A Conversation With Randy Adams

Conversations That Matter

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:12

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We have a very special guest today,

00:17

Randy Adams. Randy, you are running for president of the Southern Baptist Convention, and there are a lot of fans of the podcast who are

00:26

Southern Baptists, and I think they're going to want to hear from you a little bit about why you're running, and especially kind of where things at in the

00:36

Southern Baptist Convention. I mean, does the Southern Baptist Convention have cancer? If so, is it stage one?

00:41

Is it stage four? So we're looking forward to getting into some of these things, and I just want to thank you for joining me and being willing to discuss this stuff.

00:49

You bet. Thank you, John. I appreciate the opportunity. My pleasure. Well, first of all, could you just let people know a little bit about yourself, where you're working for the

00:57

SBC, in what capacity are you doing that right now? Tell us a little bit about just your story of coming to faith and then being involved with the

01:07

Southern Baptists. Sure. Came to faith in Montana. Grew up in Montana. Came to faith as a very young boy, actually.

01:15

But it really wasn't personal to me, and it wasn't until I was a teenager.

01:22

I was 16, and I was running, getting in shape for football. My brother was with me. He dropped over dead.

01:28

He was 14. I was 16. And he was a very strong kid, best athlete in town his age.

01:34

And when you go through something like that, it brings everything to a point and into focus.

01:41

And I remember thinking at some point, if you don't know Jesus, life ends poorly.

01:47

And you can be strong and healthy and young and drop dead, or you can live to 100.

01:53

But even if you live to 100 and you don't know Jesus, you don't have much of anything at all. So at that point, it became important to me to take a stand for Christ.

02:02

And our family was not in church at that time. We sought out a church, wound up at a

02:08

Baptist church in Whitefish, Montana, where I grew up. Was baptized when I was 16. At that time,

02:14

I tried to become a witness for Christ with my friends. I really didn't grow up in a town that had that many Christians, actually.

02:21

But then, when I went to college, Butte, Montana, was an engineering major.

02:27

There was only one Protestant group. There was a Catholic group. It's a Catholic town. And it was a Baptist student union.

02:33

And I thought, now, this is interesting. Southern Baptists are in Butte, Montana, and not the

02:38

Northern Baptists or the Methodists or Assembly God or anybody else. And I learned a couple of things.

02:43

One, at our best, Southern Baptists are biblical, high view of Scripture. And we cooperate.

02:50

And Baptists cooperated. And that's why they had that collegiate ministry, because Baptists work together to do things that an individual church can't do.

02:58

And so I joined the local Southern Baptist church. And it was through the process of BSU and teaching a

03:04

Sunday school class, eventually, in that church that God called me to preach. And when He did, I graduated college and then went to seminary in Texas and everything.

03:13

That was in 1983, so that's been a while ago. Everything changed since then. Pastored three churches.

03:19

Currently, I'm the executive director of the Northwest Baptist Convention, which is Washington, Oregon, and North Idaho.

03:25

And you're also, I believe, I think you had mentioned before, you're an elder at your church currently. Correct. Right. Yeah, we started a church.

03:32

And so I'm a pastor elder at a church plant. I'm not paid. I'm more of an advisor and a helper to our pastor, to our senior pastor.

03:39

But it's going great. The church is doing really well. Well, praise God. Now, as you are aware, the

03:46

Southern Baptist Convention right now, there's a lot of controversies going on at various levels. You're out here in the

03:52

Northwest, kind of away from the South, and maybe where a lot of these battles are raging.

03:59

I don't know. I don't want to speak out of turn. Maybe they are raging here, too. But why would you want to stick your neck out and get involved in that and run for president of this denomination?

04:10

I'm assuming that's not something that most people just get up in the morning and say, you know, I'd really like to enter some controversy today.

04:18

So what's your story on that? Why do you want to get involved in that way? Yeah, I tell people you don't move to the

04:23

Northwest if you want to be the president of the Southern Baptist Convention. It doesn't work that way. But for me, evangelism and missions has always been what

04:33

I've been about as a pastor. And then in Oklahoma, I pastored last there. The Oklahoma Convention asked me to lead the missions and evangelism work for the state, and it included collegiate ministry and church planting, all those things, all the good things.

04:46

And so I never had considered denominational service of any kind until I was asked to do that.

04:53

And I didn't want to. I mean, I cried like a baby, basically, when I left my church and took that.

04:58

But I learned a lot in that role. I really learned how we operate best as Southern Baptists, how we cooperate best.

05:05

And that was in 2004, 2005. We underwent a huge change in 2010 in which the national entities were empowered.

05:16

The states were defunded largely. We became much more top -down in terms of how we do missions, especially in North America.

05:24

And everything plummeted as a result. So baptisms, reaching the lost,

05:29

I mean, we are much less effective at doing that than we were even 10, 15 years ago. Baptisms have dropped over 100 ,000 per year in our churches.

05:38

We're at levels that we haven't been since the Great Depression, literally. That's back where we are.

05:45

Church plant numbers have declined to less than half. We've pulled over 2 ,000 missionaries off the international field.

05:52

So we had 5 ,600 missionaries back in about 2008 and 2009. Now we have 3 ,600. It's the decline in our mission effectiveness, the decline in our evangelistic effectiveness, that really has motivated me because I felt like I saw reasons why.

06:08

And the reasons why are this top -down control and a lack of partnership at the local level with local associations and local states and more convention control from the national.

06:20

And I think it's been a disaster. I think it's provably so when you look at the statistics.

06:26

And so that got me to start speaking and writing. And really, I never considered running for president until people who had been reading what

06:35

I said and wrote said, you need to do this. And I thought, no, that to me sounded kind of crazy.

06:42

But I began to pray about it, think about it, and thought, you know what? I have a different experience than most because I have the pastoral background, convention work in a more southern -type state in Oklahoma, and then out on a mission field for Southern Baptists in the

06:57

Northwest. I think I have a perspective and an experience and a background that's unique that really helps me understand how missions works best for Southern Baptists.

07:07

And that's what got me really praying about doing this and deciding I think maybe God wants me to do this.

07:13

Well, you know, the area that you live in is certainly not Nashville, Tennessee. I'll tell you that. It's just driving around Portland area.

07:23

And I'm sure it's the same going up to northern part of Washington, Seattle.

07:31

I mean, this is the cutting edge of the future as far as where secularism is taking us.

07:38

And this is what I would think a Christian organization like the Southern Baptist Convention would be wanting to figure out.

07:45

How do we reach these people that are in these areas? And these are the kinds of people you live around in many ways. So just kind of like on a side note, maybe this is a little bit unrelated, but it is related still to wanting to be running for president of the convention.

08:01

I mean, what do you see for the future? Hypothetically, if you were to become the president, I mean, what would be the priorities to reach this next generation of very secular people, very anti -God people, very much almost using politics and the social justice movement as sort of an alternative religion, it seems like, in many ways, turned off to Christianity in general?

08:25

I mean, what do you see in there? Well, very definitely. If you look at a religious map of the country, the

08:32

South is Protestant. The West is secular. It's the nuns. So the nuns vastly outnumber

08:39

Christians in the West, and that's certainly true in the Northwest. And so evangelism in the

08:44

Northwest, in a sense, it's no different than it is anywhere. It's heart to heart. It's person to person.

08:50

It's the reality of the resurrection of Jesus and what that means for a person. COVID, I think, has helped convince everyone,

08:57

I would hope, that there's no certainty in this world. You can work your hardest and your best, and everything can come to nothing, you know, in terms of your business or whatever.

09:06

And so it's really a good time to share Christ, I think, right now, because people are more open in some sense.

09:15

Now, in the Northwest, or in the West in general, one way I describe the difference between us and the

09:21

South, it doesn't help your business to join a church in the Northwest. In the South, it's a business decision for some to join a church and to join a certain church.

09:30

It's part of the culture. It's part of what's expected. Politicians visit churches and are members of churches in the

09:36

South because it's helpful in your career, politically or business -wise. It's not true in the

09:41

Northwest. They don't care what we think. The politicians don't, unless they're believers. And the business people, it's not helpful to them.

09:49

It might even be harmful to them. So we're back more where the early church was in that it's the power of the gospel.

09:58

It's the power of the message of Jesus. And there's something refreshing about that because it's not that we're trying to affect political change in the

10:07

Northwest. We can't really do that. We're trying to reach people's heart and soul, and that's really all we have is

10:13

Jesus. I mean, that's it, but that's enough because Jesus is what people need.

10:19

So it's very much back to the basics. Yeah. Yeah, because one of the controversies,

10:26

I guess would be the word for it, going on right now is over the social justice movement, kind of broadly speaking, but then in particular, critical race theory, soft peddling of LGBTQ ideas, and then, of course, this complementarian egalitarian issue.

10:42

Those are kind of the three, I would say, major kind of social justice issues that are causing a lot of controversy.

10:50

And I think for conservatives, both theologically and because of their theology, maybe those who lean politically conservative, they're going to be interested in probably knowing who the next president of the convention, where the next president of the convention stands on those things.

11:06

So I'm just curious to find out from you, what do you think of those issues, especially in regards to the seminaries and some of the things that have been coming out of some of the seminaries?

11:15

Sure. Well, I mean, again, we're where a lot of those things were birthed.

11:22

CRT, for example, in Oregon. Oregon is on the cutting edge of implementation of CRT. I was just speaking to a woman,

11:29

I think it was a week before last, and in her daughter's fifth grade class, the teacher had all of the children stand up.

11:36

This is in southern Oregon. Had the children of color sit down, and then she asked the girls to sit down, and then she told the white boys, the only ones remaining standing, that they had received privileges, they were privileged, and that white men had oppressed people of color and women, and that they needed to apologize to the other kids for things white men had done.

12:00

These are fifth graders in a public school classroom. That type of thing, I think, is happening all over the country.

12:07

It's certainly happening in the Northwest. It's probably received better in the Northwest by many, although I think using your children and schools as a battleground for CRT, hopefully no one thinks much of that.

12:21

But we certainly see that in the Northwest. I just try to drive people back to Scripture, especially our churches and Christians, is that if you try to find any solution to any social problem outside of Scripture, you're going to wind up in a bad place, ultimately.

12:37

You need to stay with Scripture. Scripture answers all of the problems in human relationships that we might have.

12:45

You find the solutions in Scripture. You find the reasons for those problems in Scripture, and you find the solutions in Scripture.

12:51

So to me, any effort to solve a racial issue by appealing to something like CRT, it's not only wrong placed, it's dangerous, because CRT in the end is anti -Christian and anti -Bible and anti -truth, therefore,

13:07

I would say. And the same way some of the other social issues, the homosexual issue, we're in an area where homosexual marriage is fairly prominent, more so than it is certainly in the

13:18

South, although now with the Supreme Court ruling, it's legal everywhere. But our churches, none of our churches have moved that direction toward affirming gay marriage or anything that I know of.

13:32

There's no church in the Northwest that has. We certainly see it, and we experience it. And I'll give you one example.

13:39

We did have one church who the owner of the building where they met asked the pastor what he believed about same -sex marriage.

13:49

When the pastor, and this guy's not a guy who's out there on street corners or whatever, you know. When the pastor told him what he believed, the guy said, you have one month, and you're out.

13:58

And he threw him out of the building. Now whether he could legally do that or not, I don't know, but he did it.

14:04

And unfortunately, this was a fairly small church, like most of ours are, by the way. Most of our churches are 50 and below.

14:10

Half of our churches are 50 and below. And so that church wound up closing its doors. So it's that kind of thing.

14:18

I think for same -sex marriage, it's not an issue for the church as much as it's an issue for the people who attend the church.

14:26

In other words, preachers, we know where we are. The government's not going to come and tell us what we can do.

14:32

It's our people. So my son is employed in Portland as a

14:37

CPA, works for a large, one of the largest companies in the world, CPA firms.

14:43

His first week on the job, his supervisor, one of his supervisors, was having a voluntary meeting on how to help the

14:51

LGBTQ community over lunch. And he didn't have to attend it. It was voluntary.

14:57

And he did not attend it. But that was his very first week on the job. So there's that kind of social pressure that our people live with and wondering how is this going to affect my career or my job or will

15:08

I lose my job. I think that's where the danger is. And we probably see that more in the Northwest than they do in the

15:14

South just because it's more prevalent, accepted, and the church is weaker. And it's easier for them to get away with it.

15:20

On a side note, because I do want to hear about the complementarian stuff too, but I have heard of, I don't know if you've heard of these church audits from Living Out.

15:28

I know there's other organizations that will try to make a church safe, quote, unquote, or more accepting for homosexuals who come into the church by changing various things about the church so they don't feel as judged.

15:44

One of the teachings I know that I've heard people my age who went to seminary, when

15:49

I was going to seminary, start to advocate is this idea that there's sort of an innate same -sex attraction or orientation, homosexual orientation, that maybe there's no hope for getting rid of ever in the power of Christ.

16:05

It's just that's who you are, and then you need to just live as a single person with these attractions or if you get married.

16:11

The way that I guess I would think of it is almost like a hopelessness that this is who you are, that this is an identity issue, that this is almost like how you were designed in a way.

16:22

And they don't quite say that, but that's kind of the impression that's given often. And so that's not the homosexual marriage issue, but it is sort of this soft peddling of homosexuality is okay as long as you don't act on it.

16:37

If it's just an orientation that you have, if it's a desire that you have, that's kind of like okay, and that can be your identity.

16:43

You can be a gay Christian or however you want to phrase that, same -sex attracted Christian.

16:50

I don't know if that's a Trojan horse coming in. I kind of assume it probably is and that more will come with that.

16:58

But that may be an issue that will come up if you become the president. What do you think about that, or do you have thoughts on that?

17:05

I think that's really sad because it's a denial of the power of Christ to change a life, and we all have innate weaknesses, you might say, whether it's a weakness toward alcohol or whatever it might be.

17:21

To deny the fact that the gospel can change a person's life thoroughly, including changing weaknesses they might have or temptations they might have or whatever else,

17:33

I just think that's a really, really sad, weak gospel to preach that gospel. So I don't know.

17:40

I have not really seen our churches go that direction in the Northwest toward this idea that people are innately homosexual and they can live as a celibate homosexual, perhaps, and honor

17:52

Christ in that way. I've not heard that, but I have heard that expressed.

17:58

So I know what you're talking about. I know that some believe that. I don't believe that.

18:05

I don't know completely what to think about that idea, but I know too many people, or at least some people, who were in a gay lifestyle or a homosexual lifestyle, and God changed their life, and they wound up getting married and having a very fruitful, productive, healthy marriage with an opposite -sex person.

18:28

So I think experientially that argument doesn't hold merit, and I think if it were true that God couldn't or wouldn't change a person's desire in that fashion when he saves their soul,

18:44

I just don't buy it. It seems like we don't do that for other sins. I used to struggle with racism, so I'm just a

18:52

Christian racist. I used to struggle with alcoholism, so I'm a Christian alcoholic because I still have those temptations or something like that.

19:00

But with that particular issue, there's an exception made. We were talking about CRT a minute ago.

19:06

And related, I know there's a fancy word, standpoint epistemology, but what it basically means is just that certain people have social locations where they're oppressed, and so they are qualified to talk about things pertaining to justice and maybe even how a church should arrange what kinds of songs it does or its worship service.

19:29

I mean, I've heard these things from Southern Baptists. And because of some kind of an identity they have, something internal within them.

19:37

So whether it's someone who has same -sex attractions, whether it's someone who is a minority ethnically or a gender minority, they are qualified more to speak about certain issues related to their quote -unquote oppression.

19:54

And this stuff has been taught in soft ways in some of the seminaries.

20:00

For instance, saying that you get the best interpretation of the Bible or a better interpretation if you get all these people around because they're going to be making sure that your white privilege doesn't give a wrong interpretation.

20:13

What do you think about that issue? Because I know that issue is already a present problem. Yeah, and that is a problem.

20:20

Intersectionality, the person who has the most intersections has the most authority to speak, for example. Well, again, that's not founded in Scripture.

20:28

To me, you keep the argument focused on what does the Bible say, and the Bible doesn't say that the

20:36

Jew was better positioned to understand God because of their Old Testament understanding than the

20:42

Gentile was. So did the Jew have preference over the Gentile or the

20:47

Gentile over the Jew? I don't think so. I don't think we see that in Scripture. So it doesn't make sense to me, nor does it make sense in Scripture, or do you see in Scripture a person's skin color or ethnic background in some other way giving them preference or giving them a special ability to understand

21:05

Scripture or hear from God or know God's will? You just don't find that in the Bible. So I think it's a huge mistake, both hermeneutically and theologically, biblically, to say that a person based on their culture, background, skin color, whatever the intersection might be, has a moral authority superior to someone else because that someone else has innate characteristics that are different than that person.

21:37

You just can't support that scripturally. Now, we understand that interpreting the

21:43

Bible, we bring everything we are to biblical interpretation. It's a science and it's an art.

21:49

And yet, we also understand it isn't determined.

21:55

The meaning of the text is not determined by who we are. It's determined by what God says and the original intent of the text.

22:03

So for me, and I think historically as Baptists, that's where we have put our focus.

22:11

What is the original intent of the text? And then how does it apply to our current situation? The color of my skin doesn't help me determine original intent,

22:19

I don't think. Yeah. What about the complementarian issue? I think that's the third big one. And right now, as we're talking about this, it's actually kind of raging because on Mother's Day, there were a few

22:30

Southern Baptist churches and church plants that ended up having females, whether they had the position of pastor or they were visitor guest speakers, preach the

22:41

Mother's Day sermon. Right. And I know this is going to probably come up at the convention.

22:48

What's your position on that? Yeah, I'm a complementarian and believe that the pastoral position and function is in Scripture, again, just basing it off Scripture, is to be held by a qualified man and not by a female.

23:06

I will say the issue is going to be more difficult for Baptists to navigate,

23:11

I think, than, like, the homosexual issue. And the reason being, homosexuality is a...even

23:20

if you're not a Christian, you know it's not natural. And so it's more recent in our culture to be accepted.

23:30

It's more easy to explain how this isn't only a violation of Scripture, it's a violation of natural law, you might say.

23:39

The complementarian issue is going to be more difficult in terms of our apologetic to the unbeliever. And I think that's where we're seeing, and I think it's a pragmatic thing that we see in some of these churches.

23:50

I think they're pragmatists. They see where the culture is going. And I don't want to be judgmental toward them in that way either.

23:57

I mean, this is just trying to think through the issue. Why would a church that has not ordained women for 40 years now ordain women?

24:08

I don't know the answer to that question. But when I look at what's going on in our country,

24:14

I think it could be pragmatic. It could be that they see the direction of the country, and this is an accommodation they're willing to make because they think it will work for them.

24:26

And by the way, they may be right about that. Pragmatically, they may be right.

24:32

And so then the question comes back for us, for all of us, I think, who believe

24:37

Scripture is, what does the Bible say? And then how do we enunciate that in a way that is winsome and that is persuasive?

24:48

And so that's where I'm trying to come from on that is, what is the winsome, persuasive way of helping our churches and helping the lost who are trying to woo to Christ understand why it is that it's a man in the pulpit and not a woman in the pulpit?

25:06

And honestly, I don't know that I have the answer to that. I think we're working toward that.

25:12

But I think pragmatism is not the answer. I think we have to base our answer and our approach on Scripture.

25:20

Those are the social issues, I'd say, unless there's another one you want to add to that list. There's also,

25:27

I think, another, and this may be the bigger thing, and I've just recently myself kind of come to that conclusion that this is so much bigger than what

25:35

I ever thought I knew. But there seems to be an issue of corruption or the misuse of finances and resources.

25:43

You mentioned that at the beginning. I want to talk about that a little bit. You had mentioned certain metrics like baptisms and church plants kind of taking a nosedive over the last 10 years.

25:56

Despite that, though, you don't hear a lot of talk about it. I don't hear, and this is just,

26:01

I haven't heard everything other Southern Baptist candidates have said, just to be clear. But I have listened and I have read some of the interviews, and I don't find them talking about this as much.

26:12

But it seems like these are pretty important metrics to look at.

26:18

If you're not having baptisms, then how in the world you can have as diverse of a board at your seminary as you want, but if people aren't getting saved as much, then that spells doom for the convention,

26:31

I would think. But I want to hear what you think. Southern Baptist Convention, cancer, stage one, stage four.

26:38

Do you even want to use that analogy? Where do you think, where is the convention at with corruption and misuse of finances, et cetera?

26:47

I've been using the illustration, I've not used this in print, that we're bleeding out, because people talk about, do we really want to get into some of the corruption issues and these deep issues that will cause people perhaps to withhold funds, cause people to check out on us, cause a bloodbath.

27:06

That word's been used, and to which I have said, we're bleeding out, we're the frog in the kettle.

27:12

Now, it may take 30 years to bleed out, or 40 years, but the fact is, everything's heading the wrong direction.

27:19

We have lost over 5 ,000 churches, a net decrease of over 5 ,000 churches supporting the mission efforts of Southern Baptists.

27:26

So one of the primary reasons we have fewer missionaries on the field, we don't have the money we had 15 years ago.

27:32

We had $81 million more given through our mission enterprise, the cooperative program, in 2007 than 2019.

27:43

$81 million, because we had over 5 ,000 fewer churches supporting it. Now, that 81 doesn't factor in inflation, so it's probably 181 if you factor in inflation.

27:54

People aren't talking about that, and to me it drives me nuts, because I think that the corruption and the lack of transparency...

28:02

So one of the things I've said, when we're talking about some of these other issues, which are very, very important, transparency will help us get at the truth of everything.

28:13

So if we just know where is the money going, how is it being spent, what are we actually getting for it?

28:20

Are we actually getting church plants? If we're spending three, four, five times as much money per new church, why are we doing that?

28:28

Are we getting the bang for the buck? If our baptisms have plummeted, then why is that happening?

28:35

The why question is a huge question. I think I know some of the reason for that. So, for example, in 2010, we started down a path of deemphasizing evangelism at our national entity, the

28:46

North American Mission Board. They had 50 evangelism staff, counting assistants, 50 in the national office, and hundreds across the country through state conventions and associations jointly funded.

28:57

They completely eradicated all of that. They went from 50 people to one part -time person and an assistant.

29:04

Now they've added two or three more, Johnny Hunt and a few others. Repeat that, 50 people to one part -time person and an assistant.

29:12

Correct. For evangelism. Correct. And when they started getting beaten up over that by me, primarily, to begin with, they started adding a couple of high -profile people,

29:22

Johnny Hunt being the highest profile. And they've added two or three since then. But that's all. But these are not evangelism strategists.

29:30

They're great preachers and speakers and whatnot. But there's no evangelism strategy being developed by the

29:36

North American Mission Board. Now, the other thing they did, in every state convention, there were evangelism staff that were jointly funded by NAM, that were helping our churches do student evangelism, personal evangelism, different ways of keeping evangelism at the point for our churches.

29:52

They were completely defunded, completely defunded. So we have hundreds fewer people, from a denominational perspective, serving our churches, helping our churches better reach the lost.

30:05

And I was speaking to a couple of leaders yesterday, I think it was. And these are guys in fairly important positions, and they had no clue that that's what had happened.

30:15

They didn't know the de -emphasis on evangelism that began in 2010. And Southern Baptists don't know that.

30:21

And I've learned they don't know what these... So my thing is, transparency is going to help everybody know the truth and define reality.

30:33

And then accountability, fighting against corruption, some misspending of the dollars, some deception in the reporting, things like that.

30:46

And for example, one of... Well, I was going to say, that's a heavy charge you just said, deception in the reporting. Do you want to talk about that a little bit, what you mean by that?

30:54

Just because I know people are going to wonder, are you talking about a specific person or persons, or do you have numbers?

31:01

Well, I'll give you a couple of numbers, and I'll give you several. I can give you several. But anyway, one is, in 2010, the church planning budget for the

31:09

North American Mission Board was $23 million. And the budget had held pretty flat for a long time, in the $20 to $23 million range for years and years.

31:17

We were planting, in the first decade of the 21st century, about 1 ,300 churches a year, new churches that many were being started.

31:27

And, however, since 2010, the budget has grown from $23 million to $75 million, and the church plant numbers have plummeted.

31:37

So we're spending $50 million more a year in church planting, and we're getting less than half as many churches.

31:43

The lowest five years in church plant numbers in at least 40 years are the last five years.

31:50

So this year, they say there was an uptick in 2020 to 588, which would make it the second lowest year in 40 years.

31:57

The lowest year was 2019, which was 552. So the church plant numbers have collapsed while the spending has…

32:05

Well, where's the money going? And that's the question. So in the reporting, for example, last year, they said they spent $69 million in church plants.

32:13

Well, there were 552 new church plants. They spent $69 million. But how is that broken down?

32:20

And, by the way, the 552 aren't all funded. That's the total number of new church starts, many of which are not funded by the

32:28

North American Mission Board. They're self -funded. They're funded by states or whatever. So here's the question that I've asked that hasn't been answered.

32:37

How many of those churches are actually being funded, and where are they located? It's a transparency question.

32:44

Don't have the answer to that question. My guess is, and I have a pretty good guess, that the total number being funded at any one time is in the 1 ,100 to 1 ,200, 1 ,000 to 1 ,200 range.

32:56

So you break that down. You've got 1 ,000 to 1 ,200 churches being funded. You're spending almost $70 million a year funding those churches.

33:03

You do the math, and you're like at $60 ,000 per church per year, something like that.

33:12

But our church plants aren't getting that much money. So then the question is, where is all the money going?

33:17

Well, we know tens of millions have been spent buying houses. They also pay pastors to be

33:24

NAMM ambassadors or just to run interference for NAMM at state conventions. Typically it's $1 ,000 a month.

33:30

So we've got tons of pastors out there. That's no different than a lobbyist. Correct. There's dozens of pastors, and maybe many more than dozens, that are getting a monthly stipend to represent

33:43

NAMM in some fashion in their state. And these are always influential guys, good guys, great pastors, influential, and that's why they're being paid.

33:53

Wow. Yeah, I haven't heard anyone talk about that really. And that should be, I would think, one of the top concerns.

34:00

One of the things that struck me as you were talking was that you have a situation in which

34:06

I hear all the time, especially from the seminaries, but it's not just the seminaries. It's NAMM.

34:11

It's to some extent IMB. It's in speeches and literature that goes out how diverse we are, how much we are committed to focusing on diversity on boards, etc.

34:26

But while this focus on diversity is happening, a focus on the basics of evangelism is not.

34:32

I mean, that's drastic. From 50 to one person and an assistant, that's insane. Yeah, yeah.

34:38

So it just begs the question in my mind, why in the world? I'm not accusing anyone of anything because I don't know, but you start thinking of the possibilities of why.

34:49

Is this kind of like the rabbit in the hat trick? Look over here. We're focusing on diversity.

34:55

But meanwhile, the fundamentals aren't there. What can an SBC president do to correct this?

35:01

And as far as I know, you're the one talking about this more than anyone else. What would you do if you were president to try to get back to evangelism and just the things that actually make

35:11

Southern Baptists Southern Baptists? Yeah, and that's a great question. I think I'm unique among the candidates in that I believe the president can make a bigger difference quicker than maybe some think because often it's emphasized that the president has appointment power for trustees.

35:30

It takes 8 to 10 years to replace all the trustees. That's true. But the president also has a bully pulpit.

35:36

And if the president of the convention puts his finger on the budget of an entity and says, open the books, we need to see where the money's going.

35:45

We need to see what actually is happening in terms of effectiveness. We need to know. And if the president talks about these changes, what has changed in evangelism?

35:54

So, for example, the answer that I've received is church planting is the best method of doing evangelism.

36:01

Well, first of all, evangelism is evangelism. Church planting happens because you gather people you've evangelized.

36:07

And I'm a total big fan of church planting. I think we need to start new churches. But my point to them has been that about 96 to 98 percent of our people are in established churches, not church plants.

36:21

Church plants are the future, but you've only got 2 to 3 or 4 percent that are actually attending those church plants.

36:28

So if you ignore the 96 percent in the established church and don't help them evangelize better, then you're just not...

36:37

Even if your church plants are doing well, overall, you're going to collapse because you're not helping the great majority of the people and the great majority of the churches do the work.

36:47

And that's what we're seeing. So I would say what happened was we took our eyes off the ball when it came to helping all of our churches evangelistically.

36:54

They put the emphasis on just the church plants. Even if the church plants were doing well, they can't make up the difference for all the established churches not doing well.

37:04

But then what also happened is our church plant numbers were cut in less than half. It's a perfect storm.

37:11

And so what wound up happening is the baptism numbers went from about 350 ,000 to, at last report, 235 ,000.

37:20

That was 2019. So baptisms collapsed. We had not been under 300 ,000 since 1947.

37:28

In the last five years, we've been under 300 ,000 baptisms. That's amazing. Unbelievable. And see,

37:34

I just think if the president puts his finger on that and speaks about it and lets people know and talks about why, it'll make a difference.

37:42

And transparency quickly will help people make better decisions, at least will define reality if we have transparency.

37:49

In terms of corruption, too, how the money's spent, there was a lawsuit filed last fall by Lifeway against their former president.

37:57

The lawsuit dropped fairly quickly. They reached some type of agreement. But in the course of the lawsuit, we learned that the former chairman of Lifeway, without telling the compensation committee of the trustees, former chairman of the trustees, didn't tell another trustee that he worked out a compensation agreement for the outgoing president in excess of a million dollars.

38:19

So one trustee, the trustee chairman, approved a million -dollar compensation package for the outgoing president while at the same time signing book contracts with Lifeway.

38:29

So the chairman has five book contracts or three book contracts with Lifeway, three book contracts.

38:35

He's no longer the chairman, but he's still on the board. And that is an utter violation of the

38:40

SBC bylaws, which says you can't receive direct or indirect compensation if you're a trustee.

38:47

And here you've got book contracts, and you're giving your friend, the outgoing president, over a million dollars as he walks out the door.

38:54

To me, that defines corruption. I mean, that is, and it's in direct violation of our bylaws, and yet we've done nothing about it, which shows to me the weakness of our leadership in the

39:07

Southern Baptist Convention. If they won't take care of that, what are they going to take care of? And I think if the president calls out stuff like that, they can ignore me at this point.

39:16

But if I have the title of president, they can't ignore that. If you shine a flashlight on it, then people have to see it.

39:22

And I was talking with someone about this, not just in SBC terms, but just in general, the way that most people seem to be exposed isn't necessarily even their political philosophy, which could be very bad, or their theology, which could be very bad.

39:39

It tends to be scandal. And the two tend to go together a lot of the time. If they're not principled in one area, they won't be principled in another area.

39:47

And so I could see that being very effective, just using the platform at your disposal, if you were in that position, to be able to kind of shine a light on it.

40:00

You said earlier, you used the term bleeding, that Southern Baptists were bleeding. And one of the questions that has come up is that so many churches seem to be leaving.

40:10

I hear about it all the time. I was just actually traveling. I was in Tennessee, went to a church, and it had SBC. It was a fairly larger church, very healthy church, a church -planting church in the

40:23

Knoxville area. And I walked in, and I asked the pastor, so it says

40:28

SBC, are you affiliated with the SBC? And he said no.

40:33

And it was over. It sounded to me like some of the more progressive political stuff coming out of the seminaries, they just decided to disassociate.

40:41

And they didn't need the SBC. It wasn't doing anything for them in the minds of this church and the pastor.

40:47

How many churches like that that are solid, healthy churches that could be such assets, how many are leaving the

40:53

SBC on a weekly, monthly, yearly basis? You know, well, there have been over 5 ,000 we know that aren't supporting, a net decrease of over 5 ,000 in the last 12 years.

41:04

One of our Southern conventions, a very large convention, the executive director there said in February that they're losing one to three churches every week in that state convention.

41:14

Now, what time frame that covers, I don't know. But as of February, he was saying they're seeing churches leave every week between one to three.

41:23

And I would guess, I mean, it's certainly dozens of churches. It's probably hundreds now at this point.

41:29

I don't know the number. But I do know there's a lot of people who are discouraged and disheartened by what they see.

41:38

And I think, you know, decline, you know, is disheartening.

41:45

But the lack of transparency and the corruption is disheartening. And if people don't feel like they're being heard, and if they fear that their mission dollars aren't being well spent, and if their questions aren't even being answered, which to me,

42:04

I mean, every Southern Baptist has a right to know how the money is being spent. That's just basic. And if you won't tell people how you're spending their money specifically, you don't have a right to the money.

42:17

That's my take. And I think that's what we're seeing. And I know for a fact what you're saying is true because I've talked to enough pastors that are leaving or are going to leave or they're talking about leaving if certain things don't get corrected.

42:31

And a lot of it comes down to trust. I think we have a dearth of trust.

42:38

And the way you build trust is through transparency and then accountability, stopping corruption, continues to build trust, and then involving more of our churches.

42:49

We really only have 4 ,000 or 5 ,000 churches that have messengers at the annual meeting out of 47 ,000 churches.

42:55

We need to expand that number. I think the way you expand it is through remote participation, having voting sites throughout the country for our annual meeting, for example.

43:05

Our annual meeting is in Nashville this year. It costs a lot of money to fly to Nashville and get a motel and do all that.

43:11

I think the widow with her mite deserves a vote. Well, I thought it was interesting, was it last year, when they canceled the whole convention and it was the same people saying, we need to cancel the convention.

43:21

We're saying you need to meet on Zoom for church. So you can meet on Zoom for church and remote church, but you can't do that for a convention.

43:29

The Lord Jesus Christ didn't say, do not forsake the physical assembling of the

43:35

Southern Baptist Convention. He said that about the church. Anyway, that's my little pet peeve. Sure. Yeah, that's an idea that everyone's now participating in and it might work.

43:46

For you personally, like I said at the beginning of this, there's a minefield out there and you seem like a good guy.

43:54

You don't give me the impression of being a politician at all or anything like that. And you're so far outside the

44:01

South, even though you're working with the Southern Baptist Convention in the grassroots here.

44:09

Why would you want to do this personally? It doesn't seem to be something that would benefit you personally,

44:15

I wouldn't think. So what's in it for you? Not in a selfish way, but your purpose in this.

44:22

Do you feel like this is something you owe the convention or something that God has put a mandate on you to do?

44:29

That's a great question. And yeah, I don't think there is anything in it for me.

44:34

I like my life and I'm not going anywhere from here. We love the Northwest. It really is in some sense a debt

44:43

I feel I owe to the convention. I love Southern Baptist. I think Southern Baptist and the way we do our work at our best is like the best thing going.

44:52

I think it's pretty miraculous when you consider that all of our cooperation is voluntary. Every church decides voluntarily what they're going to give and how they're going to participate in the life of the convention.

45:04

The SBC has no control or isn't supposed to have any control over the churches or anyone else.

45:10

And yet through this voluntary effort, we built the largest missionary system in the world, the largest seminary system in the world.

45:17

Our seminary education is kept very affordable for our students. And all of that's because of the way we cooperate.

45:24

What I tell pastors when I'm asked, why should I stay in the SBC? I say, well, for one thing, if you have a young preacher boy called into the ministry, you've got colleges, you have seminaries that you can help him find his education.

45:37

You've got mission boards. If you have a person called to go to Mongolia as a missionary or Zambia or whoever it might be, they can go and they'll be fully funded and trained and equipped and sustained on the field through the cooperative efforts of Southern Baptist.

45:53

So, and for example, if I have a family move to New York City or Boston or, you know,

46:00

Orlando or wherever it might be, I can contact a Baptist church there and say, hey, we've got a family moving there.

46:06

Would you contact them? Would you call on them? Would you help them in some way? And we've got 47 ,000 churches.

46:12

So virtually every community in the country, there are people we can call and people do that with me.

46:18

I mean, certainly every month, if not every week, someone will say, I know someone moving to Seattle or someone moving where can you put them in touch with the church?

46:26

And I can always do that. And that's a, so that's really the strength of Southern Baptist.

46:32

I think that network of churches, the strength we built in our missionary efforts.

46:39

So my thing is not, is God not doing good things to Southern Baptist? He is. It's just that he's not doing as much as I think he wants to.

46:47

I think God would like to bless us more and work through us more if we'd only get our act together better.

46:55

So for me, it's a matter of scale. I don't know of another network of churches that start in 500 to 600 churches a year.

47:02

I just think we should be doing 1 ,200 to 1 ,300, 1 ,500 a year, not 500 to 600. But we're still doing more than the others are, for example.

47:12

I don't know of another group sending and supporting 3 ,600 international missionaries.

47:18

I just think we should be supporting and sending 5 ,000, you know, if we had our act together.

47:23

So it's more that for me. What encourages you about, because we've talked a lot about some negative trends here, but are there things that encourage you about within the convention or,

47:36

I don't know, even conversations with pastors that are starting to understand some of these issues and taking charge themselves in their local assemblies?

47:45

One of the things we have going for us as Southern Baptists is we say we believe the

47:52

Bible. And I've always said if a person will stick with Scripture and if they'll pray,

47:59

God has a chance. You know, God has a chance to change their heart and change their thinking. And if they do that, then when they get the right information, they have a better chance of making the right decision.

48:11

And that comes back to my transparency call. If good people who have the right heart and the right belief get the right information, hopefully

48:20

God leads them to the right decision. And that's my hope and that's my approach to this whole thing is that if people know the truth, if Southern Baptist people know the truth, more times than not, they'll make the right choice.

48:39

Yeah. Well, any final thoughts you want to add about your run for presidency in June or anything related to the convention that you'd like to share with anyone out there?

48:50

Well, I'd love for people to come and vote for me. Yeah, I need that kind of support. That's the thing about our system is you've got to show up and vote if you want to have a voice.

49:00

So if people believe that we need to change, I really think that what the things

49:06

I'm addressing are the things that need to be changed and they're the things that can make things happen the quickest.

49:13

And it's not that there aren't other things that are going to take years to sort out and we need to spend that time and do the work to do that, but there are certain things

49:23

I think we can do more quickly that will have a pretty dramatic impact. I think leadership matters and I think who the president is matters more than what some people think.

49:35

I think the president can actually make things change if he's willing to speak the hard truth and doesn't really care who he offends in the process.

49:48

And that's part of it. That's part of it. It's just willing to state the truth no matter how it lies with people.

49:54

Now, where can people go to hear more about you or read? Because I know you have a blog,

49:59

I think. Yeah, randyadams .org. If they go to that, randyadams .org, it gives my platform.

50:05

It gives a lot of information about what I'm trying to accomplish. I've written quite a few articles on most subjects.

50:11

So whether it be the CRT subject, I've written a couple of things on that. Mostly what

50:16

I've written on is transparency, accountability, and participation. I'm mostly focused on areas of corruption and trying to open up the system so that there isn't secrecy in the system.

50:29

The NDAs and stuff like that that enable seminaries and others to keep information under wraps that they think might expose them to something that would be embarrassing.

50:39

I just think that's wrong. We shouldn't have NDAs in Baptist life. People ought to know the truth, and we ought to argue out our beliefs.

50:48

And the best argument hopefully wins the day. But if you keep information under wraps, then people don't know what the arguments are.

50:57

So anyway, randyadams .org, they can read a lot. Perfect. Yeah. Well, God bless your new ministry here.

51:04

And pray for God's will and the Southern Baptist Convention. And I appreciate you sharing all of this stuff.

51:10

It's overwhelming for someone who hasn't heard this before, I think. But it's helpful. We need to hear it.

51:17

And people in the convention especially, they need to know that some of these things are actual issues. So thank you once again.