May 30, 2022 Show with Josh Buice on “The Future of the Southern Baptist Convention (& An Analysis of the Abuse & Coverup Scandal)

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Memorial Day on this

Monday, May 30th, 2022. I'm so delighted that you who are listening are taking time out from your festivities and celebrations with your family, friends, and loved ones in order to listen to this program today and I'm especially grateful that our guest has taken some time away from his own relaxing

Memorial Day weekend with his family to be a part of this program. I'm speaking of one of my favorite guests to interview on this program,

Josh Bice, who is pastor of Praise Mill Baptist Church of Douglasville, Georgia and founder and president of G3 Ministries.

We're going to be discussing the future of the Southern Baptist Convention and analysis of the abuse and cover -up scandal and we'll also be announcing the 2022

G3 Regional Conference and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Josh Bice.

Good to be with you, Chris. And tell our listeners about Praise Mill Baptist Church of Douglasville, Georgia.

Sure. Praise Mill Baptist Church is a Reformed Baptist church on the west side of Atlanta, 180 years old.

My wife and I grew up there as children and I've had the privilege to pastor the church for the last 12 years, so that's a local church that I am privileged to serve and to be a member of.

And if anybody wants more information about that church, go to PraiseMill .com and that's

P -R -A -Y -S -Mill .com and I hope that you, if you live near that church, you will certainly visit and if you are going on vacation, that you will visit and if you have family, friends and loved ones in that area, that you will recommend that they visit and perhaps even join that fine congregation.

Also, tell us about G3 Ministries. Yeah, Chris, G3 Ministries is a parachurch ministry that exists to educate, encourage and equip local churches and individual believers with sound biblical theology.

It originally started in the context of our local church as a conference, but in year 2020, it went through a transition to basically become a ministry that produces content but also hosts conferences and workshops.

So we have a national conference every other year, we have regional conferences in the off year.

We also host workshops on biblical preaching as well as biblical worship.

And you're having an exciting regional conference coming up in Washington, D .C.,

right near the Museum of the Bible. I am so thrilled to be attending that myself and representing

Iron Shepherd's Iron Radio there and the theme, I know, is going to be Just Thinking About the

Bible. Tell us about this conference. Yeah, Chris, this is the off year, so next year in September of 2023, we will have our national conference, but this year we're hosting a regional conference in Washington, D .C.,

and it's also in September. You can find out information on the website g3min .org,

but the conference itself is going to be devoted to the sufficiency of Scripture. So we're going to be looking at the importance of God's Word, the sufficiency of Scripture, and then we'll have sermons and breakout sessions on various different topics connected to that main theme.

And I know you are going to be on the speaking roster, and you will be joined by Stephen Lawson, one of my favorite preachers.

I think everybody who has ever heard him preach who is a Bible -believing Christian lists

Stephen Lawson as one of their favorite preachers. And my longtime dear friend, going back to 1996,

Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, and also the co -host of the

Just Thinking podcast, from where the theme of the conference is coming from,

Just Thinking About the Bible, Daryl Bernard Harrison and Virgil Walker. So everyone who attends this,

I am sure, will be thoroughly edified if you are a lover of God's Word and a disciple of Jesus Christ.

I believe you'll be profoundly benefited by this conference. And even if you are not a

Christian, if our Christian listeners who are attending want to bring a non -Christian along,

I think it would be very valuable for them, perhaps even especially. If you want more details on this, go to g3min .org.

Well, we are talking about a very controversial theme today, and one of the reasons why there might be a level, a certain level, of discomfort discussing this is that you and I both have very dear friends who are really superb

Christians and ministers of the gospel who remain in leadership in some capacity with the

Southern Baptist Convention. We might perhaps desire that they eventually leave that denomination if the denomination or members of that denomination who are in the highest levels of leadership do not repent.

But it is, nonetheless, a cause for a bit of discomfort.

I don't know if you feel as much of it as I do, but I do have dear friends that I've even interviewed on this program.

In fact, you and I share a very close friendship with Dr. Tom Askell, who is running for president of this denomination, and I have the highest regard for Tom.

But if you want to state in your own words, as we begin this discussion, especially to clarify that we are not in any way trying to besmirch the reputations of good, solid

Christians within that denomination. Yeah, Chris, that's a really good word as we begin the conversation today, because the

Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant denomination in America. And, you know, the convention itself has about 47 ,000 churches that make up the membership of this convention.

And, yes, this convention is really at a crisis moment at this very juncture.

They're preparing for the annual meeting here in just a couple of weeks where they will elect a new president.

And really, in many ways, the two leading candidates for that specific role both view the convention in two different ways.

One sees it as basically a convention that's relatively healthy and strong and needs good leadership, whereas the other candidate sees the convention at a crisis moment that needs massive reform.

And so, as it pertains to the recent, you know, release of the, you know, the independent report that came from Guideposts was released on May 22nd, last

Sunday, a Sunday week ago. And it was basically a report that was sparked by a

Houston Chronicle report that was released in 2019 that revealed some 700 cases of sexual misconduct and sexual abuse within the

Southern Baptist Convention. And so, over the past couple of years, there's been a move, really, to investigate and to find out what in the world's going on here.

And so there's been a cry from the convention itself to investigate.

So, back in 2021, at the last annual meeting, the messengers of the

SBC voted to approve an investigation, basically, that would be funded by the funds of the

Southern Baptist Convention. And this is a massive undertaking. It was the largest investigation in the history of the

SBC, and it basically cost the SBC messengers, or the members, the churches, the local churches of this convention, it's cost them near $2 million.

And the findings have been a bombshell. Over the past week or so, there have been many different responses, but undoubtedly, the response has been shock at some of the names of the largest figures within the

SBC being accused of sexual assault, sexual misconduct, adultery, and the list goes on and on and on.

And so, I wrote an article, you can find it at g3men .org, in response to this entire investigative report, and my position is this, it's a crisis.

Yes, it is a crisis. It is shocking. It's heartbreaking to hear about these cases, these accusations, these situations of sexual misconduct.

But the article that I wrote was basically arguing this point, is that it is not the role of the

Southern Baptist Convention, moving forward, to be the police department of local churches.

God has ordained, and this will be something that we could flesh out and discuss throughout this program,

Chris, is that God has ordained the sphere of the local church with church discipline, and he's also ordained civil authorities, so Romans 13, for cases of crimes and misconduct and things that transcend the sphere of the church, the sword has been placed in the hand of the government to deal with issues related to crimes against women and children.

So, when we see this report, yes, it's shocking, but then now there are people who are suggesting that there needs to be a database, or a registry, if you will, that the

SBC monitors where names of individuals who have been either accused or found guilty of these various different sins, to be placed on this database.

And so I would just push back against that, and I would point once again to this crisis moment as a moment to take a turn towards biblical sufficiency, and I believe that the convention is at a juncture where that needs to happen.

Either it will go in the way of pragmatism, and it will suffer greatly, or it will take a turn in the right direction towards embracing biblical sufficiency, which will lead the convention to health and strength.

Now, from what you have described, the sexual abuse within leadership of the

Southern Baptist Convention runs the spectrum, it seems to me, from the way you described it.

It includes voluntary adultery on both parties' part, and also going all the way down to the most heinous and grotesque of crimes, the molesting of children.

Yes, that's right. I mean, you have in this investigative report, you have everything from consensual adultery to crimes against children, and it's shocking, it's heartbreaking.

And from what you know of all of these allegations, are there any that are proving to be false allegations at this point?

Well, yeah, there are, actually. I mean, you have... I mean, it's not that we can prove that they're false,

I mean, the jury's still out on that, but we do see discrepancies. You see individuals like Johnny Hunt, who has served in the

Georgia Baptist circles for many years, he's a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, and he was, until just recent weeks, an employee of the

North American Mission Board. And yet, he finds his name in this report, and a whole story of sexual misconduct and adultery, or at least an assault against a woman, even if it didn't make it all the way to the level of adultery.

And yet, now he's written a letter, and he's published a letter stating that the findings of this report, or that the contents that are contained in this report, are not accurate.

And so you're seeing individuals on various different levels, some more well -known and others lesser -known, that are pushing back against the accusations at various levels.

So there's going to be all sorts of problems when a report is just dropped like this. Once again,

I think it's indicative of the problem of the Southern Baptist Convention. The overwhelming majority of the churches in the

SBC, Chris, do not practice biblical church discipline. And so when you have churches that aren't practicing church discipline, now there's a need, or at least from many people within the

SBC itself, they feel the tension for the need for someone to do something, and that's where you get this investigative report, and then the push for a database, and so on and so forth.

But I would argue that if the churches are healthy, and they're practicing biblical church discipline, then those cases that avoid the biblical church discipline at whatever level, or are crimes against children, or assaults against women, or even little boys for that matter, then you can always go to the sphere of the government and the civil authorities that can bring justice against the individuals who have committed crimes.

And so even if a church is healthy and it's practicing biblical church discipline, if there's a crime that's committed, then the civil authorities must be engaged in that specific case as well.

So it transcends the sphere of the local church at that level when a crime is committed.

But once again, if you have churches that are practicing biblical church discipline, then there's proper confrontation, accountability, and discipline that brings about the removal of individuals from offices, or even specific roles of employment, and you don't need to go create a police department, if you will, within the

SBC to bring about proper action. In other words, the Word of God is sufficient, and that's the point that I'm driving at.

Now, is there some kind of a move to create some kind of denominational police force, using that term allegorically,

I'm assuming, that you see on the horizon? Yeah, so since the release, there have been all sorts of chatter on social media from various individuals who are suggesting that a database could be established whereby individuals who have been found guilty of adultery, or guilty of sexual misconduct and assault, or even those who are accused of these various different sins could be placed on this database, and it could bring about proper accountability.

But my whole point is that this is going to create massive problems.

It's going to open up Pandora's box, if you will, and once that's opened, it's going to be detrimental to the

SBC. For instance, on Baptist Press' website, they released an article just yesterday,

I believe it was, where there was a pastor that his name was found on this database.

Well, a local news agency picked up the report and started browsing the report to see if there were any pastors in their local area that they could report on, and sure enough, they found the name of a specific pastor in their area.

So they ran a news story on it, and it turns out it's the right name, but it's the wrong individual.

And it caused massive controversy with his local church, and his local church has a school for children on the campus, and here he's being accused of misconduct, and so it caused a massive problem for him.

And so once again, either the scriptures are sufficient, and they reveal the blueprint that God gives for the local church, and the sphere of authority for the local church, and then the sphere of authority for civil authorities, or the scriptures aren't sufficient, and then we need some database like this to be operative within the context of the

SBC. And I believe that the mechanisms that God has created and established and ordained that are found in his

Word are actually sufficient. Now, I'm assuming that there are a couple of issues here that are at the root of this being such an astronomical problem amongst the

Southern Baptist Convention. First of all, you and I are Reformed Baptists. We believe in church discipline, but we also have to admit that even the most biblically faithful of churches who do conduct church discipline have found themselves in the tragic situation where someone in leadership or members of the congregation are involved in scandalous sins such as adultery, child molestation, and all of the spectrum of sins that we are discussing that seem to be so prevalent in the

Southern Baptist Convention. But having said that, you can exacerbate a situation highly by not conducting church discipline and also being quick to restore people to leadership who have been exposed for some of these most grievous of sins that makes them, in my opinion, and I'm assuming yours, no longer candidates to be in leadership because of the

Scripture's requirements of a man who is an overseer being above reproach.

There are certain sins. If a pastor has lost his temper on several occasions or has done something that you can find within the hearts and in lives of most human beings, it wouldn't require necessarily that person being removed from office and being barred from office, but obviously there are things that would make a person no longer above reproach, not only within his own congregation, but in the community.

So would that be, in your opinion, the root of some of this, the lack of church discipline that you already mentioned, and also the belief in the restoration and even quick restoration of those found guilty of these scandalous sins?

Yeah, yeah, I think that that's, again, one of the problems that we see with this entire scenario, right?

If you look at the Southern Baptist Convention as a whole, the majority of the churches don't have biblical church membership.

When you think about the reality of the way members just bounce from church to church based on who has the best music or the best youth group or whatever it might be, and they just send a letter that's a courtesy note stating, we're just letting you know that the

Smith family has joined our congregation. There's no phone call from pastor to pastor or from church to church to talk about the health of that family.

Did they have a biblical rationale for leaving and joining another church that's 2 .3

miles down the road? And so there's just all of this lack of health and true understanding of what biblical membership looks like.

So when it comes to, or as it pertains, biblical church discipline, it's the same thing.

So if someone that's serving as a pastor commits adultery and he disqualifies himself from the office, well, if he's disciplined appropriately within that church, and then when he goes away from the context of that church, if he pursues gospel ministry in another location, well, hopefully that church is going to be calling this other church to find out a little bit about his history and that sort of thing.

And if he's seeking to evade all of that, obviously there are going to be men that are going to be wolves that are going to try to evade that sort of accountability, but if churches are doing their homework and evaluating pastors, as they should, as well as members for that matter, as they should, then biblical church discipline actually functions the way that God intended it to function.

So you don't need a database like this. Furthermore, there is a database that's already available for crimes against children and sexual misconduct of that nature, and it's held in the sphere of the civil authorities.

And so, once again, we just have to ask ourselves the question, is God's Word sufficient, and is the blueprint that God gives, is that sufficient, or do we need some other middle road sort of methodology such as a database in the

SBC? Now, when you say that there are leaders who have been accused of serious sexual misconduct sins, are you talking about people who are still in leadership in the denomination, or are you talking about people who are pastors of local congregations and elders, or a combination of both?

What exactly are we talking about? Yeah. Yeah, it's a combination of both. I mean, some of these individuals that are in this report have already been excused from their positions or have resigned from their positions knowing what was coming, you know, within the next few weeks.

Others are pastors in local churches that are having to deal with that issue at this very moment as a bombshell was released.

And so this investigative report is one thing, because a denomination is a denomination, and if there was a scandal that's happening and the denomination sees fit to organize and produce an investigative report on these matters, well, then that's a decision that the denomination can make.

But my pushback is for the creation of a database, a registry, if you will.

I think that that's the role of the civil authorities and not a denominational group, if that makes sense.

So basically you're saying there are problems, serious problems, within the Southern Baptist Convention that lie on both opposite ends of the spectrum.

You're talking about those that want to respond in a very strict sense but in a misguided sense, and then you have those on the other end of the spectrum being a part of the whole problem of nominal

Christianity, of perpetuating congregations filled with unregenerate people, not obviously intentionally or even perhaps consciously, but having such a dumbed -down and watered -down understanding of what regeneration really is and what the

Christian faith really is, that the testimonies are accepted of people with inadequate evidence of true repentant faith, inadequate fruit, and even children who are being pushed into baptism at young ages, not because they are giving evidence of truly repenting and having genuine faith, but because it's expected of them when they turn 12 or some age, almost mimicking paedo -baptist denominations except for the difference that you have an older child being baptized.

In both scenarios, you don't have real faith. Am I somewhere in the right ballpark here?

Yeah, Chris, I think that where we're seeing nominal Christianity at play, you're also seeing some forms of the social justice movement at play here, and that's one of the things

I'm concerned about is that people want to engage in what we might call the

Me Too Movement or the Church Too Movement and literally assassinate the character of individuals without proper knowledge of what actually did happen.

So, again, I think that the sphere of the civil authorities have been given the responsibility of investigating crimes.

When it comes to local church issues and misconduct or even sexual sin, say adultery or some sort of sin in that realm, the local church is called by God to take action against individuals within those local church contexts and then bring about the proper discipline, which might actually result in removing someone from an office or actually asking them to step down from denominational leadership at some level.

And so I'm just concerned that the SBC at this very crisis moment, two weeks away from the next election of the next president in Anaheim, California, with an opportunity at this crisis moment to make a really good decision and elect

Tom Askell to be the president and lead the convention to genuine reform,

I'm afraid that they're going to take a left turn and embrace more pragmatism, which has been the

Achilles heel, if you will, or the foundational error of the Southern Baptist Convention for so many years.

We're going to be going to our first break right now. If you have a question for Pastor Josh Bice on the

Southern Baptist Convention, since he is a pastor, we will broaden the spectrum of topics over which you will be permitted to ask a question, a pastoral question, something about theology, doctrine, the

Bible, but we are hoping to get a significant number of questions specifically on the

Southern Baptist Convention and the crisis they are currently facing. Please give us your first name at least, your city and state, and country of residence.

Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter, and obviously a subject like today's topic would lend itself to perhaps people who have personal and private matters they want to ask about submitting questions to us, so obviously we will grant your request to remain anonymous, but please, if it's just a general question, give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence.

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Josh Bice of Praise Middle Baptist Church of Douglasville, Georgia and G3 Ministries right after these messages from our sponsors.

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Welcome back, if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the entire program is

Josh Bice, pastor of Praise Mill Baptist Church in Douglasville, Georgia, and founder and president of G3 Ministries.

We are talking about an extremely controversial subject today, but one that I think requires us to address, especially since many of our friends and colleagues in ministry are somehow affiliated with the

Southern Baptist Convention, and that theme is the future of the

Southern Baptist Convention, an analysis of the abuse and cover -up scandal. If you have a question, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com, give us your first name at least, your city and state and country of residence.

We have an anonymous listener who says, a number of my friends in ministry have not long ago brought their churches into the

Southern Baptist Convention that were formerly independent. What is the draw for churches to do this, and is this something that you would recommend or warn against at this point in time?

Yeah, Chris, that's a great question. I think some of the benefits of being a part of the

SBC, so if you're independent, a draw to be a part of the

Southern Baptist Convention might include the opportunity to partner in missions with other churches for the supply of missionaries or theological education.

Again, you have six SBC seminaries, and if you're an

SBC church, then obviously your theological education would be about 50 percent of what a non -SBC student would cost.

So those are some of the benefits, and I guess just the need to partner with other churches, it is important, and it's something that we should not undervalue.

I disagree with the idea of just being an independent church that sees no value whatsoever in partnering with other sister churches, so I disagree with that.

However, the second part of the question, I would disagree. I don't think it's a healthy move, honestly, and again, since I'm being interviewed and the question is specifically to me,

I would say that now is not a good time to be a part of the SBC. We just exited the

SBC because of long capitulation and an unwillingness to embrace the sufficiency of Scripture and genuine healthy reformation, and so as a result of that, we as a local church are a part of the

G3 Church Network, which functions in many ways as an opportunity for pastors and local churches to partner together, but yet to be independent, autonomous local churches at the very same time and yet disassociated with the

Southern Baptist Convention. So the G3 Church Network, by the way, is a network, and it's not mutually exclusive, so if you're a part of that network, you can still be in the

SBC as well, but I believe there's genuine healthy relationships happening in the

G3 Church Network, so I see no value for my local church to be associated officially with the

SBC anymore. RJ in Westchester County, New York asks, how recent in history did the crumble of the

Southern Baptist Convention begin when it comes to the promotion of nominal

Christianity that you mentioned before, where people are kept on membership rosters perhaps for decades who have not even darkened the door of a particular church where they are allegedly a member in years and may also have a very scandalous life which remains undisciplined?

I know that the origins of the Southern Baptist Convention were thoroughly Calvinistic, and Calvinist churches are typically very much involved in church discipline, so when did this fall come in regards to those issues?

Yeah, that's a good question. If you look at the history of the SBC, the founders of the

SBC were largely Calvinistic. The convention itself was established in 1845, but soon thereafter the convention started down a bumpy road, and it would eventually have a full -on embrace of pragmatism.

Now we know that historically pragmatism is this idea or methodology that whatever works, do it.

And so the convention itself has been committed to a big tent operation.

In many ways, the Southern Baptist Convention prides itself on its bigness. It prides itself on being the largest product of denomination.

So to maintain that size and to maintain the top rung in the ladder sort of position within evangelical denominations, then you have to maintain that size by employing pragmatism at various different levels.

And so you can go back to, like, 1954, when you can see the explosion, if you will, of the church growth movement, and you see a campaign that was established officially by the

Southern Baptist Convention that was titled, A Million More in 54. And the idea was that there would be a million more baptized members of the

Southern Baptist Convention churches in the year 54. And so what happens is that these churches start doing things, and they start creating programs, and they start employing gimmicks and various ministry strategies that would allow them to reach those goals.

And so that's problematic. And so the birth of the church growth movement and the explosion of individuals like Rick Warren and others have been embraced wholeheartedly by the

SBC for years. And so it's been detrimental. And so we find ourselves, or at least the

SBC does within evangelicalism today, finds itself at a massive crisis moment, and they must deal with this.

And the future of the convention is at stake here. Now, would you say that this downward slide coincided with the dominant membership of the

Southern Baptist Convention switching gradually over the years from theologically

Reformed to theologically Arminian? Yeah, that played a large role in it.

And then in recent years, you've been seeing the seminaries of the SBC that were largely established, much like you can look back to Harvard, for instance, and you can see these institutions that were established for the training of men.

For the training of men for what? To go to the pulpit and to preach the word of God faithfully.

And so Harvard obviously went off the rails and is gone completely, and this happened many years ago.

But you can also look to the establishment of the Southern Baptist Convention entities, the seminaries, and you can see how they were established for the training of men, largely for ministry.

But now in recent years, these seminaries have been priding themselves in publishing reports, and they've been boasting in the number of women that they have enrolled and graduating from their ranks.

And even recently, Danny Akin, the president of the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, was seen on Twitter getting his picture made with a woman who's boasting about graduating from the pastoral studies track of that institution, and she even went on to tell a story about her preaching in seminary class.

Wow. And so this is detrimental to the convention as a whole, and they must right this ship or it's going to be completely gone.

Now, currently, even though this woman was degreed at a

Southern Baptist seminary and was given opportunities to preach in the class and so on, is it still not a rule amongst every congregation in the denomination that prohibits women in ordained leadership?

No, actually, it's not a rule. If you look at the

Baptist Faith and Message, the actual Statement of Faith for the SBC, it's very loose language as it pertains to the office of pastor.

And so the controversy right now is whether or not someone, or whether or not a specific local church, if you will, can have a woman who functions in the way that a pastor does, by preaching, say, on the

Lord's Day, but yet she remains an individual who's not ordained officially for the office of pastor.

So they're playing fast and loose with this issue, and it's a battle for the dictionary in many ways, because these individuals will pride themselves on being, quote -unquote, complementarian, but they're functioning as if they're not truly complementarian.

So you're starting to see a third way, a middle -of -the -road sort of opportunity that's emerging within the context of the

SBC and Big Eva as a whole, if you will.

You're starting to see lots of individuals who are starting to chart a new path for soft complementarianism and that sort of thing.

So once again, this is pragmatism. Pragmatism as a foundation leads to other areas of capitulation, and that's what we're seeing with the way that the

Convention is approaching this sex scandal, and it's also the way that the

SBC is approaching other issues related to women in ministry as well. Now if you could explain the nickname that you just used,

Big Eva. Yeah, Big Eva is just a simple nickname for the larger, broader evangelical circle or stream that the

Southern Baptist Convention swims in. So you have within those branches, you'll have other mainstream, mainline denominations like the

PCA or even the various forms of the

Methodist Church. And so when you start looking at Big Eva, it sort of uses some of those streams, but it also involves a lot of non -denominational churches, independent churches, and that sort of thing.

You mentioned the PCA, Presbyterian Church in America. They are really going through very similar problems as the

Southern Baptist Convention. It seems that they are hand -in -hand in the same types of trials and downward slides that are existing in the

Southern Baptist Convention, are they not? Yeah, the PCA is in a crisis moment as well, and they're slugging it out presently on issues related to gay

Christianity and social justice. Social justice has encompassed and worked its way into all of the large evangelical denominations, and that's without hesitation.

I know you and I have talked about this on your show for the last couple of years, and what we have seen is that the social justice movement has been welcomed into the gates of these various denominations, and this social justice train, when it came through the gates, has been unpacking its boxcars of various different goods and ideologies since 2017 and even beyond.

Earlier than that, it started. And so what you're seeing now is you're seeing the result of it, and a lot of people are exiting these big denominations.

A lot of people are leaving the PCA. A lot of people are leaving the Southern Baptist Convention. So you mentioned this independent church that's joined the

Southern Baptist Convention. If you look at the statistics, the statistics show the reverse is far more popular right now.

Churches are exiting the Southern Baptist Convention, and the numbers are decreasing rapidly. So once again, they're at a moment where they need to really look at the situation at hand and make a decision to deal with the sufficiency of Scripture issues.

Chris, the Southern Baptist Convention fought a literal bloody war over biblical inerrancy from 1979 all the way through the early 2000s.

But what happened is that although they pride themselves as a convention that really stands on biblical inerrancy, that they never have even entered the battlefield on biblical sufficiency.

And so that's why we're seeing so many problems. That's why they're embracing pragmatism is because they don't look to the

Bible for biblical church membership, biblical discipline, biblical worship, and the list goes on and on and on.

Well, we have to go to our midway break right now. Please be patient with us because the midway break is always longer than the other breaks in the show because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break because they are required by the

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And also send in questions to Josh Bice on the issue at hand on the

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chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state and country of residence. We'll be right back, right after these messages.

James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries here, excited to announce that my longtime friend, Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I are heading to Washington, D .C.

for the G3 Ministries regional conference on the theme, Just Thinking About the Bible. The conference will be held

Thursday, September 15th through Saturday, September 17th. I'll be speaking along with Stephen Lawson, Josh Bice, founder of G3 Ministries, and Daryl Bernard Harrison and Virgil Walker, co -hosts of the

Just Thinking Podcast. To register, visit g3min .org, that's g3min .org,

and click on Events. Your registration will include a ticket to the Museum of the Bible, nearby the conference venue in Washington, D .C.

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O Hail the power of Jesus' name

This is Pastor Bill Sousa, Grace Church at Franklin, here in the beautiful state of Tennessee.

Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support Iron Sharpens Iron radio financially.

Grace Church at Franklin is an independent, autonomous body of believers which strives to clearly declare the whole counsel of God as revealed in Scripture through the person and work of our

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And if you recall, we have a very important theme here today, the future of the

Southern Baptist Convention, an analysis of the abuse and cover -up scandal. We have

C .J. in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who says, I tuned in just as you were talking about the fact that you are against a database of those that are guilty of sins involved in this scandal.

How do you then suggest that these people don't freely bounce from church to church without any kind of pushback or red light going off?

Yeah, so to recap what we had talked about in the first hour, Chris, I'm all for holding individuals who have sinned accountable.

But I think that the sphere of the local church is where that's intended to take place.

And I think that that's God's blueprint. If we read the scriptures, we look at God's word, we see the sufficient blueprint that he put on display for us there.

And so I think when denominations start creating databases, the question becomes, who's going to be in charge of monitoring those databases?

You know, are we going to really put the most pragmatic -minded people in the history of evangelicalism in charge of monitoring a database that could potentially railroad someone for the rest of their ministry and the rest of their life?

And in fact, that's an equally serious sin to the sins for which they are accused.

Yeah, it is. And you've got to ask yourself an honest question. Are the people who have been consistently unwilling to engage in biblical church discipline and to follow the scriptures as the

Bible teaches us to hold one another accountable and to pursue holiness and all this within the sphere of the local church, are we going to really trust those individuals who have resisted that for all of these years to actually monitor a database appropriately?

And I think that the honest answer to that is no. We're not going to trust those individuals. So to recap,

I believe that the sphere of the civil authorities is where we should have such databases.

And those databases should be established based on crimes or crimes against children.

But in the cases of individuals who have been accused of adultery or accused of some sort of sexual misconduct,

I think that you go to the sphere of that local church and you deal with it in a local level.

And if the churches that make up the Southern Baptist Convention are willing to embrace biblical church discipline, then it's within those contexts that those individuals can be disciplined appropriately and be removed from office or asked to step down from denominational leadership.

And we mentioned before that someone who is... only those who are qualified to be as elders of a church are to be above reproach, and that would basically be that they are known for godly, repentant lives, and that they are not guilty of a scandalous sin that a church could not really recover from without still having a horrible blot on their reputation in the community.

Am I somewhere in the ballpark of accurately describing that? Yeah, yeah.

So individuals who have committed these sins, I believe, should be disqualified from serving in pastoral ministry, and in many cases disqualified from serving as professors or from denominational leadership.

However, I just think the way that you approach those decisions and the way that you approach the discipline and the disciplinary action against those individuals,

I think it either rests in the sphere of the local church or the sphere of the civil authorities.

And I believe that the Scriptures are sufficient. So what Paul said in 2

Timothy 3, 16 and 17 is that all Scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable.

It's profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.

So if we really believe that, then we need to actually demonstrate that by how we function in the life of our denominations and networks and local churches.

Now, obviously, discipline involves a key goal, a primary goal of discipline, which is an act of love, by the way, is to restore a person to good standing with the church and to be put back into a right relationship with God so that they are not living in rebellion against God.

But being restored to membership in good standing does not mean restored to leadership positions.

That's correct. And it very well may be that an individual may fall into some sort of sin, sexual misconduct, that would result in them being restored, forgiven, and embraced as a brother or sister in Christ in the context of the local church, but they may need to step down from being pastor or they may need to step down from being a professor or maybe serving in some sort of denominational leadership position.

So, yes, you are right. But once again, biblical church discipline works and it's healthy and it's good and it's profitable and the

Bible is sufficient to give us how we are to, the steps, if you will, of how we are to engage in these various different scenarios that we face.

And the SBC, once again, is at this critical moment where it can determine to embrace the sufficiency of God's Word or embrace pragmatism.

And it's consistently embraced pragmatism for so long.

Now would be a fantastic opportunity to take a step in the right direction.

Now, obviously, there must be fear amongst many to take the steps of trying to transform the way they conduct polity and discipline because there are many massive

Southern Baptist congregations where a fear of a loss of maybe even the majority of people in those places is at stake because those leaders know, or at least are very confident, that a vast number, possibly even a majority, are not even regenerate or they're not living like they are because of the nominalism that has overtaken not only the

Southern Baptist Convention, but many churches in the Bible Belt have perpetuated nominalism and have turned

Christianity into something that is merely expected of an American patriot and expected of a

Southerner. You know, people will be called Christian just because they come from generations of Baptists or Presbyterians or conservative

Methodists and Anglicans and Pentecostals. And this just perpetuates this, for lack of a better term, sorry for the crass analogy, but the breeding of Christianity.

Yes, it does, Chris. And, you know, when you look at the fear among the leaders of this convention, it was very much evident last year when they, you know, vehemently opposed, if you will, the conservative candidate at the time, and now they are doing the very same thing with Tom Askell as well.

And so when I wrote this article that you can find at g3men .org where I'm pushing back against the way in which the

SBC has approached the sexual misconduct within the convention, I'm arguing for a move to embrace sufficiency of Scripture and to avoid more pragmatism.

Pragmatism kills. But what I've been accused of is being insensitive or trying to harbor individuals who, you know, are guilty of these various sins.

That's not at all the case. I'm very much against people who have committed adultery or assaulted women or abused children and women.

I'm against them serving in any leadership position within a local church or denominational setting.

But as I've been accused of also withholding individual names or resisting reform.

Now that's somewhat humorous to me because I'm not at all against reform, but my question is how far do you want to go when it comes to reformation?

Like I'm all for reformation, but I'm not for the sort of middle -of -the -road reformation and reform and policies and procedures that the

SBC elites are trying to lead the convention to embrace. I'm very much for genuine biblical reformation, which looks like looking to the

Bible to see how a church is to function, how a church is to worship, and how a church is to discipline sinful members within the context of that local church.

And if a crime has been committed, then you immediately get the civil authorities involved. You don't have to go and create some middle -of -the -road database whereby you malign the character of individuals.

That's not the role of the Southern Baptist Convention. And how do you speak to those brethren that you know who are in the

Southern Baptist Convention when they look at this daunting task of transforming that denomination biblically, how daunting a task it is, since even if you want to say half of the churches in that denomination aren't following biblical principles when it comes to discipline and a proper way to conduct church polity and other things, how do you give them the encouragement that they can press on with a confidence that God will bring about transformation just as he did with the

Protestant Reformation? Yeah, I mean, Chris, that's a fantastic question, and I think herein lies the rub or the tension point for me.

I was recently preaching at a conference alongside Tom Askell, and during the

Q &A I was asked a question about when should we leave the Southern Baptist Convention, and everyone looked at me like I was the one that was supposed to answer that question because he recently left the

Southern Baptist Convention. But it was in that Q &A that I answered, and I basically said

Tom Askell and I are looking at things from two different lenses, or through two different lenses, if you will.

Tom is looking at the Southern Baptist Convention and seeing the profitability of the convention, that it's a large network, that it's the largest

Protestant denomination, that if we don't do something, then the bad actors are going to be in charge and they're going to do bad things with the entities and the seminaries and all of that.

And so I'm looking at it from a convictional standpoint, that I can't any longer give money to a system that's broken, a system that is committed to capitulation, a system that is committed to pragmatism and a lack of confidence in the sufficiency of Scripture.

And so for us, Chris, it came to a place where we said we did not see a good path forward.

So convictionally it was a violation of our conscience to continue to give money to the SBC. So back in December we exited the

Southern Baptist Convention, our church made a unanimous decision to do that, led by the elders.

Now, to those who choose to stay in to fight for reform, I say go for it.

And I pray that the Lord blesses the work and the labor of your hands. But I'm not trying to be pessimistic here, but I don't genuinely see it happening.

Let's just say Tom Askell is elected in two weeks at the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting.

Well, if he is elected, what we're going to see is we're going to see basically an uphill battle.

It's going to be the beginning of about 20 to 25 years of a slugfest to bring about genuine reformation in the

Southern Baptist Convention. And then you're only going to be back at what I would consider to be center point.

And then you've got to start moving in the right direction towards biblical sufficiency.

So it's a massive uphill battle. I believe if Tom Askell is elected in two weeks that he will likely not see the end result of the

Reformation in his lifetime. That's how much of an uphill battle it is.

So again, not to sound pessimistic, but I don't genuinely anticipate the

Southern Baptist Convention coming out of this thing. I don't see the SBC recovering from this.

I don't see a conservative resurgence 2 .0 happening. And so for that reason, we're out.

And I do pray for Tom Askell and others, but I don't see it happening. By the way, folks, if you want to hear

Dr. Tom Askell's side of this, I interviewed him recently on May 11th, to be exact, to discuss his candidacy for the

Southern Baptist Convention president. You can go to the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio archive where our podcasts and past shows are present, the links, the audio links for those.

That's A -S -C -O -L is the spelling of his last name. You could type that in the search engine and all of my interviews with Dr.

Tom Askell will appear. Or you could just scroll down in the archive of the podcast, past shows, for May 11th, and you'll see

Dr. Askell's program. And to reiterate my guest today,

Dr. Joss Beiss and I both love and have a very high esteem for Dr.

Askell, so we're not in any way besmirching him or his reputation at all. And I pray for nothing but the best for him and all he sets his hand to do.

We have Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, who says,

I know that the United Methodist denomination recently split with the conservative members of that denomination, forming a new group called the

Global Methodists. I have also heard on Chris's show that members of the

PCA are fearing but expecting something similar to happen amongst them.

Have you heard the rumblings of that happening in the Southern Baptist Convention? Yeah, Chris, it's been predicted for a very long time that there would be a, quote unquote, a civil war, or that there would be a split or a splintering that would take place.

And this fracture was predicted to be precipitated on the basis of Calvinism years ago.

But interestingly enough, it's the issues of social justice and all of the things that fall beneath the banner of social justice, such as complementarianism and egalitarianism and ethnic prejudice or racism and all sorts of other things that are, at this point, precipitating what could potentially be a split in the

SBC in the days to come. So again, it really just boils down to the heart of these pastors and these churches.

Do they want to see genuine health and vitality, or do they not? And if the conservatives continue to fight, it could result in either a long battle that could result in reform or a long battle that could result in reform as a result of a split and the smaller of the two groups going their own way.

And so it is very possible that that would be the case over the next 10 years or so.

And as discomforting as that kind of thing may be to people,

I mean, just to split and to lose members and to even have congregational splits, as tragic as they are, that can be the road to preserving a more biblical unity amongst at least a portion of that group, isn't it?

Absolutely, it could be. I mean, sometimes we think of a split in a local church as being detrimental, and it could be as a result of sin or capitulation or whatever it might be.

In some cases, if a church is sinning and a church is led by pastors who are capitulating, for the conservative biblical members of that church to eventually split off as a result of the fact that biblical church discipline was not capable because the leadership would not comply or what have you, in that case, that split would be a healthy thing for the one to seek to go and obey

God and honor the scriptures. In the case of the convention itself, splitting could help, but the problem is if the conservatives split off and the progressives, or the liberals, if you will, if they retain ownership and control of the seminaries and all of the educational entities and mission agencies, that could be problematic.

So in that case, either the conservatives need to just stay in and continue to fight and hope that they can win the day or go on and form another network or join the

G3 church network. Amen. And tell us about what are the qualifications to be a part of the

G3 network, and what does that actually mean? I asked

Tom the same question, Dr. Tom Askell, recently, a question involving the fact that Baptists historically have clung tenaciously to the long -held belief and a belief that is viewed by these

Baptists as thoroughly biblical, from God's inerrant, breathed -out words, that local congregations are independent and autonomous and they have no higher authority in them than the inerrant

Word of God and Christ himself. There are no denominational hierarchies where we would disagree with our dear

Presbyterian brethren, where there are presbyteries and so on, and denominational figures outside of the local church.

How does the G3 network of churches, forgive me if I misspoke in the way that you phrased it, but the association of churches that you are in the process of developing, how does that maintain, if at all, the long -held, cherished

Baptist principle of autonomous and independent congregations? Yeah, so again, that's at the heart of this entire conversation that we're having today about the way that the

SBC is approaching this issue of creating databases and so on and so forth. And I'm arguing that it's not the job of the

SBC to do those things. It's either the civil authorities or the local church because of this long -held belief in the local autonomy of individual congregations.

And so that's what we hold to. Now, the G3 church network exists as a network, not a denomination, and we hold to a few different prerequisites.

Number one, the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith is our confessional statement.

And we allow for churches who are, say, Southern Baptists, but they're led by men who are genuinely reformed and they're seeking reformation in their own local church.

Their church may not have the 1689 as its official statement, but the pastors who are leading that church can actually subscribe to the 1689.

Well, then that's okay, and we would allow those individuals to be a part of the

G3 church network. We also ask that either the church as a whole, by name, or at least the pastors of the church be willing to sign the statement on social justice and the gospel.

So the stake in the ground that demonstrates, okay, we're like -minded churches and we can work together is the 1689.

And then sort of a gate that keeps churches from coming in that are more progressive and leaning left on matters of social justice is the statement on social justice and the gospel.

And we ask that the pastors or the church itself would sign that statement.

So if a church does those things and they're willing to be a part of our network, then, of course, they can join.

Now, we also have a minimum of a $500 annual dues, and churches can give more, and we can use more money to do more gospel ministry, and our staff can produce more literature, and we can engage in more projects if we have more money.

But we've set the bar so low that a 12 -person church that's basically a brand -new church plant with only 12 members could be a part of this network.

And so we have monthly meetings, Chris, with the pastors, and it's just really, really encouraging.

We have fruitful conversations, and we engage in genuine fellowship, and we have a

G3 app. And if you're in the network, then the pastors in that network can message one another through the app as well, and it just provides for good conversation and overlap.

So right now, just to give you an idea, our local church, Praise Mill, is currently praying through the process, and we've had an initial meeting in Tennessee about planting a church north of Nashville.

And so if we decide that that's going to be an official project, we'll publish that project within the

G3 church network, and other churches in the network can engage that project, and they can pray with us, supply funds, or even supply elders that can go and serve either temporarily or even move and relocate to be a part of this church plant.

So that's what we're up to, and I would certainly welcome those that listen to your show that want to have a genuine, healthy fellowship of churches to engage in the

G3 church network. And you can find the application at our website. That's g3min .org.

And we're going to our final break. It's going to be a lot more brief than the other breaks. Please, if you have a question, send it in immediately, because we're rapidly running out of time.

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. We'll be back with Pastor Josh Bice right after these messages.

James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here, excited to announce that my longtime friend, Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I are heading to Washington, D .C.

for the G3 Ministries Regional Conference on the theme Just Thinking About the Bible. The conference will be held

Thursday, September 15th through Saturday, September 17th, and I'll be speaking along with Stephen Lawson, Josh Bice, founder of G3 Ministries, and Daryl Bernard Harrison and Virgil Walker, co -hosts of the

Just Thinking Podcast. To register, visit g3min .org. That's g3min .org,

and click on Events. Your registration will include a ticket to the Museum of the Bible, nearby the conference venue in Washington, D .C.

So join me and Chris Arnzen, September 15th through the 17th in Washington, D .C.

for the G3 Ministries Regional Conference. Register now before they run out of seats at g3min .org.

That's g3min .org. Stop by the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Exhibitor booth and say hi to Chris Arnzen while you're there.

Every day at thousands of community centers, high schools, middle schools, juvenile institutions, coffee shops, and local hangouts,

Long Island Youth for Christ staff and volunteers meet with young people who need Jesus. We are rural and urban, and we are always about the message of Jesus.

Our mission is to have a noticeable spiritual impact on Long Island, New York by engaging young people in the lifelong journey of following Christ.

Long Island Youth for Christ has been a stalwart bedrock ministry since 1959. We have a world -class staff and a proven track record of bringing consistent love and encouragement to youths in need all over the country and around the world.

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For details, call Long Island Youth for Christ at 631 -385 -8333.

That's 631 -385 -8333. Or visit liyfc .org.

That's liyfc .org. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

If you've watched my Dividing Line webcast often enough, you know I have a great love for getting Bibles and other documents vital to my ministry rebound to preserve and ensure their longevity.

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The publishers of the New American Standard Bible were among my very first sponsors. It gives me joy knowing that many scholars and pastors in the

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I'm Dr. Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.

I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak, and have grown to love,

Hope Reform Baptist Church in Coram, Long Island, New York, pastored by Rich Jensen and Christopher McDowell.

It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God, like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Coram, who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in His Holy Word, and to enthusiastically proclaim

Christ Jesus the King, and His doctrines of sovereign grace in Suffolk County, Long Island, and beyond.

I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation, and receive the blessing of being showered by their love, as I have.

For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net.

That's hopereformedli .net. Or call 631 -696 -5711.

That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, New York, that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.

As host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.

The church I've been strongly recommending as far back as the 1980s is Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey, pastored by Alan Dunn.

Grace Covenant Baptist Church believes it's God's prerogative to determine how he shall be worshiped and how he shall be represented in the world.

They believe churches need to turn to the Bible to discover what to include in worship and how to worship

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Performed with faith, joy, and sobriety. Discover more about Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey at gcbcnj .squarespace

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Or call them at 908 -996 -7654 That's 908 -996 -7654

Tell Pastor Dunn that you heard about Grace Covenant Baptist Church on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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Thanks for helping to keep Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio on the air. Why can't we see

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Attention all men in ministry leadership. You're all invited to my friend Chris Arnzen's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Free Pastor's Luncheon Thursday, September 22nd, 11am to 2pm at Church of the

Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania featuring me, James White of Alpha Omega Ministries, your keynote speaker.

Not only will you enjoy a wonderful time of fellowship with your colleagues in ministry over a delicious meal, but you'll also receive dozens of free brand new books donated by Christian publishers all over the

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So if you're a pastor, an elder, a deacon, a parachurch leader, or any other man in ministry leadership, please register for the

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Free Pastor's Luncheon today by calling 631 -291 -7002 631 -291 -7002 or by visiting ironsharpensironradio .com

ironsharpensironradio .com This is James White of Alpha Omega Ministries hoping to see you

Thursday, September 22nd, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania for Chris Arnzen's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Free Pastor's Luncheon.

Welcome back, this is Chris Arnzen and we have our final segment now with Pastor Josh Weiss of Praiseville Baptist Church in Douglasville, Georgia and founder of G3 Ministries.

We have another anonymous listener who says I am going to try to urge my pastor and other pastors

I know to investigate joining your G3 Ministry of Churches and I was wondering if you prohibit churches that adhere to the

New Hampshire Confession or the First London Confession or churches that are

Calvinist but Dispensationalist. Yeah, that's a good question.

Chris, we do not prohibit churches that hold to those specific positions.

However, what we do allow is for people to say okay, a pastor could say we hold to the 1689

London Baptist Confession of Faith even if it's not our official doctrinal statement of our church, we as pastors of this church can subscribe to this confession with the following qualifications and so you can spell out the qualifications that you might have with specific articles and then in that application we would review it and then allow for churches to join.

So, in other words, we're not all 100 % clones of one another in the network and we do recognize that you might have an issue with a specific article or two and so we're just looking for churches to be close in fellowship instead of more broad, big tent, if that makes sense.

And I'd like you to have approximately two minutes to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today before we go off the air.

Yeah, the main thing I want to drive home, Chris, is that whether it's the Southern Baptist Convention, the

G3 Church Network, or your local church, or even your own personal family, is that the

Bible is sufficient. God's Word is sufficient. The Word of God is capable of directing how we live, how we serve, how we worship, how we do life.

And so the very moment that we lose confidence in the sufficiency of Scripture, we open the gates to all sorts of capitulation and we have seen that in the history of the

Southern Baptist Convention. And if you're listening to today's program and you're a part of the

SBC, I would urge you to carefully consider if you're going to be voting in Anaheim, California, that you would get behind Tom Aspel, vote for him to be the president, and pray that he and others within that convention would lead the convention to biblical reformation.

Praise God. And don't forget, folks, the G3 Regional Conference is coming up September 15th through the 17th in Washington, D .C.

The theme is Just Thinking About the Bible. The Bible is

Sufficient is the subtitle of that theme. And the speakers are my guest,

Dr. Josh Bice, Dr. Stephen J. Lawson, Dr. James R.

White, and Daryl Bernard Harrison and Virgil Walker, the co -hosts of the

Just Thinking podcast. If you want to register for this conference, go to g3 .org,

I'm sorry, g3min .org, G -3 -M -I -N, the abbreviation for ministry, g3min .org,

and register. And please make sure that if you do register, you come by the

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Exhibitor's booth and say hello to me, that will greatly encourage me. And I will love to meet, as I always do, not only listeners that I have been aware of over the number of years we've been doing this broadcast, but also meeting for the very first time brethren in Christ who have been blessed by the program whom

I have never before met. That always fills me with a lot of joy.

And also, if you would like to be interviewed by me, we conduct on -site interviews at these events, so I would love to meet you and interview you and hear from you about what might be burdening your heart and mind.

Well, thanks again, Pastor Josh, for doing such a superb job today. I look forward to your soon return to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And let me also remind our listeners about your church website, praisemill .com, and that's p -r -a -y -s -mill .com.

I want to thank everybody who listened, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater