SBC Update: EC Sermon, Abuse Task Force, Resolutions, Cooperation Group

Conversations That Matter Podcast, I'm your host John Harris. We're going to jump right into it because the Southern Baptist Convention is still going on this week.

It's Tuesday evening and I want to give you some of the highlights on what happened today at the meeting for you who are

Southern Baptists in the audience. So first we're going to start with Jeff Lorg's speech to the convention.

He is the new chairman of the executive committee and here are some of the things that he had to say and they are getting some traction and attention.

The most common mission substitutes among Southern Baptists today are political activism, social justice, convention reform, and doctrinal conformity.

Political activists are committed to electing the right candidates to support their political positions.

Some Christian leaders even endorse politicians rather than speaking truth to power and demanding accountability to God's standards.

For some Christians, political action is their mission and their future hope centers on political outcomes.

The second common mission substitute is social justice. The list of issues in this category is lengthy, including abortion, racism, immigration, human trafficking, and dozens of other causes.

Christians devoted to these issues are well -intentioned people who believe their cause is a worthy mission with biblical references to supporting their position.

One of their favorite Bible verses is supporting social activism is John 1335.

It says, everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another. I'll come back to that verse in a moment.

The third mission substitute is convention reform. Some Southern Baptists believe fixing convention policies and practices is our mission.

They are convinced that consistently enforcing rules governing entities and convention practices is essential.

Like social justice advocates, they often tell me we cannot pursue our eternal mission until we fix our broken systems.

The fourth popular mission substitute is doctrinal conformity. Some believers believe — discover — some believers have discovered a theological system or biblical or humanity can determine or demand alignment with their convictions.

They have no difficulty citing biblical passages to support their position, which of course is their standard for how doctrinal integrity is measured.

This is a delicate issue to address because the Bible mandates doctrinal integrity as a mark of discipleship.

We also recognize the gravity of some doctrinal debates which have eternal consequences. So the stakes are high on this issue.

My concern today, however, is not with the need to defend issues central to the Christian faith, particularly against secular attacks.

My concern is the passion demonstrated by some Christians who insist on doctrinal conformity about lesser issues and attack fellow believers who do not agree with them, which is detrimental to our mission.

The four common substitutes among — common mission substitutes among Southern Baptists are political activism, social justice, convention reform, and doctrinal conformity.

But suppose for a moment I am wrong about all this. Suppose any one of these or some combination of all four are the mission of God.

Suppose God's mission will be fulfilled when the right politicians are elected, all social justice issues are resolved, our convention functions perfectly, and all doctrinal divisions disappear among Christians.

Imagine a world — imagine a world where politicians lead with righteousness and justice.

Imagine a world where there is no immorality, every marriage is holy, and every single person is morally pure.

There is no sex trafficking, no abortion, no pornography. Imagine a world where every social issue is resolved in a wholesome way, all borders are secure, all immigration is legal and orderly, and all persons are respected no matter their race, religion, or creed.

Imagine there are no mass shootings because every gun is owned responsibly, and every mentally ill person receives the care they need.

Imagine an SVC annual meeting with no procedural arguments or debates.

What would the world be like if we adopted all these issues as our mission and fulfilled every one of them perfectly?

Well, the world would be a wonderful place, full of satisfied people, living in healthy communities.

And then, and then when each one of them dies, they would spend eternity separated from God.

And when this generation of happy, contented people dies, the

Christian movement would come to an end. When people are changed by the

Gospel, they become friends with former enemies and brothers and sisters in a new family.

In a world of clannish hatred, marked by tribalism, nationalism, and prejudice,

Christians are a global community built on one shared allegiance, an allegiance to Jesus Christ.

Well, Nate Schloman says, if you didn't think that Lord's speech was gross, you don't know what time it is and you will not be reaching the next generation unless you repent and change.

So some strong words there coming from a Southern Baptist pastor, and I think Pastor Schloman's point is that often you will see

Southern Baptists pit legitimate concerns, concerns even about reforming the

Southern Baptist convention, doctrinal fidelity, and they'll pit those things against the Gospel. You really don't have to think that far back because I think every convention probably has an instance of this, maybe not a whole speech or sermon, but if you think about James Merritt and what he said,

I believe it was in 2021 to the convention, that those concerned about critical race theory, if they simply drop that concern and channel that energy into sharing the

Gospel, the whole world would be reached. Essentially, that's a summary of what he said. And this is meant to essentially pour some cold water on those who would love to bring their exuberance and passion over certain issues, including doctrinal issues, to the convention because they think certain things need to change.

In fact, that's the point of having a convention, right, is to make sure that you're completing the mission, that everyone who's part of that particular mission is satisfied by, they have a purpose in being part of this united body.

And if it's not doing its job, then where do you air that grievance? Where do you go to reform it? You would go to the

Southern Baptist convention to do that. So this really isn't that big of a deal, or it shouldn't be, that there's people who want to bring doctrinal fidelity.

Of course, Jeff Lord doesn't seem to understand exactly what social justice is.

He combines it with a number of things that we would consider to be good things, actually. But put that on the shelf for a moment.

If you lived in a world where people did put efforts into good ethics, making sure that the government functioned properly, making sure that the

Southern Baptist convention functioned properly, that's a good world to be in.

And it's not that those concerns are not legitimate just because you could reform all these things and you could do all these great things.

And at the end of the day, it doesn't mean anything because people are going to go to hell anyway.

Well, of course, the gospel should be shared, but also we should be working towards loving our neighbor and we should be involved in the obligations that God has given us to those who are proximate to us, starting with our families, extending to our churches and to our entire communities.

So this is kind of just almost a manipulative technique.

That's what it seems like. That's what it feels like. That's how it's often used to try to dissuade those who come to the convention looking for a legitimate fight because they know that there's something wrong happening and they want to do the right thing.

It's meant to, I think, dissuade those people and just kind of put their concerns in the category of not being very important or prioritized.

And so that's, I think, why you have people like Nate Shloman worked up about this kind of thing is that we come to the

Southern Baptist Convention, it's only a few days every year, and this is our opportunity and this is what we're here for.

And we're being lectured about the fact that we're not sharing the gospel. Well, apply that to Jeff Lord's speech, apply that to sitting there and listening to his speech.

That's not sharing the gospel either. That's not that's not working towards the Great Commission. That's listening to a speech.

Perhaps we shouldn't even have that. Maybe Jeff Lord is guilty of the very thing he's accusing people of.

And I think that logic would actually hold. So not the most positive speech here and maybe show some of the weakness or incompetence that may be existing even at the highest levels of the

Southern Baptist Convention. But for those who are following this denomination, who are Christians and have been following it for a long time, this shouldn't be that big of a surprise.

Rhett Burns from South Carolina presented a motion to amend the SBC business and financial plan to require all convention entities to disclose all financial information included in Form 990.

Now, this issue is an interesting issue and I think a very important issue. Actually, it may be in some ways the most important issue, and that is bringing financial accountability to the

Southern Baptist Convention. You may think, well, there's other issues like women pastors and we'll get to that. But the reason

I think that this is such an important issue is because corruption goes deep.

And if you can show that these entities are being mismanaged, that the money is not going where it should be going, that people are getting kickbacks, all the kinds of things that you can imagine that would happen in a corrupt institution, then a lot of the rot, a lot of the guys who are doing nefarious things in other areas and causing doctrinal problems, there's a lot of overlap there.

And they're going to probably be, it's going to be easier to probably show that they are bad actors by simply bringing in financial accountability.

And that's what Pastor Rhett Burns is trying to do. He's attempting to do that, at least. What's happening, though, and it's important to understand a little bit of the mechanics of this, the executive committee is wanting the entities of the

Southern Baptist Convention to work with them, their committee, to find out if there are ways that they can bring more financial accountability to themselves.

So in -house. So they themselves will police themselves and make recommendations next year to the

Southern Baptist Convention as to what they think would be good as far as financial accountability is concerned.

But the thing is, they've already had a year to debate this in the executive committee, and now they're wanting another year to come up with these recommendations.

And so what Rhett Burns ends up doing is he goes to the floor of the convention and he tries to appeal to get this discussion going there with the messenger body so they can actually make a determination about what they expect regarding financial accountability.

And unfortunately, he ends up losing that vote. Here's his speech. Yes, my name is

Rhett Burns, messenger from First Baptist Church Travelers Rest in South Carolina. I want to move to schedule the

Rhett Burns motion on financial transparency for debate under bylaw 26 to give messengers an opportunity to vote on financial transparency at this convention.

And I request to speak to the motion if allowed and call for discussion. So a motion to suspend the rules, which is what you're making, is not debatable and is a motion that has to be approved by a two thirds vote.

This is from the standing rule. OK, so it's a majority, a majority vote to suspend this rule and to schedule this item for discussion later.

And so if you approve this, it will go to the Committee on Order of Business to be scheduled during this meeting for discussion.

So the question before you is whether the question if you vote in favor, you're voting in favor of not referring it, but scheduling it.

And if you vote against, you're voting to have it go ahead and be referred. OK, so are you ready for the question?

Am I? I think so. All right. As many of you as are in favor of scheduling it rather than referring it, would you indicate by raising your ballots?

Thank you. You may lower them as many as are opposed. Would you indicate by raising your ballots? You may lower them.

Those against are the majority. They have it. And the motion fails. This next clip is of John Whitehead, one of the messengers, and he also sits on the trustee board for the

ERLC, I believe. And he tweaks one of the recommendations from the

Sexual Abuse Prevention Task Force. I think I got that right. And they gave their committee report.

And in that report, they had three recommendations. The first recommendation was essentially to the messengers of the

Southern Baptist Convention would affirm the objectives that they outlined in their 2020 to 2024 report of the

Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force, in particular, the expansion of the ministry toolkit, the establishment of the ministry check website and the creation of a permanent home for abuse prevention and response.

And we've talked about this before on the podcast, but essentially what they're talking about doing is in the number two there is or actually, yeah, number two is putting together a website that would track the reports made about particular individuals who are, let's just say, problematic in the

Southern Baptist Convention that and the big debate on this is, is this going to be something that's using a biblical standard of accusation or can you just be put on this list and how is this going to work?

And so one of the things that's been controversial about this somewhat is that they established what's called the

ARC, the Abuse Response Commission. And this is a separate organization and the controversy is that if it's a separate organization and it works with the

SBC, but it's outside the SBC and this is where this ministry check website is going to be with all the alleged sexual offenders or abuse offenders, then there's a lack of accountability there.

And so what you'll find here is there's an attempt by John Whitehead to say that any of the things that the

Sexual Abuse Prevention Task Force wants to do should be able to be carried out in -house.

Now, of course, he can tweak it and they can still go with this

Abuse Response Commission, but it's at least trying to raise awareness and let people know that this abuse report, this ministry watch database that they want to create, it's not necessary for it to be housed outside the

SBC. It can be maintained within the SBC. And of course, I'm sure John Whitehead would prefer that this wasn't actually happening to begin with, for reasons we've discussed previously on the podcast.

But this is his speech and this is the response. It went through, so it is part of the recommendations for that particular task force.

Yes, my name is Jonathan Whitehead of Abundant Life Church in Leeson, Missouri. I have an amendment to the first recommendation.

I would move that the—insert the following before the period in the first recommendation.

But the convention does not require the use of any particular organization outside the convention entities or commissions to accomplish these objectives.

I would ask if that's accepted as a friendly amendment, and if not, I'd like to speak to it if there's a second.

The question is, Brother John, you said does not require. If you mean does not require, we agree with you.

We don't know that any specific thing is required. If you're talking about precluding something, we will give you a different response.

So we're going to go with the wording of the amendment, which was does not require. And we are perfectly acceptable.

Okay. Now, this next clip is fairly important because this is really the heart of the law amendment and what the law amendment is supposed to rectify, which is the situation where there are a number of Southern Baptist churches that have female pastors.

And of course, the debate is, are they really pastors? Aren't these just Sunday school teachers and the churches gave them the title pastor?

Well, no, not for every single case. And even if that was true, that's still a problem. But this particular church, this

First Baptist Church in Alexandria, actually has women pastors on staff and has had them on staff since the 1980s.

And I'm not going to play the speech for you of the church defending itself, but they don't really defend themselves.

They just affirm, yes, we have women pastors. And so the credentials committee actually recommends that the

Southern Baptist Convention disfellowship them from the organization because they are out of step with the statement of faith of the

Southern Baptists. And one thing you're going to notice is the credentials committee chairman, as he's explaining this, he says something that should clue you into something.

He talks about the role of the senior pastor. And one of the questions the credentials committee asks this church is whether or not they would have a woman come and serve as a senior pastor potentially, if that's an option for them.

And of course, they said yes. And it was on this basis that they recommend the Southern Baptist Convention disfellowship them.

And it did. It was about 91 % of the messengers followed that recommendation, which is a good thing.

However, knowing that the law amendment is going to be voted on tomorrow, it's important to realize that this is possibly an attempt to show that the law amendment isn't really necessary, that this amendment would give the credentials committee really more latitude.

And it would be more of a there'd be more emphasis placed on the fact that churches that have female pastors are not in friendly cooperation with the convention.

And this is somewhat controversial and there's a number of reasons for it.

But I think that the chosen language of senior pastor here might show that there's an ability to police certain churches, but not others.

In fact, there are churches currently, in fact, I have, I believe it's pulled up here.

Yes. The cooperation group member, Greg Perkins, just presented recommendations to the

SBC and his church employs a female pastor. And so this is the kind of problem you have, like this is happening in the

Southern Baptist Convention, and there's kind of a disconnect that they're willing to disfellowship this church.

And last year it was Saddleback Church. But why not other churches? And there's, according to the people behind the law amendment, there's hundreds of churches just like this in the convention.

So here is the credentials committee on First Baptist Alexandria. So the credentials committee has recommended that the

First Baptist Church of Alexandria, Virginia, be found not in friendly cooperation with the

Southern Baptist Convention. For the sake of clarity, the credentials committee wants to emphasize that our opinion was formed using the current language of the

Baptist Faith and Message 2000 and the current language of Article 3 of the Constitution, which can be found on pages 163 through 164 and page 204 of the

Book of Reports. Article 3 states that church will only be deemed in friendly cooperation with the convention, which has a, quote, faith and practice which closely identifies with the convention's adopted statement of faith, end quote.

The Baptist Faith and Message, Article 6, states that while both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor, elder, overseer is limited to men as qualified by scripture.

Under SBC Bylaw 8, the credentials committee has inquired of First Baptist Alexandria regarding its beliefs, and the church expressed to the credentials committee an egalitarian view regarding the role of women in the church, which is contrary to the complementarian beliefs provided in the

Baptist Faith and Message, Article 6. We asked the church directly to explain their beliefs regarding the office of pastor, elder, overseer.

The church responded, saying they believe, quote, both men and women can satisfy the requirements of the pastor, elder, overseer office, end quote, and more specifically that they believe a woman is, quote, biblically qualified to fill the senior pastor position, end quote.

We asked if the church might consider calling a woman as their lead senior pastor. The church responded affirmatively, saying yes, they would because they do not, quote, believe that the

Bible limits the fulfillment of this office exclusively to men. Article 3 requires that a church have both a faith and a practice that closely identifies with our convention's adopted statement of faith.

And while the church practice of the church may closely identify to some, their publicly stated faith does not, and it must be both.

Article 4 of the Constitution provides that the convention will never claim to have any authority over any church.

Each autonomous church determines for itself what it believes and with whom it will cooperate. Likewise, the

Southern Baptist Convention, autonomous in its own sphere, may determine for itself what it believes and the churches with which it will cooperate.

We find no joy in making this recommendation, but have formed the opinion that the church's egalitarian beliefs regarding the office of pastor do not closely identify with the convention's adopted statement of faith.

Therefore, we recommend that the Southern Baptist Convention discontinue its cooperative relationship with the with First Baptist Church, Alexandria, Virginia, on the basis that the church has a stated faith which does not closely identify with the convention's adopted statement of faith as currently required by Article 3 of the

Constitution. Well, I'm not going to belabor the point on these resolutions because we did a show on the resolutions that the messengers needed to consider at the convention.

But I want to show you a few of the responses. And the first one that I want to show you is a response.

Well, I say response, but it was an attempt to amend the resolution on defending religious liberty.

And of course, I critique this on the podcast. I think it was maybe two or three podcasts ago, last week.

But this resolution has problems with it, in my humble opinion. And one of the things that I first noted is how this, well,

I don't even know if I have to know anything because this particular messenger really hit most of the points that I said on the podcast, the critiques that I made of this.

And so I'll just let you listen to that messenger. And I just think this is really good. So I want to feature it on the podcast.

Justin Ramey, pastor and messenger of Crider Baptist in Princeton, Kentucky. I agree that this state should not mandate religion.

However, I believe the resolution before us is too broadly written, too open to interpretation, and in some places, inaccurate.

For instance, the first paragraph states that the Apostle Paul urged Timothy to pray for religious liberty in 1

Timothy 2, 1 through 5. I respectfully submit that he did not. In that passage,

Paul urged Timothy to pray for all individuals, including those in civil authority, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way, and that those in civil authority might come to a saving knowledge of the truth.

It was not a general statement of religious liberty, endorsing the freedom to have Satan worshipers, et cetera.

The first resolve states that God has endowed every human with religious liberty.

I disagree. Again, I do not believe government should mandate religion. It is not competent to evaluate and does no jurisdiction over heart and soul.

However, my God is and does. He commands all to joyfully serve the

Lord alone or burn in hell for all eternity. Finally, the next to last resolved states that we oppose any effort to use the people and the churches of the

Southern Baptist Convention to establish Christianity as the state religion of the

United States. What does that mean? What should we remove, in God we trust, from our currency?

Does it mean that we should remove under God from our pledge? I'm grateful that our government, at one time at least, acknowledged

Christianity as our foundation and encouraged it. Again, I do not support state mandated religion, but unfortunately, the resolution before us is too murky to be helpful.

Chair recognizes the committee for a response. We believe that this resolution states the historic

Baptist position on religious liberty as laid out in the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.

It states the Christian ideal is a free church and a free state.

So, of course, unfortunately, that particular amendment failed and so did the next one.

And I thought this was a really good one, too. This was, I thought, argued well and it made a lot of sense.

And it was another one that I mentioned on the podcast, another critique I had, and that was on the resolution on the,

I believe this was on the justice and peace in the aftermath of the October 7th attack on Israel.

And it has a section on anti -Semitism.

It says, whereas incidents of anti -Semitism has dramatically increased both domestically and abroad since the terrorist attack.

And it says, while theological perspectives on Israel and the church vary within the SBC, we are unified in calling current anti -Semitic attacks against the

Jewish people heinous, especially heinous. And then it talks about resolved to oppose all forms of anti -Semitism.

And so I said that this is a hard thing because this is so vague.

We don't know what that means now. We've had several laws passed that seem to indicate that even just basic Christian beliefs could be anti -Semitic or criticisms of the nation of Israel could be anti -Semitic.

And so what exactly do we mean by that? And this particular messenger, I thought, did a good job teasing this out and trying to bring an amendment.

And, of course, this one failed as well. But heroic efforts. And so I wanted to showcase this one as well.

My name is David Mitzumaker. I'm a messenger from Grace Baptist Church, Cape Coral, Florida.

And I would like to offer an amendment to this resolution that reads, resolved.

We steadfastly oppose all legislation that would designate any part of the Holy Bible as hate speech, or impose any restriction on proclaiming

God's Word, or otherwise stifle the religious liberty of Southern Baptists.

Is there a second? Second. Please give a copy of your amendment to the page. Would you like to speak to and speak in favor of your proposed amendment?

I would. Please proceed. Religious liberty also includes protecting the right of Baptists to practice our religion.

Recently, the House of Representatives voted to pass the Anti -Semitism

Awareness Act. This bill outsources the legal definition of hate speech to an international organization led by countries like Finland, where it is a hate crime to tweet a

Bible verse. This bill codifies into law a definition of anti -Semitism that is extraordinarily vague and unclear, allowing for abuse from those who wish to see the

Christian religion erased from the public square by classifying certain portions of Scripture as hate speech.

Many Christians have voiced strong opposition to this bill. Dr. Albert Mueller believes that this legislation is dangerous and deeply flawed, warning that biblical

Christianity and even the simple preaching of the gospel could be directly targeted by this law.

Yet our Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the entity that we have charged to defend religious freedom, issued a press release where, speaking on behalf of all of us, they celebrated this piece of legislation.

As a Christian, I am offended by any law that would slander God's character and disparage any portion of his word as hateful.

And as a Christian who is ethnically Jewish, I am saddened. The Lord saved me as a student by a faithful Christian who gave me a copy of God's word.

The very act that God used for his glory and for my eternal good is threatened by this legislation and I am heartbroken that there are

Southern Baptists who would support such restrictions while patting themselves on the back over how opposed to anti -Semitism they are.

The outspoken atheist Penn Jillette once said, how much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them?

How is it that an atheist can see what Southern Baptists cannot? If we are genuinely committed to fighting anti -Semitism, how can we support a law that would try to prevent the whole counsel of God being shared with our

Jewish neighbors so that they may be saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, as revealed in Scripture alone?

The word of the Lord is a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, and our call as Christians is not to hide the stones so that no one is offended, but to boldly proclaim the whole counsel of God so that many, including many

Jews, may be saved for the glory of God. And so we should oppose, in the name of religious liberty and in the name of our

Lord Jesus Christ, any laws that would restrict the religious opinions, practice, and speech of Southern Baptists.

Amen. So, the desk over here, did you send a copy of your amendment to the page to go to the parliamentarian's desk?

Please, at microphone three, can we recognize microphone three to answer my question? I prefilled this as a resolution, and this is one of the resolved statements of the resolution, and I wrote it on the page paper.

Okay. All right. Can you state once more what the text of your proposed amendment is?

Resolved that we steadfastly oppose all legislation that would designate any portion of the

Holy Bible as hate speech or impose any restriction on proclaiming God's word or otherwise stifle the religious liberty of Southern Baptists.

Okay, thank you. We were able to find that. The chair recognizes the committee for a response. Brother, that was a lot in three minutes.

The committee doesn't consider this a friendly resolution. We had received the brother's submission before and considered it.

We did take some feedback that turned out to be helpful. We considered some edits that you gave us ahead of time and incorporated it.

So resolved number four addresses the concern, so it's based on that.

It was a welcome improvement, so thank you for that. On the issue of not adequately addressing anti -Semitism,

I'm not sure that's direct here, but consider the committee's whole body of work. You could look at our resolution on justice and peace in the aftermath of the

October 7th attack on Israel. We directly deal with that in two whereases and two resolves.

You can find it there. There might be some disagreement on how we protect our

Jewish neighbors, but there is not in the conviction that they must be protected.

Finally, maybe finally, on the need to specifically address,

I've got two more points, on the need to specifically address and advocate for the religious expression of Christians in particular or Southern Baptists in particular, nobody wants a ban on the

Bible. Nobody here would stand for that. However, historically, every group,

Christian and non, advocates for its own liberty, and we Baptists do the same.

But we advocate for the religious liberty of all because number one, this is right.

It's been earned by Baptist experience, and number two, it's the best way of protecting our own liberty.

Baptists came to this conclusion through their own experience. It doesn't matter who's in power. Our religious liberty is protected when the religious liberty of all is protected because we're part of that all.

So this even applies to Christians in power. One, for example, might admire

Thomas More, but you wouldn't want to disagree with him. Finally, on listing specific religious practices to protect, again, you can see it in our resolution.

We're not passive, as an example, on labeling the Bible as hate speech, but delineation can have an unintended consequence of limitation, as in reduce the protections to some list.

Religious liberty is a right from God. It happens to be recognized, praise God. In our U .S.

Constitution, it is not less than this. And so we don't want to suggest that it is by putting it in play for advocating a lower level of protection.

The time for the response has expired. Thank you. Microphone 3A, would you like to speak for the amendment?

Fellow messengers, Jeff Wright, Midway Baptist Church, Cookville, I want to speak in favor of these brothers.

Which state, please? I'm sorry? The state? Oh, Tennessee. My apologies. This brother's offered us helpful counsel.

I can't imagine anyone in this room wants to break with our healthy Baptist tradition.

But I would note our chairman just cited the U .S. Constitution, which is not equivalent to the

Baptist tradition. Those are not the same thing. The language we have is a free church in a free state, not a free temple or a free mosque or whatever else you would substitute for that.

And so we as a people have to walk a road between two ditches, denying the goodness of our

Baptist tradition and also on the other side, yielding grounds to those who would substitute religious diversity in the place of actual religious freedom.

And so our brother has given us a good roadmap to walk between those two ditches.

And I heartily, as a Baptist who loves our tradition, encourage my fellow messengers to follow his guidance.

Thank you. So the question before you is on the proposed amendment to the resolution.

We will now proceed to vote. A vote in favor is a vote asking to amend the resolution in the way displayed on the screen.

As many of you as are in favor of amending the resolution in this way, would you please lift your ballots?

Thank you. You may lower them. As many as are opposed, would you please lift your ballots? Thank you.

You may lower them. Those opposed have it and the motion is lost.

One of the things you'll quickly realize when you watch an SPC meeting is how much the platform controls things.

So when the resolutions committee makes a recommendation and you have people wanting to amend it, very seldom do those amendments seem to actually get through unless they're amendments that the resolutions committee agrees with and seizes in friendly cooperation.

Otherwise, you just don't really see it much. And I'd say that pattern holds for this annual meeting.

And now I'm not going to play any more clips, just a few things I'll mention for what happened today.

Today, the cooperative, I think it's the cooperative committee or the,

I think they call it the cooperation group. They released a list of recommendations.

They were formed last year, a number of the presidents, former presidents of the SPC got together and endorsed this action on the floor of the convention.

And they were going to make recommendations, which we have now, and I'll just go over them real quick.

Recommendation one is about the process of changing the Baptist faith and message. And so it tightens this process up and it would require a two thirds vote, not a majority vote.

And so that is something that I think is in reaction to this law amendment that would make it so that the credentials committee must essentially eject churches.

They don't like probably that word. They don't like the word disfellowship either in this, but they would deem as not in friendly cooperation churches that have female pastors.

So it's most likely in reaction to that, but they tighten that up a bit.

And then there was a recommendation on the process of deeming a church not in friendly cooperation.

And so it makes the messengers more responsible for that, even though the messengers are responsible ultimately.

But the way the mechanism would work if this recommendation is accepted is that the messengers would have to approve of churches being ejected from the cooperation with the

SBC instead of churches on an appeal because they've been ejected by the credentials committee or the executive committee.

Instead of them appealing that to the convention, they would just be, these cases will be brought to the convention itself.

At least that's my reading of it. And then they have a recommendation on, this one seems a little meaningless to me, but I don't know.

This seems like it should be a no brainer, but that the trustees should affirm the Baptist faith and message.

You'd think that's kind of something that already happens, but maybe not.

And then recommendation four is usefulness of the Southern Baptist church list. This seems to be, let's try to make sure that this list is accurate because it seems like there's churches on there that are not in front, they don't even know they're part of this

Southern Baptist convention, but yet they're on the website. And so that's been blamed for some of this controversy over female pastors in the

SBC as well. Some of these pastors, they don't even know that they're in the SBC. And so how did that happen?

And so I look at this and I think some of this, especially the first one,

I think requiring that two thirds vote, it seems to me like this is an attempt to make sure that doesn't happen again.

Make sure that something like the law amendment can't get passed again, not as easily at least.

That's my read of it, at least as I'm looking at it. And then of course, in the process of disfellowshipping a church, this is the thing you hear all the time from the guys who seem critical of the law amendment.

They think that the safety is, the fidelity to scripture is embedded in the cooperative body itself.

When the messengers meet, that's where you have some real accountability. And you can understand this given the

Southern Baptist convention's experience during the conservative resurgence, and they put a lot of faith in the messengers.

But the thing about it is we wouldn't do this with every doctrine, would we?

I mean, there's a reason there's a doctrinal statement. It shouldn't, you shouldn't have to affirm every single thing.

And like every year, every convention, it shouldn't, a popular vote shouldn't overturn the statement of faith, for example, just because that particular year, those are the messengers who showed up and that's, you know, the will of the people change.

The will of the people can change very quickly, as we know. So I don't know what

I think about this. It seems, I don't know if I like it, but this would put the responsibility.

And I think in the minds of the Southern Baptist, they think this is greater accountability in the hands of the messengers to,

I'm going to just say disfellowship, I think that's the word anyway, to disfellowship churches. But that shouldn't be something that they're taking their time up with in great quantities of time, at least at the convention.

I mean, there's, there should be a mechanism for the credentials committee to actually really just do their job.

And, and so that's, that's really all I wanted to say about that. Those are the recommendations that the credentials, not the credentials, sorry, the, the cooperation group made to the

Southern Baptist convention. And finally, there was a debate. I debated in my own head whether I should show this, but I figured not.

There was a whole debate about one of the resolutions for the Southern Baptist convention. It was the one on that we went over on the podcast last week on the war in Israel.

And there was a whole like dispensational versus covenantal kind of debate, although it really wasn't, but they went, they went for a while on it.

And I saw someone online complain, we can go round and round on this thing, but we can't debate something as fundamental to the organization like financial accountability.

And I think that's a good point. It's just interesting, the things that get people riled up. And then of course the

SBC presidential vote came up and Jared Moore, I would say is the most conservative candidate out there.

And he got only 10 % of the vote. He got 921 votes.

And the, probably the most radical person is Mike Keybone on the left.

And he, he got around 10 % as well, 868 votes. So neither of those guys are going to get the

SBC presidency. And the results have not been released now for the, as far as I know, for who actually got it.

I should probably check as I'm recording this to make sure, because I think those are released in the meeting. Yeah. So they're not public yet as I'm recording this, but one of the things that I've done and hopefully those who have been listening and notice is

I, I haven't said much about those running for Southern Baptist convention president, except for there's one person that I have highlighted a bit and that's

Clint Presley. And the reason that I've highlighted Clint Presley is because I did suspect he was probably going to be the, the candidate who would most likely have a good shot at winning the presidency for the

Southern Baptist convention. And I view him as someone who's going to keep the ship going in the same direction.

And he has a history of supporting some social justice type adjacent things.

And, and I've talked about it on the podcast before. And, and so I think that was merited, and this is the reason

I did that. You see that Clint Presley got the most amount of votes. He got over 25 % of the votes.

And so there's a very strong chance Clint Presley is going to be the next president of the Southern Baptist convention. And I thought that since he announced, so there you go.

We'll see what happens tomorrow. Something could change perhaps the law amendment as well.

You know, people are making predictions. Is that going to pass? Is it not? I don't know a hundred percent, but I tend to think it probably will.

It may be close, but I tend to think it probably will. I could be wrong about that. Obviously this platform has a lot of authority on this.

And I think though that this is one of the areas, Southern Baptist, it's a defining thing for them because in the 80s during the conservative resurgence, that was one of the main issues was women in ecclesiastical positions.

And Southern Baptist convention really cut their teeth. And a lot of these guys who've grown up, they might be leaning left on a lot of other things, but they've cut their teeth on that issue.

They know it's been drilled into them that pastors are men. And so it's gonna be interesting to see what happens with that.

There are elites in the convention, J .D. Greer being one of them, who really don't want this law amendment to pass.

So there's a clash going on, but they're fighting against it. They might be a few years too early on this one to really have this battle and win it.

And that's just my take. So we'll see what happens tomorrow. Hopefully that's helpful for you Southern Baptists out there.