WWUTT 1905 Q&A (Part 1) The Bible Project on Marriage, SBC Abuse Scandal, Rick Warren on Women Pastors

G3 Conference Plans, Books, and Podcast Updates

What do the Bible Project guys believe about marriage? How could the Southern Baptist Convention have better handled this sex abuse crisis? This is a mega episode. We're going to be splitting into two parts.

Here is part one of When We Understand the Text.

This is When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible commentary in the word of Christ, that it may dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another with all wisdom. Tell your friends about our ministry at www .wutt .com.

Once again, it's Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. You're welcome. I let you do that introduction, but right before you started, I was totally perplexed. I didn't know what to make of what you just said. Okay. What was it you said? It was something like...

I don't like facing a wall. That's what it was. I don't like facing a wall. You are further away from a wall this week than you were last week. But I'm facing it.

In all the other times that we've been recording, I've been trying... I'm able to face you and talk to you. Right now, I'm facing a wall.

I actually thought the way that I positioned you over here was more like we're looking at each other. Maybe if I turn my chair. There you go. Turn a little here. Let me help with your mic stand a little there.

There we go. I got to turn the whole chair then because it's not a swivel. It's not a swivel. It's old school. There we go. You got to keep your head on a swivel. All right.

Are we good? I don't know. Am I good still? Yeah. Okay. You always look good to me. Aw. Well, hey, you guys are just kind of eavesdropping on us as we're working through our technical difficulties here.

Sorry, guys. This is when we understand the text. In fact, my mic is a little hot. So, let me see. This is all the adjustments we got to make being in this new room. Yes.

Let's see. A little more headphone right there. Little less me.

There we go. Okay. And as we add more books to the room, it gets a little different. Gets a little more balanced. Yeah. Well, yeah. Our setup is It's constantly changing at the moment. It's different than it was last week.

Yes. So, volume adjustments and all this other kind of thing. Yes. And while we're still making these adjustments, I'm still not getting the podcast out on time. Nope. So, I'm sorry that Thursday was late.

I think every other day, I might have been okay, but I know Thursday was late. Yeah. Thank you for dealing with us here. Being so patient with us. This is the Friday edition of the broadcast, and we take questions from the listeners.

You can submit those questions to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com. Babe? Yes? Yes. We are registered Yes, we are. For G3. Coming up in September. Yay. In Atlanta, Georgia. Sovereignty of God is the theme this year.

They're only doing it every other year now. Are they really?

Yeah. I don't think that sunk in.

Because the last time they had it

I think I've heard that, but it didn't sink in.

The last time they had it, you had a one month old. Uh-huh. That's true. So, you couldn't go. He wasn't even a month old yet.

Nope, he wasn't. And then, didn't they have some sort of cruise or something?

There was going to be the cruise, but this I think COVID had something to do with that. Okay. Let's see. Because the last conference was the end of 21. Yeah. Did it just fall through? It didn't happen?

I don't remember. Or it happened and I'm not sure. We just totally missed it. Yeah. Maybe that's what it was. We missed the boat. It happened and we just We missed the boat. I know there was going to be something in there.

I can't remember what it was. Huh. But, well, you know, the conference itself I know that COVID did cancel the cruise that they were going to do in 20, if I remember right. Okay. Because they did have the conference at the beginning of 20.

Uh-huh. That's the last one you went to. Yeah, I do believe. So, you haven't been to one since then. I don't think so. And then, the next conference, which was in 21, that was when they moved it to the fall.

Yeah. And then, yeah. So, this is the first one since then, since they're going to every other year now. Good fun. I can't remember the name of the place. Georgia International Conference Center, something like that.

I don't know. It's over by the airport.

It's very convenient. I actually like where it's at because there's a lot of hotels in that area. You can walk there.

Yeah. You can You stay at the hotel, walk right over to the convention center. Yeah.

And then, they have like a train, something or other, that's connected to the airport. So, you just ride that over to get your meal and you can go shopping.

It's a great location. Yeah, it is. Very easy to get to and from the hotel to your transportation. So, hope to see you there. Yeah. You can register by going to G3MIN .org. Right. And just follow the link.

I mean, it'll have on their national conference, stuff like that.

Are we bringing extra people with us?

Are we bringing extra? Well, we've got our two kids, two oldest kids. That's what I was wondering. Not all five. I don't think we're doing all five kids. It'd be adventurous. Yeah. If we did. Maybe if we had someone to leave them with.

I don't think they're going to be Yeah. They would want to be at the convention center the whole time though. That would be tough. The oldest two really want to go. In fact, they were supposed to go with me at the end of 21.

And worst news I've felt like I've ever had to give my kids in my life. That I had to sit them down and tell them, like minutes before we're supposed to leave. Yeah, I remember. But I lost my hotel room.

Yeah, everything fell through. Everything fell through. It was just one series of dominoes after the next just kept falling over. And I didn't even know where I was going to stay when I got there. Right.

And I didn't want to put my kids through that too. And so I just had to sit them down and tell them, you know, sorry guys, I can't take you. They accepted it a lot better than I thought they were going to.

Well, I think sometimes whenever you're heartbroken, they understand and they don't want to make you feel worse.

Maybe so. But we're making it up to them this time and they're going to be going with us to Atlanta. It'll be good. Now I've talked with Virgil, who's kind of overseeing the registration and stuff like that with the G3 conference.

And he tells me they're expecting it to sell out. And it won't be long. Like it could be. Jump on it. It could be May, could be June. And, you know, that's months out from the conference. But they have to cap it at a certain amount.

Yeah. Otherwise, otherwise they're going to lose seating. They're going to exceed their seating capacity. So they have to stop it at a certain amount. Therefore, don't wait too long. Right. Make plans now.

Schedule it out on your calendar. Set aside in the budget what you can do. Right. And plan on joining us for G3. We're going to have a booth there. Yeah. So where they have the registrants be looking for what?

What? What? You do that so much better. Well, it's my voice. Of course. Now, I'm trying to get some books done by then. So I've got some more books to sell. Well, since I've been at First Baptist Church Lindale, I've written several Bible studies.

Uh-huh. You have. We've done 1st and 2nd Timothy. We've done 1st and 2nd Thessalonians. We're going through 1st Corinthians right now. Yes. So I'm working on taking the notes that I did on 1st and 2nd Thessalonians.

And I don't really feel like I have anything to contribute to the world of theology books or even commentaries. There are much better commentarians, commentators that you can select from. What am I going to contribute to that?

I think you should do Song of Songs.

Well, I am. So what I'm going to do is a 40-day devotional book. Nice. Since I have those books that have the number 40 on them.

Yeah, 40 seems to be your go-to.

Gabe writes 40 books. I'm going to have 40, 40 books. Let's do it. That's a goal. I'm going to cap it at 40. So I need to come up with 40, 40 books. Oh, that's fun. So this will be 40 days through 1st and 2nd Thessalonians.

I'm kind of portioning out the notes that I did on this that our Sunday school teachers taught through and organizing it in 40 devotional segments covering 40 days. Song of Songs being another one. Nice.

Since that's the book that I'm going through right now with our equipping class on Wednesday night.

And you've had to do a lot of research to gather all that information. That was a lot of work. Yeah, and so I think because it was a lot of work, we need one go-to really good source.

But I think it'd be really helpful. So I'll do 40 days through Song of Songs. I have a nice little marriage devotional book that you can go through for 40 days. But I've got to get those done. That means I've got six months to get all of that put together, edited, printed.

You can do it. And then bringing the books with me to G3.

And hopefully they'll have like the page numbers. And what else was wrong? Yes. There was a couple books that got to us and they didn't have page numbers.

The first edition of, it was the first edition of 25 Christmas Myths. It didn't have page numbers in it. That was so weird. It had a table of contents. It did. That had the page numbers. Did you have to count out the pages?

So I had, I still had one of those the last time we were selling books. And I just used it as a display copy. Yes. But people were picking up the display copy and looking at it going, there's no page numbers in this.

So I had to pull that one too, because I was like, I don't want you looking at the display copy and thinking. Thinking that's what you're getting. My books don't have page numbers in them.

Wasn't there something else that was wonky one time? I don't remember. With the print. It was like your headings were off or something. I don't remember.

Well, there's been that. I always go through that every time I do the Kindle formatting. Oh, okay. There's always stuff there. Yeah. It just doesn't format right. But I don't remember that with the books.

No. I don't remember that being an issue there. Just the page numbers. The page number issue. It's like of all things. Yeah, right. You don't really think about how bad you need those page numbers until they aren't there.

Listener Question About Service Christy and Church Authority

This is the Friday edition of When We Understand the Text. Our Q &A, when we take questions from the listeners. You okay over there? I'm good. And you can submit those questions to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

This is from Anthony. Hey, Brother Gabe. My name is Anthony. And I work just outside the city of Chicago. Oh, fun. I am a garbage man. And I'm able to put earbuds in and listen to things while I'm working.

I was listening to your question and answer from 331. This was just last week. And the question by Alice really caught my attention. You remember the question by Alice? Yeah. So she asked about, well, she made the comment about don't call yourself pastor.

Right. And then don't get caught up with all like the worldly or man-made church humanity, I think was what she called it. So Anthony says, the first thing that came to my head was Service Christy. I went ahead and jumped on YouTube searching Service Christy.

And there it was, his video on stop calling yourself pastor. Huh. And what is a church just below it. I started listening to the stop calling yourself pastor video. And in five minutes, he was using the same language that she used.

Oh, interesting. I think if you take a quick listen to these videos, you may better understand where she's coming from. I'm sure you already know his name because Justin Peters has talked a lot about him.

And he has called out just about every reformed pastor there is. You're probably next. Yes, I remember that guy. I just tried to ignore him. I remember when Justin and Phil Johnson kind of went through his stuff, too.

But he's like a rogue dude. He's got his whole discernment ministry thing that he does on YouTube. I didn't even know he was still making videos because this was several years ago when that whole saga with Service Christy came up.

And he was going head to head with pulpit and pen. And it was like, well, those two can just duke it out. Leave it between them. But I know he wasn't a church going guy because that was one of the criticisms that was being made about him is that he's just like a rogue dude.

He doesn't attend any church. One of those guys, I guess, that thinks I'm a church unto myself. The whole church is corrupt. And so I'm doing it the right way. Well, that's what it sounds like. Yeah. I mean, that was how Mormonism started.

That was Joseph Smith going, all these churches are wrong. I'm doing it right.

That's how you start a cult. Or an angel. Yeah, an angel. Moroni. Well, he did make the claim that God, the Father and God,.

The Son appeared to him, too. That was presumably the first vision, but he didn't come up with it until after the second vision. He came up with the first vision after the second. Anyway, we're not going to go down that trail.

This one's from Micah. He says, hello, Pastor Gabe. I ran across this video of Tim Mackey and I remembered that you had made a clip about him not believing in hell and wondered if you had seen this more recent clip about his standing with LGBTQ.

I had at one point listened to some of his early teaching on the Bible, but stopped when I saw what he believed about hell. Yeah, so all of this is about Tim Mackey. He's one of the founding guys behind the Bible Project.

Okay, that's how I know the name. Yeah, and if you've seen.

The what video that I've done on what they believe about hell, then you'll know that their claim is that man created hell. That's interesting. God didn't create hell because when you go to Genesis 1, you don't see anything about God creating hell, so therefore he didn't make it.

Hell is what we have created. That's what Tim's claim is. Let me go ahead and play that video here and we'll get back to Micah's email. The Bible Project is one of the most popular.

Bible teaching sites on the web, but that does not mean they're sound. Listen to what they say about hell. Whatever hell is, God didn't make it. Hell is something that humans have created. Really? Humans created hell?

In Matthew 25, 41, Jesus says, Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire,.

Prepared for the devil and his angels. Prepared by whom? Not us. Verse 46 says, the unrighteous will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. No one in the Bible talked about hell more than Jesus, and he said it's a place where the worm never dies and the fire is never quenched.

The Son of Man will send his angels to throw the unrepentant into the fiery furnace. In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. But the Bible Project says,.

Hell and that word and what that refers to, it's not someplace other than heaven and earth. It's a place where people are sustained by God's mercy and care, but God allows them the dignity of not being in a relationship with him if they don't want.

Hell is a place of God's mercy and care? No, hell is God's wrath, poured out on the wicked forever. Rejecting God is not dignified, it's damnable. The only way to be snatched from the flames is to worship Jesus Christ.

He talked about hell so much, so you would not go there, so you would turn to him and be saved. This soft teaching from the Bible Project will lead people you know where, avoid it when we understand the text.

So Micah goes on to say, thanks again for your work in calling out false teachers and those mishandling the word. I really enjoyed the G3 workshop at your church and gave me a greater appreciation for all the pastors that handle the word of God correctly.

That's awesome. I'm glad you were able to attend. Yeah, the expository workshops, those are all done through G3. So even though the G3 conferences every other year now, you can still go to these.

Small workshops that we do. Yeah, and glean a lot of information.

Yeah, now they're geared toward pastors, they're teaching you how to exposit the word, but I've had people in my small groups who are, I mean they could be Sunday school teachers, they could just, I don't even know what I'm going to do, but I want to learn how to handle the word of God in a right way.

Right. Maybe they will become a Sunday school teacher, maybe an elder. In the most recent small group that I had, the one that we did in Lyndale back in February, I had a guy in my group that said, I just want to be able to lead my family better.

I want to teach my wife and kids the word. That's great. Yeah, and you know, even the expository workshop if you want to find out about one of these workshops that's around you nearby, be sure to register for it because we cap those at like 90.

We have to have a certain number of small group leaders, a certain number of small groups, and we can only have as many small groups as we have leaders. Right. So we try to cap that at 90, we keep the group small, we're not trying to do like these huge mega conferences with the expository workshops.

Right. But you can find out about those workshops and where they're going to be nearest to you when you go to the G3 website, same website I gave you earlier. We'll get you there also. Cool. I know that Tom this summer is heading to Scotland.

I'm not on that trip. No. But he's going to do an expository workshop. Yep, there's going to be one in Scotland. Anyway, with regards to this particular clip, I did see that this was making the rounds.

These comments that Tim Mackey had made about being LGBTQ. Now, the way that you put it, Micah, is that Tim Mackey stands with the LGBTQ movement or something to that degree. I actually saw this sermon a long time ago, and this was back when I was doing research on the Bible Project to kind of explore what was wrong with them.

And if you've seen the videos that I've done, you know that I settled on their teaching regarding the atonement and their teaching with regards to hell, obviously. This is a sermon that Mackey did. I know this clip is making the rounds, but this is not a new thing he said.

Right. This sermon was back in 2017. I watched this sermon. A long time ago. Yeah. I even remember cooking in the kitchen in our house on Webster Street in Junction City. And I remember listening to this sermon while I was cooking.

And, yeah, he says some things in the sermon that are wonky. It does sound like that he believes a person can be oriented gay and that's not a sin. Like their orientation can be homosexual, but as long as they're not acting on it, that's not a sin.

Okay. Which we call that, or we call that, and the term that's been used for that has been Side B. Oh, okay. Christianity. Interesting. There's another way. They can have this orientation, but as long as they don't go through with it or act it out, then it's not sinful.

It's not sinful to desire those things. It's just sinful to act them out. Okay. Which, of course, that's wrong. That's wrong. Colossians 3 .5 says that even the desire for it, God's wrath is coming against.

So you cannot encourage somebody to sit and sin and just desire sin as long as they don't act it out. Right. That's wicked, too. You take every thought captive. Right. Now, this sermon was recently found.

Somebody listened to the whole thing and they took out segments of it and it sounds like with the segments that they pieced out, Tim is pro-LGBTQ. The problem with the clips that you're seeing is that they're taking

You're seeing what they want you to see. They're just kind of singling out the clips. And he'll say things like, in Christ there is no male and female, which is Galatians 3 .28. And he'll say, there is no gay or straight.

And I'm like, well, right. I mean, that's true. I think what he's intending when he says that, gay people and straight people can both be in Christ. He never makes the statement like that. He never says it in that way.

Okay. But when he adds that little, you know, inserts that little part into Galatians 1 .28, or 3 .28, I think that's what he's intending by it. Okay. But like I said, it's all kind of muddy. So it's hard to take sound bites out of that particular sermon and say, this is what he believes about LGBTQism.

Now, again, this was in 2017, but listen to this clip right here. This is what's not in those clips that you've seen floating around. Okay. This is from the same sermon. So listen to Tim Mackey here.

I don't think Jesus would recognize our culture's redefinition of marriage and separating it from gender. And precisely not because he's a bigot. I can't think of a less bigoted person on the planet than Jesus.

But here he is. Some people say that Jesus never said anything that weighs in on the debate about the definition of marriage in our culture. And I can't, in intellectual integrity, say that's true because he said this, which seems to me to really get to the heart of the matter.

And so if I'm a follower of Jesus and I sense the high calling to not be married, and to give my life, sexual orientation doesn't matter, he's calling me to not have sex with people of the opposite gender or the same gender.

He doesn't highlight one as more than the other. He just says sex has its place within the covenant symbol making of the image of God. It's not the only way to symbol the image of God, but it is that way.

So you see there he actually defends a biblical definition of marriage. Right. That's not in the video clips that you're seeing going around. Of course. Now he does say there, he says gay or straight doesn't matter, or sexual orientation doesn't matter, but he has just said that sex is meant only for the covenant of marriage.

He says that in the sermon. And marriage, as he says, Christ has defined it, is between one man and one woman. So yeah,.

I'm sure that his views of human sexuality with regards to whether a person can be gay and still be saved, you know, stuff like that. Sure. I'm sure all of that is really wonky, but the stuff that you're seeing going around claiming that he's pro-LGBTQ based on that sermon, I don't think you can use that sermon to make that argument.

Yeah. And this is the, this is the problem with doing this kind of, you know, discernment ministry style hit pieces. Yeah. When you're just, you're taking this stuff out of context and really not giving him a fair shake.

Mm-hmm. This is one of those rare, rare occasions when I'm, and I wouldn't even say that I'm defending Tim Mackey or the Bible Project. What he says there is still problematic. Right. It's just not what people are presenting it as being, you know what I mean?

So when we speak the truth in love, Ephesians 4, we have to accurately represent those people that we disagree with. Oh, of course. We can't just take their comments out of context and make it say what we want it to say because...

That's what they do to us. Yeah, well, either that or... No, I mean, like that's, that's their approach. So it's, you know that it's, it's not biblical to do it that way. Right. So like I said, I had listened to that sermon several years ago and it's, it's got some problems to it but it's still not enough there that I can go, well, Tim Mackey's definitely pro-LGBTQ but otherwise, thank you Micah for sending that my way.

I guess that, you know, I haven't had an opportunity to respond to that yet. So there you go. This next one comes from Silas which is a great name. It is. Dear Pastor Gabe, I think I heard you say that you were going to respond to Rick Warren's four verses that changed his mind on women pastors but I may have missed it if you responded to it.

Could you direct me to your response if you made one? In the interview that he did with Russell Moore, he said that he was going to challenge the decision that removed Saddleback from the Southern Baptist Convention over women pastors.

What do you think the result will be if he chooses to fight it? Thank you for your ministry. I think it's going to cause a church split. You think? Yeah, yeah. A denominational split. Yeah. I think that's going to happen.

Yep. I think that honestly, this just looks a little too strategic to me. You think? Like it looks like this has happened so that Saddleback can go to the floor of the convention and challenge it and actually get the Southern Baptist Convention on his side to accept women pastors.

This just seems a little too conveniently laid out. Yeah. We'll see. I mean, I can't really judge the motives. I'm not saying that's necessarily Rick Warren's motive, but you just kind of have to wonder is some sort of hand at play here that's trying to position us pieces or ends in the right position.

Right. We're setting the board up to make our checkmate move. We'll find out, I guess. So we can finally infiltrate the Southern Baptist Convention and get them to be accepting of women pastors. I mean, really, the last convention, that is what happened.

Yep. I mean, the decisions that were made were The last two of them. Well, sure. Had motives in different ways. Yeah. There was discussion about it in both conventions the last two years. So last year, the one that was in Anaheim, the decision was made that we can't disfellowship a church because they have women pastors.

We should be willing to accept churches that have women pastors as part of our fellowship. Then you're accepting women pastors. Yeah, exactly. Right. Then the statement in the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 means nothing.

Right. It clearly states that the office of pastor is for men. Yeah. So yeah, really, that decision was made last time, but then you've got this ruling that was made just a few weeks ago that Saddleback was removed from the Southern Baptist Convention because they ordained women pastors.

So now it's gonna come to the floor of the convention that's gonna be challenged to accept Saddleback back in. Uh-huh. And in the process of so doing, there's gonna be an acceptance of women pastors and it's gonna split.

The convention. I thought that Rick Warren had retired. Can't even think of my words. Yeah, he did. Right. So what's he got to do with this? Well, he's still like Pastor Emeritus or something like that at Saddleback.

Oh, right, right. He's still a member there. He's just not the guy preaching anymore. Okay, check. And because he has the face, he's in the name. Yeah, the name in the Southern Baptist Convention. Especially how much he brags about himself.

My goodness. So in this interview that he does with Russell Moore, you're gonna hear that. His bloviating about himself. Yay. Becky's making a face. Right. I haven't had the chance to get around to this yet, but here we go.

This is the interview that Rick Warren did with Russell Moore on the Russell Moore show that was published by Christianity Today. There's a Russell Moore show? That's what it's called, the Russell Moore show.

I had no idea. So we're gonna I'm in my own bubble here. Doesn't matter. I think I've listened to one or two of them, usually because of the person that he's interviewing. Here is. Here's this interview.

We're gonna get through all the introduction stuff and we'll just start here with Rick Warren. Well, I'm ready here to join in the former Southern Baptist.

Support group with Beth Moore, with Russell Moore and a few others. This last week got kicked out. You know, it's not a surprise to me actually because when I started Saddleback Church 43 years ago, although I am a fourth generation Southern Baptist and my grandfather, Chester Armstrong was related to Annie Armstrong.

Really? I didn't know that. Pretty much pedigree. My great, great grandfather was led to Christ by Charles Spurgeon and sent to America to plant churches in the 1860s. So I have a long Baptist background.

And he goes on and on and on and on.

About his pedigree. Well, the thing there though, he says that he's joining the support group with Russell Moore and with Beth Moore because he got kicked out of the Southern Baptist Convention. Russell Moore left on his own accord.

I was going to say, didn't Beth Moore too? And Beth Moore left on her own accord. That's not the right support group. Oh, and she left loud. She did. She got all the publications behind her. Yeah, we're going to do a whole spread on this whole thing.

Well, if she didn't do that, she would have been kicked.

And hurt a little bit, I think. So she had to make it a big deal. So that way everybody would support her. Oh man, it was sounding a trumpet. It was so, look at me. It's the Me Too movement. It's a Me Too moving out.

It's a Me. It's a Me Too movement. You went kind of Mario there. I did. Sorry. So anyway, let's continue on. Yeah.

But you know what? We've done so many things not by the book as being in 1980 when I started the church, we didn't put Babus in the name. Now, that was unheard of 40 years ago. Today, it's very, very common.

And it's a different convention than it was when we're missing those great statesmen.

That used to be here. And those are sad times. Well, I was really, you said you weren't surprised. I was kind of bowled over just because I would think with all of the crisis involving the treatment of women, sexual abuse within the SBC, that saying that a church is giving women too much is really not the problem in the SBC as I see it.

And I couldn't believe.

That that's what they were taking up. You know, it's actually possible to oppose churches that are covering up sex abuse. And you can also oppose churches that have women pastors. How about that? You can do both at the same time.

It's called being biblical. And when this decision was made that Saddleback was going to be disfellowshipped from the Southern Baptist Convention because they platform women pastors, they also disfellowshipped a church over a matter of sexual misconduct.

So Russell Moore makes it sound like here they are going after women pastors when, you know, there's all this sex abuse stuff that's going on. You can oppose both. Yeah. And we should oppose both. However, you can't go to a church's website and find out if there's a sex abuse cover-up going on at that church.

Right, that's true. But you can go to that church's website and find out just by clicking on their staff page whether they have women pastors. Yeah. It's a much easier issue to spot. Yeah. Than whether or not a church is dealing with a sex abuse issue.

Plus, with sex abuse, even when you know about it, you don't want to broadcast things and put people's names out there. Right. That are going to end up being publicly wounded because you made a public case out of something that for them is very, very embarrassing and very private.

You have to be careful. There is a totally different way that we handle these two issues. Definitely. When there's a sex abuse issue that's going on or there is a matter of a woman being platformed as a pastor.

Let's keep going here. But, you know, the question...

Let me say a word about that. It's not an accident that the same voices that said, we cannot protect women from abuse because of the autonomy of the local church are the same voices that are saying, but we can't prevent them from being called pastors in the autonomy of the local church.

So it only, the autonomy only matters if it's convenient for you. In other words, they clearly think we have, say, in your church over staff titles, but it was a misnomer to say, well, we can't do anything.

We're not responsible for this abuse that's going on because they're all independent autonomous churches. Nonsense. I don't know if anybody was saying that. Maybe somebody did,.

But that was never the issue. Yeah. Well, obviously not if at the same time he was removed, the other church was removed. Yeah. There was another church that was removed over this as well. Yeah. So here was what was being said when the whole sex abuse scandal in the SBC hit the Houston Chronicle.

I remember the Sunday that this happened and we had a business meeting that day. I don't know if you remember that. No. So the article broke that morning and I was up early enough that I was able to read it before I preached that morning.

I already had my sermon done. I'm ready to go. I saw that this whole big SBC sex abuse scandal thing had just hit the headlines that morning. Seven o 'clock in the morning, something like that. I pull it up and I read through the whole thing and it was pretty clear to me through what I was reading that they did not understand how the Southern Baptist Convention worked.