leftward drift continues.

It's just that there's a, on an issue that they are more capable of fighting on, which I think they have been for the last 20 years at least, if not really more than that, they decided to maintain a position they've always had.

So it's more of a maintenance in my mind, but you see this as a hopeful thing and you see these as conservative. So maybe explain that and why you're hopeful.

Why the Law Amendment Showed Conservative Strength

Yeah, well, I think you make a good point, John, in terms of how the room in New Orleans voted about at a 90 level, we could see the recorded vote on that to kick out Saddleback. And I was saying that I think the room voted at about an 80 level to affirm the law amendment.

John Whitehead on his appearance with Aaron Wren yesterday said he thought it was maybe more along like 90%, but it was definitely overwhelming. Yet at the same time, Bart Barber won reelection with about 70%.

So yes, I agree there's overlap there. I guess I'm encouraged that we've found a line that many of the messengers are unwilling to cross, even when they are being encouraged to cross that line by the leadership.

So I don't think we should overlook the fact that you're not doing this, but just that the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention went up on the stage and said, here's the law amendment and you should vote against it.

And they didn't listen to them and they voted for it. And sometimes, as you know, that can hopefully be a radicalizing moment for some people. It pulls down the veil a little bit and helps them realize really where their leaders are that they would be recommending that they vote against simply reaffirming our commitment from the Baptist faith and message that only qualified men, according to scripture, can be pastors.

And so I think on this issue, the messengers are in a conservative place, whether they're in a conservative place for everything else, in terms of personalities or leadership or presidential votes. And so, however, since it passed last year, there really has been a very conservative effort by a small slice of Southern Baptist leaders to work against it and to really try to poison the well against it.

They're throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks, to try to beat it. And so I am hoping that the messengers stand strong again this year and ratify it.

So let me ask you this. You have two conservatives that are running, you said, Jared Moore and David Allen. And it sounds like you're supportive of either candidate, so you haven't taken an official position on one or the other.

If either of them get in, what would change? This is hypothetical, of course. And we need to also, maybe we should talk about this first. So how do you get them in? Let's talk about that first strategically.

What's the ground game? And then we'll talk about what they would do and how they would reverse the trend if they had one term.

How Conservative Presidents Win Through Turnout

Yeah, well, the way you elect a solid president in the Southern Baptist Convention is by conservative turnout to the convention. And that's really something that we have struggled with for many years.

And I'll be honest, we've not done enough turnout work this year as I would have hoped we'd do. Like I said, we're just getting going. But the way you elect a conservative president is by having thousands of Southern Baptist churches realize that they need to take the effort to come to the convention.

John, I can't tell you how many churches I have had conversations with pastors, lay members, where they know that their church gets four, five, eight messengers that they could send to the convention and they're only sending two or they're only sending one.

And that is what the platform is counting on. They're counting that the base of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is about 70 of our churches are a hundred members or less. That's really what the Southern Baptist Convention is.

It's not these mega churches. They're the ones that get all the attention. But the heart of the Southern Baptist Convention is churches with a hundred members or less, but even due to those churches generous giving, they might get anywhere from six to 10 or even 12.

I know a small church in South Carolina, maybe 140 people that they get 12 messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention. And J .D. Greer's church, despite all its campuses and everything else doesn't get more than 12 because that's the cap.

And so they are trying to send all their messengers this year. And I know some are waking up to this, but that's really the bottom line. How do you get a better president to begin to really get all the appointments and all the things that come with it is by faithful churches not quitting and not sitting it out, but showing up and voting.

I see, yeah.

So a ground game then. I know you said there's probably is not as much work done as you would have hoped this year, but what has been done? What kinds of things are you seeing that. Maybe, you mentioned one example of a church sending 12 messengers.

I don't know if they've done that before, but other churches coming out of the woodwork that haven't been involved and that are getting involved now?

Mobilizing Churches Like a Mission Trip

Yeah, I think that is the case. And on the law amendment in particular, John, I do think that many churches are realizing how important this is and they sort of can't believe that this is a point of contention.

They can't believe that they're seeing our current president, Bart Barber, oppose the law amendment. They can't believe that they saw essentially five past presidents in a roundabout way or explicitly as some of them have opposed the law amendment.

They think this is so basic. And so they are coming. I talked to one pastor in Tennessee who said he had been sort of checked out of convention life for the last five to 10 years. And then when he was watching what was happening to the law amendment, he's like, oh, I've got to come and I've got to bring my messengers.

That was last year. And he's gonna do it again. And I think churches realize too that this year that there will be sort of an empire strikes back liberal effort to get their egalitarian messengers to the convention.

And so I do think the law amendment is really driving turnout and drove it, I think in New Orleans to a certain extent, it was a pretty good size convention there, about 12 ,000. And it looks like we're on pace for about 12 ,000 again in Indianapolis, which is more than what we had in Indianapolis last time that we met there.

And so the main points that we've been hitting to drive this turnout, John, is know how many messengers your church gets, max out your messengers, plan to come, do what it takes. Mark Devine, professor at Beeson Divinity School wrote an excellent article for American Reformer a few months back, arguing that churches should view coming to the Southern Baptist Convention like a mission strip.

And I love that framing. He's like a mission strip for the future of the Southern Baptist Convention, for the future of your children in the Southern Baptist Convention. And I think that's the mindset.

That's one of the things we've been trying to work on to change the mindset of how churches approach the Southern Baptist Convention. But we've been messaging on this and hammering it. You have to come, you have to come for many months now.

And I do think that is bearing fruit. I've got plans for sort of a turnout operation that we could build over the years that focuses on the hotspot regions and has regional representatives, you know, every week in touch with churches and working this angle.

And we hope to do that more next year. But also I know that Jared Moore and David Allen have been doing a lot of sort of the ground game themselves as their presidential candidates, contacting churches, contacting messengers.

David Allen's been preaching in a different pulpit, it seems like, every Sunday, which is exactly what you have to do. Jared Moore has been doing a lot of outreach work. And then also I would say that the abortion abolitionists, because there are some candidates running for some downstream ballot officers, like first VP, second VP, things like that.

Wesley Russell, who's an abortion abolitionist. I know the abortion abolitionists are working the ground game as well. And so it is being worked and we'll see how it turns out. Yeah, they're a motivated group.

And I guess, so I have so many questions and I wanna just Try to be briefer. Well, no, no, no, you're doing good. I just wanna make sure that I ask the right ones. So you mentioned a mission trip. I guess Mark Devine had said it's like a missions trip.

And I think this is the hangup for a lot of Southern Baptists, in my opinion, at least I've seen that over the years, is they're in the Southern Baptist Convention for cooperation for the purpose of ministry specifically.

And when it becomes not about ministry, when it's not sharing the gospel, making disciples directly, when it becomes more of a political fight and it takes a lot of your church's resources, I mean, sending 12 messengers from a church that's a little over a hundred people, that's some serious cash.

I mean, and maybe there's a big, a donor that's stepping in or something, but not all churches have the access to funds. And so it's money that could be going for actual ministry in their communities that is now going to fight what feels like, at least for the past few years, it's felt like kind of a discouraging battle that things aren't going the way they want.

So talk to those guys who are thinking like, hey, the purpose of this whole thing was ministry. And now you're asking me to kind of shift into more of a political mindset. I don't like, I could spend those resources on actual ministry and just pull out.

Defending the Gospel Is Actual Ministry

Yeah, well, to that, I would say that this is actual ministry. The work of being present to have a say about the boundaries of your cooperation in a voluntary association, a denomination, is an aspect of the ministry.

It's an aspect of defending the gospel and seeing to it that the true and unadulterated gospel can be advanced. The Southern Baptist Convention churches partner together for the sake of the gospel, for missions work overseas, planting churches and reaching unreached people, for church revitalization and evangelism and church planting on the North American continent, for theological training for the next generation of pastors in our country.

Six of the 10 largest seminaries in America are these six Southern Baptist theological seminaries. I think it's about 40%. I can't remember the exact number, but a good big chunk of all future pastors in our country are trained by the Southern Baptist Convention.