July 15, 2026 Show with Tom Buck on “The Southern Baptist Convention: A Health Checkup & an Honest Evaluation of Where It Currently Stands”

July 15, 2026 Show with Tom Buck on “The Southern Baptist Convention: A Health Checkup & an Honest Evaluation of Where It Currently Stands”

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.

The Program’s Biblical Foundation

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, 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 Wednesday on this 15th day of July 2026.

I would ask all of you to pray for the safety of our president, Donald Trump, today as he is visiting my hometown just about 10 minutes from where I'm sitting. He is visiting and giving a speech at the Army War College here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, so pray for his safety.

And I am delighted to have on the program again a returning guest who's a dear friend and one of my favorite guests to interview. His name is Tom Buck. He is senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Lindale, Texas, and highly sought-after conference speaker.

Evaluating the Recent Southern Baptist Convention

Today we're going to be addressing the Southern Baptist Convention, a health checkup and an honest evaluation of where it currently stands. It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Tom Buck.

Thank you, Chris. It's always great to be with you. So thankful for your faithful ministry, brother, thankful for you to have me in the talk today. So looking forward to it.

Well, I appreciate that. Please let our listeners know about First Baptist Church of Lindale, Texas.

Well, I've been pastor here for 20 years now. It's hard to believe it's that long, but yeah, for 20 years. We just celebrated our 150th anniversary as a church. We were founded in 1876. So we're thankful for that celebration this year.

God has been very good to us. We're located about an hour and a half east of Dallas in the Tyler area. A lot of people know where that is if they don't know where Lindale is. Just a wonderful community to pastor and shepherd the flock.

So I'm looking forward to continue to serve here, Lord willing, many more years.

Praise God. Well, if anybody listening lives in the Lindale, Texas area, or if you have family, friends and loved ones who live in that area, or if you're planning on passing through that area on vacation or for business or any other reason, why not look up their website, fbclindale .com, F-B-C-L-I-N-D-A-L-E, which is spelled L-I-N-D-A-L-E .com, and God willing, we'll be repeating that website later on in the program.

And one of the reasons that we wanted to have you back on the program, Pastor Tom, obviously, is because of the recent crucial votes that occurred at the last Southern Baptist Convention. And of course, we wanted to have you on earlier, perhaps right after that conference, but you had become sick and we had to wait for you to recover, obviously.

But tell us about the last Southern Baptist Convention.

Well, we had the convention this year in Orlando. It was a year that we were electing a new president because the president, Clint Bradley, had served for two years. So his terms were up and we were looking at electing a new president.

And we did that. We elected Willie Rice, who's the pastor of Clearwater Baptist Church in Clearwater, Florida. He's a very conservative candidate. Interestingly enough, a few years ago, Willie was caught up in the social justice movement, critical race theory thinking to one degree or another.

The Lord graciously pulled him out of that. And so he was a great candidate to say, hey, I've understood what those things are. We need to make sure that we don't let the Southern Baptist Convention go in that direction again.

And then the second major thing that happened was we voted on a constitutional amendment that was presented by Dr. Albert Mohler of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. And the amendment to our constitution was to prohibit churches or only allow for churches to be seated at any convention and to be considered to be in friendly cooperation with the Southern Baptist Convention.

If they could not allow for women to have the title or hold the office of pastor or perform the function of a pastor, specifically that of preaching in a corporate gathering on a Sunday morning.

And how close of a vote was that?

Well, the vote was 70, I think around 72 percent voted in favor of that amendment. Now, in our constitution, it requires it to be voted on in this year, and then it has to be re-voted on again in Indianapolis next year.

And it has to receive at least two-thirds vote in each convention. So we were well above the threshold of two-thirds votes in Orlando. And now we're looking to finalize that amendment in Indianapolis next year.

Biblical Teaching on Male Leadership in the Church

Now, perhaps it would be good, especially for the listeners that we have that may be new Christians or they may be not Christians at all, who are just curious about what Christians are talking about and teaching and believing.

Perhaps it would be helpful if you could cite some biblical passages that would back up the fact that men are exclusively to be ordained by the church as leaders of other men in the congregation.

Yes, I do think that that's important because some people misrepresent what we believe regarding this. They might make accusations that it's misogynistic, that we don't believe that women have the ability to teach or that men are smarter than women.

And often what happens is, is when we talk about this, a thousand qualifications get made in order to actually water down what the scriptures actually teach. But let me just clearly say that scripture is clear that men and women both are created in the image of God.

We stand equally before God. We are both equally sinners in need of the salvation and the grace of God to save us. We believe that women are quite capable of understanding the Bible, learning from scripture, and even have a giftedness in teaching as well.

The question comes down to how has God designed the leadership roles for the local church, for the home. And so when we talk about the local church, the place we look is 1 Timothy chapter 2. It's quite clear, I believe, I still don't understand how anybody is able to twist this to say something else.

But in 1 Timothy chapter 2 and verse 12, scripture reads, but I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. And then he gives his reasoning for this, which goes back to creation.

He says, for it was Adam who was first formed and then Eve. So he's saying that in God's order of creation, God has made it clear that male leadership is what he has designed for this world. Again, not because men are necessarily smarter or better.

It's how God has ordered this world. And so he created Adam first and then Eve. And then secondly, verse 14, it was not Adam who was deceived, but the one being deceived fell into trespass. And so what I believe is being said there, since it's going back to creation, that what was demonstrated is how the fall came about.

One of the ways the fall came about was when that order that God had created was asserted. And so Eve asserted the role that God had created for Adam. She fell first rather than looking to Adam for leadership.

She took the role of the leader and then led Adam into that. And so I think what Paul was saying there is that God created the order at the beginning. And then what happened at the fall was a disregard of that order.

And that led to disaster. And we are not to repeat that in the church. We are to go back to God's original foundation of creation. And so men are to hold the role of leadership in the church, of both teaching and exercising authority in the church.

And it is interesting that through, obviously, the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the apostle Paul made that restriction. And even though he admitted, I don't know if that's the right way of phrasing it, admitted, but he is basically saying that Adam knew he was sinning.

And yet he is still saying that it is only the male who can lead the church because of that example of Adam and Eve. So in one sense, you might be scratching your head over that. It is interesting. Do you have any explanation?

I know Paul doesn't go into detail after that, but do you have any explanation as to why that is?

Well, repeat exactly what you want me to answer again, Chris.

The fact that Paul is basically saying that only men are to lead the church, and he is saying that Eve was the one that was deceived, she was gullible, but Adam knew full well that he was sinning, and yet he is still to be the model for the exclusive male headship.

Well, I think that points again to the fact that it's not that ontologically men are necessarily better than women or smarter than women, or that men are never deceived, because he certainly followed Eve into the deception.

I think that the reason that Paul gives by saying that it was God's created order is that that's how God designed it. So the way that we fix past problems, if you will, is not to repeat the same mistakes, but is to return to the order that God created.

So God had determined for male leadership, and therefore the way that we can correct that in the church from the fall is to return back to God's original design and order.

Complementarianism Without Extra-Biblical Arguments

Yes. And do you believe that too often men in the church who agree with you and I on our complementarian position and are opposed to egalitarianism with regard to gender roles, that too often men give extra biblical reasons for male headship and start coming up with all these reasons why women are not qualified that are not even mentioned by Paul or anyone else?

Isn't that a danger to do that?

I think it's very much a danger to do that. And so often it'll be said, well, well, women are just inferior to me. And that's why or that women or are more easily deceived. I don't think that that's what Paul's saying.

First Timothy two. I know some men that are very easily deceived. And if you go throughout church history, many men, if not most or many false teachings and heresies are mostly by men that have been have been introduced into the church.

And so men can easily be deceived. There's no doubt of that. But what the issue is, is that we must obey God according to the order he's designed, which is not a reflection. Again, as I said, upon some ontological issue between men and women, that men are better and women are less.

But the issue of how God is ordered is designed. And God is designed for women to play an important role in the church. The important role in my home. My wife is a wonderful helpmate to me. We discuss the word of God together.

She often shares her insights and thoughts as she's looking at scripture. And there are times that Jennifer, my wife, sees things that I may have missed as I'm looking along in scripture. But she and helps me to see that.

But she never asserts the role of taking the position of teaching and having that level of authority. So I do think that that's one of the reasons a lot of people do not like patriarchy or complementarianism, whichever word someone wants to use, is because there have been men who had seen that as a means by which to put women down.

And of course, that's what God said would happen at the fall, that women would want to assert the role and the authority of men. And then the men would come along and would oppress her. I can't remember the exact word used there in Genesis, but would dominate her.

And that's not what we're meant to do. And that's not what we mean when we talk about male headship and leadership in the church.

Male Headship, the Fall, and the Curse

Do you think it is also possibly a part of the curse upon women? I mean, we as humans all receive the guilt of Adam's sin, and we must have our hearts of stone removed and be given hearts of flesh in order to finally freely choose what is pleasing to God—that is, choose to follow Christ and to place our trust in his finished work on the cross.

But there was a unique curse placed upon the woman for her role in the fall. She was to have pain in childbirth, for instance. Could this be a part of that, that men would only lead in the church and not women?

Oh, that's a good question. There are those who try to argue that male leadership was actually a result of the curse, not God's original design and ordering. So they'll try to argue to say, well, now in the church, women should have the ability to lead just like men, because it was the curse that brought about this male dominance and so forth and so on.

But that's the exact opposite of what Paul's teaching in 1 Timothy 2. He's saying that in God's created order, and that was prior to the fall. So I do not believe that male headship, male leadership, and women being submissive to that is a result of the fall, because we see it prior to the fall.

In fact, Paul says that's the reason women aren't to teach. He doesn't say because the woman—his primary thing is not because the woman fell, but because God created Adam first. So male headship is not a result of the fall, but was prior to the fall.

And what happens in the fall is that part of the curse is that the woman wants to then assert the role of male headship and dominate over him. And then men end up sinfully dominating women. So this tension between men and women is a result of the fall.

And so I don't believe that women are resigned to the role of submission because as a result of the fall or part of the curse, but as a part of God's original design. It doesn't mean women are inferior, but that's how God ordered it.

So women, though, have very well—they did have the issue of the curse of pain in childbearing, but I don't believe that her submission role is part of the curse.

Tom Hanks And when these advocates of egalitarianism, the ordination of women, gathered with their opponents at the Southern Baptist Convention, is there an opportunity for public debate or public commentary by those on both sides during these conventions?

Competing Camps in the SBC Debate

Dr. Richard McKeon. Unfortunately, there's not enough time, in my opinion. I think that in one sense, we've been debating it for several years, because this isn't the first time such an amendment has been presented.

It was presented several years ago, and it passed in the first round and then was defeated the second year, which, interestingly enough, was also in Indianapolis. And then it was tried to be brought forward again and got deceited.

And this time, Dr. Mohler brought it forward. So we've been debating it for a while, but I don't think there's enough time on the floor for that. I wish there were more time to have a robust debate about the issue.

But there have been things that happened at the convention, like prior to the convention, founders, for instance, with Tom Askew several years ago, had one of the strongest advocates for Galluparianism, which was Dwight McKissick.

Tom Askew and Dwight McKissick debated this very issue probably about four or five years ago, just prior to the Southern Baptist Convention at the same venue where it was being held, but not during the actual business meeting.

But there have been robust debates regarding that. And to be clear, not everybody who opposes the amendment blames that they do so because they're pro-women preaching. I can parse that out for you a little bit if you'd like for me to.

Oh, sure. But we've been debating it for several years. So there's basically, let me see, I think three camps, but as I'm walking out, we'll see if there's more than that. So camp number one is we need an amendment that makes it very clear that churches who have women who have the title of pastor or are functioning in the role of pastor preaching or something of that nature should not be a part of the convention and should be disfellowshipped from the convention.

So that's the group that I would stand in. Then there's another group who says, hey, there's nothing wrong with women preaching. You all are misinterpreting 1 Timothy chapter 2. If a church wants to have a woman serve as a pastor and some of them say she can't be a senior pastor, she can be a different type of pastor.

So that's part of the debate as well. But they believe women can function at some degree or level in either the office or the function of the pastor. And then the third group would be those who say, hey, I don't believe in women pastors.

I would walk out if a woman were preaching or serving. I would not be in a church where a woman served as a pastor. But I don't believe that we should allow or be telling other churches what to do. So we shouldn't have an amendment that tells churches that they can't have women's pastors.

We should just allow that to happen in those churches, even though I personally wouldn't do it. And there probably is a fourth category, and that are those who say we don't really need an amendment. We voted out Saddleback.

We voted out other churches that have had women pastors without this amendment. So why do we need an amendment? Let's just keep doing what we're doing.

Cultural Hermeneutics and Women’s Ordination

And these folks who are making the argument to defend female ordination in the church to positions of authority over men and having the role of being teachers of men, are they using, as many have done, situational ethics, basically, where they are trying to pin the situation on culture of the days of Paul?

And therefore, since our culture is different today, Paul's restrictions don't apply. Is that what they're mainly doing? Or they have other ways of getting around this? I mean, I'm so surprised—I was surprised years ago when I discovered one of the modern-day heroes of many Reformed brethren was Roger Nicole.

I saw him preach back in the—it was either the late 80s or the early 90s at the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology when Dr. James Montgomery Boyce was still with us. And I was very surprised to learn that Roger Nicole was an egalitarian.

He believed in the ordination of women, which shocked me because he believed in biblical inerrancy and so on. What are the arguments that they're using?

I mean, they vary. So let's take Dwight McKissick, for example, who is a pastor in the Dallas area, a pastor of an African-American church, and he believes that—he believes a woman can't be a senior—shouldn't be a senior pastor, but can be a pastor in other areas and preach and have authority over men.

But he argues that 1 Timothy 2 is cultural. He argues that this was specifically dealing with women that were problematic in the Ephesus culture and part of the temple prostitution cult that was there.

And so Paul was dealing with a particular issue that was taking place in Ephesus. Well, the problem with that is that later on in 1 Timothy, and it's slipping my mind exactly—I think it's in chapter 5—he tells Timothy, I'm writing these things to you so that you should know—so that you can know how all the churches should be ordered.

So Paul doesn't seem to have in his mind about specific and particular things that are happening in Timothy's culture, apart from other churches. He's telling Timothy all the churches should be ordered this way.

So that argument just doesn't hold up. And then there are other people who argue that headship, like in 1 Corinthians, talks about the husband being the head of the wife, man being the head of woman, that headship there doesn't mean leadership, authority, role, but it's something different than that.

And so it's just classic liberal argumentation that's used. And then I think there's others that just don't care, and they just say, hey, we believe men and women are equal. The gospel makes—there's neither male nor female, and so they misinterpret that passage and say, therefore, none of these distinctions matter.

And patriarchy is an outdated, non-biblical—the gospels greet us up in ways that we should not have these kind of structures any longer.

Hermeneutics, Homosexuality, and Denominational Drift

Now, I have taken the position, and I have even told this to egalitarian brethren on my show on occasion. For instance, I'll give you an example. I have had a prominent figure within the forming of the new Methodist denomination, the Global Methodist Church.

I've had him on my program, and this denomination was formed in opposition to the United Methodist denomination becoming increasingly more pro-homosexual in their views of ordaining homosexuals and just viewing it more as a behavior that should be adopted as something no different in its acceptance to God as heterosexuality.

And so the Global Methodists made a break, and I applauded this gentleman on that move, but they ordained women, just as the United Methodist Church does. And I warned him that you have brought within your movement to this new established denomination, you've brought with you a time bomb that I believe eventually is going to explode, and you're going to be right back to where you started from with the same teachings of the United Methodist Church because of the hermeneutic being the same.

Those that defend homosexuality and homosexuals as being worthy of ordination and even membership, let alone ordination, they're using the same reasoning and the same hermeneutic to defend what they believe and do, am I right?

Yes, I don't think it should surprise us that denominations who embrace the ordination of women more often than not—heterosexuals might be an exception to that, and that might be an interesting discussion, I'm not sure exactly why that's the case—but more often than not, the vast majority of the time move towards embracing the LGBTQ agenda.

And I think one of the reasons that shouldn't surprise us is because the very means by which you move toward ordaining women means you have to deny God's created order. Because, again, that's what Paul bases it on.

He does the same thing in 1 Corinthians when he speaks of the male headship. He goes back to created design. Well, if you disregard God's created order when it comes to the role of men and women, I don't think it should be surprising to us that eventually, because you begin to reject Scripture in that way, that you would defy God's created creation design—so God's creation design for male headship and women—that those groups would also eventually reject God's created design regarding sexuality.

So it doesn't surprise me in one sense, because I do think there's a strong, direct line you can make that they're doing the same hermeneutic or making the same theological mistake in interpretation.

Yes. In fact, I had another guest on, a Nazarene pastor. In fact, I had a debate on this program between Nazarene Jared K. Henry and Reformed Baptist pastor Jeremiah Nortier. They've had three debates so far on my program, and one of them was on the ordination of women to positions of authority over men.

And I basically was saying the same thing to Jared—it could have been off the air, I can't remember if it was on or off the air—but I was telling him the same thing. I said to the Global Methodist gentleman that this is a ticking time bomb.

He refused to recognize any correlation between hermeneutics, insisted that they were not the same, just as the Global Methodist did, and yet there is evidence in the Church of the Nazarene of a growing acceptance of homosexuality.

And so far, it has been dealt with, thankfully, in a strong way. They have fired seminary professors who have been endorsing this and so on, but it still hasn't been erased, and I think that it very well could be because of the connection of hermeneutics.

Scripture’s Authority in the SBC

Yes, and I think that this is one of the issues that we're facing in the Southern Baptist Convention, that people are arguing, hey, this is a secondary, tertiary issue, we should not be splitting from other churches or putting churches out of the convention over secondary, tertiary issues.

And there's multiple ways to address that. You know, there are all kinds of secondary, tertiary issues in a Baptist doctrinal statement, but that we also hold dear to be a part of the Southern Baptist Convention.

But this issue of women preaching or being pastors goes back to the authority of Scripture. And so I would even argue that it rises to—not gospel, okay? So if we put—it's not a gospel issue, but I don't believe it's this secondary, tertiary, unimportant issue.

I think it's foundational. It's some—I've almost said like a 1 .5, if you will. You've got first tier, second tier, third tier, a 1 .5 tier, that it so impacts that first tier that it becomes an issue.

Here's what I would mean by that. If you can take 1 Timothy 2 .12, which says, I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over man and make it mean I do forbid a woman to teach and exercise authority over man, what else, what other Scripture can you not take and absolutely obliterate?

If you can do that and twist that authority of 1 Timothy 2 .12, you're susceptible to do it with anything else, because you've crossed the line now that the Word of God has very—is malleable in a way that is very dangerous, as you would say, at taking time.

Amen. Well, we have to go to our first commercial break. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

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The Local Church and Sovereign Grace

If you just tuned us in, our guest today is my friend, Pastor Tom Buck, Senior Pastor at First Baptist Church of Lindale, Texas, and highly sought after conference speaker. We are addressing the Southern Baptist Convention, a health checkup, and an honest evaluation of where it currently stands.

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