Mr. Smith Goes to the SBC Convention

We are live for another unannounced live stream. I have to speak a little low tonight because it is late and we have some guests and I don't want to disturb them.

So FYI for those who are wondering, John, why do you sound like you have an NPR voice? That's why I sound like I have an

NPR voice right now. It's been a long day for me. I had a great weekend, by the way.

I hope everyone else had a great weekend. It was Easter Sunday or Resurrection Sunday as many in my church call it.

I got to go be with the family afterward, but it was a long day. We had the sunrise service, which

I did not go to. It would have been a longer day if I did that. And then there was an Easter morning,

Resurrection Sunday morning breakfast. We did that and special music and flowers and then the service.

By the way, someone who listens to this podcast came. They actually traveled a distance to come to the service, which was quite a treat to be able to talk to someone who's one of the listeners out there.

So we had a great time and then went to the family's house and didn't get back till late in the evening.

I guess that's a typical holiday day, but I'm exhausted not because of that, but because it's tax week.

Because it is tax week, I did start last week.

I did start on my filing. Yesterday, really, were like two full days spent just figuring out taxes.

My taxes have become so complicated. I wondered yesterday, why do

I keep thinking about being off the grid somewhere out West, working as a cowboy or something?

Oh, that might be why. It dawned on me. I'm like, why do I keep having this thought? Because the taxes are so complicated and such a headache.

That's why. It's amazing to me. It's amazing to me. It could be so much easier.

I'm wondering if we have the most complicated tax code in the entire world. We must. I just can't conceive of it ever being any more complicated than it is.

Anyway, I've been working on that. This week, it's a busy week. All that to say, what

I'm trying to do is fit in some podcasts in between things. I want to give you a little bit of an update.

Tomorrow, I'm actually going to be meeting with Kevin Gutzman at Western Connecticut State University, interviewing him for the 1607

Project. I'm meeting with a culinary chef. I know, a culinary chef, right? Interviewing him for the 1607

Project. We're going to talk about colonial food. Then later this week, I'm going to be traveling in Georgia.

I will be meeting a number of people, including—now, I know only a few of you might know who this is, but including

Paul Godfrey. Some of you heard that name, and you know exactly who I'm talking about. Someone I respect a lot.

I admire, at least when it comes to political, social commentary. I'm looking forward to that.

Lots going on. Oh, by the way, I need to show everyone this. TruthScript. Working on that.

Working on five things at the same time. Working on a book. Working on TruthScript.

Working on all kinds of things. This introduction is for those who care about all these personal things.

We're going to get to some meat in a moment. Let me see if I can pull this up and show you. That's what it looks like.

Not much there right now. You can see the icon. I think we're going to stick with this.

One of the patrons actually made this, which is awesome. I love it. We're not sure if we'll keep the font quite yet, but it's going to look something like this.

That's the mission. TruthScript's mission, I can say it, is to encourage Christians to be transformed by the renewing of their minds instead of conformed to the world coming soon.

That is in the works right now as we speak, which is awesome. Just wanted to thank everyone who's been praying for that.

This is the good TGC alternative.

We want to do something similar to the Gospel Coalition because I think that the Gospel Coalition actually has done a good job on a few things.

I'm not saying all their content is good, but I'm saying they understood a formula. They understood simple articles, short articles for common people, not anything that's too long, too academic.

What we have on the conservative, if you want to call it side theologically, is we have a lot of discernment style blogs and ministries.

We need those, but that's what we have. Then we also have exegetical type ministries.

They're not going to give you a movie review. They're not going to give you information on what's current.

They're going to focus exclusively on grace to you, Ligonier Ministries, maybe

G3. They're going to focus on more interpreting Scripture, Founders Ministries. We need those outlets as well, but there's no one that I can tell.

Some people have sent me a few websites and said, isn't this kind of like it, John? It's not. I haven't seen one that is doing what the

Gospel Coalition is doing. That's what TruthScript is about.

We already have a board picked. We have the officers picked. We filed for 501c3 status.

That's all going forward, so exciting stuff. The stuff

I wanted to talk about tonight is related to an ongoing conversation that's happening right now on Twitter.

I've been getting these notifications. It's one of the things. There's been a bunch of things, but this is one of the things

I've been getting a lot of notifications about. I think

I understand where this article is going, but we're going to read it together. I haven't read it yet because of everything

I've been doing. It's at the American Reformer. If you want to pull it up, if you're streaming live, it's by Megan Basham.

It's called Mr. Smith Goes to the Convention, meaning the Southern Baptist Convention.

Here it is. We can read this together. Then I'm going to show you that the

President of the Southern Baptist Convention has already reacted within, I don't know, three hours of this article being posted, because I think it dropped this afternoon.

Here's the subtitle. Female Pastors, LGBTQ, and the Future of the

SBC. In May of 2022, Mike Law, pastor of Arlington Baptist Church in Virginia, sent an email to the executive committee of the

Southern Baptist Convention. As the only full -time member of a church of about 100, he had never had an interaction with his national leadership before, so he began with a chipper greeting introducing himself and his congregation, followed by a straightforward question.

Is a church that has a woman serving as pastor deemed to be in friendly cooperation with the SBC? Home to some 47 ,000 churches and 13 million members, the

SBC's status as the largest Protestant denomination in the U .S. is due, in large part, to its loose structure.

Rather than a top -down hierarchy, it's more of a casual association of churches who agree on doctrine and pool their money to fund missions, seminaries, and various charitable endeavors.

You can tell all this background is giving information to probably conservative readers politically who aren't initiated into SBC politics.

Most of you listening probably are, so I'm going to skip over this. Though its contributions may have been small,

Arlington Baptist was nonetheless a contributor in good standing, and its pastor was inquiring whether, since Article 6 of the

Denomination Statement of Faith asserts that the office of pastor is limited to men, based on 1

Timothy 2 and 3, a church could remain in the club if it violated this doctrine.

Law explained that his understanding was that a church with a woman pastor would not qualify for what the

SBC calls friendly cooperation, because that requires a faith and practice that closely identifies with the

Baptist faith and message. The SBCs name for their statement of faith, churches that affirm homosexual behavior, have been disfellowshipped, why would this point of doctrine be any different?

He finished by thanking the committee for its service and said he looked forward to their answer, and he never got one. Now, I want to say,

I think it's referenced later in this particular article, I did watch about half of Mike Law's video.

It's only like 15 minutes long, and it's well done. It's a video anyone could have made.

I mean, it's just a webcam and a little PowerPoint presentation, but he really is aggressive.

He doesn't do that winsome thing where he's trying to just go along to get along, give the benefit of the doubt.

He is sounding the alarm in this particular video, and he also cites some hard facts.

He says that he did a very scaled -down study. It wasn't involved, it wasn't comprehensive, and he found 120 female pastors, according to him, 120 in the

Southern Baptist Convention, in good standing, in churches that are in good standing. I know I pointed out last week that there was that initiative.

I don't know what you would call it. I guess initiative is the best word I can come up with for it, but that was supporting female pastors.

I just went, I probably spent maybe half an hour, not even 20 minutes, just going through a few churches on this list of pastors who had signed a statement, a petition,

I guess would be a better word, a petition to allow female pastors. It wasn't specifically about the

Southern Baptist, but just in general. I started coming up with all these pastors, women pastors, who are in good standing in SBC churches.

I went to the SBC website, and poof, there it is. Places like Raleigh, North Carolina, where there's an

SBC seminary right there. Right down the road from the seminary, there were at least two churches that had women pastors on the staff, and they called them pastors.

I pointed this out last week, and I just said, I wonder how widespread this is.

Well, here's the article. It's very widespread apparently. All right, so the response

I received from the vice president of communications, Jonathan Howe, explained that determinations of friendly cooperation are made by the credentials committee, not the executive committee.

So if he wanted to report a church for having a woman pastor, that was where he should go. I wrote back apologizing for not being clear the first time.

He knew where churches could be reported, but was only asking about the general principle. Did the committee agree with the

Baptist faith and message position on women in the pastorate, and did that belief guide their decisions?

Howe replied that he could not speak for the credentials committee, and did not think the credentials committee was likely to speak for the credentials committee either.

They speak through their actions throughout the year, he said. He then pointed to a portal where he could report a church for review.

Now, you'll recognize this as your standard ring around the rosy.

This is your double speak that you get when you typically are trying to get a straight answer in the corporate world or something, and you're sent to this department and then to that department, and no one wants to take responsibility.

Same thing in an organization like the Southern Baptist Convention. It shouldn't be that way, but it is. To law, the confusion lay in the fact that the committee had not been speaking through their actions.

In just a five mile radius of Arlington Baptist, I had noticed five other SBC churches that had female pastors on staff, he tells me.

Further, far from exhaustive research, turned up 170 more. Colleagues shared that they had 170.

Just think about that for a moment. 170. Colleagues shared.

The standard argument that I keep hearing from, I've heard for years from people on the other side of the aisle, because it is an aisle now, it's more of a chasm in the

Southern Baptist Convention is, yeah, there's a few churches here or there that have female pastors.

It's because a lot of them are pre -conservative resurgence days, and they just haven't been rooted out or they haven't noticed.

It's because of ignorance. It's not because of willful neglect or anything like that. 170.

It's kind of hard to make that case anymore. Credit to Mike Law.

He did the digging, and he was able to turn up all these results. Colleagues shared that when they had reported churches in their areas for the same issues, the

Credentials Committee took no action. Then there were the whispers that various SBC leaders themselves attended churches where women act as pastors.

In fact, one blog cited Hal's wife as one of them. Oh, man. That's awkward.

In short, it seemed to Law it would be helpful if the committee could be prevailed upon to speak through other means, namely words.

But while Law's next email to senior members of the Credentials Committee produced no better results, their response did clarify why his query was being met with stonewalling and unasked for directions on how to report churches.

I believe your question is in reference to Saddleback Church. The Registration Secretary informed him. Because of this, he said the committee would be unable to give a response.

With 23 ,000 members across, for those who don't know, Saddleback Church, is where Rick Warren did pastor.

They have ordained women pastors there, and they call them pastors. This was a big issue last year at the

Southern Baptist annual meeting. It will be a big issue at this particular annual meeting coming up.

With 23 ,000 members spread across 14 campuses, not to mention extension groups around the world that attend services online,

Saddleback could hardly provide a greater contrast to Arlington Baptist, where Law himself stuffs sermon outlines into Sunday's bulletins and makes the spaghetti for Wednesday night

Bible study. So you can see Megan is trying to, as the title suggests, show that Mike Law is the little guy in all this.

He is the Mr. Smith who is going to Washington and just cares about the church. We've got a bunch of people streaming now for this unannounced live stream.

One comment I'll just focus on before we keep going here from Truttle. It's an interesting icon you have there,

Truttle, for your profile. A bureaucracy is an institution that exercises enormous power over you but with no locus of responsibility.

That's a great quote. Bureaucracy is how this all gets enabled. Yep, couldn't agree more, couldn't agree more.

Let's keep going with this. The Mega Church's founding pastor, Rick Warren, author of Purpose Driven Life.

Let's see, we know this. He's on the left. Francis Collins, World Economic Forum, blah, blah, blah.

Alright, in 2021, Warren had defiled the

Baptist faith and message by ordaining three women. So we just talked about this.

All of this conjecture was immaterial to law, however, as he hadn't been thinking of Saddleback at all.

Okay, so here's the thing. Saddleback's getting all the press. Maybe it's because they're so big and Rick Warren's there.

Maybe that's by design, to some extent, is what I'm saying. Mike Law is saying, look, I've got 170 churches here.

Saddleback's only one of them. For Saddleback to get all the attention means,

I guess there's a few things. One possibility here is you get rid of Saddleback or at least that they're no longer in good standing.

You make the problem go away in a high profile case. Women pastors continue to ascend the ranks in the

SBC or at least they enter the pastorate, they increase in numbers. You can always point to that example of when we disfellowshipped or basically disfellowshipped

Saddleback Church. So it gives a shield for those on the left who want to continue this drift, if you will.

So that's one thing. That's one idea of what might be going on.

I'm not saying that is going on, but that could be what's going on. There are some other possibilities, but let's keep going with the article.

I don't want to interrupt myself too much here. So Mike Law felt like clarity was in order.

Thus, a month after his initial letter to the executive committee, he determined to attend the SBC's national meeting and propose a constitutional amendment.

It would require Southern Baptist churches to conform to the Baptist faith and message on the question of women in the pastorate, just as they were required to do on issues of sexuality.

Delegates known as messengers to the annual convention would have the opportunity to consider the question on biblical merit, free from the wrangling over famous personalities like Rick Warren.

But then, less than two weeks before the convention, Warren announced he was retiring and named as his replacement a husband and wife team.

Though Law would not know for it for some time, Warren's decision would become the main obstacle to his hope of giving the

SBC a chance to make a clear -cut, up -or -down choice. The first day of the convention started at 8 a .m.

Law arrived at 7 .45, stationing himself near one of the 10 microphones. This is back in the last annual meeting in June.

Though he had pre -submitted his amendment by email the night before, there were no guarantees he would actually be granted an opportunity to make a motion, as the process is by all accounts harrowing.

There are only two 20 -minute periods when you can make motions, and long lines form for the mics.

Law resolved to continue standing near the mic for a two -and -a -half -hour wait, even after Howe came by and pressed him to sit down.

His persistence paid off. He wasn't the first to make a motion, as he'd hoped, but he did get his proposal in early, and it was quickly seconded.

At that point, the Committee on the Order of Business would have scheduled his amendment for an immediate vote. Instead, they sent it to the

Executive Committee, who would then decide whether to bring it forward at the next convention in the summer of 2023.

At that moment, Law had a choice to make. He could have pulled the amendment out of the committee to force a vote on the floor, and in fact, that morning, friends had nudged him to do so, but senior leaders of the

SBCs persuaded him to be patient and trust the Executive Committee to shepherd it through a formal vetting process, something that would also give him more time to drum up support before the 2023 convention.

It was a decision he would later come to regret. And yeah, and I understand why he did that, but I think there's a lot of this going on.

Maybe Law would even say now, I don't know, that one of the reasons he regrets this is he didn't realize how bad the rot was in the

SBC, how corrupt it really is. And this happens all the time. I'm telling you, it's still happening all the time.

It's no different than in the last few years, people who have also been quote -unquote red -pilled on the medical establishment or the deep state.

You know, Donald Trump Jr., I saw he was in an interview just recently, and he was saying he pretty much trusted the

FBI and the CIA. If they were going to go after someone, at least there was a reason for it.

Even if they were wrong, there was something to it. And then he saw the whole Steele dossier,

Russia collusion thing, and he said, you know, that really showed me you don't really actually need any evidence.

And he was totally cynical. He is on the deep state, quote -unquote.

And that's happening. There's a lag time a little bit, because people tend to trust their church maybe.

But people are coming to that same conclusion that, oh my goodness, the people that are at the helm, the people that are actually steering the boat, it's not that they're ignorant.

It's that they actually don't care, or they're evil, or there's some kind of a motivation there.

There's some kind of weakness there that is preventing them from taking the actions that they should.

And so it looks like Mike Law came to that conclusion. Trusting those guys wasn't the greatest move.

And that's what he believes now. That didn't mean the issue of women in the pastorate was tabled for 2022.

However, at the 2021 convention, a pastor from Louisiana had submitted a motion calling for Saddleback to be disfellowshipped over its ordination of the three women.

As with Law's motion, the credentials committee had decided not to act immediately, but rather take a year to consider the matter.

They were now due to deliver a decision. Instead, the committee chairwoman announced that they were recommending the creation of a new committee that would spend another year studying the definition of the word pastor.

Everyone remember that? I remember that from the floor of the convention. And actually to his credit,

Al Mohler had a great response to that. And it's like, if we need a committee to study the word pastor, we're in deep trouble.

How many other words are we going to form committees to figure out what words mean? What is the meaning of is? There was a friend of mine who,

I don't know if he wants me to say his name, but he has another podcast and he was thinking of doing a documentary similar to Matt Walsh's What is a

Woman? And he was going to do What is a Pastor? And I think he abandoned that project because,

I don't know why, he was probably just too involved. But it was a good idea in a way. It would just be hard to pull off. But it's the same problem.

It's the loosening standards, getting rid of definitions, challenging definitions.

The war is over definitions and principles. That's what it's over. It's not over these surface level things that I think people in power in these bureaucracies would prefer we argue about.

All right. He felt that perhaps the problem was not with the word pastor but cooperation and suggested the new committee could instead spend a year studying what it meant to cooperate with the statement of faith.

Let's see. Who is the he there? I guess. Oh, the committee. Okay. A former chair of the

SBC committee. Okay. Then it was time for lunch. Okay. I remember this. When the meeting recovered, then

President Ed Litton was announcing standard business from the platform when he was summoned to a hushed exchange with the credentials committee chairwoman.

Upon returning to the podium, he announced there would be a departure from the agenda to hear from a surprise guest.

That was, of course, Rick Warren. You can see where the deference is. This is exactly

James, right? This is what the left always says. Oh, those conservatives, you give preference to white males.

That's what you do in your church. You're giving preference to rich people. You're not looking at the poor and the marginalized.

Then you see the same crowd that runs the convention that loves to scream about those things and use them as wedge issues when it suits them.

Many of them do. Here they are making a decision to allow someone with much authority and prestige and money to come in and monopolize the microphone with a limited time available for the people who are messengers from other places.

As the New York Times has highlighted, Saddleback has never used the word Baptist in its name. Just showing that Rick Warren really he cooperated with the cooperative program, but he's not exactly your standard

Southern Baptist pastor, I suppose. Months later, Warren asked Pew to alter its online transcript. Let's see.

Warren says he misspoke. Warren calls widespread misperceptions about Southern Baptists.

Let's see. So the Baptist Standard, I'm just going to read it, but the

Baptist Standard observed that he has always downplayed Rick Warren, any affiliation with the SBC because of that.

Okay, that misperception, I've heard this so many times. And sources who have been in the SBC leadership for decades tell me that before 2022, they can only recall

Warren attending the convention a couple of times in 35 years. And I will say this, I have,

I've been in those discussions and there's not a name mentioned here, but I will tell you that I do know names of people who have been at the conventions who say this, that they have not seen

Rick Warren there. It is very doubtful Rick Warren has been at these conventions, but he shows up to make a spectacle.

Nonetheless, Lytton gave Warren a VIP welcome, permitting him to make a speech that ran six minutes.

And then she goes over what Rick Warren said and how he basically just touted how important and powerful his church is and his work.

And when he was done, Lytton thanked him. Law tells me that in the

S many SBC conventions he's attended over the years, he has never seen anything like that. That never happens.

He said, uh, okay. He adds that as the question of Saddleback's membership was not being debated, there was no mechanism in Robert's rules of order.

The platform recognized Warren. All right. So, so she, she focuses on this preference that Rick Warren is given.

And, uh, and I want you to ask in your mind, why that is come up with your own idea. If you're in the

SBC, why, why was Warren afforded so much attention? Does that bother you?

What does this mean on the issue of women pastors? Why focus on Warren and Saddleback and not the 170 plus churches that have women pastors in them in the

SBC? After Warren's speech, the credentials chairman announced that the committee had heard the messengers.

Yeah. So she's pointing out the hypocrisy here. Uh, still the seed of questioning definitions was planted.

All right. Luckily, unlike James Madison or Thomas Jefferson, the authors responsible for article six of the

Southern Baptist statement of faith, we're still alive and able to tell their denomination exactly what they meant. So you had

Albert Mueller, Chuck Kelly, Richard Land, that released a statement clarifying what they wrote. And, uh, they said, look, we, we were, we weren't confused about what a pastor is 20 years ago.

When we, when we came up with this, when we, uh, not came up with it, but when we affirmed the

Baptist view on women in the pastoral role, as for why so many

Southern Baptists were experiencing this newfound confusion, Mueller believed it has less to do with definitions and more to do with cultural pressures.

And he's actually, I think, right on that. Okay. I'm going to skip over this a little bit.

Uh, and what Al Mueller says, we talked about it before. So it's a slippery slope.

Uh, and I would agree with that. It is a slippery slope. In early 2020

Saddleback pastor, Chris Clark and his wife, Elisa co -founded a Saddleback chapter of embracing the journey in ministry for parents of LGBTQ children with long -time

Saddleback members, Doug and Shauna Habel. By the end of 2021, an

ETJ newsletter revealed that Saddleback was hosting four ongoing

ETJ support groups and one small group. So this, um, this quote unquote ministry is happening under Saddlebacks.

Well, it's not even under their nose. It's with their approval, with their funding, with their, with their applause.

Um, while ETJ does not specify whether it affirms LGBTQ lifestyles and identifies its founder,

Craig McDonald, sits on the board of Renovas, another faith -based nonprofit that does assert that homosexuality and transgenderism are compatible with Christianity.

Two organizations are linked, billing itself as a religious nonprofit that exists to reclaim faith for LGBTQ plus Christians.

Renovas, oh man, Renovas says its vision is a world where no one has to choose between their faith and sexual orientation or gender identity.

That's just great. And this is, I mean, I just, I don't believe for one second, people,

I don't believe. Everyone who can hear my voice right now, that Rick Warren, the pastors at Saddleback church are ignorant about this stuff.

And I know it's a big place. I know some things slip through the cracks, but it's, it's the same issue at a place like Saddleback that you have in the

Southern Baptist convention. There's not a concern about it. When it is revealed, there's, there's not a statement put out.

I mean, as far as I know, these, this organization is, this is, these ties are still there. There, there's not been any, any retraction.

There's, it's, it's approval. At some point it becomes approval. At what point is that?

Probably initially it was approval, but, but it becomes a default option position,

I guess, that we have to hold. We're required to at some point when, when, when it's been years and you have nonsense like this going on.

Along with recommending ETJ, Renovus endorses groups like the Reformation Project, GayChurch .com

and Q Christian Fellowship and the Reformation Project. That's Matthew Bynes. That's really gay affirming.

Interestingly, Karen Swallow Pryor, who I think is still a Southern Baptist, even though she is quitting her, her position at Southeastern.

She had Matthew Bynes write a chapter in her second to last book called

Cultural Engagement. And in the introduction, she says that all the authors that would include Matthew Bynes are

Orthodox in their theology. So, I mean, that, that's happening in the Southern Baptist convention. It's been happening in a number of different places, not just at Saddleback.

This is the time to be clear. This is the time to draw firm lines, especially with what's happening with the transgender stuff.

It is the time to really, really double down and just, it's not even just doubling down.

It's, it's re -educating people. It's making, you know, solidifying. I mean, think about a war -like scenario.

We are in a spiritual war. The troops need to have firm grounding. If they don't have firm grounding, they don't have the sword of the spirit sharp.

They don't have the shield of faith ready to go. They're going to be trounced.

They're, they're going to be routed from the battlefield, which is, I'm afraid, what's, what's happening. And you have a number of shepherds out there who should be shooting wolves, protecting sheep who aren't really shepherds.

They are interested in fleecing the sheep as much as the wolves are, because some of them are wolves.

On its event page, Renovus lists an upcoming ETJ conference in Atlanta. The lineup includes

Saddleback Pastor Chris Clark, Renovus board member Demi Kazi, as well as a number of authors like Matthew Vines, there he is,

David Gushy, and Justin Lee. Those guys are way out there. But even if ETJ were so deeply intertwined with openly affirming organizations and influencers, its recommendations and activities should still call

Saddlebacks' discernment in deciding to partner with the organization into serious question. Nowhere in its online materials does

ETJ characterize LGBTQ identities or behaviors as sinful. To, oh,

Brian McLaren. Wow. The vast majority of its recommended resources are explicitly affirming.

I didn't recognize these others. I recognize Gushy, Vines, and Lee, but John Pavlitz and Colby Martin, I didn't recognize them.

But Brian McLaren, man, he's probably the grandfather of the emergent church.

He is way out there, way outside of orthodoxy. He's more in like panantheist or pantheist world.

To return again to those who launched ETJ at Saddleback, a close examination of Shauna Habel and Chris Clark's activism suggests that fears about the connection between the churches who shift stances on ordaining women and those who shift on LGBTQ issues are well -founded.

Let me just say this. This is totally 100 % true.

You start questioning the word of God on a social issue in one area, you will question it in another area.

It is a slide. You just keep applying the same logic. That's all you do.

This has been a problem for a long time. I would say it goes back farther than this. Those who accepted the

BLM narrative or the CRT narrative tend to get soft on the issue of women pastors or soft complementarianism, they call it, where women can function in the role, but they can't have the title or the position, things like that.

They separate the two. That comes from people who were soft on BLM CRT.

Now they're soft on this. Yes, the train just continues. A number of people have pointed this out for years.

It's a very well -founded, it's not a slippery slope fallacy. It is just a trend.

The argument isn't that if you adopt the idea that women can be pastors in the denomination that you will necessarily go for homosexuality or something like that.

In fact, I know a number of people in other denominations who don't do that.

I'll have my reasons for thinking why. I'm going to put that on the shelf for a moment. It's not a necessary relationship.

It is. The reason is because it's the same logic that's being applied. It's this undercutting of biblical sufficiency, this confidence in man's wisdom today, the experts, whatever, and casting tradition aside and casting the final authority of God's Word aside as anything authoritative.

A lot of people who do this don't think that's what they're doing, but that's what's happening. Once that happens, then you can do anything.

You can make the Bible say whatever. It's an origami at that point. I think this is totally true.

That's what it's about. The logic used in the Southern Baptist Convention to justify women pastors.

It is a whisper from the serpent. Does the Baptist faith and message really say, does

God's Word really say? That gets applied to other things.

When it does, you can ask. You really could, if you wanted to, say, does

God's Word really say that Jesus is the only way? Why not? Why stop with something like pastoral roles?

In a Facebook fundraising video for the documentary, 1946, which argues that the traditional

Christian condemnation of homosexuality traces back to a modern translation error,

Habel, who sometimes goes by Habel Morgan, explains how she came to share this belief, describing her attendance at the 2016

Reformation Project Conference with her daughter. Habel says, I saw gay Christians worshiping God. I saw the

Holy Spirit, and I knew that God was in this place. Again, look what's happening.

It's what I saw with my eyes, this. It's not about the authority of the Word of God anymore.

What does the Word of God say? It's about what I felt in a moment. It's about my experience.

Once that shift happens, anything's possible. Habel had been clear on Twitter that part of her mission is persuading churches to abandon biblical orthodoxy with respect to sexuality and gender in response to trans -identifying actress

Ellen Page's criticism of non -affirming churches. She posted churches like Killsong that mandate queer celibacy should try a year of solitary themselves.

God's endgame is love. There's paragraph after paragraph here, and I'm not going to read all of it.

You can go to American Reformer if you want to see more of this. Getting into the details of what's going on with Saddleback pastors like Chris Clark, what's going on with ministries like the

ETJ ministry, and how these things are. The rod is much worse than you thought, is what she's saying.

The rod is much worse than you thought. Finally, the couple

Warren selected to lead Saddleback don't seem entirely clear on the Bible stance on homosexuality either.

When asked whether a gay married couple—this is the current pastor's wife—should carry on with their sinful relationship after coming to Christ, Andy and Stacey Wood answered,

I don't know. That's really hard. They went on to say there is no black and white answer, and they have to ask the couple how they feel the

Holy Spirit is leading them. The Woods did not cite any scripture in their response.

So this is what's going on at Saddleback Church. As the summer of 2022 faded into fall,

Mike Long began to make the case for his constitutional amendment to the wider SBC. In August, he drafted a public letter and began soliciting signatures from SBC pastors to demonstrate to the executive committee that an up or down vote was necessary to bring clarity to the current confusion.

Many pastors seemed to agree with him, and his petition rapidly gained more than 2 ,000 signatures.

But dozens of pastors replied that they could not sign because their churches—the majority of which had been

Southern Baptist since their founding—had already broken with the SBC over perceived leftward drift.

Wow. That's one of the problems with trying to even take back the denomination now.

It's the window of opportunity has, I believe, closed. And if it hasn't, it's closing fast.

As a decade—you know what? I'm not telling Mike Long what to do. I don't know a lot about Mike Long, but what he's already done, maybe he should be running for president of the convention.

I mean, he's shown some backbone and leadership, and this is a Mr. Smith moment. You think about this, what he's done as a really more of a small time pastor here.

There are people, even conservative types in the convention that had the resources to do what he's doing, and they had more of a platform to be able to persuade, and they haven't really used it effectively.

And you have a guy—and this is all it takes—a guy like Mike Law to step in and to really lead the charge, to put the work in, to be persuasive, to say what needs to be said.

Maybe he should run. I'm serious. I don't know. A decade ago, I was in ministry in the United Methodist Church, wrote one for Melbourne, Florida, as a pastor in the

SBC. The writing was on the wall, and the Lord graciously called us out of that. The same writing is on the wall now for the

SBC. The fact that the committee wanted to take a year to figure out what a pastor is is beyond laughable.

A pastor from Burding, Kansas shared that his congregation had voted to leave when the convention failed to address women pastorate in 2022 when given a clear opportunity.

Several explained that even more than a drift, a lack of responsiveness from national leadership led to their decision to depart.

So there's examples that are given here. I'm going to skip ahead, try to get you to some significant things.

Almost immediately after the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary's board made a statement against women pastors in the convention,

Bart Barber and the Executive Committee Chairman Jared Wellman issued a joint statement about the amendment saying, as far as it lies within our authority to do so, we are committed to letting these questions come before the messengers at the annual meeting.

Taking this as a good sign, Law began reaching out individually to members of the Executive Committee, offering to respond to any questions or concerns they might have.

He met with Jonathan Howe and other Executive Committee staff over Zoom. But before February arrived,

Law began to hear from various national leaders suggesting perhaps his amendment itself could be amended. Remember for a moment what happened with Resolution 9, 2019.

Remember it was submitted by a gentleman who, I don't know that that gentleman is completely on the right or anything, but someone who had concerns about critical race theory.

And they took the resolution, the Resolutions Committee did, and they changed it so much to make it say things it didn't say.

I mean it wasn't really the same resolution. And you have something

I think possibly similar going on here. So Mike Law goes through the proper channels, like a good

Southern Baptist, and what happens to his amendment, his important amendment?

What are they going to do with it now? I could just tell they were kind of casting about for a different option,

Law tells me, and I was clear I did not want that because the whole point was to bring clarity. After his refusal to cede to a lesser option, the reception

Law received from the committee seemed to turn icy. Their staff informed him he would not be able to submit the list of thousands of SBC pastors who had signed his open letter supporting the amendment.

They would also not consider the partial list of SBC churches with female pastors he had created as evidence of need to act.

So this shows you everything, shows you everything. Then came the biggest blow of all on February 7th, two weeks before the

Executive Committee meeting where they were supposed to decide whether to bring his amendment up for a vote.

Wellman told Law they were pushing the decision off. The committee would wait until their meeting in June, right before the convention.

The news did not bode well and Law could not understand what had caused the change. Crushed, he emailed the subcommittee chairman asking if he could come to Nashville for February 21st meeting and give a 20 -minute

PowerPoint. The chairman said he could have five with no PowerPoint. Because he would have no access to media and his in -person talk would be short,

Law had already invested much more time in the project. He put together a

YouTube video of his presentation, which I referenced earlier, and then emailed the link to the Executive Committee members early on the morning of February 16th.

At 11 .48 a .m., the subcommittee chairman emailed back simply, thanks Mike, see you next week. But at some point, so I guess that's to imply that it wasn't probably even watched, but at some point over the course of the day, the chairman evidently decided that Law, who had never been told he shouldn't or couldn't communicate with committee members, had offended by emailing the video.

At 5 .47 p .m., the chairman replied again, this time with a terse note, quote, you have essentially worked around what is common procedure for having motion makers share with the

Executive Committee. Because of this, the chairman said he would no longer be allowed Q &A time, only the five minutes.

So they're penalizing him. This is crazy. Then on February 21st, the same day Law gave his brief and uneventful presentation, the

Credentials Committee made a move so unexpected, not only did the New York Times, People Magazine, and NBC pick up the news, so did the

British outlet The Guardian. The Executive Committee announced it was disfellowshipping Saddleback. Okay, so remember

I told you earlier to think about why Saddleback, why does Saddleback get so much of the attention?

Now that we're given the wider context of how Mike Laws was treated and what his goal was, could it be that this is a shield or this is an appeasement strategy?

This is a way to deflect. This is something that's being used as a way to show that there's conservative credentials and concern when maybe there really isn't, because nothing's being clarified necessarily.

The root problem is still there and can go on. I think this might have been a miscalculation, possibly, because making

Rick Warren mad might not have been the way to go, but maybe they're talking and they have something worked out and I don't know.

Southern Baptist on both sides of the debate immediately expressed confusion. SBC leadership had drug their feet on the question of nearly two years.

Why would they abruptly oust Saddleback so close to the convention? Even more sensible, why not put

Laws Amendment up for a vote? A tweet from Executive Committee member Mike Keybone immediately followed the announcement, giving the game away.

Saddleback now has the option to appeal, which appears likely, Keybone said. That appeal would happen on the floor of the annual meeting in New Orleans and be decided by the messengers.

This was the heart of the room to let the messengers of the SBC decide. So there you go. Keybone didn't explain how it could appear likely that Saddleback would do anything given that the decision had just been announced that day and Warren had not yet offered any public comment about how his church would respond, but it was clear that the statement

Barber and Wellman had made about Laws Amendment and letting the messengers decide was about to go through a spin cycle.

So this is so interesting. So you have someone who wants an amendment that's going to clearly delineate, just apply, really.

It's going to apply what the Baptist faith and message says and provide clarity for this issue.

You have that and that's canned. The person who brought it is treated disrespectfully according to this.

Instead, you have a move that allows the issue to come up in a different way.

Instead of affirming a standard, it is now chocked full with personality, reputation, platform, the emotions that come with all of that.

It's going to be a political theater thing, more so. So you have that problem. That's muddy.

That's not clear. And then the other thing is, the positioning of this will actually put those who are for women pastors in an advantageous position because they will be arguing in the affirmative, whereas before Mike Law would have been arguing in the affirmative.

Let's affirm our statement of faith. Let's affirm the Baptist faith and message. Now it's going to be, let's affirm

Saddleback Church. Let's affirm Rick Warren. We don't want to be big meanies, do we? So it's a huge strategic difference.

And that's what's happening. Two days after Keybone's post, Barbara echoed the sentiment in a long tweet thread that made it clear the decision to disfellowship

Saddleback was not one of principle made because the executive committee believed the church had violated biblical doctrine, but one of strategy.

This is actually the most direct mechanism for the messengers to be able to vote on this question. Yeah, right.

To suggest that the committee has usurped the messengers in taking this action misconstrues the spirit of the EC members in making the decision.

Almost done, guys. He pointed out that if the committee had not decided to oust Saddleback, another messenger could have made a motion to disfellowship it again, restarting the process.

Ad infinitum. Barbara made no mention of the fact that there was also an amendment on the table that could put an end to the process in a much clearer and more convictional way.

The executive committee kicked Saddleback out of the club, in other words, to force a vote on Saddleback. And that vote would be how the messengers would make their voices heard.

The swap was evidenced by Barbara's closing remarks in the thread. I promised earlier in the year that I would do all that I could to let the messengers express their will.

So Barbara's pledge to let the messengers decide, which had been made in the context of law's amendment, was being retrofitted to Warren's appeal.

Sam Webb, however, was not inclined to erase the existence of the amendment. Though he had to ask

Barbara three times what his comments meant for law, he did finally get an answer during a testy exchange.

Webb posted a link to a news story about the joint statement saying the article below about the amendment says you are committed to letting these questions come before the messengers.

Barbara replied that Webb, referring to his initial promise in the context in which had been offered, was the equivalent of demanding law get special treatment and a

VIP pass. But Barbara's response was positively forthright compared to Wellman's, who denied in an email to law that the joint statement had ever been referring to his amendment, despite the fact that the article about it from the

SBC's own house org in the Baptist Press had been titled, Barbara Wellman Issues Statement on Proposed Constitutional Amendment.

This is so hysterical. This is so SBC. I have to say, this is so SBC. They're the kings.

I saw this even on the seminary level. They're the kings of making the most like hard and fast, vague statements.

That doesn't make any sense, right? But that's what they do. They make these statements that are so like, they shadowbox.

I think Russell Moore is like the master at doing this, where he'll make a statement about something and you think you know what he's talking about.

It's like, obviously, you know what he's talking about. It's like, well, aren't you talking about, I don't know, Trump's, well, he probably would go after Trump.

So that's maybe not a good example. Aren't you talking about what was just said by some

Republican official or what was just this event that just happened in the news? Aren't you talking about that?

And he's never talking about that. It's always like something else. He's always referring to something else.

It's always, it's a problem in the SBC. They're never talking about you.

Well, they are behind closed doors, but in public, they're never talking about you. But they're somehow still moving the needle in the wrong direction quite aggressively.

And it's amazing that they've managed to do this, to move the needle so far in the left, to the left, over and over and over again, when they never take positions on anything.

Well, you know, anything concrete, it's always these vague things. Okay, some rank and file onlookers seem to have picked up on the state of play and realize that whether women can be pastors in the

SBC is likely going to be decided by a popularity contest over Rick Warren. Bingo. Most SBC members busy with their churches and communities likely have no idea.

And that's part of the reason that this article is needed. And I'm glad Megan wrote it. Let's skip ahead here, because this is a long article.

Yeah, she talks about the Scott McKnight, his petition, which

I talked about at the beginning of this, please sign this letter to support women in the ministry of the SBC. And when it talks about some people who signed it, it's actually kind of interesting, because it's similar to what she was saying about Rick Warren's church.

It's noteworthy that the group that launched the petition, Baptist Women in Ministry, was started by a woman who left the SBC in the 80s.

Let's see, one of the founders, Molly Marshall, now serves as president of the Seminary for the United Church of Christ, the first mainline denomination in the

US to endorse gay marriage. And today, the group features female Baptist ministers who advocate reproductive justice, abortion, and describe the joy they experienced from fully including

LGBT brothers and sisters. So it is, it is, it is really, it's heating up.

So this is actually a very helpful piece, because it connects the issue of women pastors to the

LGBT normalization issue. And it also exposes

Saddleback Church, gives a good example of where this can go, and exposes the executive committee and what they're doing.

This was a big, this was very confusing for some people. When this all started, like,

I think it was a month and a half ago, I was traveling, I did a podcast. And people, some people were saying, who are more on the conservative side in the

Southern Baptist Convention, that this was great. This meant the SBC was going in a good direction. There was some celebration immediately.

And I was a little bit skeptical. I wanted it to be true, but I was pretty skeptical. I knew about the Mike Law thing.

And I, I had heard about this amendment. And I was wondering, well, if they're gonna disfellowship

Saddleback, then why not accept this amendment that states clearly what the rule is.

And, you know, now, now, now we know, I think what's going on. Now we know.

And I think what I said at the time, as I remember, was that sometimes people, like, will,

I've noticed this in the SBC a lot. They'll take like, let's say five positions and they'll say three of them are conservative that they believe in.

And then two of them are on the left and they'll, they'll tally it up and they'll say, well, I'm conservative. They're really not like for, for where they are.

They're actually more on the left. They're pushing the needle to the left. And those positions are usually conservative on, they're not, they're not really that conservative on.

They might be like holistically pro -life. They might be anti -homosexual marriage, but okay with homosexual

Christianity. Right. They don't really actually believe in the principles or the definitions, but they just don't go as far as some go.

And so they'll say they're conservative. They'll frame themselves that way. And they get very upset if you say that they're not.

And, and, and I suggested that what was going on with this at the time might be an attempt to take an issue that appears to be on the right, to throw it out there to show, look, we're reasonable people, where the rot isn't as bad as you think.

We're not liberal here in the SBC, but meanwhile, they finding creative ways to push the needle left.

And that's, I think exactly what's happened. Okay. Lots of comments. Why is John whispering?

I know I answered this at first. I have some company and it's late at night and it's my

NPR voice. So I thought I could either move the camera into another room or which

I don't really want to do, or we can do NPR podcast tonight. So it's NPR podcast.

Let's see a lot, a lot of people weighing in and someone asks

Josh Penley, have any possible SBC presidential candidates been announced? If I remember correctly in the past few years, we already knew the majority of the candidates this close to the annual meeting.

And that's true, Josh. That's very true. I have asked this question a number of times over the past few months.

And I, I don't think, I don't know.

And I don't know if conservatives in the SBC convention even know they've jumped back and forth between a number of different people.

And I'm not sure to be honest with you. I'm just going to be, I guess, blunt and maybe this will offend some people, but I don't know that the conservatives in the

SBC, the conservative side has much of an organization that especially at least compared to the left, the, those who have the platforming in the positions have amazing organization to get their people to the convention, to put the right people that are going to be towed the party line.

I don't see that the conservatives have anything even resembling that. And that's not to discourage the people who are fighting the good fight.

I don't want to do that, but that's just the truth. Oh no,

Harris auditions for NPR. Isn't that in revelation? Yeah. This is if you're a dispensationalist,

I guess, right? Hey, by the way, Johnny Cash squirrel, Johnny Cash was a dispensationalist, wasn't he?

I was just, I was listening to my, my iPhone and my, my music app and I put it on shuffle and a

Johnny Cash song came on. It's going by the book and I'm like, huh, Johnny Cash would have been a pre -mill dispy as some of you covenantal people like to say.

Anyway not, I should not have brought that topic up. That was a bad idea to bring that up.

Now I'm going to get all kinds of questions about eschatology, which I don't want to talk about. I've been reading a little bit on, on that lately, but not, not really wanting to talk about it in this episode.

Let's see. Let's, let's go here. So you could have a new show late night with John.

Yeah, no, no, that it doesn't. I'll be honest. The title late night with John does not sound like a wholesome family friendly show.

I'm just saying, I'm just saying. All right, let's, let's talk about this.

This is the reaction to it. And then we're going to land the plane here, but I haven't actually read this thread.

I skimmed part of it. It's such a long thread, just like the article was long. So I don't even think we'll get through all of it.

But Bart Barber weighed in. He weighed in and he said a response to Megan Basham's long form published misunderstanding.

It's always a misunderstanding about the questions regarding the office of pastor in the

SBC. He says Jared Wellman and I wrote neither the headline nor the article content in the story.

Most people working in journalism would suspect this since it is common practice that we would not write the headline or the story.

This is significant, significantly important because Basham's allegations repeatedly throughout her article is that we released a statement originally about a constitutional amendment that Myclaw has proposed, but she alleges that we then swapped the meaning of the statement.

This is just ridiculous. I don't even, we don't have time for this. There's really not a lot of substance to this at all.

It's just, it's basically how dare Megan, how dare Megan. So Megan responded to this.

The idea of the SBC's own news service Baptist, actually, so she's responding to something John Whitehead said.

John Whitehead, who's very involved in Southern Baptist life, responded to Bart Barber and he said, you and Jared, speaking about Bart Barber, sit on the governing body of Baptist press.

Rather than pursue a correction months ago, you benefited from the reporter's false assumptions. Only now have you tweeted that Baptist press misrepresented your real position.

Do good managers let misrepresentations persist? And then

Megan Basham retweeted that and said, the idea of the SBC's own news service Baptist press, which is overseen by the

SBC executive committee, did not know what the SBC's president and executive committee chairman were making a statement about is so ludicrous.

I'm almost impressed by the chutzpah, but I am at least amused. So she's having fun.

She kicked up some bees and they're trying to sting her.

And Daniel Darling tweeted out, lying is still a sin, even if it's on the internet. Oh, thanks, Daniel Darling. Lying is still a sin, even if it's on the internet.

Oh, this is great. So that is what's happening in the world of the

SBC. Um, I don't, I don't think there's much

I want to say other than, uh, just a little commentary here that to tie everything together, what's happening in the

SBC is not unique to the SBC. It's happening in all kinds of institutions right now.

And people are waking up at different times and seeing how bad the corruption is.

And it's a corruption, I think, by design, to some extent it's managerial elites who haven't really gotten ahead.

A lot of them, because of exemplary behavior, they haven't accomplished great things necessarily.

Much of the time it's people who climbed the ranks because they had connections and those connections were formed because they were, um,

I saw this in seminary. They were invested in really stroking the ego of the people above them.

They were, um, they were buttering people up who had positions of authority. And then those people that had authority gave it to the people that they liked because, because there was a mutual interest there.

And I think we've come to the point now where that's gone on for so long that we don't actually have leaders in these upper positions.

Joe Biden, Bart Barber, Anthony Fauci. I mean, there's hardly any like real leaders, let alone masculine leaders.

I'm just talking about people who are care about the ones that they serve, want to do a good job, pursue excellence, um, willing to sacrifice.

That's something of the past and it's something of the past, even in these Christian circles. And, um, and I say

Christian loosely. So it's, it's incredibly sad for me to see this happening.

That said, there are a number of places, it referenced it in the article, where there are people who see this and who are taking initiative and they're, they're going to their own churches.

They're forming their own fellowships and, uh, new networks are forming and they're not necessarily based on that same formula.

Uh, I'm, I'm writing a book right now. I think I said that at the beginning. And one of the things I want to tackle is this problem of, okay, so how do we, how do we find leaders?

I think part of the problem is already starting to correct itself with enrollment in seminaries going down and colleges in general, but seminaries in particular.

And the seminaries no longer hold the key to, like they did, at least they still have power, but they no longer hold the exclusive key to, uh, of authority in helping a church find a pastor.

It used to be when you needed a pastor, you went to the seminary, right? Now I think there's a new, new connections are being formed.

A new paradigm is emerging and it's not even about going to seminary as much as it is your practical knowledge.

Cause, cause people have found out after going through a number of seminary grads, these people don't know what they're doing.

And so they're looking for people who can actually lead. And they're also looking for people who line up more with, with them on basic Christian principles.

Uh, at least for more, uh, theologically Orthodox churches, that's what's happening there. They're looking for, they don't want someone who's got a degree as much as they want someone who knows what the truth is, what the

Bible teaches on issues that are being attacked today, like gender and sexuality and is willing to stand firm.

And that's worth its weight in gold now. So having skin in the game, being authentic, I think that's a new paradigm that's emerging.

And I would just counsel anyone out there who's going to seminary, who's trying to rise the ranks of leadership in any organization, but in particular in Christian organizations, don't think that it is to your advantage.

It may be in the short term, but don't think longterm. It's to your advantage to, to do the whole suppressing convictions and ingratiating yourself to power so that you can one day get power.

I would caution against it. You're, I mean, I'm, I'm an example of this really in a way.

I mean, I don't want to use myself as an example, but I am one. Would you know my name, those who are listening, would you know my name if I didn't start talking about these issues and saying, there's a problem you wouldn't, you would have no clue who

I am probably. Maybe I'm short selling myself, but I don't think you would. I'd probably be at a church somewhere pastoring right now, or I was,

I was thinking of either chaplaincy, church planning or teaching. I'd be in one of these roles and, and they're good, fine roles to be in.

And, and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but it's because I had skin in the game because I was willing to sacrifice because I was willing to forego those things that gained an authenticity in this new paradigm that's emerging, that people saw, this guy must be telling the truth because look at the risk he's taking.

He must believe what he says, because look at the risk he's taking. Look at, you know, look at how he doesn't back down from things.

That's worth its weight in gold now, way more than the personal relationships and connections that they'll get you so far.

But I think something's changing. I think something's changing and it's a good thing. It's a good thing.

So, last but not least, I need to share with you all the sponsor for this podcast.

I should have done that at the beginning, but I didn't because I don't know why. I just forgot.

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So I think I'm about podcast it out now, NPR it out, right? I can't do an NPR podcast and whispering takes it out of me.

It's so weird, but I hope that was helpful. Just a little SBC update there.

Please pray for me as I'm traveling a lot this week and I just, I want to do a good job with all the filming I'm doing. I'm doing a lot of filming this week and I really want to bring you some really good projects later in the year.

And, um, yeah, there, it takes time to get there, but, um, but it's happening and, um,