Rick Warren vs. the SBC

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris, on the road right now, going to DeForest, Wisconsin for the

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Be Not Conformed conference tomorrow, if you can make it. Stephen Wolf is gonna be presenting,

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Dr. Fuller, Russell Fuller's gonna be presenting, I'm gonna be presenting, and we have a range of topics that are,

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I think, very interesting and timely. Dr. Fuller's gonna be speaking about a biblical nation.

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What is a nation? I mean, Matt Walsh has this documentary, what is a woman, what is a nation? This gets into questions surrounding

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Christian nationalism and whether or not we should have border security, and Stephen Wolf is gonna be talking about the responsibility of a

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Christian magistrate, so if you happen to be elected to public office and you're a believer, what should you do? And Stephen is great at distilling what men, theologians, have already distilled from the scripture and bringing it to us.

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And Dr. Fuller is also gonna be sharing on having joy in the midst of hard times. These are hard times, dark times.

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I just saw it this morning. People, I mean, I get these every day. Fox News is promoting Dylan Volvaini.

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Cracker Barrel is celebrating Pride Month. I mean, for Christians, this is a hard time. Institutions we trusted until very recently are now caving to pressure, and it's not pressure coming from us at all.

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It's from evil people who want to promote evil things. So Dr. Fuller's gonna talk about finding joy in the midst of that.

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I'm gonna be talking about the importance of being in creation, of letting our souls be amazed, and that's the sublimity, but also refreshed.

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That's the beauty. And it's gonna be interesting. It's gonna be something unlike what you've heard me present in the past, not directly political or anything, but very applicable,

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I would say, because that's one of the big problems we have, I think, is we are so distracted by our cell phones and constant distraction, constant notifications.

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And so I'm gonna be talking about that, getting back to that, and why that's spiritually important.

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So, and we'll have a panel discussion, too. So if you can come, if you're in the area, that would be awesome. Other thing

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I wanted to plug before getting into the main topic is equipping the persecuted. As I just said, things are getting darker, and I know with a lot of Christian organizations, they're also jumping on the pride bandwagon, or they've already capitulated in other areas of social justice.

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And many of you don't know where to give, because you've been giving to these charities or these

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Christian organizations, missions organizations, and now you're wondering, what do

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I do? Because these organizations have jumped off the rails. And one of the organizations I'll just tell you

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I trust is Equipping the Persecuted. They give aid and resources that help with things like self -defense to our brothers and sisters in Christ in Nigeria.

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They also provide some training. They share the gospel every time they go. That's part of it. But they also have training.

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They will actually train pastors in Nigeria in correct doctrine and how to avoid social justice.

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And so if you want to give to an organization that's doing good work, equippingthepersecuted .com.

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They're not paying for these big fancy parties that end up being almost like vacation getaways for the board members and so forth.

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They are putting their money where their mouth is. So if you give to them, it's going to a good cause.

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So just wanted to plug that. Let's get into the topic today, because my phone is just,

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I talked about notifications on your phone. I have a lot of them turned off. But if I open certain apps,

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I'll see that I have a lot of notifications and a lot of the stuff I'm getting concerning the

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Southern Baptist Convention next week is concerning Rick Warren and Rick Warren's presence.

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And I want to just say from the beginning, I'm actually kind of thankful for Rick Warren. And that may sound weird.

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John, how can you say that? You're conservative theologically. You don't agree with him. I don't, but I think he's exposing things.

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I think that he's bringing up an issue that is really making the people at the

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Southern Baptist Convention choose who they will serve. Now, the more cynical among us perhaps think that that decision has already been made.

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I'm inclined to agree that the direction of the Southern Baptist Convention has been set. But I think Rick Warren is just clarifying things.

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And I think that's actually a helpful thing for him to clarify where the Southern Baptist Convention actually stands on this issue of women pastors.

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Because the denominations that have adopted women pastors into their doctrine, they don't last long.

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They dwindle. They capitulate on other things. They capitulate on LGBT stuff real quick. And that's one of the concerns here is this is an indicator of where the convention's going if they fail to discipline

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Rick Warren's church. So for those who don't remember, from the last convention that the Southern Baptist held, there was a motion made to disfellowship churches that had females as pastors.

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And this was more or less rebuffed by the resolutions committee.

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And Rick Warren then made a speech about how important his church is, important his work is, and how much he loves

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Southern Baptists. And he was allowed, he was given privileges others, messengers were not.

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And then Al Mohler then made a speech opposing what Rick Warren's, well, more or less supporting the resolution.

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And people saw it as a direct challenge to Rick Warren because Rick Warren has female pastors on staff at Saddleback Church.

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So this is where, I mean, at least in the public eye, this conflict began.

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Now, since that time, Rick Warren has, Rick Warren has decided to,

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I wouldn't say just double down, but make this the driving focus of the convention coming up next week.

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And do I have predictions? Sure, I do. I think that's gonna be an issue. I think the other issue is going to be the sexual abuse task force and the whole issue of, does the executive committee for the

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Southern Baptist Convention get more money? Because they're gonna need more money. They haven't even, to my knowledge,

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I don't even know if they've gone to court yet. They certainly have. There hasn't been a ruling against them, but they already have depleted like half their budget or something like that on this whole issue of sexual abuse.

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And so that money's gonna have to be taken out of other areas. It's gonna have to reallocated from important things

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Southern Baptists are doing like missions, church planning, education. It's gonna have to be rerouted to fight the lawsuits that are impending because of the executive committee's foolish behavior on sexual abuse and taking responsibility for churches and just waiving attorney -client privilege, just all the stuff we've talked about over the last few years.

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So that's gonna be an issue too. But the Rick Warren thing, that's what's getting the headlines. That's what's getting a lot of the buzz right now.

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And I wanna read for you a few of his tweets because he has not just doubled down. He's made this a crusade. This is his mission in life right now, it seems, to make sure that the

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Southern Baptist Convention does not disfellowship him. Now, for those who don't know, you don't listen to this podcast,

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I'll just explain briefly. Mike Law, a pastor, I believe, in the

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DC area found a number of churches in the convention that had female pastors.

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He presented to the executive committee a resolution to, well, not a resolution, really.

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It was more of a change to the bylaws of the convention to deal with this problem. And he was, to summarize, he was pretty much rejected, but they also, at the same time, kicked

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Rick Warren out. So they didn't adopt his bylaw, but they kicked Rick Warren, his church saddleback, out of the convention.

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And people have read this in different ways. I tend to think, and I said this, I think, at the time, that this was more symbolic than anything else.

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It's trying to give the impression to conservatives that there is no liberal drift, that they're on top of it.

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Meanwhile, they're actually putting barriers in the way of someone who wants to create a rule that will actually deal with this problem.

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So it's kind of a political thing, it's a political move. It's more symbolic than real.

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And that's because the bylaws of the Southern Baptist Convention, and this is mostly coming from more social justice -friendly forces, have, they specifically say if you are engaged in racism or if you are engaged in sexual abuse of some kind, according to the

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Credentials Committee, which kicks people out of the convention, for lack of a better term, you can be disfellowshipped.

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Well, it doesn't specify, I mean, every issue, but it specifies those two issues.

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And if you look at the New Testament, are those, are issues, and I'm putting this in the most charitable light,

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I realize many of you are saying, this is social justice, this isn't even about those issues, I get it, but let's put it in the most charitable light for the sake of argument.

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Are those issues, let's say treating people poorly, sinning against them because they're of a different ethnicity, abusing someone sexually or otherwise, are those things evil?

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Well, sure. What does the New Testament focus on, though? A lot of doctrinal stuff, a lot of stuff that affects your soul, a lot of things that ruin the integrity of the church because they directly challenge the truth of the

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Bible. And that's because we're spiritual beings, our souls live on eternally. Those things, man, you could do all the right things in this world, hypothetically, as far as, you know, externally, you're not engaging in bad behavior, but then lose your soul in the end because you were trusting in the wrong

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Jesus. And I'm not saying a perfect person, I'm saying, you know, because no one's perfect, but I'm saying, like, you could, from the outside perspective, look pretty clean and not have sexual abuse issues in your denomination and still have some rampant heresy going on.

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And so conservatives have not been, people who care about doctrine have not been at the forefront of specifying language for what aspects of the

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Baptist faith and message are then used to either qualify or disqualify a church from, well, really disqualify a church from the convention, from cooperating with them.

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The more progressive forces have, and no one really raised a stink. In fact, I would say the conservatives supported those measures, by and large.

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It's a different world now, though. And I think a little too late, unfortunately, but some more,

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I'll call them moderate, and I know in the SPC, moderate means liberal, but I mean, they're not really that conservative, but they at least have, they're orthodox, they have orthodox, but their sentiments, politically, let's say, aren't really that conservative, but, and they weren't worried about the social justice stuff, but now they're scared.

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Now they realize that what the true conservatives have been saying all along is correct.

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And if you adopt critical race theory as an analytical tool, if you go down the road of this racial reconciliation mantra that we've heard over the last few years, then the next thing to fall is your complementarianism, is your biblical teaching on manhood and womanhood.

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And the denominations that have gone this way end up dying. They end up going full LGBT after they get rid of the distinction between male and female.

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And this is, what's happening right now with Rick Warren is a shift towards that.

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He wouldn't go all the way, perhaps, not at this point, but taking a role, taking a function that is designated for men in scripture and saying women can do that is a shift in that direction.

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It's, and that's not a slippery slope fallacy, that's just saying the same logic that's used by Rick Warren right now can be used to support other things that a lot of the convention, people who are orthodox in the

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Southern Baptist Convention are concerned about. So they're finding their fighting spirit now.

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I think it's a little too late. There should have been a fighting spirit on other issues, namely the critical race theory stuff, the abuse stuff, but they're finding, and I should say the

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Me Too stuff, really, because that's mostly what it is, but they're finding their fighting spirit now on some of them, women pastors.

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And it's gonna be very interesting how this works. You're gonna see a lot of guys who allowed a lot of Me Too and social justice stuff into their seminaries and institutions and churches all of a sudden acting strong on this issue.

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You're gonna see some of that. You're also gonna see another, and this is the big key thing, you're gonna see another fault line develop.

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You're going to see a fault line between, and everyone will say they're complimentary, and that's the thing.

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They're all gonna say they agree doctrinally, but they clearly don't. And there are gonna be those who say we're complimentarian, but we don't think we should disfellowship

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Saddleback Church. They're gonna make the issue Saddleback Church and churches that use the title pastor, but they're not really pastors, or they're still in keeping with complimentarianism, or this is a secondary issue.

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They're gonna downplay the issue. You're gonna see those people fighting with the more orthodox types who say, no, this is a fundamental issue.

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And that's a fault line that I would suggest didn't really exist before, because Southern Baptists were pretty much all in agreement.

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Even the elites who capitulated on social justice stuff had tended to still really talk high and mighty about their complimentarianism.

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And you're gonna see now a fracture in the elite circle. So whether this is a victory for Rick Warren, and he gets to,

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Saddleback remains in the convention, and the vote is taken, and people say, we wanna keep them in, that would be a rousing defeat of conservatives in the convention.

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But even if that doesn't happen, I think the needle is moved towards the left.

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Just the fact that it's brought up and taken seriously, and these new fault lines are forming, that is a win for the progressives.

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That shows you that it's moving in the wrong direction. So let me go over some tweets. These are from Rick Warren, and some things that he said.

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And then I wanna look at some things J .D. Greer said, because I think J .D. Greer is actually providing the template for what a lot of Southern Baptists are gonna end up doing, who have institutional power.

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They're gonna handle it the way that J .D. Greer's trying to handle this. So here's a Rick Warren tweet. There's a number of them.

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He's just going crazy on Twitter, to be honest with you. I mean, he's saying all kinds of things. He said, under the

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Baptist doctrine, and he's quoting here, by the way, Adrian Rogers. So Adrian Rogers, a conservative resurgence kind of legend.

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And Adrian Rogers in the 2000s said, under Baptist doctrine, which asserts the autonomy of congregations, a local church is free to ignore it.

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We're not trying to force our beliefs on any individual or church on the face of the earth, said Adrian Rogers.

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So it's from the Baltimore Sun, June 15th. Now he left out something, though, in this.

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The statement, first of all, that Adrian Rogers, he's not talking about women pastors.

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So that's important to know. This isn't a support for Rick Warren on that. But the rest of the quote is this.

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We're not trying to force our beliefs upon any individual, upon any church, upon any other denomination on the face of the earth.

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And then he said, we are trying to say what we as Baptists do believe, as a witness and a testimony, and as a guide for those who work among us.

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So that's Adrian Rogers. So he's saying, look, the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, which outlines complementarian beliefs, which says that women can't be pastors, this is a guide for those who work alongside us in the

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Southern Baptist Convention. So Rick Warren is trying to, this is a classic tactic of people on the left.

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They try to take heroes, conservative heroes, and then pit modern conservatives facing different challenges against them.

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Now he says, during our great, this is Rick Warren again on Twitter, during our great conservative resurgence, not one church was kicked out for female pastors, not one.

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In 2000, not one church was kicked out for voting against the Baptist Faith and Message changes, not one.

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Why? Well, then we had faithful inerrant statesmen. Now we have fearful legalists showmen.

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So this is the kind of language Rick Warren, he's just lopping bombs out there, saying that the people who run the

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Southern Baptist Convention are fearful legalists showmen, which I would agree with him to some extent, but not in the direction he's thinking.

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The reality is that during the time he's talking about in 2000, when the Baptist Faith and Message was changed, you had organizations pop up that were,

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I'm not sure if the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship started then or started before then, but even if it started before then, you had a lot of Southern Baptists leaving the

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Southern Baptist Convention and joining the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. You also had other organizations like Jimmy Carter and the

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New Baptist Covenant. These were splinter groups from the Southern Baptist Convention who didn't wanna go along specifically with their complementarian views.

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So Rick Warren's not giving you the full truth here. He's saying no one was kicked out. Well, they didn't have to kick anyone out. People left.

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If you wanna talk about integrity, really the integrity was that people back then didn't try to, at least

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Christians, weren't as in the Southern Baptist circles, weren't trying to subvert the organizations that they were a part of.

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They were honest about, this is what I believe, it's different, so I'm gonna start my own thing. And maybe Rick Warren should do that, but he's not.

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Rick Warren, and I think the thing that motivates Rick Warren probably is an ego. That's what it seems like. I mean,

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I just remember him standing up at the convention last year and saying how he's trained more pastors than the

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Southern Baptist seminaries, and his church has done so much for missions, and he's,

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I think, feeling rejected is his problem. He feels that the Southern Baptist Convention is rejecting him, and so he's gonna take the fight to them and make sure that he's vindicated.

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So, the other thing, here's another tweet he said, state conventions are wisely shielding their churches from the new

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Inquisition, so they were only asked for numbers, not names. Added together, at least 1 ,928

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SBC churches have women pastors quietly serving on staff. Most are larger growing churches, about half are ordained.

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The new Inquisition, right? So you have almost 2 ,000 churches in the SBC that have women pastors. And I mean, if that's true, then

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I guess that supports a lot of what we've been saying for a long time, that there is a doctrinal shift, that this is not good, that things are going in this direction, and I guess he doesn't realize he's giving away, he's giving away that, in trying to make this his argument, he's proving those of us who said this was gonna be a problem correct.

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But I think the main thing here is he's using very inflammatory language. And you don't see this on other, why does it only go in one direction?

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It's always left to right. Even in these conservative denominations, they can fight really hard against conservatives and say all kinds of inflammatory things, but it's so, when it's those to the left,

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I mean, look at what Rick Warren says on homosexuality. I just played clips from him from 10 years ago in,

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I think, a previous podcast, and man, we could just get a cup of coffee, we should sit down and talk about this.

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There's none of that language when it comes to, you believe only men should be pastors, but like the Bible says.

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There's no like, well, we should get a cup of coffee and discuss. It is just, it's an inquisition.

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There, you're a bunch of legalists. He also, this is the last tweet.

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He said he agreed with Al Mohler 100%, and then quoted Al Mohler from 2013. Al Mohler said, we affirm the responsibility of all

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Southern Baptists to guard our conversation so that we do not speak untruthfully, irresponsibly, harshly, or unkindly to any other, to or about any other

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Southern Baptist. So he's saying, I sure hope Al Mohler, and he's saying, I pray you still believe this

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Al Mohler. So he's warning Al Mohler, you better not speak harshly or unkindly about me, or irresponsibly or untruthfully.

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Meanwhile, Rick Warren, I just gave you a sample, has been doing that for days. So the height of hypocrisy, and I think he's identifying

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Al Mohler as gonna be one of his biggest hurdles. Al Mohler, of course, really being,

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I think, an architect, who's ushered in a lot of the Me Too stuff with like Jennifer Lyle, David Sills. If people are familiar with that situation, at Southern Seminary, it was promoted as a

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Me Too situation by Al Mohler, when in reality, it was, it looks like it was more of a consensual adulterous affair.

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But Al Mohler doubled, by the way, there was a documentary being made about that. I saw clips from it.

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And now, where is it? I mean, David Sills is suing the Southern Baptist Convention. So I'm wondering if they just buried the thing.

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But Al Mohler, not too long ago, was really ushering in a lot of the progressive stuff.

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Now he's gonna fight the battle of complementarianism and he's gonna be Mr. Conservative.

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And so it's just, the whole thing is just rich to me. Those who wanted to go left on these certain things didn't realize they let, they allowed a foot in the door that is going to totally compromise the convention.

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Now, J .B. Greer, I think, is the architect probably more than anyone else, at least the indicator.

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He's a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention and he has indicated, I think, what a lot of the elites are going to try to do.

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This is where the fracture, this is where the fault line is. I don't know what the numbers are. I just know there's gonna be a split among the elites.

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There's gonna be those who probably go with Al Mohler and there's gonna be those who try to go with someone like a J .B. Greer. Now Greer, this is what he had to say, he tweeted out on June 7th.

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One of my concerns is that this conversation is that we are alienating firmly complementarian women, faithful sisters who are not trying to be pastors, but are feeling less inclined to serve because we have turned them into a battleground.

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And the battleground is doctrine. The battleground aren't these females who aren't pastors who are serving.

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Now, let me translate this. The people in Rick Warren, let's make it practical. The people in Rick Warren's church who are called pastors, who are doing pastoral work, aren't really pastors.

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They're just females who have good hearts and J .B. Greer is going to defend them. That's what's going on here. J .B.

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Greer is positioning himself as I have the moral high ground, I'm defending these women. And I think

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Mark Coppinger, by the way, if you go to truthscripts .com, Mark Coppinger on manliness, he had a great article and he talked about two ladies that Rick Warren is violating.

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Lady Wisdom, and these are biblical ladies, and the church, the church is presented as the bride of Christ.

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These are the two ladies that Rick Warren is against. And he can talk about being pro -women all he wants, but he is not pro -correct doctrine.

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And in so doing, he's violating these two ladies. And in so doing, by the way, it's putting women, actual tangible women

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God created into some very awkward situations that they're frankly not equipped for. They're not suited for.

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And it's not good for them. It does, that's not a slight on women in the least. It just means that there are different roles.

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I don't, you know, a man's not equipped to do certain things women can do. This used to be kind of like understood, but now of course we're questioning all of these things.

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So Greer is trying to blame, you know, he's coming in and he does this on so many things and saying, you know, why is everyone fighting?

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I'm the guy who's not fighting. I'm the guy who's the peacemaker. I'm the guy who's gonna tell everyone to calm down. I'm the reasonable person.

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And my reasonable spirit tells me that we're really making women the battleground.

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We gotta stop that. And of course that was never the case. Doctrine, it was about doctrine. So we believe complementarianism, this is an article he wrote, is an essential element of the church.

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So here you go. We're still doctrinally sound. And he says, when it comes to the issue of women as practicing pastors, the

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SPC has made its stance clear in the Baptist faith and message. We subscribe to a complementarian view of men and women in the local church.

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That is one of our stated essentials that defines how we carry out our cooperative work. What that looks like in actual application among our churches, however, is slightly fluid.

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So here we go. Here's the language that's gonna be used to justify. Some churches have chosen to appoint women as lead pastors, which appears to be clear denial of complementarianism for churches like this.

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Perhaps we should recognize that they are not closely identified with us. In other churches, however, the issue is not one of complementarianism so much as it is one of nomenclature.

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For example, what are we to do about a church that's using an improper title?

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Calling a woman the children's pastor, are they really taking an egalitarian stance or do they have a nomenclature problem?

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We can encourage churches to adopt better, less problematic nomenclature, but are we really prepared to start asking our credentials committee to start kicking out churches left and right over sloppy titling of staff positions?

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I wanna say something really quick. The credentials committee is expected to kick out supposed racist churches and churches that support abuse using their own discretion and with a very elastic categories by which to choose from at this point.

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And so, why is J .D. Greer only focused on this one? Are we really prepared to try to adjudicate this?

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That's the argument. Well, we're complementarian, but we can't actually function in a complementarian way.

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We can be complementarian in our doctrine, but when it comes to applying it, we can't do that.

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That's what's going on here. We are just incapable. It'll be used by evil people.

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He's already smearing the people who wanna make women the battleground. So do we really wanna give them the opportunity to punish women who are just serving the

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Lord? And I mean, this is, it's a social justice move is what it is. I mean, it's an oppressor oppressed thing that he's trying to draw out of here, but he's walking a fine line because the

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Rick Warrens are gonna run to his left and say that your doctrine, what you're doing is you're still making doctrine too essential.

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But I suspect in the battle that's taking place now, Warren is going to add to see

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Greer as an ally because the mission right now, maybe that won't be the case in 10 years, but right now they have to take out the

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Al Mohlers. They've already, I don't wanna take the wind out of anyone's sails,

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I don't. And so I'm very careful before the convention what I say about these things. I do have my opinions about what's going to happen as far as Mike Stone, CBN and all that.

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By the way, I've invited Mike Stone to come to the podcast a number of times, just for those who keep asking me if I'm gonna have

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Mike Stone on. I can't seem to get through to him. If you know Mike Stone, let him know, I'd love to have him on, but we're getting a little late at this point.

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Anyway, what I was gonna say is that really, effectively, that conservative wing, the

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CBN type guy, they've kind of been, they've been effectively neutralized already.

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Not saying they don't have any sway whatsoever, but their impact is minimal.

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They would have to rely on a coalition strategy at this point because they can't, they haven't seemed to be able to get a grassroots effort like during the conservative resurgence started where the convention's overwhelmed by their people showing up.

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The people say that, well, that could happen because most Southern Baptist churches are conservative. I agree, but it hasn't.

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And there are reasons for it, I think, but it hasn't. And so because of that,

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CBN is forced when they get to the convention to try to figure out a path forward with the crowd that's already there.

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And they're mostly establishment types. That's gonna force them into coalition building. They're gonna have to. I mean, the fact that even

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Willie Rice is the one who nominated Mike Stone is just weird to me because Willie Rice was the establishment pick for the last convention.

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So they have to, you know, I think Al Mohler's gonna end up being, he may be even thinking this, positioning himself as kind of like the conservative, and then he's gonna absorb the support of the

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CBN types, Conservative Baptist Network types, and some others who, his coalition, and maybe they'll have enough numbers.

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You know, that's what's going on. But right now, Al Mohler's the one that has to be overcome.

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It's people like him. It's not gonna be the CBN types as much. And so in that battle,

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J .D. Greer's an ally. J .D. Greer is an ally with Rick Warren, even if they disagree down the road.

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J .D. Greer says, the reality is that even the largest estimates of churches with female pastors on staff make for a very small, and in fact, shrinking fraction of our convention.

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So Rick Warren says it's like 2000 churches based upon, I guess, state convention numbers.

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J .D. Greer is saying it's shrinking. No, no, no, this isn't a problem. He says, we have fewer than 20 in North Carolina.

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We used to have 200. And so the people who say that it's a growing issue, he says they're ignorant, misinformed, or being purposely divisive.

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I want you to pay attention to that too. Rick Warren's using inflammatory language, so is

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J .D. Greer. But where is J .D. Greer's inflammatory language directed? Not at Rick Warren, not at the egalitarians within the

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Southern Baptist Convention, not at those who want to compromise the doctrine. No, his inflammatory language is directed, once again, at conservatives.

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That anyone who says there's a problem with female pastors in the convention is misinformed, ignorant, or purposely divisive.

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It's, again, it's posturing. I mean, Greer can check the right box on a doctrinal statement, perhaps.

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Yet, at the same time, Greer is moving the needle to the left. And he's a master at this.

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He's done this on so many issues, where he says, I'm a conservative, I believe these particular things, and then he moves the needle against those things.

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He, and I don't even know if he realizes he's doing it. I tend to think he does because he's so good at it, and it works so effectively.

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The Baptist Faith and Message 2000 says that the office of pastors limited to qualified men, he says, it seems we are at risk of focusing hard on the men part.

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And we have much less to say about qualified part. But First Timothy says the qualified men should be sober -minded, self -control, and not quarrelsome.

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And then he goes on, and I'm just gonna skip some of this. So many pastors are absolutely ruthless on Twitter every day.

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So he's saying, look, he's taking the wind out of your sails. You have no right to point your finger at Rick Warren and his female pastors that are against the statement of faith for your convention if you, pastor, are a little mean on Twitter.

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If you're ruthless on Twitter, then he's making, this is like John Piper, when John Piper wrote that article about Donald Trump and said, well, basically they're morally equivalent.

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That's the argument he made, that Trump, he outlined all his sins in the Greek. Trump is this prideful man, and Biden believes in killing babies, but Trump is just about as bad because Trump has these horrible character qualities.

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It's the same kind of thing. It's drawing a moral equivalent to water down the actual threat.

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It's saying the threat isn't really a threat because we already have people within the circle who are worse.

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One of my biggest concerns here, he says, is that we will alienate women, and I think I've already said this, who will be inclined to serve.

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So making these women the battlefield, making them the issue and not

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Rick Warren's infidelity to the Baptist faith and message and scripture. So that's gonna be a big thing coming up in the convention.

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How it's gonna go, I don't know. I don't have a, you know, I'm not a prophet on this stuff, but I think at the very least, it's going to move the needle towards the progressives.

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I don't know. I, you know, like, I think even two years ago, I would have said, of course, Rick Warren is going to be thoroughly rejected because at the very least, the people ushering in the leftism have to prove they're not leftists to continue to subvert.

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But now, I don't know. Rick Warren may pull this off. He may shield his church from being disfellowshipped, and if that happens, then it's over.

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I mean, you don't have, your doctrinal statement is worth the paper it's written on. It's like the

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Constitution of the United States at that point. So that could very well happen.

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Do I think it's gonna happen? I suspect if I was leaning towards a possibility, I would say probably not.

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I would think that, generally, the platform controls. And if, generally, okay?

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So if the platform decides we need to disfellowship Saddleback, they're probably going to get their way unless Rick Warren really pulls something off.

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And I know Rick Warren's been trying hard. I mean, all these pastors got spammed by him with some open letter or something that he wrote, and somehow he got these email addresses.

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I don't even know how he got them. Conservative Baptist Network doesn't seem to be able to get those contacts.

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So how did Rick Warren get them? I don't know. But he's pulling out every, so I don't know. I don't know, maybe he's doing a better job by himself,

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I think, building a coalition than, well, I'll just, I'll leave it there. He's doing a good job building by himself a coalition.

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So if his coalition is strong enough and he gets his people there, he wins. The question is, though, can he do it?

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And this hasn't really been done like this before. So if he doesn't, though, if he doesn't bring his coalition there,

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I think he gets rejected, but I think a split forms. And I think that split in the elites is going to kill the convention more later down the road, or at least it's going to be bad.

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One other thing that I noticed that I thought, this should be a big focus, but I don't think it will be. This is just another example.

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There's been many, but this is one example of just the vultures trying to get what's left of this big denomination.

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Adam Greenway at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary engaged in a pattern of spending that a task force who investigated this believes did not reflect proper stewardship of seminary resources.

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So Adam Greenway, the former president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Between 2019 and 2022, over 1 .5

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million was spent on renovations, furnishings, and related expenses to the president's home. These expenditures were made at a time when the seminary was making significant budget cuts, including the reduction of faculty personnel and positions.

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Examples of expenses for the president's home include an almost $60 ,000 for Christmas decorations, more than $25 ,000 for artwork, and over $11 ,000 for an espresso machine and accessories.

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Despite extensive renovations completed early in his tenure, further optional work was done on the president's home in late 2021 when more than 180 ,000 was spent on HVAC work.

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Not wrong to renovate a home, but when you're making budget cuts like this, was it really necessary?

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I mean, I think the espresso machine gives it away. This seems like a slush fund. That's what it looks like at least that was used to park money, to reward friends or himself or whatever.

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I mean, this is just, we're finding these things out. And this does relate to the

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Cole complementarian debate because Adam Greenway was one of the guys opposing Al Mohler and supporting Rick Warren last year.

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I think he's probably taken off the map at this point because he is disqualified. He is so embarrassed himself with this kind of thing.

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It's just sad. It's just, that's what's going on though. That's what happens. This is like late stage empire, like,

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I just think in general in the United States, empire falling stuff. Late stage of an empire, we're falling and the people are, the looters come out to try to get whatever last thing they can before the barbarians overtake things.

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And the Southern Baptist Convention is a big institution, well endowed. And if you can get whatever resources you can while the getting's good, then you're gonna do it.

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And I know that sounds cynical, I guess, but that's just, I wonder how much of this stuff is going on that we don't see.

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That's why I think the number one thing we need, and I was glad, I'll say this one, this is a positive thing about Mike Stone.

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I think he did call, if I'm not mistaken, for audits. And that is a good thing.

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I wish that more conservative candidates had done that. Randy Adams did that when he ran against Mike Stone two years ago, but I haven't really heard that much from the conservative side.

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But if that's something they're willing to do, that's the thing that's going to change the convention more than anything else, is when you actually open the books and find out how corrupt these people actually are.

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That's the way to take them out. It's not, unfortunately, the doctrinal stuff.

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That knows battles need to be fought, too. But if you want a shortcut to, because there's a lot of overlap there, the people pushing the bad doctrine are also corrupt.

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That's probably the thing to do strategically. All right, well, that's the podcast for today. Aren't you feeling good?

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Well, if you want to feel better, come out to DeForest, Wisconsin tomorrow for the

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Be Not Conformed conference. And I got to tell you, there's a lot of churches like the church we're going to in DeForest that are solid, that are strong, that are doing the right thing, that are leaving institutions like the

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Southern Baptist Convention, going their own way and doing the right thing. And the Southern Baptist Convention, their numbers are shrinking.

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But the numbers of independent churches are growing. It's probably because they're leaving and forming independent churches. That's a good thing.

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And I think moving forward in the future, that's a good thing for a number of reasons, one of them being the government can't control an organic movement like that as much.

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I mean, it's easy to go to a denomination and control the top so you control the churches. But if the churches are independent, truly independent, it's very hard to do that.

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And so that's one of the reasons I think moving forward, that's a better model for influencing your community while surviving, while maintaining your doctrinal integrity.

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So I think that's a good trend. And I think seminary enrollment is way down too.

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People I think are starting to realize they need to raise up leaders from within their own churches and not look at seminary education as the metric or the sole metric used to determine whether someone's qualified for a position.

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That's also a good thing. That diminishes the power of these institutions that have been foisting so much innovation on us as believers.

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So good things are happening, but unfortunately the Southern Baptist Convention is going in a bad direction and it's gonna probably continue that way.

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So if you are in the convention still fighting, I would say, fight as hard as you can, go to the convention and vote and do whatever you need to do.

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Try to, from the floor of the convention, make the motions that are going to, I mean, I'm not the best person to ask about what specifically should be done from the floor, but I just think in general, pushing for resolutions that will enshrine conservative positions, theologically conservative positions, pushing against those that will dethrone them, trying to get people into key positions where they can exert influence and appoint board members.

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These are all things that need to be done if you're gonna try to take it back. But if you can't do it, you need to think about whether or not you wanna keep investing your time and your resources, taking them away from ministry and putting them into this kind of a fight, whether that's worth it.

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And each person has to make that choice individually. All right, God bless. More coming.