The Big Moment at SBC22

Welcome once again to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. I've been traveling for the last week.

I think this year I've done more traveling than maybe any other year. I'm not sure. It's been a lot.

But this last week was a blessing, and I was able to go to all over the state of Wisconsin, which

I'm not actually that familiar with Wisconsin. I just associate Wisconsin with farms and cheese, and I got to find out how beautiful actually

Wisconsin is. And farms, not that farms aren't beautiful, they are. I enjoy farmland. But there's some wonderful scenery at Devil's Lake.

And then we went up, I mean, I can't remember the name of the river now. It's escaping me that we were at in the northwestern part of the state.

But that was beautiful as well, and it's more diverse than I thought. And a lot of states are like that.

People think, if I say that I live in New York, they'll say, in fact, I had one person I remember one time tell me,

I guess you don't see a lot of trees because he's just thinking of New York City. And I said, well, actually, we got tons of trees.

We got beautiful forests where I am because I'm not in the city. New York's a big state. And so I found the same is true of Wisconsin.

And so I just am so thankful for those who were very generous to put me up and let me speak at their churches.

And there were some political events, and it was just a blessing. And I hope

I was able to encourage people. I think that did take place. And even some people who didn't agree necessarily with my perspective on some of these things were able to come and hear a different perspective and maybe get a copy of the books,

Christianity and Social Justice, Social Justice Goes to Church. And so we just had a great time. And one of the big blessings for me when

I travel is being able to meet faithful pastors, church leaders, just faithful men and women in churches, mainly churches that we would consider from especially a more

Bible Belt perspective to be smaller, you know, when a church that's under 500 people in some places is considered small.

I was surprised when I heard that. I think when I was in Lynchburg, someone told me that. Oh, that's a small church.

It's only got 400 people. And I'm thinking, that's a big church where I come from.

But speaking in churches, you know, with 50 people, 200 people, I mean, these are places often in areas that are either rural or maybe somewhat suburban.

And not that I haven't met faithful pastors in urban areas. I certainly have. But mainly

I think I've spoken in places that are probably rural or suburban where they're just kind of off the beaten path, but these pastors are absolutely faithful.

And it is so encouraging to see that, to see churches with lots of stability and a plan for the future and just a lot of, there's a lot of joy when you follow

God's law and you're with people of like mind. And so I'm just so blessed to be able to see that all over the country.

And one of the things that burdens me is that so many of you who are listening, who are in tight spots in situations where you feel like there is no one around you, or it's very difficult to find like -minded believers or church for that matter.

I just, my burden is I wish I could just share that with you and I could just show you, hey, there are places and there's actually quite a few of them out there.

And so, yeah, Wisconsin, there are churches in Wisconsin that are very solid and faithful and had a wonderful time.

And many of these host families love to show me around their area. So I was able to get some cheese that I'm looking forward to eating.

I haven't tasted it yet. They actually ship it from the cheese factory. They have cheese factories in Wisconsin.

And one observation though about Wisconsin, I just got to say for everyone out there, and this probably applies more broadly speaking to the

Midwest, a lot of German people, a lot of, I think they told me

Scandinavian people in that northern area of Wisconsin. But of course the whole

Midwest has a lot of German people, people who trace back to Germans who have immigrated. And there is something about it that's different than, there's a number of things actually that are different than the

Northeast and the South. But one of them is things are very clean. I just noticed that even going into rest stops and restaurants and public places, things are very clean.

I feel like I could almost eat off the floor in some of these places. And there are exceptions,

Chicago being a big one. But especially in more rural areas, it just seems like even though it's farms everywhere, that people are very orderly, neat.

And I think that might be a German thing and a Swedish thing to some extent, that it's different than when you drive around in the

South in a rural area. Oftentimes you'll see half buried cars and not in any particular order either.

And they're just kind of out there. And nothing necessarily wrong with that. I'm not criticizing or anything.

It's a cultural difference. The Scotch -Irish people are very different than the German people, are very different,

I'll tell you, from people up in the Northeast. People in the Northeast, especially on a 4th of July or Memorial Day or any weekend you go to the beach, very, very messy, very trashy.

Trash left everywhere, stadiums after ballgames and all, very... And in fact, it was interesting.

This isn't the point of the podcast, but some people might be interested in this. George Washington, when he was leading the

Continental Army and he went North, he was from Virginia, right? And he met people, I think it's specifically, he said people from the

Massachusetts Bay Colony area. He described them as really trashy people, that they were just really, just not...

They didn't meet his standard of cleanliness. And I remember thinking, well, that's so interesting because I definitely noticed that difference when you travel.

And everywhere is different, different cultures, different expectations. There's always good and bad things just about everywhere.

And I enjoy seeing that diversity. So that was one point, it may be in the corner for the Midwest there, that very, very clean.

And I did kind of like that to some extent. So anyway, I just enjoyed it so much. And I just wanted to thank everyone who was part of that.

And those of you who are praying for me as I travel, I think this is important. I think what I'm doing on this podcast is probably more important now than maybe it's ever been.

I don't know. In some ways, I wonder whether or not there's a diminishing value, especially when you look at conventions or organizations like the

Southern Baptist Convention and you see how it's been given over. I wonder whether or not, should

I keep talking about them? I mean, the window of opportunity seems to have closed and the exposure seems to have been done.

I often don't know what to tell people who wanna... In fact, there was someone just the other day who wanted to know about a certain

Southern Baptist operative, if you will, and whether or not they were on the level.

And I'm thinking, man, I've done so much work exposing that person. And it was good, I was able to share. But there are people, and I understand kind of waking up from a slumber, but I think by and large, the people who are going to wake up have already seen the extent, at least enough of the extent of the corruption and moral and theological compromise.

And if you didn't see it, honestly, I mean, all you had to do was stream the convention. Probably, if you just streamed it for an hour, any portion of it probably, just if you were flying the wall at any time in that convention for an hour, you would have,

I don't think it probably mattered almost what you saw, you would have seen something wrong somewhere. And so anyway,

I just think that a lot of the awareness is there. There are still people that are figuring things out, but the information's available.

And that's what I think has been important. But in another sense, so that's one of the things that I look at,

I'm wondering, is what I'm doing is of a diminishing value, especially in a denomination like the

SBC. But I know there's other denominations, which we'll talk about probably next week. We're gonna talk about the Christian Reform Church a little bit.

They had some changes this last week as well. And they were kind of overshadowed by the Southern Baptist Convention. There's changes in the

Lutherans and the Presbyterians. And there's other things, of course, to focus on and expose. But a lot of what

I'm doing when I go to churches, though, is I'm not exposing. I am presenting on the errors.

It's apologetics in a way. It's showing, it's discipleship. This deviates from the word of God and from the teaching of Christ, our

Lord. And so we need to watch for it and condemn it when we see it, so people know exactly why it's wrong and what it is.

And so I'm not naming actually a lot of names. I'll definitely name some. But it's not because I'm afraid to or anything either.

It's just because I wanna focus on giving people tools to understand what the issues are.

So we talk a lot more about the issues and concepts. And that's, I think, something that is not diminishing in importance.

And if anything, that is something that is becoming more needed than it's ever been.

And I think a lot of people in, well, people in the conservative world, and I think theological conservative against the postmodern and Marxist push, there's been a few materials that have come out as resources, and some are decent, some are good, some are...

In general, I think there's a dearth. There needs to be a lot more. But I think that those materials have almost stopped being produced.

We're moving on. There was kind of a blip on the radar in 2020, and a lot of people wanted to react to that, and then it's kind of fading out.

And the reality is, though, the issues aren't going away. The issues are, if anything, getting exacerbated and more ingrained.

You might not see buildings burning down because of BLM or something, but critical race theory is becoming more ingrained this year than it was last year.

It's becoming deeper. There's more control that people who advocate for that have in institutions, and they're pushing it.

And the danger now is it's become normalized. So if there's any negative attachments to critical race theory, it's only the most extreme end of critical race theory.

The people who advocate reparations might be critical race theory. But if you have implicit bias training, of course, that's not critical race theory, right?

And my, how things change so quickly and become normalized. And so that's what

I think this needs to still be focused on. And I am no, I'm no fool when it comes to this.

I know that it becomes more and more dangerous over time as more and more powerful institutions and people become enamored with not just critical race theory, but the whole social justice panoply, the

Me Too stuff, now the environmental stuff. More and more statists emerge who want the government to handle everything from guns to disease control.

And it becomes dangerous to be someone like myself in a way. You blacklist yourself more and more every day you speak out publicly.

And I get that, and I'm no, I don't have any illusions about that. I know that many of you in academia and even in church hierarchies are, many of you are suffering and sometimes silently, or you say something, but you feel kind of overwhelmed or outnumbered.

And you may not even be. It may be that you have a few people at the top really intimidating the majority, but whether you're in the minority or majority, it's scary to step out on that limb.

And so I think these tools of understanding and responding are just, they're gonna be more and more important as time goes on.

So I'm gonna keep doing what I'm doing and they can call me any name they wanna call me and try to smear me however they wanna smear me, but it doesn't change the truth.

And for me, this podcast has never been about me. It's never been about building my platform or seeking influence or seeking some kind of a status in any kind of hierarchy.

It's always been about just giving you the tools that you need before God to respond to this stuff.

And so that's what I was doing the last week. And that's what I'll continue to do until I think the

Lord has something else for me and then Lord willing, I'll step away and do something else, maybe ministry related.

But for now, we're gonna be focusing on social justice and we're gonna talk about it and we're gonna talk about the changes that are happening.

For today, I'd like to talk about the Southern Baptist Convention because I didn't get to talk about it as much last week.

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So go to GoldRiverCO .com and get yourself some tea. All right, let's talk about the

Southern Baptist Convention. I wanna give you some clips from last week's convention from the annual meeting and I wanna talk about some of the most famous ones that are being passed around.

And the first one is gonna be a clip of Rick Warren, who is essentially defending himself.

He, as I explained in a previous podcast, his church was in danger of perhaps the

Credentials Committee, which is responsible for assessing whether a church is in compliance with Southern Baptist doctrine.

They were in danger of getting kicked out of the convention because they have women pastors and yet the Credentials Committee, and I'll show you that clip later, but the

Credentials Committee decided that they weren't qualified or ready or able to kick Saddleback Church out.

So this was a public discussion going on and Rick Warren decided to weigh in on that discussion.

And so I wanna say one thing before I play the video, it's interesting to me, I don't know why this is, but in years previous,

I've always been able to go back and play the Southern Baptist Convention and find clips and stuff. This year, it was only a live stream.

You can't go back, at least not that I could see anywhere, and find a place that you can play the entire convention and watch it again.

So some of these clips I was able to see live, but I was traveling, so I was not able to see a lot of them. A lot of them

I had to listen to other people tell me what happened. And then these were some of the more popular clips that surfaced on the internet from people who were recording the live stream.

So here's the one, the first one, and this is probably, when people remember SBC 2022, this may be the more or the most significant moment they remember possibly, this whole issue of Saddleback Church and women pastors, and then

Rick Warren defending himself. There's been some interesting memes online kind of making fun of Rick Warren, things like that he planted the church he was baptized at, you know, just things that are impossible, but Rick Warren kind of like is the

Chuck Norris of evangelicalism now. He can do anything. And so here's what he said that's provoking some of these memes and humorous responses.

You know, first, everybody welcome to Orange County, Southern Baptist of 149

Southern Baptist churches here, 90 of them started by Saddleback Church. You know, it's customary for a guy who's about to be hung to let him say his dying words.

I have no intention of defending myself. I have taught my kids and grandkids for years.

I am most like Christ when I refuse to defend myself. The Bible says Jesus spoke not a word unto them when

Pilate accused him of all kinds of things. So I have no intention. I have most of you on my mailing list anyway, and I can write you and tell you what

I believe about the gift of pastoring as opposite from the office of pastoring.

But I'm not here to talk about that. Lunchtime, I wrote you a love letter and I'd like for my possibly likely last convention to read it to you.

K and I could have not built Saddleback Church to its size and influence in any other denomination.

I love Southern Baptist. I am a fourth generation Southern Baptist pastor.

My great -grandfather was led to Christ by Charles Spurgeon and sent to America as a church planter.

Saddleback was sponsored by the North American Mission Board. I served on the staff of the

California State Convention and the Texas State Convention as a teenager. Billy Graham picked me up when

I was 18 and for the next 52 years mentored me because I started at 16 years old, hired by the

California Convention to preach youth revivals and I had preached over 120

Harvest Crusades before I was 20. Billy took this long -haired, skinny

Californian and mentored me for the next 52 years. Here's my love letter to you because I really am grateful if this is my last convention.

Because of Southern Baptist polity, I was allowed to serve one church for life.

That's not possible in those denominations. And grew it to become the largest church in this convention.

Because Southern Baptist gave me a passion for evangelism and mission, we baptized 56 ,631 new believers.

And as a Southern Baptist church, sent 26 ,869 members overseas to 197 nations.

Because Southern Baptist taught me the value of a membership covenant. 78 ,157 members of our church signed our membership covenant after taking a four -hour membership class.

Because Southern Baptist taught me to emphasize the priority of Bible study, we now have 9 ,173 home

Bible studies in homes in 162 Southern California cities. Because Southern Baptist taught me the value of church planting.

I already mentioned, we planted 90 in Orange County alone, and literally thousands around the world.

Because Southern Baptist taught me to honor and love the local church, I've had the privilege for 43 years of training 1 .1

million pastors. That, sorry friends, that's more than all the seminaries put together.

I owe you all so much. So I sincerely say, thank you,

Southern Baptist, for shaping my life. And you're never gonna find another

Baptist who agrees with you completely on everything. There are

Baptist brothers here today who don't believe Jesus died for the whole world. But we imagine somehow get along with them.

So as Western culture grows more dark, more evil, more secular, we have to decide, are we gonna treat each other as allies or adversaries?

Second, since this is the year 2022, that means we are 2022 years from the birth of Christ.

Now we know Christ started his ministry at 30 years of age, Luke tells us that, had a three and a half year ministry.

Christ died in AD 33. He was resurrected in AD 33.

He gave the great commission in AD 33. He sent the Holy Spirit and started the church in AD 33.

That means 2033, 2033, just 11 years from today, is the 2000th anniversary of the great commission.

I hope one of you, because I won't be here next year, will make a resolution that Baptists take the next 10 years to finish the task of the great commission in our generation before the 2000th anniversary of the church.

Are we gonna keep bickering over secondary issues? Are we gonna keep the main thing, the main thing?

We need to finish the task and that will make God smile. Thank you everybody,

I love you. According to Rick Warren's math, you just heard it,

I did the crunch the numbers. He trains almost three pastors, three every hour.

So for the last 43 years in that span, he has trained three pastors every hour, including while he's sleeping.

He's trained 71 pastors a day. I don't know where he's getting this number, that 1 .1

million pastors that he trained, Saddleback trained, in 43 years. That's an incredible number.

I don't know if he misspoke, I don't understand where that's coming from, but that's a whole lot of people.

And he says that was more than all the seminaries put together. And so I think that along with some of his other statements have caused him to be the subject of some ridicule.

And I think it comes back to his statements about, he doesn't wanna defend himself, but then it seems like he's defending himself.

He doesn't, he says, I owe you, but really what he's saying kind of, it seems like is you actually, you owe me.

Here's all the pastors that I've trained under the flag of the Southern Baptists and the missionaries

I've sent out under the flag of Southern Baptists and for the benefit of Southern Baptists, but 120

Harvest Crusades before he was 20 years old. I mean, he was name dropping Billy Graham, Charles Spurgeon.

And then you have, and this is the main reason, I think, that this has become the memorable moment for the convention because he went on for how many minutes is this?

Probably, I don't know. That was, I think about seven minutes or so.

He's able to go on without any interruption from the stage. Even Ed Litton, who's presiding over the meeting, amends him.

And I think I heard him do it at least twice. You hear amen in the background. It's Ed Litton at the microphone saying amen to what

Rick Warren is saying. And that was not, that kind of treatment was not given to others in the convention.

Most notably, Tom and his wife, Jennifer Buck, when they were trying to address the stage about the issue with his wife's mistreatment by those in the convention who sought to share a rough draft she had made years ago that told the story of abuse that she had undergone before her marriage to her husband.

And this is being compared by some, and they're saying, why in the world is Rick Warren let to just continue on as long as he wants?

There's amens from the stages. He's respectable. He has the biggest church in the Southern Baptist Convention, according to him. If it's not, it's definitely up there.

I mean, there's a lot of people that go to that church. He's, I mean, that's the obvious thing that would stand out and make you wonder whether or not that's why he was able to just defend himself like this, even though he said he's not defending himself.

And then what he says at the end there that we need to keep the main thing, the main thing. This is the big question.

What is the main thing? And he was, you know, there was people clapping for him. And what is the main thing?

Well, the main thing is the gospel, according to Rick Warren. We need to go and we need to get the gospel out there to the world.

What if someone were to come to you and say, well, the main thing is the gospel. It's not the Trinity. The main thing is the gospel.

It's not the deity of Christ. Main thing is the gospel. It's not whether or not the Bible's true. I mean, you would probably say if you heard any of those things, well, we have to have an inerrant, infallible word of God.

We have to have a Christ who is God. We have to have the clear teaching of God from scripture about himself.

If we're going to have the gospel, the two cannot be separated. The two go together.

Just try to undermine the inerrancy of scripture and then say, convince someone that scripture is rightly teaching us when it talks about the story of Jesus and repentance through by faith, by grace through faith in him for salvation.

It's silly, and yet that's what seems to be happening in the convention.

That seems to be where the direction is that some of these quote unquote secondary issues that really aren't secondary issues are now becoming watered down and seen as secondary when they're not.

Now, the issue of women pastors, people have asked me, is that a secondary issue,

John? And I have friends who are Pentecostal or in other church traditions who believe that women can be pastors.

And I have a strong disagreement with that. I don't believe that that's the case. I don't think you can get around scripture, but there are people who

I think mistakenly will promote the idea that there can be women pastors. Here's the question

I have though about this, and this will determine really whether or not this is a primary issue or a secondary issue.

And I realize there's some out there who would say, just this is a primary issue, I understand that.

But this is where I'm coming down on it though. The question is, what do you think about the

Bible? What do you think about the Bible's teaching? Do you think it's true? Do you seek to undermine it?

Do you seek to do gymnastics around those passages that you don't like because there's actually another authority that you're trying to appeal to?

Perhaps the man or a cultural authority that's based in man's wisdom is what you actually believe.

And so you're trying to bend the word of God or ignore the word of God so you can serve your true

God, which is your own mind, yourself, pleasing the world.

If that's what's happening, then you have a primary issue now because now you are undermining the inerrancy and sufficiency of Scripture, which is actually a direct attack on the nature of God, that what he, his character, if that's the motivation behind it.

And for a denomination like the Southern Baptists who are not assemblies of God, who are not Pentecostal, they don't, and so I just wanna say,

I think there are Pentecostals. I think there are some, I've gotten to know some who I think they're wrong, but their motivation is not that.

They're not trying to accommodate, at least some of the ones I know, the culture or some other authority.

They legitimately think that the Bible is okay with women pastors. And like I said,

I disagree, but I think they're not trying to undermine the inerrancy and sufficiency of Scripture.

This is different than the Southern Baptists where the Southern Baptists actually have a stated belief on this in the Baptist faith and message.

And this is also historically, the Southern Baptists have always had this position on women pastors, as far as I know.

And so when you have a denomination like that, and it's still on the books, this is still the stated belief.

This is still what people must share in common in order to cooperate with one another for the purpose of missions. And now they are waffling on their own statement of faith.

You have two things going on that are very bad. You have number one, you have the undermining of the

Bible itself. And I do think that the motive behind this is to try to accommodate, to accommodate people like Rick Warren, to accommodate the culture.

But then you have something else going on. And the reason I should just say, the reason I think it's accommodation is just because I can't think of any other reason.

No one's coming forward with a biblical arguments like you would see maybe with the assemblies of God for why women can be pastors.

Everyone's kind of on board with that idea, but they're trying to split hairs on whether or not the function and the office can be separated.

And they're trying, it's a halfway measure. It's kind of like the same sex attraction Christianity stuff where it's like, well, we're against homosexual marriage, but we just think you can have these desires and that's perfectly legitimate and it's not sinful.

And you can celebrate gay culture without endorsing gay behavior. And I mean, it sounds silly, but that's because it's a halfway measure.

And that's what's going on with this. There's a halfway measure going on right at the moment when the pressure for the

Southern Baptist Convention to accept egalitarianism is higher than it's ever been.

And there isn't, these aren't biblical arguments really, they're more pragmatic concerns.

And these are new, these are innovative arguments that are taking place for the

Southern Baptists that will, they're trying to put the onus or the burden of proof on traditional

Christians in the denomination who have always held Baptist belief on this subject, that now they have to somehow prove that, well, the office and the function are one and the same.

And really it's the opposite. The burden of proof is actually on those who are making the claim that those two can be separate.

So they're making an assumption there that there is a separation when you're not gonna find that assumption in the scripture.

That's not where it's rooted. It's rooted somewhere else. They're finding it somewhere else. They're bringing something else in and their own wisdom or their own opinions on this.

And then they're subverting the Bible and putting the cramming of the Bible into their new paradigm.

And they've done the same thing on the critical race stuff. And they've done the same thing on, like I said, some of them on this same -sex attraction issue.

And so we see it again with this. Some people would call it maybe the Hegelian dialectic, but there's this halfway measure, this accommodation, this appeasement going on.

And it's very concerning. And so this is probably gonna be one of the number one moments that the moment the

Southern Baptist Convention started shifting to say, well, the main thing isn't our statement of faith.

And that brings me to the second point here. So not only is it undermining the scripture and what it teaches and what

Baptists have held that it's taught, it's undermining their own statement of faith. So it's undermining the

Bible, okay, but it's also undermining their statement of faith. Why is that important, John? Because it comes back to some basic character issues, lying, deception.

If you can make a stated agreement and you all sign it and you all get together and you say, this is what we'll hold to, and then you start changing the rules and redefining the document, how is that any different than what we've seen happen to the

United States Constitution? It's not. It's presentism, it's relativism, it's postmodernism, words don't mean what words mean.

And we can't go back and find out what they meant at the time in which they were written and look at authorial intent to determine what they mean.

We must now, because we're in 2022, I guess, and now you have a big Southern Baptist church that has women pastors.

Now we have to interpret the older document that had a very specific meaning on this through the lens of what we think now of that term and how people are misusing that term and changing the dictionary.

If that's not a downgrade, I don't know what is. And so in response to this,

Al Mohler got up and he had this to say, and I think this is going to be between what

Rick Warren said and what Al Mohler said about this, that this is gonna be one of the biggest things that's remembered about Southern Baptist Convention 2022.

And so I'm gonna play you the clip and I'm gonna start with the Credentials Committee in their report.

They talk about this issue and then Al Mohler's response to it. And then I'll give you some commentary on Al Mohler and his response.

Here we go. Our scope is limited to considering the question of whether a church is currently in friendly cooperation with the convention as described in SBC Constitution Article 3.

Our assignment is to form an opinion as to whether a church has a faith and practice that closely identifies with the convention statement of faith.

To form that opinion, our committee relies on previous actions of the convention, the

Baptist faith and message, adopted resolutions, and the convention's governing documents.

It is important for you to know that although we can inquire of a church, we may not investigate or use any process that would attempt to exercise authority over a church.

To do so would be in direct violation of Article 4 of the SBC Constitution.

We are a recommending body only. We have no decision -making power.

That power lies with you, the messengers of the convention, or with the executive committee acting at interim between annual meeting sessions.

Only the convention or the executive committee has the authority to declare that it will no longer recognize a church as a cooperating church with the convention.

Our committee typically meets one time each month, meeting anywhere from two to five hours.

These meetings also require several hours of prep work before the meeting from each committee member, who are all volunteers, with other full -time and part -time jobs.

Current credentials committee members include Jim Averitt, a retired

Vice President Administrative Service Southern Nuclear Operating Company. He is a member of Dawson Memorial Baptist in Montgomery, Alabama.

Brother George Russ, Executive Director Metropolitan New York Baptist Association.

Brother Greg Field, Senior Pastor Nellis Baptist Church, Las Vegas, Nevada. Stacey Bramlett, Bank Senior Vice President, First Collierville, Tennessee.

Serving as ex officio is Brother Roland Slade, Senior Pastor Meridian Baptist, El Cajon, California.

Brother Don Currence, SBC Registration Secretary, Administrative Pastor, First Baptist, Ozark, Missouri.

And myself, Linda Cooper, and I am a registered dental hygienist, a member of Forest Park Baptist Church.

If you have a tooth problem, come see me. I could use a piece of floss right now.

These men and women highly respect the magnitude of our work. I would like to thank each one of them for their hard work and dedication to the submitters, survivors, and all the

SBC churches. For those of you who have been praying for us by name as we serve the

Southern Baptist Convention, I say thank you. We greatly need and appreciate your prayers.

During the 2021 SBC annual meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, a motion concerning the relationship of Saddleback Church, located in Anaheim, California, was referred to our committee for consideration.

For your reference, our report and recommendation can be found on page three of the

Tuesday Bulletin, as follows. Based on the information available to us currently, including direct communication with Pastor Rick Warren, who was so gracious in answering our questions regarding faith and practice, we have concluded that we are not yet prepared to make a recommendation regarding Saddleback Church, recognizing that there are differing opinions regarding the intent of the office of pastor, as stated in the

Baptist Faith and Message 2000. Therefore, we are coming today, asking for a study committee to provide clarity regarding this matter.

We feel it is very important for you to know that it is the unanimous opinion of the

Credentials Committee that the majority of Southern Baptists hold to the belief that the function of lead pastor, elder, bishop, overseer is limited to men as qualified by scripture, and that this was the intended definition of office of pastor, as stated in Article VI of the

Baptist Faith and Message 2000. However, the Credentials Committee has found little information evidencing the convention's belief regarding the use of the title of pastor for staff positions with differing responsibilities and authority than that of lead pastor.

For this reason, the Credentials Committee moves that the following recommendation be adopted.

The Credentials Committee recommends that the Southern Baptist Convention during its June 14th, 15th, 2022 annual meeting in Anaheim, California, form a study committee, the members of which shall be appointed by the president to report to the

Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting June 13th and 14th, 2023 in New Orleans, Louisiana, a recommendation to provide clarity regarding the office of pastor, as stated in the

Baptist Faith and Message Article VI, the church, given the many different offices within Baptist churches which include pastor in the title, though often with very different responsibilities and authority.

Mr. President, that concludes our report and our recommendation to this great convention.

Thank you for that. That is a, the question is, the Credentials Committee report on page three.

Microphone 5A. Microphone 5A, you have a point of order. Would you state your name, the name of your church, your point of order, and help us understand what has been done wrong.

Mr. President, my name is Bill Askell, pastor and messenger from the

Bethel Baptist Church in Owasa, Oklahoma, and I'm gonna put my earplugs in so I don't sound like I'm drunk, all right?

Now, what I wanna speak to is a point of order with reference to the Resolutions Committee, but a brother is behind me who wants to speak to a point of order, and I'm gonna yield to him because I love him dearly and thank

God for him. I introduce to you Dr. Al Mohler. Mr.

Chairman, I just come to this microphone in the event that it is in order for me to speak.

I'm speaking as a messenger of the Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky.

I served on the committee that brought the Baptist faith and message in 2000 that was overwhelmingly adopted by this convention.

My concern is as a churchman, a theologian, and someone who loves this convention, as I know everyone in this room does, if we eventually have to form a study committee over every word in our confession of faith, then we're doomed and we're no longer a confessional people.

Dr. Mohler, would you, your microphone number five, I recognize you again to continue speaking to this.

Thank you, sir. I certainly want to be in order with the rest of this convention.

Yes. I appreciate the opportunity. I'll make this brief. I also appreciate the good work of the

Credentials Committee and the spirit in which they bring this, but I am a confessionalist.

This is a confessional denomination. We say what we believe in specific words that are the

Baptist faith and message. The moment we start to, of necessity, have study committees to decide what the words mean, the words mean what

Southern Baptists said in the year 2000. At that time, the word pastor was used by the committee and adopted by the convention because we were told that is the most easily understood word among Southern Baptists for pastoral teaching leadership.

I have to hope we still have that much clarity and that churches that use the word pastor mean it.

Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity. All right, is there anyone who would speak for this recommendation?

Someone from the committee. Dr. Mohler, I understand totally.

To me, I know what pastor means, but in some of our Southern Baptist churches, pastor is a spiritual gift that is given to many people, so we wanted clarity in what that pastor means.

Ladies and gentlemen, with all due respect, that is not how we do our business.

Well, what you just heard was, in my mind, similar to statements made in politics from Bill Clinton not knowing what the definition of is is from a recent

Supreme Court justice in confirmation hearings saying she didn't know what a woman was because she's not a biologist. She couldn't at least give a definition for it.

And this brings up a question, and the question is, where did this come from in the convention?

How did we get to a point when you have the credentials committee of all committees, which should be responsible for knowing what the

Baptist faith and message teaches and applying it because they're responsible for booting a church if a church isn't in compliance?

How in the world did they not know what their own document seems to say? Now, much could be said here, but one of the things that has not been pointed out, at least in my hearing,

I'm sure it has in places I'm not aware of, is that the chairman of the committee, I believe that was the chairman, if I'm not mistaken.

It's someone representing the committee, but I think it's the chairman, is a woman, obviously. It's a woman who comes out and represents the committee's position on this.

And I've wondered for a while whether or not that is a contribution to this. You can go back and watch a episode that A .D.

Robles and I did together on the Conversations That Matter podcast, where we analyzed a recording a student had taken in class of Danny Akin teaching on complementarianism.

And Danny Akin's position is a soft complementarian position. Well, I don't think

Danny Akin would describe it as that. He would see himself as just complementarian. But if I have time,

I might play you some clips from it later. But he even opens the door for, well,

I wouldn't let Lottie Moon be a pastor, but if she wanted to preach on a Sunday, I would let that happen.

And so there are things like that in there. But one of the things that I remember A .D. and I talked about was the board for the seminary, the trustee board.

And at the time, the chairman of the board was a woman. And I believe there were a number of women serving as trustees.

And it was peculiar. And I think A .D. made the point that it's peculiar for this reason.

You have an institution that believes that only men can be pastors. And it's supposed to be training male leaders for the church, for missionaries and church positions.

And so what the trustee board is going to be responsible for, in part at least, is to determine things like curriculum changes or address curriculum if there's a problem that comes up, address the direction of the seminary, what they do.

And it just seemed odd, according to A .D., that you would have the chairman of that committee that is truly responsible for the seminary being a woman when that person could not even go through the program that she's in charge of, essentially.

She could go through it, but she couldn't go through it for the determined purpose the program's there for.

She couldn't exit an MDiv program and then get ordained in a church that was in cooperation with the seminary, as far as the statement of faith.

And so it would be, why would she go through that whole program? What would be the point? But yet she's gonna be, in part, responsible for making decisions about the seminary.

And A .D. just thought, there's some tension there, it seems like. That seems unusual, it seems odd. Those aren't, you wouldn't want people on your trustee board who are making these decisions when it's not,

I think the way he phrased it was, you know, women can't be pastors, but boy, they're the ones that really know what's good for pastors to learn and know.

And I thought it was a pretty valid point. I'm like, yeah, that is kind of odd. But we've been in that for now years.

And so you have the trustee board being represented, and I believe being chaired, I should have looked that up, or the credentials committee being chaired by a woman here.

And it's, I don't know if anyone noticed the irony. Well, if you can have the person who's responsible for applying the

Baptist faith and message and determining whether, and literally involved in the discussion of whether pastors are male, can be female or not.

And that person herself is a woman. And she has authority over pastors in the convention.

There's another hierarchy here, which is the, in a way, which is the convention. And the credentials committee is determined.

There is an authority that comes with this. But, and so she's over pastors in this capacity, then that undermines, would seem to undermine your stated belief, at least the assumptions behind your stated belief.

So we're not technically violating it because she's not a pastor, but we're giving her a level of authority beyond a pastor for these specific purposes.

That to me is an obvious, it's so obvious in my mind, that is an obvious manifestation of the undermining of the basis for complementarian or patriarchal views.

Because it's no longer something that's, I think most people would think of as rooted in creation.

It's just, we have these kind of arbitrary rules in the Bible that we're responsible for. Women can do anything, but be a pastor apparently.

And so that's what's happening in the convention. And I think it's just, it's obvious why.

You don't have to really analyze this much. You just see who is the one representing the credentials committee there.

And I think it becomes kind of clear what's going on. Now, Al Mohler came out and made a very good point.

He was direct. And it's a curious thing to me, because he did not do this in 2019, when

Resolution 9 was up for debate. He got on his show the next day and talked about it.

But he had to also kind of voice his appreciation for the resolutions committee.

And he couldn't, he wouldn't take this hard stand on that issue from the convention floor.

And other things have happened from the convention floor. Now, Mohler is not there. Now, he did on this issue. And the question is why?

And the answer is, I don't fully know, because there's not a lot publicly available. I've talked to people who have known

Mohler pretty well, and they've told me what they think is going on. But there's no publicly available thing

I can point to to say, this is why Al Mohler did it. And I think it's safe, or it's reasonable,

I think, to just take him at his word here, that at least part of his motivation is he legitimately believes that this is a threat to the convention.

And this is an area that for all of Al Mohler's waffling on same -sex attraction or same -sex orientation, and whether it exists or not, and his waffling on reparative therapy, and his waffling on critical race theory, which has been probably his biggest issue.

And I've gone through that. In fact, I go through it in detail in the book, Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict.

He hasn't really waffled, to my knowledge, on the issue of women preachers and complementarianism.

He's been pretty consistent. In fact, he rebuked Beth Moore, I think it was in 2018 or 19, not by name,

I don't believe, but he insinuated some things on Twitter. And so he was willing to kind of take a stand on this one issue when he wasn't with all these other things.

I mean, and we found out even recently with this whole Jennifer Lyle situation, I mean, he was also really making, paving a way for the

Me Too movement in the Southern Baptist Convention. I mean, he's kind of been on board with the progressive trends in at least three areas, the

Me Too movement, the BLM, or critical race theory stuff, and then the soft -pedaling of LGBT. He's been at the forefront of those things.

And yet this is one thing, women pastors, where he does tend to deviate. And for those who don't know, when

Al Mohler took over Southern Seminary in the early 90s, this was one of the things that shocked some people or surprised liberals who, and I'm talking classical, not classical liberals, but the kind of liberals that were not postmodern, but more modernist liberals.

They were denouncing, or not denouncing, but teaching against biblical inerrancy and that kind of thing. They were surprised that Al Mohler had come in and changed his position, because Al Mohler's position was egalitarian.

And all of a sudden, without him telling them, he's now a complementarian? How is this possible? And I think it was one professor, former professor there, he says it in the documentary about the conservative resurgence at the time, he said that Al Mohler's just gonna switch back when the winds blow in a different direction.

And so Al Mohler's been known, this is really mainly what the myth surrounding

Al Mohler, the larger -than -life Al Mohler, this is really what it's rooted in, is that Al Mohler is a strong complementarian.

And he kicked out all the people who believed in things like women pastors, and he took a stand on it, and that's what he's been known for.

And so it's part of his identity, I think, and maybe he legitimately does have that as a conviction.

He believes that, even though he's an opportunist, perhaps, in other areas, he may actually believe this. And so we'll see what happens.

And he also, this is an issue that maybe he thinks is a winning issue. That could be also. I mean, he got an applause for that, but the damage has been done,

I think. The assumptions have been undermined, and that's where we're at now. And so I appreciated there's a pastor,

Alan Nelson, who wanted to ask Danny Akin, the president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, if Danny Akin saw any relationship between them giving women

MDivs to be qualified to be a pastor, and this confusion over what a pastor was.

And so I'll play that for you, and Danny Akin's response. Yes, sir.

My name is Alan Nelson. Dr. Akin, my question is, do you think that there's any connection between your institution's conferring degrees upon women for pastoral ministry, and this convention's confusion about what a pastor is, and whether or not a woman can be a pastor?

Do you see any connection at all between your institution giving women degrees for pastoral ministry, and our misunderstanding about what pastors are?

Thank you. Well, I can't speak to whether there is a connection. What I can tell you is we allow women to enter into any degree program at our institution.

We do provide classes that are specifically for women that are gonna have a teaching ministry as a woman to women, but we do not endorse anyone to ministry and that's not what your seminaries do.

But we're also crystal clear, women are welcomed at Southeastern Seminary. We want them to come and be well -prepared biblically and theologically in every area.

And they do know in advance that we are a loving, gracious, complimentary school, and that may be why we have more women studying at Southeastern today than at any time in our history.

And so ladies, come on. You're welcome. Now this rah, rah, rah, let's clap because someone said something that we agree with that didn't really address the actual question.

Let's, in the previous clip we watched, clap when Ed Litton says, we don't conduct our business this way.

When there's some way to push back on the people who are trying to keep the denomination from sliding away from orthodoxy, when they are neutralized because people want them neutralized, that is a death blow to the

Southern Baptist Convention. The very people responsible for trying to maintain the statement of faith they have, the orthodoxy they have, the beliefs that they supposedly hold in common, those people who are the defenders of that document and concern that that document's being undermined are being marginalized, to pick a word the social justice warriors love, in the convention, not because there's someone who is directly attacking them and saying, we disagree with the statement of faith and we're going to undermine it.

They're not being direct like that. You shouldn't, by the way, expect people to be that direct. They're gonna be subversive.

Satan's subversive. Why wouldn't you expect that? What they're doing is they're indirectly getting them for things like their tone, the way that they're doing it, and strawmanning them as if the question is that Alan Nelson, you just heard him ask, as if his question were, should any women be allowed to get theological education?

I mean, that's not what he's asking. His answer is about whether women should be trained as pastors.

And if we are assuming that that's okay and that's encouraged, then wouldn't we assume that there's going to be some confusion on that downstream?

And the answer is, yeah, there would be confusion on it. And so, I mean, it's not that women shouldn't have a theological education.

It's should they specifically be trained as pastors and take the classes that pastors need to take for their specific function, their job, their role.

Those things are all part of the same thing in scripture. They're not separated.

I want to take a trip with you down memory lane with Danny Akin, if I may. If you go to spring of 2019,

I was just looking up some notes and I was remembering as I went down, trip down memory lane.

In fact, I'll make this slideshow, because I'm not going to go over all of it, but available in the info section for patrons. If you want to go see this slideshow from the situation in 2019, then you can.

But briefly speaking, we had Beth Moore saying she was preaching from on Mother's Day.

We had some people at Southern Seminary, Tom Schreiner, and I think we had as well,

Danny Burke kind of, and we had Owen Strand who was teaching at Mid -America or Mid -Western at the time.

All, without naming the name, Owen might have, but they were trying to,

I don't think they were naming the name. They were just trying to hold up a complementarian view.

They were being opposed, their view, by people like Dwight McKissick and Thabiti Annabouile to some extent, obviously

Beth Moore, Russell Moore. You actually had Pastor Grant Gaines and Russell Moore opining on Twitter about how great it would be if the next president of the

Southern Baptist Convention were a woman. This was 2019 this was happening. And so, yeah, we can't have women pastors, but yeah, the next president of the

Southern Baptist Convention, she should be a woman. And so this was all going on. Well, in that circumstance of Beth Moore, I think

Beth Moore quoted the previous president of Southern Seminary, Honeycutt, and supported this more egalitarian view.

And Al Mohler came out without naming Beth Moore, but Beth Moore knew who he was talking about. And Al Mohler, he said, we have reached a critical moment in the

SBC when there are now open calls to retreat from our biblical convictions on complementarianism embrace the very error that the

SBC repudiated over 30 years ago. Honestly, I never thought I would see this day. And I don't know why he wouldn't think that he would see this day, but this was the situation in 2019.

So Mohler actually was in favor on the side of the complementarians at that point.

Now you had Danny Akin though, at this point. And I just wanna say guys, just remember what

I said before, this doesn't mean that he wasn't pushing other stuff. It doesn't mean that the Me Too stuff, the critical race theory stuff and soft peddling of LGBT wasn't happening, but he was upholding this.

And so were many of the professors at Southern Seminary, and they still uphold a complementarian view. And Danny Akin during this time was recorded in a class in which after that,

I'm told that not just that class, but universally across campus, students were then told they were not allowed to record lectures anymore, which is very telling.

But in this particular recorded class, Danny Akin, who I guess didn't know he was being recorded, talked to a group there at the seminary.

And I have some quotes that I'll read for you. He says that he believes in a quote, a kinder, gentler complementarianism that asks quote, what can women do instead of what can't women do?

Which I think is the wrong question. The question is what's God's design for women and men, not what can, what can't they do.

But that's how he frames it. And he says, I don't see anything in the Bible that says a woman cannot be a king, a queen or prime minister or a president.

This is again, preference. I don't think it's smart to have women referees where a woman coach for a bunch of guys. That's a wisdom issue.

I can't give you chapter and verse. Then he says, women can pray, read the scriptures before the

Sunday sermon. They can assist in baptism and serve the Lord's supper. He begins to get uncomfortable, his word, if a woman starts exegeting the text.

Yet he also says that he says that W .C.

Criswell and his wife led a Bible study, co -led a Bible study for 50 years at First Baptist Dallas.

And he thought it was unwise. He says, I think it was probably even, I don't wanna say unbiblical because if I say that then,

I'll just say that I don't think it was the truest expression of what the Bible teaches about what women do. I don't have a problem, and here we go, teaching you, if you pick the context, in co -ed fashion, exceptionally, but not normative.

So here's where we get the soft complementarianism. He goes, if Lottie Moon were alive today, would I have her come to my church and speak on a

Sunday morning? I would, but she wouldn't be there every Sunday in the authoritative position of a teaching elder.

Who wouldn't want Lottie to speak on a Sunday morning? So this is the question. This is the question. Are the office and the function separated?

If they're separated, and you can have someone who takes the function of a pastor for a Sunday morning, but isn't the regular pastor and doesn't maybe have that title, then you've just given up the debate.

Because if they're not tied together, then why not be loose with the term pastor itself?

If we're just able to make things up, which is what's happening here in the Southern Baptist Convention now, why not just say, well, we're gonna call these people pastors, but they're not, what's different from what

Danny Akin's saying from someone who just says, preferentially, I think it's fine for a woman to preach half the year, but not the other half the year, or less than half a year, so people don't get the idea that she's the pastor.

Or that a woman can now be a pastor and take that title, but as long as they're not the lead pastor and regularly exegeting scripture.

Or a woman can preach a passage as long as she doesn't exegete scripture in that passage, if she just, she can share an experience, let's say, instead of preach the scripture.

Or, I mean, you get what I'm saying. It becomes origami. You can just make the rules up as you go and say that you're being biblically faithful when you're not.

And so Danny Akin is not patriarchal in the least.

He is not looking at a created order and saying, well, God has intentions in the way he created things, and so leadership belongs to men.

Men should be the leaders in social situations, you know, like the government or the church, or he's looking at specific texts, and he's saying, well, this text specifically says a woman can't be a pastor, and then it's kind of like, but we can, everything, as long as we technically don't break that command, then we can do everything else.

So it's missing the whole idea that there's a design in this, that the scripture's assuming a design that's different from men or different from women.

Women have a maternal nature that men don't have, by the way. I mean, they have advantages that men don't have.

The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. And that is where the idea of complementarianism comes from, that they complement one another.

But he condemns, in this speech, he gives Owen Strand's tone, you know, when

Owen Strand goes for complementarianism pretty hard, and he says, I'm very much where Russell Moore is.

He says, Russ has been one of those who has been helping promote the women's network, and they just met recently last week at the

ERLC, and you know, engaging these questions. He likes where Russell Moore's at, and this was at the time Russell Moore was saying, why not a woman president of the

Southern Baptist Convention? So this is Danny Akin, and Danny Akin's the one that's responding, three years later, now responding to a question about, hey, what's happening at your seminary?

Could that be contributing to the confusion over this? You bet it's contributing. We've heard Danny Akin in class, teaching at the seminary, confusing this issue.

He's the kind of guy that gave them the credentials committee, the very arguments they're using right now to separate the function and the office.

He did the same thing. Now, he might not go as far as them, but he did the same thing. So this is what we have going on in the

Southern Baptist Convention, and it's the death of the Southern Baptist Convention, and it's not because, well, this is how progressives phrase things, generally, when they hear someone like me say this, is like, well, you just, you think that women getting involved in ministry is the death of the convention, or you just think, you just don't like women.

No, it's the death of the convention, because it really has little to do with women getting involved in ministry.

That's not the issue that's killing the convention. The issue that's killing the convention is the rejection of the authority of scripture and the authority of their own guiding documents, and the inability to interpret those documents.

If you can't interpret them, you can't enforce them. If you can't enforce them, there is no unity anymore, because people can just lie about what they believe or make it sound, define it however they want, and if you don't have people with the same, they're not on the same page theologically, then trust is, there is no trust anymore.

You don't wanna fund an organization that doesn't believe what you don't believe, and is it any wonder that there's hardly any trust between the two sides now in the

Southern Baptist Convention? There isn't. There's no trust. It's totally destroyed, and these things are all related.

You have to realize they're related, and IMB missionaries have told me for years, decades on the mission field, they have, in areas where there's not many

Southern Baptists, let's say they have to partner with cooperative program money, with local people who are

New Apostolic Reformation, Pentecostal, Charismatic, all sorts of theologies there that are different than the

Baptist faith and message, and yet they have to partner for ministry with them, women pastors included, and these stories don't make the light of day just because the

IMB, when you leave your force generally, or you have to sign a non -disclosure agreement in order to get your benefits, and so these people aren't talking about it, but they'll say privately sometimes, and so if that's what, you don't have to believe me on that.

I don't have a source I can point you to publicly, but if that's what's happening, let's say, in the IMB, and if this is what's being taught at seminaries, though they're trying to keep it under wraps, then it is no wonder that you had what you saw yesterday at the convention floor, and you have to ask your question.

Why did that happen? How did that happen? You have a convention that isn't able anymore to define to what a pastor is, and that's a real problem, so hope this was helpful for all you

Southern Baptists in seeing kind of one area in which there's kind of a deep cancer. I wanna say this kind of at the end here.

Two things, really. I wanna say, number one, that the, man, this would probably be a separate podcast, so I'm thinking of, if I wanna go here, let me just make it very brief, and maybe

I'll expand in another podcast, but conservatives seem to be more motivated now on the idea of women pastors, because it seems black and white to them.

You know, we have a Baptist faith message. You can't have women pastors. You have people in here that don't know what a pastor is, or they think there's a place for that, and so they're more motivated on this, and they have been,

I think, for a few years, but I think what's happened is, and this isn't criticizing anyone in particular.

This isn't, don't take it that way. I have much respect, by the way, and I wanna say this specifically about Tom Askell.

I have much respect for him to go through what he went through at the convention. It's not easy going through that and being called the things you're called and all of that.

Would I have called, I mean, I've said this publicly, would I have called out false teachers by name and said what they're doing is false teaching and been a lot more aggressive?

You know, if I was in that position or something, yeah, I probably would, but anyone who's willing to run against the machine, the liberal machine, is going to take some hits, and so I just wanna say about him and then everyone at CBN, I do have respect for what they attempted to do.

I think, though, that the issues that are emphasized among conservatives with any clout in the convention have been issues that aren't necessarily the same issues that would motivate, and in fact, the level to which they are going after these issues, they're not, so there's two things.

They're not the same issues that people in the pews are as concerned about, even though maybe they should be, and because it's not all that aggressive and there's not an identification of false teachers and who they are and why the false teaching's dangerous, except for we have a

Baptist faith, and we have a book, we have a Baptist Faith and Message that also gives us a complementarian view.

There's just not a huge motivation, I think, to show up at a convention, and so I'll expand on this,

I think, in another podcast, but if the issue, think about it this way. If the issue was we have people in the convention who do not hold to the same view on the authority of Scripture as we do, even though, yeah, they say they sign the statements, they say they have that view,

I believe in the Danvers Statement, we have people in the convention, though, who are, they are putting themselves in opposition to the very

Bible that you hear from every Sunday and read every day, and the reason that you support the

Southern Baptist Convention is because you want the Bible, the teachings of the Bible to get out there, and you have people undermining the

Bible, and by the way, they're false teachers, because I can show you other areas in which they polluted the gospel, or if they're not false teachers, they're like Peter, and they're giving cover to false teachers, and they're not repenting of it, so they are worse than Peter, because they're not repenting of it, and we need to go kick these false teachers out of our convention who have false doctrine, and if that was kind of the message going out there, scorched earth, these people need to, there's no compromise with them, we're not sharing anything, once we become in charge, we're booting them kind of thing, which no one wants to say,

I get that, you may motivate the base more, or that window of opportunity that I think is closed,

I think that that may have motivated the base to show up, but most people in the pews, they don't know what complementarianism even is, that's something that's foreign to them, they're hearing it, they're trying to, they should know it perhaps, they should know what patriarchy is, but I don't think most people do, in the pews, they know what the

Bible is though, and they know what undermining the Bible, what that is and how it's bad, and so there's been kind of, the level of the discussion has been a little more academic and kind of just, it's been very, measured would be the nice word, but weak would be probably the not so nice word, it's been kind of weak, there's been a lot of behavior that I think would be in accord with a time in which everyone was supposed to treat each other like gentlemen, we are past that time now, and so I think that was one of the reasons that, this year we saw a light turnout for conservatives, and they're just not motivated by this issue as much, though they probably should be for the reasons that I've mentioned, and for years, there was kind of a concern about woman pastors in the convention among conservatives, they wanted to emphasize that, but there wasn't a lot of evidence, so you'd find a church every now and then, like a

North American mission board plant that they had women pastors, and then maybe there would be a stink about it, there would be a response, we don't support this, something along those lines, and it would go away, it would die down, but it was never characteristic of the entire denomination, and the people going to their churches are thinking, well, my pastor isn't like that, and it's hard to see it,

I think conservatives rightly saw that this was going to be the way, if we're gonna go this way on critical race theory, then we're gonna go this way on women pastors, but I think they were much more comfortable debating women pastors at the convention, putting out material against women pastors, all of that than they were with dealing with the woke critical race theory woke stuff, and that was more prevalent, that was more systemic to the denomination, characteristic of it in every entity, and the big churches pretty much universally, and it was always a hard thing,

I think, for conservatives, I'm just giving you my opinion at the end of this, just my opinion, I think it was always a hard thing for conservatives to go after that, because they were afraid of being called racist, and it was also, for them it was academic speak, they weren't familiar with, conservative

Baptists are familiar with complementarianism, they have to learn it, they talk about it in seminary, but they're not talking about critical race theory and how to respond to that in seminary, and so it's just out of their comfort zone, and it's a fearful thing too, once you understand it and you see how it works, and you see how easy someone gets canceled for being a racist, and you even see the examples of Southern Baptists, or people talking about the

SBC, and who dare to challenge their critical race theory infused racial reconciliation, and how they're called racist in 0 .2

seconds, it just creates, I think, a lot of apprehension, and so it was much more, it was higher ground, it was much more defensible ground in the mind of conservatives, broadly speaking, to go after the egalitarian issue in women pastors, and that's been going on,

I think, for a few years, the evidence wasn't that strong though, it just wasn't a motivating thing, of course, everything was there that I mentioned, that showed you that this was where it was going, but it just wasn't overt, well now, it's starting, the beginning of the overtness is starting, and I think people have left, unfortunately, people who are, a lot of churches who were very concerned about the critical race theory stuff, and just didn't wanna be part of this woke denomination, in their minds, just ended up leaving, they didn't see a huge amount of pushback, they saw some, but it wasn't a lot, and now,

I think the conservatives, this is where we are now, I think conservatives are, they're raring to go on the complementarian issue, and it's just, the army's been downsized so much, and so it's a less, less people are coming every year, in fact,

I'll play you this clip, this is what Tom Askell said, after the convention, after he graciously lost, and he said this about people who came out to support him, but I especially want to thank those who sacrificed to get to Anaheim, specifically for the presidential vote,

I had one brother tell me that he spent one and a half years worth of his allotment of money in the church budget for conferences in order to come, another man told me this morning, that he took a mortgage payment out of his family budget in order to come,

I don't even know what to say. This is one of the things that we've been talking about for now a while, since,

I think we've been talking about it since 2019, and I know I asked folks that are, that are higher up in the conservative movement, if you want to call it that, in the

Southern Baptist Convention, what the ground game plan was, how do we get people out when you have a high number of people that are paid to be there from NAM, and then you have a high number of people who come out from big churches that can afford in their budget to send people there, and how do you get conservatives from little churches in the country who don't have the money to pay for a plane ticket and a hotel room in California to show up at a convention?

And that's been a difficult thing. And so what Tom Askell's describing here is a problem that I don't know how it's overcome.

People aren't going to be taking out mortgages every year so they can show up at a convention where they lose, and they're outvoted, and I mean, it's just not possible, and I would greatly respect,

I wanna say it, I greatly respect the people who did this. I'm not saying it's stupid or dumb, it's actually, I think, what they should do if they're gonna stay in the denomination.

They need to make an effort. There's a timetable for that, though. There's a point in which you have to say, this isn't worth it anymore, and I gave a whole thing on eight reasons to leave the

Southern Baptist Convention last year, because I could see that this is where it was going, and there didn't seem to be a way to recover it.

And yeah, it's sad, there's a lot of money, wrapped up in these institutions, but if there's no way to,

I mean, if you're gonna be expending a lot more money, both personally and as a church, or if you're gonna be, even if you just pay whatever it is, the $14 a year to remain in the

SBC, a minimum amount, but then you still have to pay to get to these conventions, and it does cost money, and so I think the writing is on the wall for the

SBC, and this is just further evidence, and hopefully this is a further, just for those on the fence on this,

I hope that this helps you see how thoroughly compromised the

Southern Baptist Convention is, because if they can't even keep to their statement of faith, they can't even define their statement of faith, there's no basis for unity, there's no basis for cooperation at that point, and it's been undermined for years, and in various ways, and now we're starting to reap the consequences of it, and starting to see,

I think, what will be a bigger push within the next decade, within the convention. Eventually, you're going to just see, I think, the acceptance of women pastors,

I don't know how you get away from it, it may take some time, but even now, it seems like some of the pushback is, it's more symbolic than anything, how much of it actually is going to affect things if the credentials committee can't even apply their own statement of faith.

So if that's confirmation for you on leaving, then I will have served my purpose, I hope, in this particular video.

If you're gonna stay, I'll say what I always say, then I greatly respect you for fighting, but you need to fight if you're gonna stay, and you need to have an exit strategy if things don't go the way that you're wanting them to go.

So I don't know if that's next year or the year after that, and I have a great respect for the people who did go and expend time and money and tried to make a difference, even if, whether or not they did things the way

I would've done, we all do things differently, but the point is that I think people need encouragement, and so I think it would be good, if you're listening to this and you haven't said thank you to CBN folks,

I mean, who's at CBN? You have Rod Martin, you have Brad Jerkovich, you have then obviously

Tom Askell running for the position, you have Votie Bauckham, I mean, Votie was there running for president of the Pastors Conference, he's been really clear on these issues.

In Fault Lines, you have some people with some good character, leaders in their churches, leaders on the mission field that were trying to make a valiant effort here, and some friends of mine, people

I know from the American Reformer involved in this, and if you know someone who was part of this effort, I just would thank them.

Even a defeated army still needs, they need some encouragement, and so my goal here isn't to kick a dog while it's down at all,

I don't intend to do that, I wanna encourage as well, but I'm gonna give you the real deal,

I'm gonna give you what I really think, and so I really do think that, yeah,

I mean, for the last few years, not this convention, we could have been more aggressive on false teaching, and really tried to rally people, and we would have been called all kinds of names, but to forget about that and just go for the jugular on that, but the efforts were still made, very strong efforts to return the denomination to orthodoxy, and within the

SBC, I mean, the main thing is thou shalt be nice, and thou shalt not speak evil of another fellow Southern Baptist, and I think there's a fear ingrained in the culture of the

SBC that if you do that, you're toast, and so I understand some of the aversion that some people had to doing that, but despite that barrier, there was still a great effort made this year, and so thank you to all the people who did make that effort for exposing this,

I mean, what you've done, if you went to the convention and you voted and you were part of this effort, what you've done is not a waste, it has served to further expose, when you've pushed on these things and asked the questions you've asked from the microphones, it has exposed who the people running the convention really are, and we need to see the truth, and the truth is always important and worth fighting for, and many of those in the convention who went out there, that's what they were there for, and so this is not a waste,

God saw it, and for those who even took out mortgages, don't think that your effort was in vain, but assess what you're gonna do for next year, that's all

I gotta say, hope that was helpful, so much more to say about the SBC, but I need to get to some other things, so we'll see what happens next week.