June 30, 2023 Show with Tom Buck on “My Personal Experiences with the Southern Baptist Convention” PLUS Buz Taylor on “God’s Lawsuit”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.

This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 30th day of June, 2023.

Tom Buck on His Ministry and the Southern Baptist Convention

I am thrilled to have back as a returning guest Tom Buck, who is senior pastor at First Baptist Church of Lindale, Texas, and board member of the board of directors at G3 Ministries. And during the majority of today's program, we are going to be discussing Tom's personal experiences with the Southern Baptist Convention.

He has to leave our program a half hour early. So during the final portion of our program, we will be joined by an old friend of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. If you listened to the program starting in 2015, when we relaunched after relocating to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, you will remember the name Buzz Taylor, who was frequently a co-host on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio right in the studio with me.

Well, he is going to be giving an update on his life and discussing a new book that is nearly complete and ready to go to print called God's Lawsuit. So make sure you stay tuned to the tail end of the program so that we can hear Buzz Taylor with you.

And anybody who would like to ask a question of either Tom Buck or Buzz Taylor can send your questions to ChrisArnson at gmail .com. ChrisArnson at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name, at least city and state and country of residence.

But first of all, let me welcome you back, my dear friend, Tom Buck.

Thank you, Chris. It's great to be with you always. Thank you for having me back.

Oh, it's great to have you back. And why don't you remind our listeners or inform them for the first time if they haven't heard you on the program yet. Something about First Baptist Church of Lindale, Texas.

Well, we are located in East Texas, about an hour and a half east of Dallas, and I've been the senior pastor here for 17 years now. It's been it's hard to believe it's been that long, but it is. And thankful for the ministry that we have here.

We will talk, I'm sure, about Southern Baptist. We've been a Southern Baptist church for many years. And I think our church started about 1876, so a long history church.

Well, if anybody would like more information about First Baptist Church of Lindale, Texas, go to FBCLindale .com, F-B-C for First Baptist Church. And Lindale is spelled L-I-N-D-A-L-E dot com, F-B-C Lindale dot com.

You're also a member of the board of directors for G3 Ministries. Why don't you briefly tell us about G3 Ministries and the upcoming conference that I am excited to once again attend and be manning an exhibitor's booth for Orange Reap and Zion Radio.

Yes, I am on the board at G3 Ministries. I have been on the board since they became a ministry. Apart from conference, they began as a conference, and we have a conference every other year now. It used to be annually.

After 10 years, it moved to being an every other year conference. This year, we're going to be having the conference in Atlanta, September 21st through the 23rd, on the topic of the sovereignty of God.

Great lineup of speakers that are there. I'm not speaking in the main sessions, but I will be doing a breakout session there. I also oversee the expository preaching workshops that we have with G3, where we help men, particularly pastors we're trying to help, develop their exegetical skills and better handle the God's Word in the pulpit.

And then this summer, we began a workshop for women that's an expository teaching workshop, so not a preaching, obviously, workshop, but one to help women in developing their handling of the Word of God as well for teaching older women, teaching younger women, and teaching children, and being used of God in the life of a local church in those ways.

So G3 is expanding greatly. We've got G3 Press that is printing books that help the local church, and that's our desire to educate, to equip, to encourage the local church. That's what we're all about, and we're trying to do everything we can to do that.

Yes, and the upcoming conference is on the theme, The Sovereignty of God. It will be held September 21st through the 23rd, which is a Thursday through Saturday in Atlanta, Georgia. And the huge lineup includes such powerful speakers as Votie Baucom, Steven Lawson, Paul Washer, Phil Johnson, who's the executive director of John MacArthur's Grace to You Media Ministry, Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, Justin Peters, Ken Ham, and there is a very long list that continues after that, and my friend who's my guest today, Tom Buck, is also doing a breakout section, so why don't you tell us about that?

Yeah, we don't always keep the breakout sessions strictly along the line of Sovereignty of God, or whatever the theme of the conference is, but they've asked me to talk specifically about expository preaching and how we make proper biblical connections to Christ.

So I'll be examining the Christocentric view of interpretation of Scripture and evaluating whether that is a legitimate approach to sound expository preaching, so that's what I'm going to be dealing with.

Well, if anybody wants to register for the G3 conference, and I strongly urge that you do, it is, and I'm not exaggerating, my very favorite of all conferences that I attend. The times that I have been there, meaning my exhibitors booth for Iron Trip and Zion Radio, have without question been the most fruitful experiences, and I just really look forward to every time I have the opportunity to return.

And if you would like to join me there, go to g3min .org, G -3-M-I-N-dot-org, and for a 30 discount off the registration fee, all you have to do is enter the promo code for Iron Trip and Zion Radio, which is G -3-I-S-I-R, G -3-I-S-I-R, and you will get 30 off the registration fee, and you will be hearing our mutual friend Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministry in commercials throughout this program reminding you of that information.

Tom Buck's Experiences of Drift and Controversy in the SBC

Well, the Southern Baptist Convention has never been a stranger to controversy. At one time, as you know very well yourself, Tom, it was nearly completely engulfed by leftism, liberalism, and by God's mercy, there was a 180-degree shift in the theological emphasis of the Southern Baptist Convention and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and so on, and even though that was something with which many who are Bible-believing Christians, especially if they are members of the Southern Baptist Convention, many were rejoicing from the rooftops over that, the controversies haven't disappeared.

And I want you to basically tell us about your experiences with the Southern Baptist Convention. Perhaps you might want to start with something positive, but then please tell us about some recent events that have troubled the hearts not only of you and your wife, but of people who know and love you and respect you and highly value you in your ministry.

Well, I've been a Southern Baptist my entire life, was raised in Southern Baptist Church, came to know Christ in Southern Baptist Church. I was going to seminary and Bible college at the time that the conservative resurgence began to be coming on the horizon and the problems in the schools at that time, so I didn't go to Southern Baptist Bible college or seminary mainly because I didn't want to engulf myself in those type of theological controversies.

I just wanted to go get trained well in the word of God. When I came out of seminary in 1993, Al Mohler was just then becoming president of Southern, and that really was what prompted me to stay in the convention.

I was making a decision whether I would. I had never been a member of a church other than Southern Baptist, but as I began my ministry, which began actually in 94 after I graduated in 93, I made the decision that I wanted to stay in the Southern Baptist Convention because there's so much good that has been done with the International Mission Board, the seminaries that were turning in a good direction.

It's really only been for me in the last probably six, seven years that I have seen things that have just been really disturbing to me. I began to see that there were issues, particularly what I've called adrift, others have called adrift as well, regarding the role of women in the church, and then, of course, one of the big issues was the infiltration of the concepts of critical race theory that began to infiltrate the Southern Baptist Convention long before 2019.

But in 2019, it surfaced in what's become known as Resolution 9, which was pretty much advocating for the positive things of critical race theory and intersectionality, saying that scripture still is supreme, but that that ideology can help us in understanding what's going on in our world today.

Tom Askell and I began then speaking out against that. We were deeply concerned about what was going on within the convention regarding those things. And so here we are today, several years later, last year, the convention would not deal with Saddleback, even saying that they wanted to form a committee to a task force to determine what is the word pastor mean, quote unquote.

One year later, for whatever reason, a year ago we couldn't define what a pastor is, and this year they did remove Saddleback and remove another church that had one other church that had a woman pastor that was near a Southern seminary in Louisville, and she's been pastoring there for 31 years.

But all of a sudden, they decided to deal with that. Not exactly sure. I have some theories about that. We can maybe talk. But I feel that what we have is a disconnect between the local Southern Baptist Church and the leadership of the convention, and I believe there has been a drift.

I believe there continues to be a drift, and I think that they're scrambling to try to figure out how to patch this great chasm that exists between the local Southern Baptist Church and the institutions.

So you and your wife actually had unfortunate run-ins, if you will, or reactions from key figures in the Southern Baptist Convention, and they have troubled your friends. Can you tell us something about that?

Also, most people know that I've been vocal about the problems in the SBC, again, somewhere around 2018, 2017, somewhere in that time frame, vocal, sharing my concerns about the drift that's taking place.

And in 2021, I guess it actually was 2022, I had reached out to the person who was the presidential candidate at the time, one of the presidential candidates, Willie Rice, and when I reached out to Willie Rice initially, Tom Askell wasn't even running.

They've said I did it as a political hit job on Willie, but I didn't even know that Tom was running when I reached out to Willie initially. The reason I reached out to him is he had an individual in his church who I knew who was a deacon in his church and had, about 15 years earlier when he was a teacher in a high school, a public school, had been involved sexually with one of his students.

And so I felt, having that knowledge, that I needed to go privately to Willie Rice to have that conversation. I was concerned about the fact that the convention had been engulfed in these types of problems regarding how we have handled issues of sexual abuse.

And when I reached out to the individual that I knew, he told me that Willie Rice knew. When I reached out to Willie Rice, he told me initially that he wasn't aware of what I was talking about. And so we set up a conference call, it was private, between me and two of my elders, Willie and one of his staff members, and I shared with him my concerns.

He then told me that he did know about the situation and that he would address it. Of course, it was an hour phone call, much longer than just that brief quip. But within 32 hours of me calling Willie Rice about this, a rough draft that my wife, Jennifer, had written back in 2018 that talked about our early years of struggle in our marriage, that God gloriously redeemed through the gospel and transformed us, got leaked to the media.

We were unaware when it initially was leaked. We became aware several days later. But it's pretty much just absolutely unthinkable that it wasn't released directly in relation to me calling Willie Rice.

So that's what happened.

Now, when you say leaked into the media, are you talking about the secular media in Lyndale, Texas, or beyond?

No, we're talking about Baptist News Global, for certain, that it was leaked to them. And it was clearly leaked to be a smear piece. I think they thought that we had never talked about the problems in our early marriage.

I think they thought that, hey, we'll show that Tom had patterns of abuse, quote-unquote, in his own life, and that disqualifies him. I think they were wanting to disqualify me in some way because I had come forward and said something to Willie.

I never threatened him. I told him I wasn't going to go public with it. But I think they were fearful that I would. They not being Willie, but they being other people in the SBC. And the thing that made it damaging to my wife was not that our story of our struggles in marriage, because we had told that our entire ministry, but my wife had included in that rough draft that had not been seen by we didn't know it was even out there other than one person that Jennifer had given it to.

It included private information about abuse that happened to Jennifer when she was a child that she had never told anyone about publicly, and abuse that had happened in my life before I met Jennifer that I had not told anyone about publicly.

And so it put us in a very awkward situation of what do we tell about this, what is in the story? Because people began to wonder, what are they trying to hide? What is it they want to hide from people knowing?

It wasn't the struggles of our marriage. It was that very private information.

So what was it about this individual whom it came to your knowledge was having an unbiblical sexual relationship? What was it about this person that was so valuable that this information would be leaked out in order to defame you, to somehow counteract the information that was public about the individual that you approached?

Yeah, I don't think it was something special about the person who had the, for lack of a better term, sordid past. It was me going to the individual, Willie, who was running as the presidential candidate.

And I think the powers that be in the SBC saw me as acting politically to try to get Tom Askle to destroy Willie so Tom Askle could be elected again when I first contacted Willie. I didn't even know that Tom Askle was running.

He didn't tell me. I found out that he was running when he told everybody else. And so that wasn't true. I wasn't acting politically. I think they thought that I was out to destroy him, Willie Rice, and destroy his candidacy, which was not true.

So whoever was behind this decided that they would preemptively strike and try to destroy me first. The only thing that makes sense with it going 32 hours later to the Baptist media.

Now, if you could, I mean, anything that you feel comfortable saying since it has already been made public, what was it that was leaked about the article that your wife had written talking about how your marriage had victory over this problem or problems, plural, and has brought you to a place where God has mightily used both of you and blessed not only your enjoyment of your marriage, but the usefulness of your marriage, your marriage being used as a ministry to others, in addition to being a wonderful oasis for the both of you to retreat to.

But tell us, what was it, as much as you care to, that was attempted to vilify you or scandalize you?

Real quickly, Kuiper Productions did a documentary. They can find it on my pinned tweet on Twitter. If they go find me on Twitter, which is just at Tom Buck, they will see that there was a four-part documentary there that explains everything that occurred.

So if they want to get the in-depth, behind-the-scenes look of everything that happened, of me going to Willie and it being released and everything. But essentially, what Jennifer had done is she had, back in 2018, she talked with me and said, Tom, you know, it might be good for us to share our story publicly of what happened in our marriage early on.

We've been married 36 years now, so it had been the first four or five years of our marriage. By the fifth year, God had restored everything. And the Me Too movement was hot at the time, the Church Too movement.

And what Jennifer felt was that they were just writing off people, telling people, you know, if you have any type of trouble in your marriage, if there's verbal abuse or whatever it may be, there's no hope for that.

There was no gospel hope being given. And Jennifer said, I think it might be good for us to tell our story publicly. We'd already told it in our church back in Florida and then in Texas whenever it was appropriate, which I'm preaching through Ephesians 5 or talking about marriage.

I would talk about it very openly from the pulpit. So what happened early in our marriage is I just didn't know how to be a godly husband. I was going to school. We were in seminary even at the time. I was verbally abusive, the language would be today, to my wife.

There was even emotional stress that caused on her because of that. And then we've told this over and over again, and she put it in her story as well about this instance where, you know, she playfully put a Coke can on the back of my neck and it angered me.

And I turned around and grabbed her hand and I slapped her wrist like you would a child and said, don't you ever do that. And it was in that moment that both of us, as we looked at each other, knew I needed to get help with anger issues that were in my heart and in my life.

And shortly after that, there were some other things that occurred, not problems with us, but just other circumstances of other people helping us say, hey, yeah, this is how you need to get help. We began counseling.

I went to counseling. We went together. And Jennifer had a woman in her life who had been pouring into her by the name of Dottie and her husband, Bob, was who ended up counseling us. And God took our marriage that was really at the brink of divorce, to be honest with.

You.

I think it may have would have ended in that had God not turned things around. And God restored our marriage through the power of the gospel. And so Jennifer wanted to tell that. And so in telling it, she wanted to also she wanted to communicate to the survivor community, if you will, that she knew what she was talking about, that I knew what I was.

This was not some small thing. And so she was deciding about whether she needed to come reveal her abuse in her past. And she wanted to also decide for us together of whether it would be important for people to understand the abuse that I'd experienced that had been kind of the the fuel to a lot of the anger that I was experiencing in my life.

So it's like, hey, we weren't just you know, Tom wasn't just a monster and she wasn't someone who didn't have her own issues. But we were two sinners married together who had a lot of baggage in her past who were trying to work through those things.

And so she had written this rough draft in a very just tell it all type thing and then had reached out to someone I with her to say, can you help us give us some feedback to know how we take all of this stuff and what we need to make public?

How do we do this for public consumption? So it wasn't ready for public consumption. It was very raw. As you know, rough draft isn't ready to go be printed. It needs to be sifted through and determined.

And so there was a lot of very personal, raw data that was in that. It's all public now to one degree or another. But that's what that's how they decided that they would take that information and use my wife and weaponize her story as a means by which to attack us politically in the SBC.

Betrayal, Bitterness, and the Ongoing Effects of the Leak

So tell us how this leaking of this information has harmed you in any way. And tell us something about perhaps your sense of betrayal and how you get through that and over it and not hold sinful bitterness about it and so on.

It was extremely devastating, more to my wife than anything else. I mean, I've been attacked in the SBC before. I've had political things done against me before, but I've never had my wife used against me and I've never had them willing to tamper with a marriage and potentially cause destruction in someone's ministry and try to make it look like that.

You know, I'm not fit to serve as a pastor. I mean, it was the most direct assault that we've ever experienced in our ministry ever. The most the most satanic assault that we've ever experienced in our ministry.

Again, that documentary will spell out a lot of it for you. But my wife felt exposed. She felt betrayed. The person that we went to was Karen Pryor, who is now a professor at Southeastern, or was at least until recently.

And at the time she was at Liberty University, we considered her to be a friend. And something happened. She's not the one who leaked it to the media, we don't believe. But we certainly do believe that she shared it, leaked it to one degree or another once she went to Southeastern, because the video shows how Keith Whitfield, who was the provost at Southeastern, still is on staff at Southeastern, was the one who was approached to ask Karen to authenticate it, Jennifer's rough draft, so it could be published.

So they knew that Karen Pryor had it. They knew who to go to to get it authenticated. And so we felt betrayed. Then when we went to Southeastern and asked for help, they were not willing to help us. And they chose to protect their people rather than helping my wife.

And even when she wrote and appealed to meet with them, they refused to meet with her in person.

Well, we have to go to our first commercial break. And if anybody has a question, please submit it to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Let's say you have experienced something similar to my guest Tom Buck, and you don't want to identify yourself. We can understand that.

But if it's a general question, please give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. We'll be right back with Tom Buck, right after these messages from our sponsors.

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So go to RoyalDiadem .com and mention Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We're now back with Tom Buck, Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church of Lindell, Texas, and a member of the Board of Directors for G3 Ministries.

We are talking about his personal experiences with the Southern Baptist Convention, and our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. And before we go to any listener questions, Tom, has this leaking of this information had any long-lasting, damaging effects to you, your ministry, and your church, other than perhaps your own feelings of betrayal, and that of your wife as well, her feeling betrayed by people that she thought were friends, and that kind of a thing, where you once loved and enjoyed the friendship and fellowship with people who turned on you and stabbed you in the back?

I guess probably the biggest long-lasting effect is that the lies that have been perpetuated by what they've done continue to be out there. So, Jennifer and I are even contemplating about just totally disengaging and getting off of any type of social media stuff because there's barely a week that goes by that she doesn't get said something to her derogatory or me, something said about me being a wife abuser, even using the term wife beater, not qualified for ministry, just all kinds of things.

So, it has been damaging in that way. The people that know us best know that these things aren't true. But on the flip side of the good, what God has done in it is, and how we've continued to ask the Lord not to allow for a root of bitterness to take root in our hearts, and God has continued to be gracious with us to help us battle that type of thing.

But we've also had plenty of people that have come forward that have now heard our story, have taken the time to listen to it. And we've had women come to Jennifer and men come to me and husbands and wives come to us together saying that they, too, have experienced that and felt the hope to come out and say, if it's possible for God to change you all, it's possible for God to change us.

So, it's actually opened up doors and opportunities for ministry to help marriages that have been struggling. So, what they meant for evil, God has used for good.

Well, praise God for that. Let's see here. We have a listener question. We have Seth in Hummelstown, Pennsylvania. Greetings, Chris and Tom. What is G3 Ministries' relationship to and stance on the Southern Baptist Convention?

Well, G3 Ministries doesn't really have a relationship at all, does not have a relationship at all with Southern Baptist Convention. Josh Bice, who is the founder and president of G3 Ministries, used to pastor a church that was Southern Baptist, but they left a couple of years ago because they were so dismayed with the direction of the Southern Baptist Convention.

So, it's never had any official ties, only those unofficial ties. As far as its stance on the Southern Baptist Convention, I would say it probably really doesn't have a stance because they don't have a dog in that fight, so to speak.

G3 is clearly about promoting the gospel of Jesus Christ, the glory of God, the gospel of God. That's what we're about. And so, G3 does not want to get itself engulfed in the politics of the SBC, and I think that Josh is more than happy not having to wake up worried about that any day of the week.

He's just getting about good gospel-centered ministry. I will say this, if there are those who are looking for a home, who are leaving the Southern Baptist Convention and looking for a home to be and partnerships to have and getting busy about doing good gospel-centered ministry, G3 is the place for you.

And what I love about it when I go to the G3 Convention, when I go to the Southern Baptist Convention, I feel like I'm out of place. It's not my people. I hate to say that, but it's just the case of it.

But when I go to G3, I feel like I'm going home, because it's a place where we are theologically in agreement. We don't agree on every single issue, but the issues that matter, there's unified agreement across the board.

And so, that's probably the best way I could put it.

Well, to get further clarification, do or does, I should say, G3 permit vendors that specifically promote Southern Baptist institutions like the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville and other seminaries, colleges, and so on, where they once did, I'm almost certain, when I used to go there.

Perhaps when I first started attending the G3, it's possible that Josh was still in the Southern Baptist Convention. But as far as things like that, and even the G3 church directory, do they allow churches to be members of the Southern Baptist Convention still because of the serious disagreements they've had with conclusions and decisions by the SBC?

Well, the G3 network is what you're alluding to, and the church is belonging to that, and we want churches to join the G3 network, which is like-minded churches that want to partner together in ministry and receive all kinds of resources from G3.

We do ask them to be, every church that's a part of the G3 network, to be in agreement with the 1689 London Baptist Confession. If they have any areas that they disagree with, to spell that out, because you're not going to necessarily have someone that dots every I and crosses every T the same.

But that's a general starting point. I don't know how many there are, but I know there's quite a few. I'll put it that way. I know there's quite a few churches that are affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention who are also a part of the G3 network.

So, you do not have to leave the SBC to be a part of the G3 network. Now, as far as the conference goes, I don't want to speak out of turn, but I'm pretty sure that there are not any vendors from Southern Baptist seminaries or colleges that are having tables at the G3 conference.

So, I don't want to speak out of turn. I don't know that there's a policy against that, but I certainly would think it would be uncomfortable for both the seminaries, SBC seminaries and G3. There's no like-mindedness there.