The State of the SBC with Tom Buck

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There is a lot going on at the SPC that is bringing up a lot of questions in the minds of a lot of people, but thankfully there are some men who have some answers.

00:07

And today I have one with me on the program.

00:09

We're going to be talking to Pastor Tom Buck.

00:12

You do not want to miss this episode.

00:14

Conversations with a Calvinist begins right now.

00:36

Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.

00:38

My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.

00:41

And as I said in the introduction, I am joined today by Pastor Tom Buck.

00:45

Of the First Baptist Church of Glendale, Texas.

00:50

And I want to welcome you to the show today, sir.

00:52

Thank you for being willing to come on the program.

00:55

I'm glad to be here.

00:56

Appreciate you having me.

00:57

Yes, sir.

00:58

And I do want to also mention that we share a wonderful blessing.

01:01

Both of us have Jennifer's in our lives that are certainly our better half.

01:06

So I'm thankful to your wife for giving you to me for this hour.

01:10

So tell her I said that we appreciate it.

01:12

I certainly will.

01:13

Well, Tom, the reason why I asked you to be on the program is, as I've heard your name for years and we've never met personally.

01:21

The first time I ever heard your name come up was on Dr.

01:24

James White's program.

01:26

You used to, that's correct, right? You'd come on to the dividing line.

01:31

Yeah.

01:32

And I used to be a dividing line junkie.

01:34

I don't get to listen to it as much as I used to, but I used to listen to it all the time.

01:37

And I would, I would hear this, this, this guy coming on to talk about the state of the SBC.

01:42

And you seem to be a guy who really knows what's going on.

01:46

Can you give us a little bit of your history and sort of how you, how you came to where you are and, and, and maybe how you are.

01:55

Well, tell us about yourself.

01:56

I guess it's a better way of saying that.

01:58

Yeah.

01:58

Well, I, as far as my relationship with the SBC, I've been in the SBC church my entire life.

02:05

In fact, my parents were members of the SBC church.

02:09

So one week after I was born, I was in the nursery, an SBC church.

02:14

And so I often jokingly say I was a part of an SBC church before I ever got saved.

02:20

And so I came to know Christ in SBC church.

02:23

I grew up in a very, what I would say would have been a liberal Southern Baptist church.

02:28

The people in the pew were not necessarily so, but the pastor was definitely a moderate in how he understood and handled the scriptures.

02:36

And so when it came time for me to decide to go off to Bible college and seminary, that was in the late seventies, early eighties.

02:47

I began to think through those things.

02:49

That was not a good time in Southern Baptist schools.

02:51

And so I made the decision to go off to Moody Bible Institute and then went to Dallas Theological Seminary.

02:57

I came out of Dallas Theological Seminary in 93, wondering if I was going to go back into the Southern Baptist church.

03:05

The entire time I was in Dallas, I was a member of the Southern Baptist church, but I didn't know whether I was going to pastor there or not because of a lot of the problems that I saw within the convention.

03:15

But that happened to be the same year Dr.

03:16

Albert Moeller became president of Southern.

03:19

And it seemed like things were going in a great direction.

03:23

And so I decided to go into, become a pastor in the Southern Baptist convention, did so.

03:31

And it's really just been the last four or five years that I've had increasing concerns with the Southern Baptist convention and the direction it was going.

03:40

Okay.

03:41

I noticed something on your Twitter feed a couple of days ago.

03:45

You posted a picture that you were actually involved in the formulation of the Dallas statement.

03:52

I think I saw a picture of you and Bodie and John MacArthur and James White and several others.

03:58

How did you get, how did you become part of that? Did people just know you for being a pastor for so long, or did you, how did you get involved with that? Well, mainly Josh Weiss, Dr.

04:09

Josh Weiss is the one who organized that.

04:11

And so I had begun talking to Dr.

04:14

Weiss, having met him at G3, thankful for the ministry that he had.

04:22

And both of us were concerned about what had taken place with MLK 50.

04:30

We kind of independently thinking about those things, as well as talking somewhat to one another.

04:36

I was heavily involved to one degree or another with Nine Marks at that time.

04:42

And I was concerned about Nine Marks connection with these issues.

04:49

T4G, as you know, shortly after that did something very similar to what MLK 50 did.

04:56

And so Josh, Josh and I were talking together about these issues.

04:59

And I wrote Dr.

05:01

MacArthur a letter actually, independent of Dr.

05:06

Weiss.

05:07

And I got about 50 pastors to sign that letter with me.

05:11

And I was saying that we need him to speak out on this issue.

05:15

And that this issue was on the same level as other things he's talked about, like with charismatic movement and emerging church movement.

05:26

And I said in the letter, the only difference is I think that that this issue is, is a bigger threat to the church and all those other things you've dealt with combined.

05:34

Oh, wow.

05:36

And Dr.

05:37

MacArthur, at the same time, Josh Weiss was communicating with Dr.

05:42

MacArthur as well.

05:43

And long story short, we all ended up in Dallas together.

05:46

So it's kind of how it happened.

05:47

And we've forged a friendship from that.

05:51

Okay.

05:52

Now I, again, speaking from somebody on the outside, I remember MLK 50 from the outside, but I don't, but I don't know the significance that that had and why that would have been a catalyst.

06:06

Like I said, I kind of have my opinion, but I want to hear it from, from somebody who is more educated in that area.

06:13

What was it that about that, that, that made you say, this is the red flag.

06:17

This is something that we need to address.

06:20

I mean, obviously we know MLK had a lot of theological problems and social or personal problems, but, but of course he's also a hero to many people.

06:30

So it made it, you know, that's why he's uplifted.

06:33

But what was, what was the issue? Cause I, again, I, I know little, but I want to hear your thoughts.

06:38

Well, yeah, I mean the ethics and religious liberty commission of the Southern Baptist convention is who put that on Dr.

06:45

Russell Moore obviously was leading that at the time.

06:49

And you know, I have absolutely no problem with honoring Martin Luther King Jr.

06:54

for how God sovereignly used him as an instrument in our nation to bring about needed, desperately needed change in our culture.

07:05

So someone doesn't have to be completely orthodox to be able to be celebrated for what they do for our country.

07:12

And so I'm thankful for that.

07:14

But there was a, a total, a complete disconnect between what he had done as a civil leader, if you will, or how he was used of God in that way in our society versus what he believed as the gospel.

07:33

He did not believe the gospel that, that you and I believe he didn't believe the gospel that the Southern Baptist convention that you're all see claims that they believe.

07:42

Yep.

07:43

And I say, amen, amen to that.

07:45

Knowing what he taught and what he believed.

07:46

I agree.

07:46

Absolutely.

07:47

And so when they came together, that was just kind of all smoothed over.

07:50

For one, that was one big problem is I felt that it was dangerous to the gospel because many people talked about Martin Luther King as if he was a believer.

07:58

They did the same thing at T4G in that panel.

08:00

They spoke of him as, as you would a believer.

08:04

When Mark Dever was asked whether he believed that Martin Luther King was a believer or not, he said he didn't know, you know, it's possible he was, which either Mark had not, you know, read very closely what Martin Luther King had written or he was just completely ignorant of the, of the topic.

08:22

But they all say did a lot of things.

08:24

You had the issue of Chandler where he talked about, you know, how of choosing, you know, we need to be choosing black people.

08:35

So affirmative action type stuff.

08:37

And he said, if he had a white, if he found a, he said they were looking for a pastor and the group that he was looking at to help him find a pastor said, well, we find a white eight and a black seven, which one do you want? He said, I'll take, I want the black seven.

08:51

He said, what if we find a white eight and a black six? And he said, well, I'll take the white eight because I wouldn't want to be accused of tokenism.

09:00

Well, that's what the black seven is.

09:02

You know, it's just like, it's just ridiculous.

09:05

It's insulting.

09:06

I would be insulted if I were a black person sitting there hearing my ethnicity being ranked and rated by numbers like that and saying, yeah, we'll take the number seven.

09:17

I think you'll just, it'd be kind of always this type of feeling that, that whoever they chose had to be a seven.

09:24

I mean, how about we just choose the best person period? So you had that, and then you had, I think it was Eric Mason that said you're black on the outside, Anglo on the inside.

09:34

There was a lot of racial type statements that were made through that.

09:39

It was just, in a nutshell, it was thinking about issues of race through a worldly lens, which I later come to understand it really was a critical race theory type lens, then the understanding it through a biblical lens.

09:53

See, that's very helpful because obviously we hear terms like CRT thrown around.

09:59

We hear people talking about critical race theory.

10:02

Even former president Donald Trump mentioned critical race theory and as a danger.

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Many people hated him for that.

10:11

Of course, many people attacked him for saying that.

10:13

I did a show about that when he came out against that saying it.

10:16

And so it is important that people understand that this is not just something that's going on in public schools.

10:23

This is not something that's just going on in the government, but it's something that is being infiltrated into the churches and in such a way that is very subversive.

10:32

And that's another thing I wanted you to maybe speak to.

10:35

How did this happen? I mean, how did this go? How did we get here from where we were? Yeah, I don't know completely what the answer to that is.

10:46

The first time it came on my radar was probably in, I think, around 2017, might have been 2016 when I was at a Nine Marks event and they were pushing a book called Divided by Faith, which is extremely influenced by critical race theory and the thinking of that particular ideology.

11:13

And in fact, I was told specifically by Mark Dever that the sermon that David Platt preached on Amos 5 at T4G, which has become pretty famous in regards to it being a oppressed versus oppressor, critical race theory type understanding of that Old Testament story, that he had been directly influenced, David Platt had been directly influenced by having been given Divided by Faith from somebody within Nine Marks and that heavily influenced him.

11:47

That book has been used to continue to or to start perpetuating this ideology into at least our area of thinking Calvinistic.

12:00

And that's where I'm kind of looking at critiquing at this point, because the interesting thing is that this was introduced from my experience from the reformed part of the Southern Baptist Convention.

12:11

Oh, wow.

12:11

Okay.

12:12

So you mentioned that, and I've heard a lot of mixed conversations coming out of Southern Seminary.

12:21

And I've always been a person at least who has respected the people coming out of Southern because most of them I have found to be fairly solid.

12:30

I mean, I have friends who've gone to Southern who have doctorates from Southern and master's degrees from Southern.

12:34

Many of them are very solid men.

12:36

But I know that several years ago, I remember seeing Dr.

12:40

MacArthur and Dr.

12:42

Moeller on a panel together.

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And Phil Johnson was sort of challenging Dr.

12:48

Moeller and Dr.

12:49

Moeller got very upset about it.

12:51

And I remember it was centered around this issue.

12:53

Yeah, I was there.

12:54

I was there at that panel.

12:56

Okay.

12:56

All right.

12:57

Is that, do we really think, and when I say we, I mean, those on the side, I guess Calvinist and conservative, do we really think guys like Al Moeller are promoting this? Or do we think they're just turning a blind eye to it? Is that sort of the idea? Well, it's kind of hard to say.

13:14

I mean, you have to get, you know, try to read somebody's heart and read some.

13:18

Oh, and I know, and I'm not going to admit.

13:20

I know you're not saying that.

13:21

So I'm just kind of qualifying that as we talk about it.

13:24

I mean, I've had multiple conversations with Dr.

13:27

Moeller and every conversation I've had with him, he expresses what I believe that probably you, I had had much of a conversation with you, but where I would think you would probably stand on these issues where I stand as well.

13:40

I mean, but we can't, you know, neglect the fact that his provost, no longer his provost there, but at the time his provost, actually he was his provost at the time when he said this, Matthew Hall had said it prior to this, but it came to the forefront after Matthew Hall became the provost that he considers himself to be a white supremacist and he's a racist and he'll be that way until he dies.

14:04

And I remember saying that video was reclaimed by Jamar Tisby, excuse me, not Jamar Tisby.

14:12

Oh, his name flew out of my head.

14:15

But anyway, he's also a professor at Southern Seminary.

14:18

But in a panel discussion where he and Matthew Hall were on, he talked about how that Matthew Hall was one of the leading, one of the most knowledgeable people on critical race theory that he knew.

14:30

And so there is no doubt, and I don't think Dr.

14:33

Moeller would deny this, that there is no doubt that the ideology of critical race theory was being championed by some professors at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

14:46

I mean, there's video evidence of that.

14:49

Now, what level that Dr.

14:52

Moeller knew about that, I don't know.

14:54

I do know that eventually he had those things scrubbed.

15:00

Resolution 9 became an issue because Curtis Woods was the chairman of that committee that brought Resolution 9 to the Southern Baptist Convention in 2019, which became a major point of contention within the convention where it was saying, yeah, the critical race theory is subjected to the Bible, is subject to the scriptures, but it's still a useful and helpful tool for us as we look at the world.

15:28

They said that in that resolution, that critical race theory has been kind of adopted or co-opted or whatever by forces in this world.

15:39

I said, no, no, no, no, no.

15:40

It originated with that.

15:42

It's not that they took critical race theory and made it something.

15:46

It originated with this false, godless ideology.

15:50

It's in and of itself evil and wicked.

15:53

And Curtis Woods was a professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

15:57

So you had at least three professors at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary who were teaching, supporting, and championing critical race theory.

16:09

Now, Dr.

16:10

Moeller put a stop to that, but it was taking place and going on under his watch.

16:17

Makes sense.

16:18

Makes sense.

16:19

And so, and as you said, obviously we don't know Dr.

16:22

Moeller's heart and he has done so much.

16:25

In fact, I'm reminded of the fact that one of the issues that we're facing now is the question of female pastors and not to jump ahead because I know historically I'm jumping ahead, but going back to when Dr.

16:41

Moeller first came to Southern, one of his things that he championed was a male pastor.

16:47

And he was attacked and vilified and hated.

16:51

And I've seen videos of groups that were shouting him down and things that were opposed to him.

16:58

So, I mean, obviously he's been a champion of many good things.

17:04

And so, yeah.

17:05

Absolutely.

17:05

And yeah, that's one of the reasons I, probably the main reason that I stayed in the Southern Baptist Convention when I came out of Dallas Seminary in 1993.

17:15

And he was willing to say the hard things, stand for the hard things.

17:20

And, you know, I had a conversation with him and some other men back in 2018 that I was saying then that this problem is raising its head again in the Southern Baptist Convention.

17:32

And there was some skepticism towards what I was saying.

17:35

Oh, no, no, no, no.

17:36

That's not the case.

17:38

You know, you're exaggerating.

17:40

But sure enough, I was exactly right on that.

17:44

And it was because I'm on the ground as other pastors are seeing what's taking place.

17:50

And I saw the swelling of this movement again in the SBC and now it's full force here to by 2022, four years later, it's right on the floor of the convention.

18:03

Yeah.

18:03

And you were in Anaheim, right? Yes, I was.

18:07

Yeah.

18:07

So you were there when you, you know, all of us have seen the memes of Rick and Rick Warren and those who've got up and pronounced himself, you know, almost Lord almighty and telling everybody how great he was.

18:21

And he is there for, in my opinion, for the reason of promoting the idea that we should consider the ordination of women an issue that is a non-issue.

18:34

If a church does it, great.

18:35

If a church doesn't do it, great.

18:36

Is that unfair to say? Or is that you think that's.

18:40

He pretty much, I mean, he pretty much said that, you know, after he gave a laundry list of all the things that he has done perfectly in ministry and accomplished more than, you know, next to Paul, it's Rick.

18:52

But the, after he finished that, he said, you know, we're going to debate, are we going to divide ourselves over secondary issues? He even took a shot pot shot, in my opinion, at Tom Askel, because he said, we even allow people in this convention to believe Christ didn't die for everybody, which of course, that's not what we believe.

19:07

Right.

19:08

I didn't hear.

19:09

I didn't hear that, but you didn't hear that.

19:11

No, I didn't hear that one.

19:12

That, that's, that, that's a bold, uh, I mean, cause obviously, yeah, I would say Tom Askel directly, but, but every Calvinist in there who holds to the five points and limited atonement should have taken that in the ribs.

19:24

Oh, absolutely.

19:25

And because it's, for one, it's just, it's false because that's not what we believe.

19:29

It's a, it's a false, it's a wrong caricature of us.

19:33

But, um, and of course I go by five point buck, as you know, so everybody knows where I stand on these issues.

19:39

But, um, yeah, and he's, and of course he calls it a secondary issue.

19:44

Um, and I don't believe we talk about this a little bit, if you want to regarding, I don't believe it's a secondary issue in the way that he wanted to paint it.

19:51

But I think that Rick Warren exemplifies everything that's wrong with the SVC.

19:57

Um, his arguments were based on pragmatism.

20:00

That's the biggest, that's the, if anybody asks me what the biggest problem of the convention is, it's pragmatism.

20:04

All these other things are theological issues and problems that we have are a direct result of being a pragmatic convention.

20:12

And that's why he gets up and throws the numbers around.

20:14

The reason he throws those numbers around, everybody's saying, hey, that looks, makes Rick Warren look bad.

20:19

In reality, Rick Warren's just feeding us what we love to eat.

20:24

And so he's standing up and saying, guys, let me show you how, how much I've done, how many numbers I've accomplished.

20:31

That's what Southern Baptists have always said.

20:33

We, he should have got a standing ovation from everybody in that room who, including me, if we believed in, in pragmatism.

20:41

So he was basically saying, forget all this stuff, ignore the women pastor thing, ignore these theological issues.

20:47

What matters at the end of the day is how many nickels and noses I have, how many people that I've plunged into the water, whatever, however you want to think about that.

20:57

So pragmatism, he represents.

20:59

Bloviating.

21:00

I mean, the Southern Baptist Convention, it's always, we're the largest and broadest denomination in the world.

21:05

And we have, we have, you know, so many million people when the FBI couldn't find 90% of them.

21:11

You know, the convention wants to mock, and I have as well, Rick Warren for saying he's trained 1.1 million people.

21:20

That's not any different than the Southern Baptist claim that they have 15 million members.

21:25

They no more have 15 million members than Rick Warren has trained 1.1 million pastors.

21:31

And so he just fed us exactly what we love to eat.

21:35

I just want you to know every once in a while, I, I, uh, I say that's the, that's the quote.

21:40

That was the quote of today's show.

21:42

What you just said.

21:44

Which one is what we want to eat.

21:46

Well, yeah.

21:47

That, and what you said about the numbers that, you know, it's no different saying that, you know, they have, you'd say 15 or 50.

21:56

I can't remember the number, whatever it is.

21:59

It's just like every, you know, Southern Baptist church I know of that, that doesn't membership list.

22:04

And they argue, well, we have 20,000 members, but we only have, you know, 2000 in service, you know, or, or, or, you know, and that's a mega church, you know, maybe a church like ours, our church, you know, we run around a hundred people a Sunday.

22:17

And, uh, the, the joke is if we had, if everybody, whoever joined our church in the last 50 years, our church is 50 years old.

22:24

If everybody who ever joined our church was still there, we'd have a mega church.

22:28

But, uh, so we could put, you know, we've, if every member, it was still a member you could put, you know, 10,000 people or whatever the number is, but it's just not, it's not a realistic number and that's right.

22:39

So getting to the, to the Rick Warren thing and the issue of secondary issues, and I know this is sort of maybe taking us in a different direction, but I do think it's important because if we were to draw three consecutive circles or three concentric circles, and we were to say the center is what is definitional of what it means to be a Christian.

22:59

The second circle would be definitional of what it means to be a member of our church.

23:04

Right.

23:04

And maybe the third is the audio for the things that even within our church, we could disagree about within a denomination.

23:12

We're still dealing.

23:13

The second tier is still important.

23:15

Right.

23:16

Those second things, even though they're not, um, definitional to being a Christian, they are definitional to being a Baptist.

23:24

Like, for instance, would we not say that in the grand scheme of things, baptism is a, is a second and forgive me, cause I'm a, don't correct me too quickly.

23:33

What I mean is somebody like R.C.

23:35

Sproul, we would say R.C.

23:36

R.C.

23:36

Sproul is saved while he's with the Lord.

23:38

Now he's a Baptist now, but he's a R.C.

23:42

Sproul is saved.

23:43

Uh, but he was wrong about baptism.

23:45

I, I, I, I believe we could say that.

23:48

And so with that, we would, we would take issue with someone coming on the floor of the Baptist convention and saying, baptism shouldn't be an issue because it's a secondary issue.

23:59

Do you think that's fair? Is that, is that.

24:02

I do think that, I do think that's fair.

24:04

I think there's a little more to it than that, but let's just deal with that part first.

24:09

Clearly, uh, the reason that we're able to partner with, uh, R.C.

24:13

Sproul, for example, when he was alive, uh, even though we differ on the issue of baptism is because we both believed on the essentials of the gospel.

24:24

So we could partner together, let's say in an evangelistic crusade.

24:27

We'll just use that as an example.

24:29

Or a conference, a Bible conference.

24:30

Conference, right.

24:31

We can partner together because we all believe the same gospel.

24:35

But then when we get into that second tier, obviously that's saying, how can, how do we live together in a week to week, uh, community, you know, church, uh, group, uh, of people who are in covenant together because Baptists, you know, are in covenant with our church covenant as well.

24:54

And, uh, you can't live with one another if you disagree on this second tier issue.

24:59

So baptism would be one of those.

25:01

Yeah, the, the issue.

25:03

So I agree with you entirely on that.

25:04

The issue with, with leadership in the church, that ecclesiological issue.

25:09

And this is where I think that what Al Mohler calls the theological triage, uh, the concentric circles is what I use as well.

25:16

I learned that in seminary.

25:19

Um, and I, I agree that we need to understand things to that degree or another.

25:24

I do think those illustrations fell us on top on issues like the role of women in the church.

25:31

Okay.

25:32

And the reason I say this, I think it's, it's higher.

25:35

It's a higher, more, more important issue than a lot of the second tier issues.

25:39

That we might talk about and baptism would be an example of that.

25:43

R.C.

25:44

Sproul and I differ on baptism, but we agree on the role of women, conservative Baptists and conservative Presbyterians have disagreed about baptism, but they agree on the role of women in the church.

25:55

So there's something about that particular issue that, that makes one a conservative.

26:01

In fact, every, every drift and liberal, uh, wayward convention that's gone wayward or movement or denomination has had the issue of women, role of women at the very center and heart of the issue.

26:15

And maybe it's because of the fact that this deals with creative creation order as Paul goes back to in first Timothy two, uh, women where the role of women in the church is as fundamental as what makes a man, a man, and what makes a woman, a woman, because it's creation.

26:36

Uh, that's different than even the issue of baptism.

26:40

Does that make sense? Well, no, it's fundamental.

26:44

Absolutely.

26:44

So I do think that it's, it's more fundamental than baptism.

26:49

I know that some people, maybe some people scratched their heads when they hear that, but I'd like to say it so people can think about it a little bit and say, Hmm, wonder what that means.

26:57

Maybe there's truth to that.

26:59

And the reason I say that is not baptism itself motive baptism.

27:02

So it's more fundamental than the motive baptism.

27:06

And that's why conservatives who differed on issues like motive baptism have agreed on this issue.

27:12

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

27:14

So how many, when you were there, so you were in Anaheim, you got the feeling of the room.

27:22

How many people do you think, and I know you can't know this for certain, but what's your feeling on the overall tenor of the Southern Baptist convention, the messengers who were there? Was there grand support for women pastors and this move of change, or is this something that's only a fringe are fighting for, but they're vocal enough fringe that they're getting the attention and making the movements? What do you think is really happening? Well, I would probably say, I think based on what I felt in the room, that the majority that was there is not for women serving in the role of pastor.

28:04

Then you take that majority and there's some among that majority, and I don't know how many that is, but I think it's a fairly high percentage who would say, I wouldn't do it, but I don't think it's something to divide over.

28:21

So I'm against women pastors, women being pastors wouldn't do it in my church.

28:27

But I'm not going to say that I believe it's completely wrong.

28:32

So I do think there was a fairly, a surprising number in my opinion, who seemed to be in support, okay with it altogether.

28:44

And so the people that are all, I believe that the people who are okay with it altogether and the people who, this is just, again, me shooting from the hip from what I saw and people who are, I'm against it, but I'm not going to oppose somebody else doing it is a greater majority or is the majority over the people who say I'm against it and nobody should be doing it.

29:08

And see, isn't that the attitude towards so many things though? I wouldn't do it, but if I'm not going to tell somebody else they can't, it's very American, not very biblical, but very American.

29:19

I don't want to step anybody else's yard.

29:22

I'm going to let them do what they want to do in their yard.

29:25

Exactly.

29:26

And say, well, we believe in the autonomy of the local church.

29:28

We most certainly do.

29:30

So does a Baptist church have the right, so to speak, to have women pastors? Well, what do you mean by the right, that they're autonomous and they can make their own decisions? The answer to that is yes, but does that mean that in a church and in a denomination that has a confessional statement that clearly defines that women are not to hold the office or the function of a pastor, then yes, that convention not only has a right to tell that other church not to be a part of it, it has a responsibility to tell that other church that they're not in fellowship with the convention.

30:05

And do what you will, but you're not going to be a part of us.

30:10

If you don't want to wear a shirt and shoes in the McDonald's or around, that's fine, but McDonald's may not let you in.

30:17

No shirt, no shoes, no service.

30:19

And when it comes to the Southern Baptist Convention, it should be women pastor, no fellowship.

30:26

That's what our doctrinal statement says.

30:28

Absolutely.

30:29

So with that, what power, as you just said, the churches are autonomous.

30:34

And again, I know the answer to some of these questions, but I'm asking this for the person who may not know.

30:41

Because for instance, in the Methodist church, the denomination holds power over the local church.

30:47

And therefore, if the denomination says X or Y, the churches have to follow it.

30:52

But one of the things that Baptists have always prided themselves on is the fact that we are autonomous individual churches, and the churches are governed by their congregations, not by the denomination.

31:06

And therefore, what power would the denomination have, the Southern Baptist Convention have? Is excommunication the only power to be able to say, if you do this, you can't be a part? Yeah, that's really the only thing.

31:22

It essentially would be that they would not be allowed to be seated at a convention with voting messengers.

31:31

So if Baptist Church X down the street wants to call themselves Southern Baptist, they can claim it all they want to.

31:39

What really makes you Southern Baptist is you give to the convention, and the convention considers you to be in friendly cooperation.

31:49

But when you're in friendly cooperation, you then can have messengers who are seated at the convention to vote.

31:56

So if my church could be disfellowshipped, and we can still say, well, you say we want to, but we're still going to be Southern Baptist, we'll give money to you.

32:05

That doesn't make us Southern Baptist.

32:07

Ultimately, what makes us Southern Baptist, if you will, is if they allow us to have seats, seated messengers at the convention.

32:16

So that would be the power that would take that away.

32:19

And have there been churches? I know there have been, but let me ask this different way.

32:24

How many churches have been disfellowshipped over the last few years over any issues? Are you familiar with those numbers? There was one over racism, and I'm not familiar with all the story of that one.

32:38

But it happened by the credentials committee, I believe.

32:40

So it never even came to a vote, I don't think.

32:43

And then there's been a couple over the issue of homosexuality.

32:46

There might even been one at one time in the last decade over a female pastor.

32:53

But obviously, that's not the thinking currently, because Rick Warren's church clearly has women ordained as pastors and has just hired a husband-wife co-pastor team.

33:07

And the credentials committee was unwilling to disfellowship them.

33:10

So that's extremely problematic.

33:13

Well, I want to shift the gear a little bit and go back to the CRT issue with the Dallas Statement and all this, that rise.

33:20

And I want to ask the question, how is it that or how do you see the connection between the rise and that and how we've gotten here today with the female pastor issue? Do you think those two things converged or that they were or they grew together? Absolutely, it converged or grew together.

33:38

Maybe that's the word.

33:40

I've described it like this, and I've heard other people too.

33:43

So I don't know if I got it from somebody else or it originated my own mind.

33:48

But I've heard the critical race theory described like a locomotive engine.

33:54

And then you have boxcars behind that.

33:57

And so the three boxcars come along with that ideology, ideological train pulling it, locomotive pulling it.

34:04

You have the issues of race, you have the issues of egalitarianism, and then you have the issues of LGBT.

34:14

Now, by saying that, I'm not trying to say one is like the other.

34:17

So I don't want anybody to hear me saying, well, yeah, anybody that believes in issues of racism is also pushing LGBT issues.

34:26

But they're sharing the same, right now in our culture, they're sharing the same language.

34:31

So for instance, oppressed and oppressor.

34:35

So the way we understand race in the culture, according to critical race theory, is who are the people that hold the power are the oppressors.

34:43

So white males are the biggest oppressors because we held so much of the power.

34:50

And then anyone who has been oppressed, which would be anybody that's not a white male, has been some to some degree or another oppressed.

34:59

So in comes intersectionality that says the levels that you have, you can have levels of oppression.

35:07

So compounding and layers, I should say layers of oppression.

35:11

So a white woman is oppressed, yes, but a black man because he's black is more oppressed than a white woman.

35:18

A black woman is more oppressed than a white woman or a black man.

35:23

A lesbian black woman is more oppressed than all of them, and so forth and so on.

35:32

And so that then moves in, that's how it's used in the other cars, the boxcars, if you will.

35:38

And so this has been a way to bring this ideology has brought these things into the church.

35:46

And so today to say that a woman should not be a pastor, the moment you say that, you're immediately put in the category of your white man saying that.

35:56

You're saying that simply because you want to retain power, simply because you want to continue to oppress others because that's what you're used to doing.

36:05

And the Bible, well, that's just been your tool and your weapon to oppress.

36:10

And let me show you names of women that served, you know, Junia and all of these others and see, you just want to ignore that.

36:19

And so, yeah, it's been used as a means by which to bring this into the church.

36:25

So now you have the same thing with LGBT issues.

36:31

I mean, we're not going to be too far along.

36:33

We already have same-sex attracted pastors being pushed right as being acceptable.

36:40

And of course the PCA is dealing with that more than we are.

36:43

So all of these things are interconnected because the ideology is driving it and using the same language and argumentation for all of those areas.

36:52

It's interesting.

36:53

And I just want to take a quick aside.

36:55

You mentioned the same-sex attraction.

36:56

I saw a video of you.

36:59

I think it was recently, but I may be wrong because I obviously I was having you on the program.

37:03

So I was looking through YouTube, doing a little bit of that pastoral stalking, learning a little bit more about what you've taught.

37:11

And I saw you on a conference panel where someone asked about same-sex attraction, and you were arguing that the attraction should also be dealt with, not just the action, but the attraction itself.

37:24

Is that proper to, am I describing that correct? Yes, because if we think of what Jesus said in Matthew five, it's not just the act, but it's the desire of the heart that is sinful as well.

37:40

And so very few people are willing to say that.

37:42

And that's why I was glad to hear you say it because I find myself ever more increasingly dealing with people who come in, not necessarily into our church, but into our lives through various mediums.

37:56

And they are pushing this idea that it's okay to be gay as long as you don't act on it.

38:00

It's okay to have these feelings or desires or fantasies, or as long as you're not doing it, as long as you're not practicing physical action.

38:10

Right.

38:10

And we both would agree that when someone actually practices, even Jesus wouldn't have said that, well, looking upon a woman and actually doing the act are exactly 100% the same in every way.

38:24

Jesus wasn't saying that, neither would we say that.

38:27

So clearly, when one hates in their heart, that doesn't create the same type of tragedy and wickedness that actually killing someone does.

38:37

But the root of the sin is there and out of the heart comes those things.

38:42

So let's just use stealing.

38:45

Yes, if I see something, you know, a computer on your desk and I steal it, that is wicked.

38:53

That act is wicked.

38:54

But looking and having the desire to steal it is also wicked.

38:58

And that needs to be mortified.

39:01

It may not bear the same consequences externally upon you because I stole your computer, maybe not even upon me at that moment because I've now gone to another level of sin, but I should seek to mortify the desire.

39:13

Okay, so that's just the basic level of that.

39:15

But then you go one step deeper and say, yeah, but the attraction is not sin.

39:19

So they would say, well, what if I have an attraction towards the same sex, but I'm not thinking of the sex part of it? Well, even that is because that's a disordered desire.

39:30

So if you read Owen's mortification of sin, we've got to get to the root of the sin issue.

39:38

And if we only treat the surface of it, it's like pulling up weeds and not getting the root of the weed out.

39:44

It may appear the weed's gone, but the weed is just going to come right back.

39:48

And it's because the roots have not been pulled up.

39:51

Yeah, and I want to say you said this, so forgive me if I'm wrong, but I think you also pointed out the fact that if we give way to same sex attraction and say that the attraction is not the problem, the action is the problem, then eventually that's going to give way to the idea of minor attraction.

40:09

Yes, I did say I called it.

40:12

I can't remember what they call it.

40:14

SSA.

40:14

I think I called it young person attraction or something like that.

40:19

YPA.

40:20

The logic takes you to the same place if you press that out.

40:25

Now, I get it.

40:27

We have brothers in Christ and sisters in Christ who are battling against these attractions they have, these desires that let's just say they didn't ask for that, so to speak, right? They're born in sin, born under Adam.

40:41

They maybe didn't even cultivate these desires.

40:44

They're not.

40:44

Maybe some people are not even sure where they came from, right? In the sense of that, and there may be even some level of guilt that they feel over even having the attraction, maybe even some to the point of depression or think because I'm battling this, I don't want to think these thoughts, and so I understand that.

41:04

I'm sympathetic towards that, but the answer is not to tell that person, well, the attraction is okay.

41:10

Now, we can actually look at that person and say, listen, all of us are born with different propensities towards sin.

41:18

I don't know how that completely works, but I've seen that in my life where some people have a propensity towards this sin.

41:26

Other people have propensity towards another sin, and one propensity doesn't make you a worse person than another, so to speak, but what you do is you battle that.

41:38

You battle that attraction.

41:39

You ask God to reorder your desires.

41:44

Can I promise you that you'll never have that feeling again, that you'll never feel that again, that you'll never have that? Of course not, but the answer is not to become depressed and discouraged, or some people even say it drives people to be suicidal.

42:00

I think that our concern needs to be giving people truth and then giving them hope with that, and that they may walk with a limp the rest of their life fighting and battling over that sin, but they're seeking to mortify it day in and day out, and I think the worst thing you can tell somebody is to give them an unbiblical answer that makes them feel better, but isn't necessarily helping them attack the sin at its root.

42:30

Amen, amen.

42:32

Well, Tom, I know you've been a vocal person within all of this and within the SBC, and through all this have been somewhat of a lightning rod yourself, and your willingness to speak out on these issues, your willingness to say things that other people may not say has cost you some things as well.

42:55

And I just want to, for a few moments, just sort of address that because I did watch the video of your wife, Jennifer, on the floor of the convention.

43:06

She tried to speak.

43:07

It looked like she was shut down there at the convention, and she was trying to have her voice heard over the subject of abuse.

43:16

Can you speak to just a moment? Again, I saw that.

43:20

My heart went out to her.

43:21

My heart went out to you.

43:22

And can you speak to just for a moment of what was that about for people who don't know what was going on with that situation? Yeah, unfortunately, it's a really complex and complicated story to one degree or another, but I have been outspoken for some time, and so I have earned a certain level of, so to speak, of vitriol from some people in the SBC because I have been outspoken.

43:49

I've gone privately and confronted things, and when answers have not been adequate, I've spoken publicly when need be.

43:57

And so a situation arose that I was aware of something that needed to be reported to Willie Rice, who was running for president at the time at the Southern House Convention, and I had some information that needed to be shared with him.

44:16

I asked him privately if he knew about it.

44:18

He said he didn't.

44:19

And so then I called and made him aware of that, and I had concerns then that it would be perceived as being political or even be used in that way, that I was trying to be that way.

44:34

Long story short, all of that, that was part one.

44:37

All of that ended up happening where that somebody within this group that knew about that because I went to Willie Rice on a Saturday, March 26th, and within 24 hours, someone unbeknownst to us sent a rough draft that my wife had written back in 2018, four years earlier, because Jennifer and I have told our story of our marriage struggles in the first five years.

45:09

We've been very open about it throughout our ministry.

45:11

We found it to be helpful to couples who are struggling in their marriage, maybe feeling a lack of hope that anything could get better.

45:24

We were open about the story completely.

45:28

My language towards my wife was very ungodly.

45:32

It was very mean-spirited.

45:35

The kind of the breaking point for us came when I realized I really have got to get help because I had all this anger within me for a variety of issues that we won't go into now and had nothing to do with Jennifer, but prior to me meeting Jennifer, and Jennifer playfully put a Coke on the back of my neck, and it made me angry, and I turned around and grabbed her hand, grabbed her hand with this one, and I slapped her wrist, pretty much like you do a child, sadly.

46:08

Now, it didn't leave a mark, didn't do anything of that nature, but it was an act of me touching her in a way that was ungodly, and we both realized we needed help, that I needed help, and went to counseling.

46:22

This was, like I said, the first five years of marriage.

46:24

I wasn't serving as pastor at the time, and God redeemed our marriage.

46:30

He worked in my heart.

46:33

We've never had an incident even remotely close to that since then.

46:37

We've been married 35 years next month, and so we had Jennifer in 2018 decided she wanted to, hey, maybe we'll tell our story to more than just our church people, and so she began to write out a rough draft on that, and she just began to write everything, which she also included some things that happened to her life before she met me, abuse that happened to her, and she was just writing out everything that occurred, and then she had decided, yeah, I'm probably not going to put that in there.

47:10

I'm not sure I'm ready to tell the world that yet, and that's her story to tell, not mine, and so there were a variety of reasons why that she never did publish.

47:22

She had even forgotten about it.

47:24

Well, we ended up getting a call telling me that if I release any of the information about Willie Rice, that they would then release Jennifer's rough draft.

47:38

They were going to publish it.

47:39

Oh, my goodness.

47:41

So it was straight up blackmail.

47:43

In our opinion, it was, yes.

47:46

In one sense, it didn't matter because when we first heard it, we didn't even have the rough draft anymore.

47:52

We told one of the people who sent us the rough draft.

47:55

They sent it, and we realized that this is what Jennifer had given to Karen Pryor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

48:01

She wasn't there then, but had asked her to help with it.

48:05

Were y'all friends with Karen Pryor? Yeah, we were at the time in 2018.

48:09

At least I was.

48:10

Jennifer didn't know her well.

48:12

Then Karen said we were asking her to shop it around, that we have all the evidence that we were not doing that.

48:18

I have the direct messages of the original conversation.

48:21

We never asked her to shop it around.

48:23

Jennifer just asked her to help her edit it because Jennifer's like, I'm going to write everything out, then I need somebody to help me get it ready for public consumption.

48:31

So they thought, the people that had it thought, well, they thought we hadn't been honest about this, and nobody knew this dark secret of Tom Buck.

48:43

The reality is everybody knew this dark secret because we believe in being honest and open and forthright, because God gets the glory, right? We're not this anymore.

48:56

It's what we once were.

48:57

I can't tell you the number of couples we've counseled that have found hope in this because of our story.

49:03

So people said, well, if you told the story, then how could it become blackmail? And how it did become that is because what we haven't told, Jennifer had never told, was about the abuse that happened to her.

49:16

And she didn't want that to go public.

49:18

So we were in this quandary.

49:21

No, we haven't.

49:22

What you're saying about us and our marriage, everybody knows, but everybody doesn't know this other thing.

49:27

And so what Jennifer decided to do is, well, I'll publish the story, and that's what she did at G3, without that information.

49:39

And so she did that, but those who were involved in the blackmail scheme, right after she did that, within five days, did a hit piece on us saying, yeah, but you haven't seen the real story.

49:52

We have the real rough draft, which is worse than what Jennifer Buck put out.

49:57

So it just became awful.

49:59

And we then found out, we found out in the process of it, that with Southeastern Seminary, was at the very center of this.

50:08

Not blackmailing.

50:10

We didn't have any evidence of that.

50:12

But when the blackmailers went, wanted to authenticate it, because Jennifer's and my name was not in the article.

50:20

Jennifer had never put her names in it.

50:21

She just talked about I, my husband, and me.

50:25

So the only person that knew it was us was Karen Pryor.

50:29

And so who did they go to to get to authenticate it? They went to Karen Pryor.

50:35

Now, she didn't authenticate it and told them not to publish it.

50:39

But the bottom line was, we were saying it had to leak from Southeastern Seminary or the house would they know to go to Southeastern Seminary to get it authenticated.

50:48

And we went Southeastern.

50:50

They agreed to an investigation.

50:52

Then they backtracked and reneged on that.

50:55

And so when Jennifer went to the floor, she was asking for the convention to call to do an investigation of this to find out who was a part of this, and they shut her down.

51:05

So it's a very complicated story.

51:08

Two parts to it.

51:09

But that's that's how it came about.

51:13

That's and that leads to where I because I when we think of a group that's debating theological issues, you know, debating whether or not women should be pastors, when we think of a group that's debating, you know, how do we handle same sex attraction, things like that, those those are legitimate theological questions that people can come together and debate.

51:37

But when we're dealing with a situation like what you just described, which seems to be an insidious underpinning, which is sort of driving this movement.

51:49

And that's I mean, like I said, I've listened to you.

51:52

I've seen sort of your story.

51:53

And what you just told me is very consistent with everything that I've seen so far.

51:57

And I knew some of this coming in.

52:00

It seems as if there's more going on under the water than anybody knows.

52:07

It seems like there's just it just seems.

52:09

And my question to you, I guess, building on that is, is where do we go from here when it seems like the water is so dirty, when it's everything is so muddy? Is there hope for the Southern Baptist Convention? Or are these people who are running away correct? Because I know many churches have left the convention.

52:28

Josh Bice, am I correct to say he left the convention? Yes, he's left, yes.

52:32

Are they correct? And again, I know this is one man's opinion.

52:37

I'm not asking you to make a statement, but do you think that that's the right choice? Or do you think people should stay and fight? Well, I mean, my own church has got to make some decisions.

52:48

And so I want to be careful about what what I say regarding that.

52:51

But let me at least say this.

52:53

There is no hope for the Southern Baptist Convention with the current people in charge.

52:58

OK, that I firmly believe that.

53:01

I believe that minus one or two entity heads, there is no hope for the Southern Baptist Convention with those who are in charge.

53:14

When you have the leader of the LLC say that you'll never get him to say that a woman should be put behind bars for committing an abortion or having an abortion.

53:27

I mean, that's extremely problematic on so many levels.

53:30

Yes, could there be mitigating circumstances as there is with any murder to determine whether it's first degree, second degree, voluntary manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter, so forth and so on.

53:41

Of course.

53:42

But to say that you would never hold a woman accountable.

53:45

I mean, and you call yourself an ethics leader when you have North American Mission Board, which is constantly having churches that are ecclesiological, an ecclesiological mess.

53:59

And there's no repentance on these men's part.

54:02

And I think that they've all got to go.

54:06

So I don't know what the what the what every individual church should do.

54:11

But if you stay in and you desire for there to for for the waters not to be muddy, then you got to drain the swamp.

54:21

And unless the swamp is drained, there's no hope for the Southern Baptist Convention.

54:26

And all you're doing is rearranging the old edges, rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

54:32

The Southern Baptist Convention is going down.

54:35

It is drifting and it is drifting downward and it is sinking.

54:39

That's the bottom line.

54:40

And there are people, you know, there are people in the convention that don't care.

54:45

There are people in the convention that, you know, are blind to what's going on.

54:48

And, you know, they have the rose colored glasses on.

54:51

But that's the reality of it.

54:53

And I think that what happened to my wife and I are great examples of this.

54:59

Rick Warren was one example because you see how they treat him.

55:02

They give him all the time in the world to speak and and stand up and chastise the convention.

55:07

I equated it to, because remember, they were looking at disfellowshipping them.

55:12

So I equate them allowing Rick Warren to do what he did to you and me having someone in our church and our church discipline and letting them have six minutes to get up and and lambast the church congregation.

55:23

But were they saying, and I'm out of here and y'all need to keep the main thing the main thing.

55:29

The man's church is potentially our discipline and they're letting him lecture us.

55:34

On our side, why did Jennifer and I get shut down? Because they only give justice to the people they like.

55:43

So because they didn't like me, justice didn't matter.

55:48

My wife, they knew because they outed her as an abuse survivor.

55:53

She didn't want to be outed, but they outed her by how they treated her.

55:57

And when she comes to the microphone as an abuse survivor, she shut down.

56:02

But yet the other abuser, and they wouldn't even allow her name to be spoken.

56:05

When someone tried to say her name, they said, no, we can't speak her name.

56:10

But when it comes to reading a resolution with all the other abuse survivors, they read their names.

56:17

This is a, the Southern Baptist Convention is a convention of partiality.

56:21

It's a convention of pragmatism.

56:25

And those are the things that are there, if there were two words that I could put up for last week, we saw pragmatism and partiality on display.

56:33

And a total lack of ethics across the board.

56:37

So I don't have a lot of hope for the SBC.

56:41

Yeah.

56:41

And I, yeah, I agree in that regard.

56:46

I have to ask, because you and I talked, I don't know if we mentioned this on the program or in our pre-program conversation, but we did talk about our mutual friend, Tom Askell.

56:55

Do you think in your heart of hearts, and I know there's no way to know because no one knows the future, but do you think that if Tom would have won the presidency, that, that, that would have been a step in the right direction that he really could have made some changes? Or do you think he would have been just fighting an uphill battle and an unwinnable battle? And again, I know you can't know, again, this is conversation.

57:17

So just what are your thoughts on that? Well, I certainly believe it would have been a step in the right direction, so to speak.

57:22

Um, but in all candor, I don't, I think it would just be prolonging the, I think it would have been prolonging the inevitable.

57:36

Um, I think the level of vitriol that you've seen spewed at me would have been directed at him with, with great force.

57:47

They would have been working in, I believe they would have been working behind the scenes and out front as well to undermine him every step of the way.

57:58

Uh, while they propped up Ed Litton, who is nothing but a plagiarizer.

58:03

Yeah.

58:03

And, uh, and, and, and by the way, you know, I talked about my concerns with them singing mistakes instead of sin when they opened up that convention.

58:12

I don't think it's a mistake, pun intended, that, that hymn, uh, change was done by Ed Litton's, uh, worship team.

58:22

And it explains to me why the man doesn't understand sin and thinks his plagiarism was at most a mistake.

58:28

So they propped up a plagiarist in order to accomplish their social justice agenda and to push forward even, they were afraid that the issues about, uh, the sex abuse task force would fall apart because they wouldn't have the right person appointed, that, that, uh, Mike Stone wouldn't appoint the right people.

58:50

Um, and so they were willing to prop up a plagiarist to accomplish their end goal.

58:55

That's pragmatism at its most evil level, that you would take someone who you know has done sin and prop them up to accomplish what you consider a greater good.

59:07

That is the Southern Baptist Convention.

59:09

That's who they are.

59:12

And they would have, what they, they would have been the opposite with Tom Askell, who is a decent man, who is a godly man, who is a righteous man, and they would have fought him tooth and nail that he wouldn't be able to accomplish anything.

59:24

Same thing with Mike Stone.

59:25

They would have, they would have done the same thing to him.

59:28

And anybody who thinks that Mike Stone would have appointed a sex abuse task force that would have come back to cover up sex abuse does not understand Mike Stone.

59:37

That man loves the Lord.

59:38

He cares about the truth.

59:40

He himself is openly professed, confessed that he himself has suffered abuse as a survivor.

59:47

But that's another example.

59:50

There's only a certain type of survivor they care about.

59:53

They don't care about Mike Stone.

59:54

They don't care about Jennifer Buck.

59:56

They don't care about anybody else unless you hold their worldview and their ideology and, and their form of pragmatism.

01:00:06

What happened to you doesn't matter.

01:00:08

And that's why I said that survivors to them are a political tool for to accomplish their agenda.

01:00:14

And that's all that it is.

01:00:18

So speaking of that, and maybe this is a good place for us to begin to draw to a close.

01:00:22

I know you, I know you have things to do this evening, and I appreciate you giving me so much time on this interview.

01:00:26

It's been a, been a, been very enlightening and very helpful.

01:00:29

But as, as we draw to a close, you brought up the, the, the sex abuse scandal, and that was something I know we don't have time to go into it at all.

01:00:38

But in regard to that, the question that I would have, because again, from an outsider, I look at it.

01:00:43

I see something that looks to me like, you know, similar to what happened in the Catholic church.

01:00:50

And again, don't know.

01:00:52

Yeah, it's not even close.

01:00:53

It's not even close.

01:00:54

And that's part of the problem.

01:00:56

Now that doesn't, that does.

01:00:58

I mean, people are going to hear this.

01:00:59

Oh, he's minimized it.

01:01:01

He's diminishing it.

01:01:02

Now what we've got, we can't deal with a problem unless we deal with reality.

01:01:08

So if I've got, you know, if I, and again, this analogy, please just kind of separate a little bit for the sex abuse stuff.

01:01:14

Cause it can't, doesn't even come close, but let's just say, you know, I take a car to a mechanic.

01:01:19

I want that mechanic to tell me what the actual problems are.

01:01:22

I don't want him to say that he needs to overhaul my car and do all the same, fix all the same problems with my car and charge me the same price for my car because the car that came in before me was a jalopy that needed to be overhauled completely.

01:01:37

I want you to deal with the problems in my vehicle.

01:01:40

Tell me what they are.

01:01:41

Give me an honest assessment of what that is and what it's going to take to fix my car.

01:01:47

So if you look at the Roman Catholicism, first of all, you dealt with all of these pedophile priests.

01:01:52

You dealt with it, just rampant throughout Catholicism, in the Roman Catholic church.

01:01:59

This is not even close to that.

01:02:01

I don't know if you read Megan Basham's article, but there was an expert who looked at some of the numbers.

01:02:06

So you have, yes, one case is too many, right? But we would say the same thing about the public school system.

01:02:14

But we're not even close to what the public school system produces out of that.

01:02:18

And we shouldn't be because we're Christians for crying out loud.

01:02:21

There shouldn't be any that takes place, but we know that non-Christians get in the church.

01:02:26

And by the way, a great way to get non-Christians in the church is to practice Southern Baptist ecclesiology for 20 years.

01:02:33

Amen.

01:02:34

It's just one of the reasons they don't like me is because I just say what I believe is true.

01:02:39

And they know it's true.

01:02:40

When you, year after year after year, keep a role in your church where you don't do any discipline, you don't have any type of regenerate membership checks and balances in your church, you are inviting people into the church that are unbelievers.

01:02:56

But the amazing thing with that, even with all of those bad things, over a 20 year span, I think there was 470 cases that occurred.

01:03:08

That means pastors, volunteers, youth pastors, all of those, that is an unbelievably small number of individuals that have suffered abuse.

01:03:20

Now, I know they'll say, but there's always more than you know.

01:03:23

Well, that would be true in the Roman Catholic Church too.

01:03:25

So just deal with the numbers that we know.

01:03:28

So that means we need to deal with it, but it's not even close to the same.

01:03:33

And therefore, we need to say, based on what's occurred, what are the best ways for us to fix this problem? And the whole house isn't on fire, but yet they want to treat like the whole house is on fire and demolish it all.

01:03:46

I think this needs a laser-like approach to it, and it needs a biblical answer.

01:03:52

And I think some of the answers that the task force have given, particularly guidepost recommendations, are not biblical answers, such as where someone can be accused without even facing, the person that accuses, their name doesn't have to be revealed.

01:04:11

So you can be accused of something and not even know who it was that accused you.

01:04:16

So that's just one example of that.

01:04:18

I don't mean to minimize that, because my own wife has suffered from abuse.

01:04:24

Again, there are others in the convention that have, and it's a shame.

01:04:29

I was speaking out against Daryl Gillyard and how they platformed him back in 92 and 93, I was talking about that.

01:04:36

And that should have been dealt with, and it never was.

01:04:40

But that's the root of the problem.

01:04:42

The root of the problem in the Southern Baptist Convention is that it's practiced in ecclesiology that allows sinners of all type to run free.

01:04:50

And it was a great place for certain sexual predators to enter, sadly as well.

01:04:56

And I'll say this, as long as we allow plagiarists like Ed Litton to fill our pulpits, we shouldn't be surprised when eventually predators get into the church and they begin sinning too.

01:05:11

And until we're willing to deal with the small sin, as well as the big, we've got to deal with it all.

01:05:19

But they want to pick and choose which sins they deal with, and that's shameful in the Southern Baptist Convention.

01:05:26

Right before we started the program today, my wife sent me a video and I was listening to it as I was setting up the microphone and everything, and it was from Jared Longshore.

01:05:38

Now, I think this is a relatively new video, so you may not have seen this one.

01:05:43

Are you familiar with Jared? I am.

01:05:45

Yes, I know Jared.

01:05:46

I love Jared.

01:05:47

Yeah, good brother.

01:05:49

Recently started baptizing babies, so I got some issues with him.

01:05:52

Yeah, I understand that too.

01:05:54

Yeah, and he jokingly referenced the fact that he was a former Baptist.

01:06:00

But in the video, he actually talks about the guidepost group, the one who's been brought in by the Southern Baptist Church to do this report.

01:06:09

And he actually says in the video that they are part of the problem, that guidepost themselves is not.

01:06:17

This isn't a Christian group that we brought in to do this.

01:06:20

Do you have any thoughts on that? And I know you haven't seen the video probably because it just came out, but he was basically saying that in his opinion, and again, I'm quoting him from very recent memory, but still loosely.

01:06:33

Basically, he was saying the Southern Baptist Convention has already died.

01:06:38

And at this point, the only thing that would save it would be a genuine resurrection because it has begun to, and he brought up CRT and these different things, but he said they're reaching out to groups like guideposts to be their answer, and they're not the answer.

01:06:54

Well, I mean, yeah, I didn't hear the video.

01:06:57

And I would agree with him principally on what you just said.

01:07:02

I think that I have one caveat I would give because I spoke out with guideposts being an LGBT promoting group.

01:07:14

And that's the thing that he said.

01:07:17

Now, let me say this, and I've said this multiple times because people said, well, you just undermined the whole report because you disagree with him on that issue.

01:07:27

I don't believe that that necessarily keeps them from being able to conduct an honest investigation.

01:07:33

So I think you could have a homosexual, LGBT, whatever letter you want to use from that alphabet to one degree or another, prosecutor.

01:07:44

Is it possible that a prosecutor could do the job well and do an investigation or whatever it may be? Yes, I think that is possible.

01:07:52

My biggest issue was you are taking a group who defends and promotes sexual perversion and taking their recommendations on how to address sexual perversion in your convention.

01:08:07

So do I have a problem with their investigation? I don't know.

01:08:11

Do I believe they could have done a good investigation? Yes, I think that is possible, even though they are promoting the sexual perversion of LGBT.

01:08:20

Would I accept from them their recommendations? No, that's totally different.

01:08:26

Their diagnosis, maybe they can diagnose it right.

01:08:28

Their prognosis, I'm not taking.

01:08:31

And so that's the differentiation I would make on that.

01:08:33

Well, that's a good thought.

01:08:34

And that's very commensurate with what he was saying.

01:08:38

He was saying that they have an issue and why follow their advice, basically, not the right direction.

01:08:47

Well, Tom, I do want to draw to a close.

01:08:49

I want to say, first of all, just how grateful I am that you're willing to come on and to share all these things, to answer questions that I know that you've answered before in different contexts.

01:09:00

But being able to answer them for my audience and for those who are going to listen to this, I want to say again how thankful I am for you being here.

01:09:07

Thankful your family giving you to me for this hour.

01:09:10

And thank you for our shared love of the Lord Jesus Christ and the gospel ministry and ministry that you have been doing now since, well, before I was born.

01:09:18

So when did you start preaching? Well, I mean, the first time I ever preached a sermon, I was actually 13 years old.

01:09:25

I preached a sermon on Youth Sunday at our church in the evening.

01:09:29

But I've been a senior pastor for 1994 was when I became a senior pastor.

01:09:35

Okay, so not quite.

01:09:38

I'm not that much younger than you then.

01:09:40

So that's good.

01:09:40

We both got a little gray in our beard.

01:09:41

So yeah, just a little bit.

01:09:43

Okay, well, again, thank you for being on the program.

01:09:46

And I want to say also to you, the audience, thank you for listening.

01:09:51

Thank you for being a part of conversations with the Calvinists today.

01:09:55

This is a serious issue.

01:09:57

And the subject of whether or not a church should stay in the Southern Baptist Convention is a question that is not easily answered and may not be the same answer that every church is going to give.

01:10:06

And every church is going to have to decide what they need to do.

01:10:09

But I'm thankful to men like Tom who are willing to come on and talk about what's going on to share their personal situation and how this has affected them, not only in church life, but even in their personal life.

01:10:20

And I want to say this.

01:10:21

If you have a question that you would like for me to address on a future episode of the program, please feel free to email me directly at Calvinist podcast at gmail.com.

01:10:30

Again, that's Calvinist podcast at gmail.com.

01:10:34

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01:10:41

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01:10:45

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01:10:51

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01:10:56

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01:10:59

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01:11:03

So again, I want to thank you for listening to conversations with a Calvinist.

01:11:06

My name is Keith Foskey and I have been your Calvinist.

01:11:09

May God bless you.