WWUTT 2410 Q&A The G3 Conference Cancelled, the Josh Buice Scandal, the People this Affects

The Josh Bice Scandal and the G3 Conference Cancellation

In light of the news that has come out about Josh Bice and the G3 conference, how do we think about this? What would drive a man to do this? Is there something we need to reconsider about the whole national conference thing altogether?

The answers to these questions, When We Understand the Text.

This is When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible commentary to help encourage your time in the Word, brought to you by Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona. For more information about our ministry, go to www .wutt .com.

Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky.

You're welcome.

Well, as advertised, we're going to be talking about the Josh Bice scandal here in just a moment.

Right.

Responding to a question that we received from a listener.

Oh, wonderful.

And you can send those questions to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com, or we'd love to hear a voicemail from you.

Yeah.

If you go to www .utt .com, you'll notice that website looks quite a bit different, but you can still click on the voice tab there at the, or voicemail tab there at the top of the page. Record us a voicemail from your computer or your phone.

Let's begin by opening the Word. So Proverbs chapter 10 is where we are, and I'm picking up in verse 22. The blessing of the Lord makes rich and he adds no sorrow with it. Doing wrong is like a joke to a fool, but wisdom is pleasure to a man of understanding.

What the wicked dreads will come upon him, but the desire of the righteous will be granted. So let's look at that first one. That seems a little curious. The blessing of the Lord makes rich and he adds no sorrow with it.

So will we as Christians never be sorrowful?

I think his blessings won't make us sad.

Yes. So sorrow will never be the end of us.

Ah, okay.

Even when there is sorrow, there's always comfort and even contentment in it. So it's not a, right. It's not an enduring sorrow, right? We don't, we don't die in sadness. We die in hope knowing that eternal glory awaits us for all who are in Christ Jesus.

So yeah, even we as Christians are going to be grieved by things that happen that, that we did not foresee that were going to take place. Losing a loved one, being stabbed in the back by a loved one, things like this can certainly bring sorrow, but God is still working in that to some ultimate good.

So sorrow is not the end of it. The blessing of God will always bring joy and peace ultimately in the end. The blessing of the Lord makes rich. That next one, verse 23, doing wrong is like a joke to a fool.

So he really doesn't think it's all that big a deal, right? But wisdom is pleasure to a man of understanding. So this, this is kind of tying into what we're going to be talking about here in just a moment.

Yeah.

Hearing about what has happened recently with G3, the cancellation of the conference, which is not going to happen now this coming September. Hearing about what Josh Bice has done, which I'll talk about that here in a bit.

This is broad sorrow. Might seem joke. It might seem like a, it's not a big deal to the person who doesn't have wisdom, right? But then verse 24, what the wicked dreads will come upon him. But the desire of the righteous will be granted.

Josh was a guy who was trying to uncover the faults in everybody else and came to find that his own faults were uncovered. Whereas a righteous man and what he desires that the goodness of the Lord would be done, that will be granted to him and the goodness of God will be accomplished even in his own life.

I mean, it's really sad and disappointing that, that it happened in the first place, but to know that nobody is without fault, right? Although we strive to be righteous and everything, we still have our tendencies to sin.

We have to strive even more in not only holding every thought captive in ourselves, but also praying for those who are in positions that lead others in godliness.

So it was on 139 where David says, search me, oh God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. The righteous man will want to have those hidden faults exposed so that I know that I may lay these things down before God and receive forgiveness for them.

And fix it early.

Yeah, exactly. Catch it soon.

Yes.

I know what kind of foolishness I'm capable of and I'm so grateful to God for the love that he has shown to me and has never let me go too far away from him.

Amen.

And those times of conviction that he's brought upon me or even exposing my sin that it may be rooted out. I praise God for that. It may not be great in the...

Comfort?

Yeah.

It may not be comfortable, certainly.

It's very uncomfortable.

In the time that I have to go through this.

And sometimes it makes me angry. I'm like, no. You know, I'm so rebellious in my nature that I'm just like, no, I'm fine. And then I realized later, I'm like, oh, wait, no, no, I'm not fine. I need to fix that.

Yeah.

It's kind of our immediate reaction is to go.

Deny it.

Just deny it.

Deny, deny, deflect.

Yes.

Blame somebody else.

Yes.

No, it's him.

Yeah.

If this wouldn't have happened, I would not be like this.

No.

That's not true either.

What Happened at G3 and Why It Matters

So what are we talking about regarding Josh Bice, in case you don't know? Well, the...

Maybe introduce who he is first.

Yes. Josh Bice is the president of G3, the founder of the G3 Conference. You're talking about a conference that began in, what was it, 2013.

Yeah.

So 12 years ago with just like 600, 500 or 600 people attending this conference.

Yeah.

About as many...

I think it was mostly their church.

Yeah.

About as many as could be seated in the sanctuary at Praise Mill there in Georgia, in their own church. And it's since grown to become this massive conference. The last one that they had two years ago had 6 ,500 people at it or something like that.

So it's gone from like 650 to 6 ,500 times 10. And here we are with...

And they branched out with the workshops and stuff like that.

Yeah.

And I've worked with those. I've been a part of that. You've heard us promote the G3 Conference and say that we're gonna be there. Many of these men are friends of mine because I've worked with them and some of the other ventures that G3 has been a part of.

I'm grateful that they've even sought my counsel on certain things, like have called me and said, what would you do with this or something like that?

Yeah.

And at the same time, I've reached out to them and have sought their counsel.

Yeah.

How would you handle this kind of situation? They've been an incredible resource and aid for evangelical churches, especially in the reformed camp.

The expository camp as well.

Yeah.

Exposition, things like that. So this has to be the largest reformed conference in the US.

Yeah, I would say.

And now we know, or as you may have heard, because of a scandal that Josh Bice was... I mean, it was a one-man show. He was to blame for it.

Yeah.

Now the conference has been canceled. The conference that was coming up in September is not going to happen. All of this news just came out on Monday. So we're still kind of fresh on a lot of these things.

Very fresh.

But let me read the statement that came out from G3, and then I'll get to an email that... There's actually two statements that have come out, but I'm going to start with this first one and then get to an email that a listener sent regarding the cancellation of the conference.

Okay.

So here is G3's statement regarding Josh Bice. And none of us knew that anything like this was coming. It's just on Monday, this dropped.

Yeah.

And took us all by surprise. The Lord calls his church to walk in the light, to speak the truth in love, and to uphold integrity, especially among those entrusted with leadership. It is in that spirit of sober transparency and humble accountability that we, the board of G3 Ministries, share the following statement regarding Dr. Josh Bice, president of G3 and elder at Praise Mill Baptist Church.

In recent weeks, the elders of PMBC uncovered irrefutable evidence that Dr. Bice has for the past three years operated at least four anonymous social media accounts, two anonymous email addresses, and two substack platforms.

These accounts were used to publicly and anonymously slander numerous Christian leaders, including faithful pastors, some of whom have spoken at G3 conferences, several PMBC elders, and others. These actions were not only sinful in nature, but deeply divisive, causing unnecessary suspicion and strife within the body of Christ, and particularly within the eldership of PMBC.

Dr. Bice had been asked on multiple occasions over the past two years whether he had any connection to these anonymous accounts. In each case, he denied any knowledge of them. On Sunday evening, May 4th, after clear and comprehensive evidence emerged linking the accounts directly to him, the elders of PMBC confronted Josh.

For some time, he continued to deny his involvement. Only after further evidence was presented and much pleading with him to walk in the light did Josh finally confess to his actions. Since then, Josh has acknowledged his sin, expressed sorrow, and asked for forgiveness.

His desire is to personally ask forgiveness of every person he has slandered or lied to. While Josh has acknowledged with the elders that he is presently disqualified from serving as an elder, we do not believe at this time that his sin is necessarily permanently disqualifying.

Accordingly, his content will remain accessible via the G3 website and G3 Plus. That's since changed. They've since taken Josh's, all of his material down.

Okay.

But we'll come back to that here in a bit. To be clear, no other employee or board member of G3 knew Josh was engaged in this activity. He acted alone. On May 8th, after some members of the board privately encouraged Josh Bice to resign, the board received and unanimously accepted Josh Bice's resignation as president of G3.

In light of these events, we have made the difficult decision to cancel the upcoming National G3 Conference and all 2025 workshops. All registrants, exhibitors, and publishers will receive a full refund of registration fees.

G3 plans to continue G3 Plus, G3 Press, the G3 student retreat, and other media content. As we look to the ministry's future, we will prioritize the publication of helpful biblical content that strengthens the church and avoids the dangerous celebrity culture that has unfortunately come to characterize so much of modern evangelicalism.

We grieve for the harm caused to the body of Christ and to those faithful ministers who were targeted. We likewise reaffirm our commitment to walk in the light, to speak the truth in love, and to labor together for the building up of Christ's church in holiness and unity.

We also ask for your continued prayers and support for G3 as we work towards fulfilling our mission to educate, encourage, and equip local churches with sound biblical theology for the glory of God. So that's the first statement.

Then a second one came out a couple of days later saying that they were taking down all of Josh's material from the G3 website. Founders Ministry put out a statement in which they also said that they were removing all of Josh Bice's stuff, the articles that he had written from Founders website.

And I've since followed suit. I had a video, a What video, that was promoting the cessationist documentary, but it featured me and Josh together, and we were the only two figures in that video that were talking about the work of the Holy Spirit to bring a person to salvation, that regeneration that precedes faith.

And I've taken that video down. Is it untrue? No, of course not. But no promotion should be given to Josh, especially while he's in this season of recognizing his sin and coming to repentance and bearing fruit in keeping with repentance.

So in light of this, I've actually heard statements from some different people. Some have casually kind of reached out to me on social media. And then we also received an email from a listener asking, why did these things happen the way that they happened?

And unfortunately, I've heard accounts of people being out a lot of money, not just the money that they paid for the conference, because G3 has said that they're going to refund that. But any airline travel, booking a hotel or a like, what would you call it, reserving an Airbnb or a Vrbo or something like that.

And you're putting down fees that you won't get refunded, buying tickets to other things and making a whole vacation out of it. And there's money that they won't get back from that now. Not just the G3 registration.

Time off work.

It's already done.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Something to that effect. So this email comes from Carly, and she says, hi, Pastor Gabe. I figure you'll speak on this anyway, but I was hoping that you could give some of your thoughts on the G3 Josh Bice situation.

My assumption is that the things he was saying must have been really bad if the G3 board decided to completely erase all of his work from their platforms. I'm wondering if you have some thoughts on why he would do something like this.

Why or what would be the purpose of slandering people he'd otherwise call friends, especially men of the faith who we all admire and have learned extensively from. Another aspect of this is how devastating it has been that they have canceled the G3 National Conference.

We've had our tickets purchased for over a year and it already paid for housing, travel and other activities while we were in Atlanta. My husband and I have lost over $600 in plane tickets, Airbnb fees and Georgia aquarium tickets we bought, none of which are refundable.

We both had taken time off work already, and I've seen some people say that they can't cancel their time off requests due to their work policies. I'm curious if the G3 board thought about this aspect of canceling the conference when they made that decision.

I don't think I've seen anyone talk about how much money has been lost by supporters of G3's ministry, and I don't think they've even apologized for any money spent outside of the conference tickets that we may lose as a result of the cancellation.

This has been one of the most hurtful aspects to me. I appreciate any insight you have into this situation. You are especially gifted at bringing clarity and wisdom to situations like this. We appreciate your ministry so much and the work that you do to share Christ and his truth.

Well, I thank you so much for your email and for following the ministry, and I'm not sure how much clarity and wisdom I can bring to this for you.

Right.

But I will, I'll certainly try. Let me first talk about the money you've spent, then address the question you have about why Josh acted this way, and finally, why did G3 make the decision to cancel this conference?

And why was it the best decision that they had to make?

Right.

So, first of all, my heart breaks for you and for anybody else who has been expressing.

This.

Oh, yeah.

That they had already invested a lot of money into this, and it's money that you can't get back.

I mean, money is not supposed to be our number one thing, but at the same time, it matters. It matters big time, yeah. And especially losing that much money all at once for nothing.

I mean, we know, we know the burden of that.

Yeah.

We know, yeah. We get it.

We've been there recently.

Yeah.

So, and we had already said a couple of weeks ago, two or three weeks ago on the broadcast, we were not going to make it to G3 this year.

Right.

And a lot of that had to do with distance.

Right.

There's no animus that I've ever had toward G3 about anything. So, I think it's wonderful, the ministry that they've done. And like I've said, I've worked with them in the past through the expository workshops and things like this.

I hope it's a ministry that can continue, but this is a big deal.

It is a big deal.

The national conference, that's their flagship.

Yeah.

And so, to have to cancel it, that not only hurts the name G3 itself, but any future conferences.

Yeah.

It hurts all the extensive stuff that they do outside of the flagship conference, because some of that money that they'll bring in for the main conference will then go to help some of these other smaller things that they do, or even scheduling the next conference.

Right.

And on top of that, and I haven't heard many people talking about this, I guess a few have, but this hurts the whole concept of big national conferences like this altogether. Because, hey, maybe there's another

It promotes more of the smaller.

Yeah, right, right.

Is that what you mean?

Value to more of the smaller things, certainly, which become more local church centered. And that's the way G3 started out.

Right.

That's so true. It was Praise Meal Baptist Church.

Yeah.

But then it got bigger. It got to be this bigger thing.

Mm-hmm.

But no, I'm speaking more specifically toward the idea of a big conference, however many other huge conferences there are out there, is somebody really going to risk investing in that conference now?

Oh, I gotcha.

Paying the big cost.

I see. Yeah.

Planning time off work, making a whole big trip out of it. If something like this could happen, that's a risk. I could be out hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.

So true.

And so

Especially with a family our size.

Yeah.

That's definitely not an easy decision to make. It wasn't easy for them to make it. I heard of another family that had lost $1 ,800, and they won't get any of that back. And so I can say that the level of what Josh was saying and doing, I'm not on the inside of G3 anymore, so I'm not speaking from what...

It's not like I've called those guys up, and they've told me things, and now I'm sharing them with you.

Right.

But I can say the level of what Josh was saying and doing and the level of dishonesty by which he was doing. It was bad enough that scrubbing his material from G3's website is warranted. And I think

We had a chat about, is it to that extreme?

Right.

We even evaluated. We didn't just follow suit blindly. We did take time to think about it and discuss it and heard about it.

Becky and I talked about it. I asked two other pastor friends of mine about it, like, what would you do in this situation? And I didn't even say, hey, I'm going to take Josh's thing down. But they saw that I had done it already and had responded and said, I think you made the right call there.

And again, it doesn't mean that all the stuff that Steve Lawson ever preached was wrong. It doesn't mean all the stuff that Josh Bice ever preached was wrong. But we're just kind of in this new territory of technology now where, you know, you preach a sermon and it's not just the moment you preach the sermon.

It keeps on preaching. As long as it's out there on media and stuff like this. So maybe there's a time in which that material would come back on later. But for now, I understand the reason to have it taken down, kind of have it hidden from.

View.

So why would he do something like this?

I have no idea. I mean, I cannot pretend to be in the guy's head.

Well, that's true.

To know what he was thinking about. But you know, pride would be the biggest thing. Insecurity.

Okay.

Ingratitude.

Okay.

So when you're talking about him going after people who are speakers in the G3 conference.

Yeah.

That was weird.

Men who have invested time and their own ministries in helping G3 be what it is. And yet he's behind the scenes in this secretive way, trying to expose them for wrongdoing. And doing it through these anonymous accounts and these anonymous emails, even going after his own elders at church about this.

I mean, there's just this ungratefulness toward people that he has. Also lacking compassion. And of course, you know, the big one, the ninth on the list of the fruit of the spirit, self-control.

Yes.

Lacking self-control.

Yes.

And those things that we see in 1 Timothy 6, 4 through 5 about a person who is constantly sowing division, has evil suspicions about others, this is a person who is not grounded in the gospel.

Yeah.

But they've given themselves over to other ideas.

Right.

Outside of having a mind that is controlled by Christ.

Right.

Having the mind of Christ as said in Philippians 2, 5. Josh has destroyed everything that he's accomplished over the last 12 years.

Can there be someone who like steps in his place? Like, you know, whenever a CEO happens to get fired or something like that, it's a big.

Deal.

They just replace the CEO. But they replace the CEO. So is it the same kind of deal? Or is it like the kind of thing where because it was so much based on their church, and he was head pastor, that it just kind of falls apart.

So this gets into...

Because of the camaraderie and the connections, I guess.

So this gets into answering the question of why did they cancel the conference at all?

Yeah.

Because G3 is not Josh Bice.

Right.

He didn't want G3 to be Josh Bice. And so the conference should be able to continue without him. However, as you've heard, as was said in this statement, and as was also said in the second statement that came out, Josh was attacking even speakers that he had invited to participate in the G3 conference, and was even trying to expose them for wrongdoing.

Yeah, that was strange.

And to give you an example of this, because this example has been made public. This has already come out as public because Julie Roys posted it. But Josh contacted Julie Roys, who's a gossip rag. She is not a credible journalist, however much she thinks of herself as being one.

He contacted Julie Roys through one of these anonymous email accounts and told her to investigate Votie Bauckham in the way that he handled money that came to him for his heart surgery when he was about to die.

Remember all of that?

Yes.

I mean, I was personally involved in that.

Right.

Because I went to a Verizon store to get Votie a phone so that he would have a phone while he's traveling the United States to get the heart procedures done that he needed to save his life.

Right.

So there was a money raising thing that was put out by founders. They raised over a million dollars for Votie. And so Josh contacted Julie and said, look into that because the heart procedure only cost $300 ,000.

So what is Votie doing with all this other money? Setting aside that when you have a heart procedure done, it doesn't just end with the heart procedure.

It doesn't.

No.

So there's all kinds of expenses that will continue after that.

Yeah.

Not to mention maybe another heart procedure.

Right.

That would come later on down the road. So I have no problem with that.

Not only that, but you're taking off of work. You're also like not physically active. So you need to get physical therapy. You have all of these things that you have to get done.

There's a ton of stuff.

There is. There's so much. And he's not even in the country. Like he doesn't. He wasn't living in the country at that time.

Right.

So it was like, he's a whole sea away.

Yeah.

Ocean away.

But I mean, aside from that, just the diabolicalness of Josh contacting Julie and saying, investigate Votie for this. It's unreal.

Yeah.

So that's one of those things that I can certainly say, because again, that's already been made public.

Right.

But there's other things that Josh said that we can't bring out. I don't know that I could give you the specifics of them anyway, but we can't make those things public. And the G3 folks can't make those things public.

Right.

Because now they implicate the person that Josh was making an accusation about.

Right.

And it brings that accusation public, which is slander.

Of a question about it.

Yes.

It shouldn't have even been said in the first place. And I've been in this situation before.

Yes, you have. Many times.

We have had somebody at our church, not our church now, but in the past, somebody that was bringing slanderous accusations against somebody else.

Yep.

And we would discipline them. We as elders know what the accusations are.

Right.

But we're not going to make that public.

Right.

Because there's no credibility to it whatsoever. This person does

Just don't even put that in anybody else's mind.

Right. Exactly. There's no point. This person does not get a platform

Right.

To be able to make their false accusation.

Exactly.

So, there are people that are saying, well, G3's just sweeping this under the rug. For the sake of the innocent people that Josh was falsely accusing, these things shouldn't be made public.

Exactly.

And I'm totally okay with that. But now those speakers are put in this awkward position of like, there's a conflict of interest between me and G3 now.

I'm going to go speak at this conference who was headed up by a person who doesn't like.

Me.

Yeah.

Right. Right.

And attacked me.

Yeah.

And falsely accused me. So, yeah.

I get it.

And so, now the speaker is put in that awkward position of withdrawing. And then everybody who probably paid to attend the conference to

For that speaker.

Perhaps to hear that speaker

Yeah.

Is going to be mad about that.

Right.

And then you get

It was just

And then you have to choose as the audience if you're going to support this ministry of, you know.

Yeah.

Granted, it's not Josh Bice ministry, but it's still, Josh Bice was a big part of it.

Too.

Founder and president.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, you're right. It wasn't just anybody at G3 that was doing this. It was the guy that even was sending out the invites to these speakers to speak at the conference.

Yeah.

And then was targeting them with these slanderous accusations. So anyway, as we kind of come to the end of this half hour segment here, be in prayer for G3.

Yes, please.

If you're listening to the podcast, we're going to keep going. We're going to continue talking about this. But for now, be in prayer for the organization. Pray for Josh.

Yes.

Pray that he would be convicted. And again, as said, bear fruit in keeping with repentance.

Yes.

That the fruit of the spirit that we read of in Galatians chapter five would be exhibited in his life. That he truly comes to understand the wickedness of what he has done. And as we said, this is going to hurt a lot of people.