Rick Warren vs. Al Mohler

The Southern Baptist Convention Fight Over Saddleback Church

Hey everyone, welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I am still on the road, as you can see, in a hotel room tonight, and coming back home from the Be Not Conformed conference and a Lutheran meeting that I was at, and both went very well.

No, I'm not a Lutheran. I was invited by some Lutherans to talk to them about social justice, and I actually talked quite a bit about what's going on in the Southern Baptist Convention, so I will hopefully give you a bit of a report on what I've been doing later in the week, but right now I don't have a lot of time, and I want to give you some highlights from what happened today at the Southern Baptist Convention and share with you my thoughts on that.

So obviously the big news is Rick Warren and Al Mohler and the exchange they had and what that means for tomorrow, and I want to show you that exchange and then I'll explain what's going on.

Anyone else?

We're going to declare that the polls are closed and we will move to our next item. I know you can see that we're over time, but our bylaw requires us to finish this action, so we're going to continue until we're done.

The Credentials Committee recommended that Saddleback Church be found not in friendly cooperation with the Southern Baptist Convention. The Executive Committee adopted the recommendation and found that Saddleback Church is not in friendly cooperation with the Southern Baptist Convention.

Saddleback Church has filed an appeal with the convention within the required 30 days prior to the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention. The question is, shall the decision of the Credentials Committee and the Executive Committee that Saddleback Church is not in cooperation with the Southern Baptist Convention be sustained.

Our rules apply a limitation of debate on this matter to one representative of the church in question and one representative of the Credentials Committee or the Executive Committee. The Chair recognizes Rick Warren for three minutes, and following his conclusion, the Chair will recognize the Executive Committee and Credentials Committee for three minutes to respond.

For 178 years, the SBC has been a blend of at least a dozen different tribes of Baptists. If you think every Baptist thinks like you, you're mistaken. What we share in common is a mutual commitment to the inerrancy and the infallibility of God's Word and to the Great Commission of Jesus Christ.

No one is asking any Southern Baptist to change their theology. I'm not asking you to agree with my church. I am asking you to act like a Southern Baptist who have historically agreed to disagree on dozens of doctrines in order to share a common mission.

Since Southern Baptists have always allowed disagreement on doctrines, including the essential doctrines of salvation, why should this one issue cancel our fellowship? In 2013, when the Calvinists were under fire, Baptists agreed to disagree and the split was averted.

Now ten years later, will we treat egalitarian Baptists with the same grace we showed the Calvinists? We should remove churches for all kinds of sexual sin, racial sin, financial sin, leadership sin, sins that harm the testimony of our convention.

But the 1 ,928 churches with women on pastoral staff have not sinned. If doctrinal disagreements between Baptists are considered sin, we all get kicked out. You'll never get 100 of Baptists to agree 100 on 100 of doctrine.

That's why our Constitution says that churches must closely identify, not completely identify with our confession. Now the Baptist faith and message is 4 ,032 words. Saddleback disagrees with one word.

That's 99 .9999999999 in agreement. Isn't that close enough? Al Mohler, who for some reason gets to speak twice and do the rebuttals, claims the phrase the office of the pastor is limited to men, that that also includes every staff position too and somehow it also prevents any woman from teaching.

But I was able to contact about half, over half of the original drafting committee of the Baptist faith and message 2000 and seven of them told me Al was wrong. In fact, before the vote on the 2000 Baptist faith and message, even Al in his hometown newspaper said it didn't limit women from being assistant pastors.

Go read it in the Courier Journal. If this precedent is set, Southern Seminary will have to change the name of the Billy Graham School since Billy Graham trained women pastors at our global training events and he endorsed the preaching ministry of his daughter saying Ann is the best preacher in the Graham family.

Vote no. If this precedent is set, we'll have to rename our two.

I'm very sorry, but the time has expired. Chair now recognizes the executive committee, credentials committee for response.

Thank you, Mr. President. As the chairman of the executive committee, I would like to again recognize Dr. Albert Mohler as the representative of the executive committee to respond to the appeal.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to say that my position was there misrepresented, but nonetheless, it is important to state for the record that Albert Mohler does not say what the Baptist faith and message means.

The Southern Baptist Convention says what the Baptist faith and message means and is quite competent to accomplish that task. In the year 2000, the words, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture was inserted because 30 years ago, this issue threatened to tear this denomination apart.

The definition of friendly cooperation came down to the fact that that was an issue that would endanger the cooperative cohesion and faithfulness of the church, of the Southern Baptist Convention. And in particular, we look to this issue because Southern Baptist decided this is not just a matter of church polity, it is not just a matter of hermeneutics, it's a matter of biblical commitment, a commitment to the Scripture that unequivocally, we believe, limits the office of pastor to men.

It is an issue of biblical authority. It is one that has actually led to the unity of the Southern Baptist Convention as Southern Baptists have gone forward with an issue of clarity here, which has greatly made our doctrine and order a matter of unity and harmony.

It is the unity and harmony of the Southern Baptist Convention that is now at stake. And we're in an unusual situation. Once again, this is not a convention responsibility to offer a comprehensive verdict on the ministry of Rick Warren or Saddleback Community Church.

We can thank God for every good gospel thing that is represented by that church and its ministry. It is a question about the Southern Baptist Convention and what it means for a church to be in friendly cooperation in doctrine and in order with this convention.

And here we face the unusual situation in which Dr. Warren himself has made repeated statements and the church has taken repeated actions that make very clear that it rejects the confessional understanding of the Southern Baptist Convention on this issue.

This isn't a question of misunderstanding. The Credentials Committee and the Executive Committee took action based upon the actions of Saddleback Community Church in establishing a woman as a campus pastor and having women with the title of pastor to teach in the teaching role on Sunday morning, and then Pastor Warren going on to say more expansively that the church basically, and he endorses and calls for a more comprehensive egalitarianism.

I'm confident that's not where the Southern Baptist Convention is going to go. I believe that it is a statement without rancor and without personal attack, without making a comprehensive verdict on a congregation that is no longer among us.

We simply say that our Credentials Committee and Executive Committee have done the right thing. We need to do that.

Rick Warren's Rhetorical Mistakes and Al Mohler's Winning Style

So for those who haven't watched the other videos that I put out on this subject, long and short of it is that Rick Warren's church, Saddleback, is one of two churches being disfellowshipped from the convention, the Southern Baptist Convention, because they're out of step with the Baptist faith and message on the subject of women pastors.

And so you heard Rick Warren make his defense. You heard Al Mohler representing the Executive Committee, which made the decision to kick Saddleback Church out, represent the Executive Committee and support their decision.

I think just as a matter of tactics here, Rick Warren's presentation probably could not have gone all that much worse, in my opinion. It was pretty bad. In fact, it signals to me that he doesn't really know Southern Baptists that well, at least the way that the annual meeting politics works.

If you've watched it as many years as I've watched it, you don't typically see this kind.

Of thing.

In fact, even when J .D. Greer is trying to blast his political opponents from the stage, he tends to really ostracize them as fringy, and they're not like those good Southern Baptists who make up the rest of the denomination.

So what Warren did was he used the pronoun you instead of us, which is a big mistake. That's not the language that you generally hear from the left-leaning folks in the Southern Baptist Convention. They'll make an appeal and say something like, you know, we need to make sure that we treat immigrants right, or we need to make sure that we treat abuse victim survivors right, or we need to make sure that we have diverse churches or something like that.

They don't start wagging the finger and saying you. They see themselves as part of the room, and so there's a commonly shared identity there, and that's very appealing. But Rick Warren immediately makes this separation.

There's Saddleback and him, and then there's you all. There's you. And you're not acting like Southern Baptists, so he's chastening them with his words. He also made it very personal with Al Mohler. That's another rule he broke.

And you know, liberals can get away with this stuff a little more than conservatives, but still he's questioning relationships, which you're just not supposed to do. Even if you disagree, you're supposed to be, this is the good manners in the Southern Baptist Convention in the elite echelon.

You have to affirm the relationship as you are destroying your opponent. That's how it is. I didn't make the rules, but that's what I've observed for years. You even say things like my good friend or my brother, and then you proceed to destroy them.

Sometimes behind their back, and sometimes it can be even more overt than that. But you have to at least pretend like you're in friendly cooperation and you care about them. And then the other thing he did, which was a big mistake, was he blamed the stage for giving Al Mohler too much time.

So he made an enemy, not just of Al Mohler, but of the rules of the convention and the stage and those who are controlling it. And the stage, as I've said before, generally controls the way these votes go.

It's very rare that the votes don't go the way the stage, and by the stage, I mean the president and those who are around the president giving committee reports and running things from what's in front of the Southern Baptist where they can visibly see.

So that leadership that's being used to direct Southern Baptists from the front of the room, that's usually what controls the convention. And Rick Warren wanted to make an enemy with them as well, which is another big mistake.

And so they cut off his mic, and some people are cheering that, which I understand because Rick Warren got a lot of time last year, and it didn't seem fair. And so at least they cut his mic. But you got to understand here, too, this has come off the heels of weeks of Rick Warren just going full bore and over the top and not really, not, he's not using the style.

He's not in keeping with the style that you're supposed to, the image you're supposed to cultivate as a Southern Baptist, and he's made an enemy with major Southern Baptists over this issue. And it's just, it's, I don't know what to make of it completely, but that's my interpretation of part of the reason why I think the vote's probably going to go against him tomorrow when they tabulate it and give the results.

It's already actually happened, but they haven't actually given the results yet. I think that could play into it. The other thing is Al Mohler, his response, he stood more on principle. He spoke Bible language, which Southern Baptists tend to understand more.

He complimented, and this is a bigger thing, he complimented Southern Baptists, that they're competent. He basically told the room, you know, you're all Southern Baptists and you all know how to interpret this.

You're, you're knowledgeable. So he complimented them while Rick Warren is pulling them down, ripping them a new one. That's the huge contrast there. And that style stuff, that sometimes that can matter more than the theology, to be quite honest with you.

And Rick Warren was on the wrong side of that. And so I'm not reducing it all to that, but I am saying that that is a significant element. And when people say tomorrow, if the vote goes against Rick Warren, that look, the Southern Baptists took a principled stand on this.

Yeah, that's fine. And I would agree to an extent, but I would also add in, it was easy for them to do it in this circumstance, much easier than it would have been otherwise if Rick Warren played the game the way you're supposed to play it.

Now I want to talk briefly about those who are playing the game the way the Southern Baptists, in a palatable way that would introduce the spoonful of sugar to help the medicine.

Go down.

And let me show you this clip and then I'll comment on it. This is a clip of a number of former Southern Baptist presidents. I see James Merritt, he's the one speaking, J .D. Greer's there, the last, or two presidents ago, Ed Litton, the last president's there for the convention, Gaines is there, and they're all showing solidarity with.

What, the message you're about to hear.

The Emergence of a New SBC Coalition

I am a complementarian to the core. I am fully committed to every jot and tittle of the Baptist faith and message, but it's become apparent to me we are in desperate need going forward of two things, clarity and consistency.

So I move that the convention authorize the SBC president to appoint a broadly representative task force from across our convention to study the issue of how this convention should deem churches to be in friendly cooperation on questions of faith and practice, as laid out in article 3 .1 of the constitution, referencing our adopted statement of faith, and to bring back recommendations to the 2024 SBC Emanuel meeting in Indianapolis for how we can move forward together in biblical fidelity, missional clarity, and cooperative unity.

Amen.

So this is a recommendation for a study committee to study this issue of what is a pastor, and of course he starts off with, I'm a complementarian, but we need to look at this, right? That's the way Southern Baptists want to be approached.

It sounds sophisticated, it doesn't sound mean, it seems principled, it's everything Rick Warren wasn't, and those guys, they know how the convention works. They've been presidents of the convention, and so they're approaching it in a way that they know is more of a long-term game, long-term strategy, and it will bring the convention, I believe, to the same place Rick Warren wants to bring it.

It's just that Rick Warren wants to bring it there immediately, and they want to bring.

It there.

Now, of course, I'm assuming motives here, so let me just say this, even if they don't have the motives of making the SBC egalitarian, which they probably do, some of them, but even if they don't, alright, let's just say they don't, let's say I'm going out on a limb assuming that, I think I have the evidence to back it up, but the reality is their actions are going to lead to that.

As soon as you start nuancing everything to death, and re-questioning really basic, fundamental, easy to understand things, this is how the liberal denominations, the mainlines that we think of today, like the PCUSA, et cetera, that's how they got to where they are.

It's this academic nuancing that ends up eventually killing doctrine, and that's the route this is going to go. And really, this is the split I talked about in the last podcast, where I said, look, you're going to have, even if Rick Warren loses, this is still a good thing for the left.

It moves things towards the left, because it resets the barriers, or the scope. So if you have, you think of thesis, antithesis, conservative, liberal, now the conservatives, the true conservatives, most of them have left or been vanquished, and what you have left is a situation where the conservatives are now nine marks.

Now nine marks, they were on the left, on the CRT issue, I think even the abuse issue to some extent, or the Me Too issue I should say. But now all of a sudden, they're the conservatives. Nine marks held an event yesterday at the Southern Baptist Convention, and Jonathan Lehman is supporting Mike Law's amendment, which will go for a vote tomorrow, I think is an amendment that basically says that the Southern Baptist Convention is going to add in their, I think it's Article 3 of their bylaws, a statement, a rule, that if a church has women pastors, they can be brought up in charges before the Credentials Committee and basically kicked out of the convention, kind of like what's happening to Saddleback.

Church.

But as you heard Rick Warren say, there's supposedly 1900 other churches, according to him, that have women pastors, so what about them? So an amendment like that would make the difference, and the real test is going to be whether or not that amendment passes on the complementary and egalitarian issue.

It's not really the Rick Warren thing as much, because there's too much personality with Rick Warren, he was too arrogant, the stage was against him. I think that there is the possibility that even left-leaning people in the SBC don't mind sacrificing a Rick Warren in order to show that they're still conservative somehow, but while also moving the needle more slowly by not adopting Mike Law's amendment.

I think I said this in the last podcast, but you already have language against quote-unquote racism and abuse, and people can be, or churches can be brought up in charges before the Credentials Committee on those issues.

So this would just add the issue of women pastors to that list and really specify it. And so Nine Marks is supporting this, and it's kind of rich for me watching this over the last few years and thinking Nine Marks is going to be the conservative, okay, that's different, Nine Marks has been pushing things more towards the left, but Baptist 21 is another organization, Danny Akin's sons, I believe, run that, and they do a podcast, and I don't listen to them really, but I've heard them before, but they are supporting this, what looks like it's going to be an alternative amendment or something tomorrow.

That's the expectation at least. But yeah, I'm not sure exactly how this is all going to shake out, but you have this petition for a study committee, and tomorrow's when we're going to find out really what happens.

What direction is the Southern Baptist Convention going to go on this issue? Are they going to adopt Mike Law's amendment? Are they going to adopt a softer amendment? Are they going to try to amend Mike Law's amendment?

Those are the questions that I think are way more important than whether Saddleback Church gets kicked out or not. That's the big optics. Now, I think I did say in the last podcast, if Saddleback Church is kicked out of the convention, it's got to be overwhelming.

If there's even a question, if it's even a close vote, that's not good. That's not good. I mean, the left is, the needle's being pushed to the left no matter what in this circumstance, but a really rousing defeat of Saddleback, like if it's like an 80 landslide against them, that would be symbolic to show, hey, the convention really doesn't want to go this direction.

There really are more conservatives. Now, I would be skeptical, I guess, even in that case a little bit, I would be encouraged by that, and I think you should if you're trying to stay in the Southern Baptist Convention and fight.

But the reality is there was a few things yesterday that happened that in my estimation are just more of the same, more of what we've, that drift that we've had for the last few years. Every year there's a resolution on some racism, quote unquote, related issue, every year since like 2015 or something.

But this year it was on immigration and it was a terrible resolution. It's called unwisely engaging immigration. And I'll just summarize a few of the problems. Government should care for migrants, so they have that responsibility now.

Immigration reform should happen and creating a pathway for legal status. Now, you got to understand the context they're saying this in. They're saying this when we have a mass invasion basically at our Southern border.

They condemned nativism, whatever that is, right? And forced diversity is part of it because we need to reflect the Revelation chapters seven, diversity in heaven. And so somehow immigration reform is part of this.

And it's just a, I don't know if it's ignorant or just nefarious, but it's a terrible resolution. And of course it passed. So that also tells you where the convention is going. There's these other issues that are happening in real time.

And, you know, I think the CRT issue is just a done deal at this point. Like there's really no attempts to, for conservatives to rally around that conservative, that's a lost issue. And now they're trying to fight the woman pastors thing, which we were told a few years ago, every Southern Baptist believes that the office of pastor is reserved for men and this isn't even an issue.

Well, now it's an issue. But I think part of the problem is the layman were more motivated during that little window of opportunity. We had to, I think, fight because of the CRT stuff, they were being told by their pastors that they were implicitly racist.

And this was splitting congregations up. This issue is not the same. And for a variety of reasons, one of them being that these churches where there's women pastors, they tend to be more leftist and accommodating.

The people in those churches are used to it and they tend to be more supportive. It's not like it's as widespread. Could it become widespread?

Sure.

But it's not like the seminaries aren't really, you could say in some soft, subtle ways they are supporting this, but they're not overtly supporting this kind of thing. And it's not like the CRT issue where you had like almost across the board, it seemed like pastors were chiding their congregations.

I think I made the point maybe two or three years ago, or I probably made it both two and three years ago, or I guess 2019 and 20, I guess the next one they met was 2021. So those years that the only way to win this, really to win this, to get the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention is to make sure that you can bring as many laymen as possible, messengers to the convention and just overwhelm the convention.

Small town pastors, get them to come, form a fund to do it, get a ground game, do kind of like something similar to the conservative resurgence of the eighties. And from my estimation, that just hasn't really happened.

They've been saddled. I don't want to get into all of it because it's, I don't want to discourage the people who are in the convention, to be honest with you, who are trying to fight the good fight tomorrow, especially.

But let's just say that that hasn't really happened. And that means that you are forced then to build coalitions at the convention or in order to try to win the room. If you're trying to win the room, that's an uphill battle.

And I would say that the complementarian issue is more of a, it's a deeper theological issue that I think the people in the room and the people who work for the convention, the theology and herds, the pastors who end up showing up to it, they're going to be more, more willing, I think, to engage that topic.

And so maybe it's a, it's a better winning topic for conservatives in a way, but clearly it wasn't enough to propel Mike Stone to victory because he only got a little over 30%, which if I, if memory serves me, that is, that's certainly worse because it was a close vote the first time Mike Stone ran two years ago.

But I think that might even be worse than last year in Anaheim. It's not much different, at least than the vote that took place in Anaheim. And so, so it's just, it's, it's kind of a mess. It's, the issue that is being fought on is one that I think most, is mostly one that the conservatives who tend to be more in the elite classes or the pastoral ranks, the seminary professor types, they're willing to fight on it, but there's just not enough numbers of them.

We probably have the numbers or we did have the numbers a few years ago to fight on the CRT thing, but the strategy wasn't really implemented to get them to the convention. So, or they just didn't come, whatever happened with that.

So, so this is the conundrum. This is the challenge that conservatives in the Southern Baptist Convention have with them. The reality is that the conservatives are desperate for hope right now, and I think they're going to grasp for anything that they can to show that they're still relevant.

Because remember, we've heard for now over a year that Anaheim wasn't the place. That was where the last convention was held. It was liberal, conservative pastors from the Bible Belt weren't going to be going out there.

So, you know, that that's kind of expected that Tom Askell would lose that. Okay. Tom Askell was the more conservative guy running, the guy nominated by CBN, Conservative Baptist Network. Well, now it's in New Orleans.

And I remember, I distinctly remember this as clear as day. Some, I won't say who, but the big conservatives will say in the Southern Baptist Convention saying, that's where we're going to win. It's Louisiana.

Those are our people. Those are the Bible Belt people. And you see, it was even worse. Now you could attribute that to a number of things. It's probably a combination of things, but you have conservative churches leaving every week from the Southern Baptist Convention, and you're going to have more of them leave, I think, after this.

You can't stop that. And then it becomes a numbers game where, how do you, is it even possible? Is that roadmap even possible? And then you have to form these coalitions, like you have to, as a conservative, now you have to side, you have to like kind of include nine marks and they're part of your coalition and they're terrible on CRT related stuff.

But, hey, they're going to do the complementarian thing. So I guess they're allies now. So, I mean, that's not all wrong, but you just have to, I guess, take into account that when someone does win, if that ever happens, on the conservative side, who are they going to be appointing?

Who are they going to feel like they owe one to? If you have a coalition strategy, then the coalition, this is just inevitable. This is just part of politics. That means people from organizations like Nine Marks, who helped you win, who might not be on board with you on everything, are going to expect nominations to various committees and stuff.

So even if conservatives could hypothetically get in there, now their coalition is so broad that they would have to probably give up some issues. But I think there's a desperation for hope out there. So if Mike Law's amendment, even if it's amended and watered down, if it passes, that's going to be a rallying cry.

If Rick Warren's church is disfellowshipped, that's going to be a rallying cry, but you can't ignore the fact they lost the presidency. And they'll give reasons for it. They'll probably say, well, it wasn't our year, even though we've been told now, you know, Louisiana was a better, it was going to be easier there.

You know, Barbara was an incumbent. You're going to hear things like this. Like it just, it's understandable and we'll get them next time, kind of thing. But they couldn't even get a two thirds vote for financial accountability, 1090 financial accountability, which is a standard for nonprofits to make sure that they are ethical in there.

They're handling money and, and they couldn't even get that vote passed. And so, you know, was it close? Some people say it was, but here's the thing. That's a no brainer. Like that's a really no, that's just a simple anti-corruption measure.

Some of it, like, like voting out Barbara should be a no brainer, but the fact that it was very lopsided, that vote, it shows you something. It shows you that the stage tends to control for one thing, but it also shows you that the people there, they either don't know what time it is or they are, they're in it for the wrong reasons.

And, and that kind of level of corruption with, I mean, I heard it the other day at this, this Lutheran meeting thing I was at, someone was giving a presentation. They said, look, it's true that you get the government.

He was talking about politics, but you get the government that you deserve. People get the government that they deserve. And, and, and that's just the truth of the matter. Yeah, there's a separation between laymen and the elites in the denomination, but if laymen have to care, right?

And if laymen haven't cared, or if they haven't really, and I think this is more likely the case, they, they have not been properly led and informed and rallied, then they're going to get the government and in this case, in their denomination that they deserve.

And that's what we have. We have that at the national level. You also have that in the Southern Baptist Convention and other denominations. So I guess that's a little bit of a downer. But that's my take on it for now.

And we'll see what happens tomorrow. I'll probably try to bring you more tomorrow. If I can, I'll be on the road most of the day. We'll see. If not tomorrow, then on Thursday, then I should have some more on this topic.

But there's a lot going on. The PCA is meeting. They're going to be making some decisions as I understand it tomorrow. I just heard, I think the Missouri Synod is not going to, they're going to be meeting in the next few weeks.

And a lot of these denominations have their meetings. And, and even the ELCA, the Evangelical Free Church, I think they met, if I'm not mistaken, then last week, or they made a big decision last week.

So I'm going to be looking more into that hopefully later in this week. I was told that it's because of planting season. After planting season is when they have these denominational meetings. So a lot of them around the same time.

But, you know, there's a lot of stuff going on. Of course you have on the national level what's happening with Donald Trump. And it's, it's just crazy. It's just crazy. But, you know, doesn't that make you thankful that we worship a God who is not unstable or crazy or someone that we have to fear in the sense of wondering if he's going to change his mind.

But he's the same yesterday, today and forever. And our place in heaven is guaranteed with him. We have truth that doesn't change. We live, we can live by it and it's going to reap the same rewards and results because it's timeless and it's part of his nature.

And in changing times like this, where things just seem very, like they're changing under your feet so fast, they're very unstable. It is good to remind yourself that there is someone who does not change and that's who we worship.

So I will be giving you some of the lectures that I did and Stephen Wolf and Dr. Russell Fuller did at the Be Not Conformed conference either this week or next week. And I talk a little more about that.

And so there's some hopeful messages in that. So I look forward to that. I think they will encourage you. And one of the things, I'll just say this briefly, that I presented to the Lutherans was a model for the next steps, for denominations and churches that have had social justice incursions.

What should they do now? That was my topic. And of course, I was challenged on it. It was kind of like a colloquy where you go back and forth and you talk about things. But I want to bring that information to you.

And I think there is a path forward. It's not on the big denominational stuff, though. It's going to be like Thomas Jefferson's natural aristocracy. It's going to be the working class pastors who have walked the walk.

They're respected because people know them. They love their sheep. It's a shepherd model versus what we've seen so far from the SBC elites, which is managerial. It's sometimes overly academic where they just nuance everything to death or go after evil in the abstract but won't name names.

Or it's just plain activism. It's just their leadership style is we're activists for political change, but they incorporate some kind of a social justice message into their gospel. So those three options, the managers, the academics and the activists, they're not the way to go.

But there is a model that is the way to go. And that's the shepherd model. And I think that's happening at a lot of local churches and many of them leaving the SBC right now. And I don't know that that's all bad.

I don't know that that's necessarily a bad thing. I think if we have totalitarian governments moving forward, trying to spy on churches, which I think the Department of Homeland Security probably already is doing, then it's better to have a decentralized approach.

And so I'll be talking more about that, Lord willing, in the next few weeks. And that's a hopeful thing. Anyway, God bless. More coming by now.