SBC Annual Meeting
Last week I attended my first Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting. Redeemer Bible Church is a Southern Baptist affiliated church. Six percent of every dollar given to Redeemer goes to the SBC cooperative program. The SBC is in the news often for many reasons, mainly because it’s the largest Protestant Christian denomination in America, at 47,000 cooperating churches. I have been troubled by some of the news I read about the convention and its leadership, and felt it was important to attend this year. I appreciate Kelvy Donovan and Karen Robinson joining me.
In the past I served with a tactical team. Every time there was an emergency of some sort the first thing leadership did was send out an advance team to get the ground truth of what was actually happening. Without fail, the report the advance team would send was different than the news scuttle or the hearsay gossip. We always took action on what was actually happening, not on the news and gossip. This was certainly the case with this year’s convention.
For starters, if you’re new to the SBC, or know very little about SBC history, I urge you to look up a podcast to get a good history lesson. The podcast is “B21” (for Baptists in the 21st Century) Episode 133: A Conversation About the SBC with Nathan Finn. Nathan was a classmate of mine at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (SEBTS) and a central denominational leader in our time. It will help you get up to speed. Listen to the end. I very much agree with his closing statements.
Next, it’s imperative to understand that the SBC is a massive organization. Huge organizations have pros and cons – good and bad. We’re a part of the SBC for the good, and push back against and monitor the bad. The two major good things about a very large cooperating ministry group (denomination) is: (1) it presents to the unbelieving world a large unified group that demonstrates something of the universal church of Jesus Christ. This is in contrast to countless small, fragmented, disagreeing, non-cooperating smaller groups of churches. (2) The very large pooling of funds and personnel allows for major things to be accomplished. For instance, Southern Baptist Churches will support thousands of foreign gospel preaching missionaries in countries all over the world next year through funding to the International Mission Board to the tune of nearly $100,000,000. That’s amazing! The IMB is the largest foreign missionary sending organization in the world. Next, let me speak to the seminaries. Our six seminaries are known for solid Bible teaching, missionary gospel zeal, and sound scholarship at an affordable price. You should visit a campus sometime. As a minister, I am a product of Southern and Southeastern. This would not be possible without the SBC contributing $43,000,000 to these seminaries this year. Ministers and missionaries from every conservative branch of Christianity in the world benefit from these seminaries.
Now to the convention this year. It’s a 48 hour massive business meeting (12,500 messengers from SBC churches all over the country) where we hash out business as a group and decide what kind of a group we are going to be. In short, I was very encouraged by this year’s meeting. A group this large will make small steps each year in the right direction or the wrong direction – moving toward God’s word or away from it toward cultural accommodation. This year we made moves to clarify (1) that we are firmly gender complementarian, (2) that we understand the role of all Christians, men or women, participating in the great commission of Jesus, but affirm only spiritually qualified men can fill the role of pastor in a local church, (3) that we must continue to protect our vulnerable children from sexual predators, but that we needed to redirect some of our efforts that got off track last year.
I will speak directly to these things after our member meeting Sunday afternoon, and take your questions, but here’s my quick round up:
- Pastor Bart Barber was re-elected SBC President for a second year. You can only hold the office twice, so this will be his last year. He did an excellent job leading the meeting and under his leadership every thing I’m about to outline happened last year. He is a calm, unifying, Bible-believing, mission-oriented leader that is doing a good job at our helm.
- We passed nine resolutions. These are statements made by the SBC that declare who we are and what we stand for. See the resolutions here: https://www.sbc.net/resource-library/resolutions/ These resolutions squarely identify us as a people that are holding the line on biblical gender and sexual ethics. This is THE biggest issue of our time and I’m proud to say these resolutions were passed with majorities in the 90% range. They all point toward complementarianism. This means that men and women are created equal in personhood, worth, and dignity before God, but are different from each other in essential ways that work to create one whole in the bond of marriage. Husband and wife / father and mother together make one in marriage, creating a healthy God-designed home, and those families join together building healthy churches. There is much to be said here. If you would like to learn more, I suggest Kevin DeYoung’s book “Men and Women in the Church” or visit the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. The opposite of this is egalitarianism, which promotes the concept that men and women are essentially the same with no substantial or God-ordained role differences. This is the first step toward transgenderism, which is the idea that one’s gender can be changed because it is self-determined, rather than determined by God.
- We appointed 78 NEW foreign missionaries to go to foreign lands all over the globe. It took nearly an hour for them to all introduce themselves and say something about their work! Many were introduced behind screens and without last names because they will go to lands hostile to the gospel. We must be faithful to pray for these faithful and courageous brothers and sisters. The Walkers are with the IMB on the field now. Pick up a prayer card at the welcome table and participate in their ministry through prayer.
- We acted on our statement of faith that only spiritually qualified men can fill the office of pastor by rejecting the appeal, and disfellowshipping Saddleback Community Church (Pastor Rick Warren). This was one of the largest SBC churches and came on the heels of Warren retiring and handpicking a husband and wife team to fill his senior pastoral role. The wife, and other women, often fill the pulpit to preach at Saddleback. Warren had passionately hoped to use his influence to set a new precedent in SBC life, but was voted out by 88% of messengers.
- The sexual abuse task force was continued for another year, but has terminated it’s relationship with Guidepost legal (the firm that conducted the original inquiry) and the official “Caring Well” curriculum (that became compromised through various political agendas). The purpose of the group remains very important (to protect our children from sexual predators, and to minister with effective compassion to those who have been harmed by sexual abuse). The group issued some very concise and helpful structures for accomplishing these important ends. They will be helpful in implementing these goals at Redeemer. I still have concerns over one aspect of their “listing system” and intend to write the chair with my concerns.
- We met with representatives of The Pillar Network (thepillarnetwork.com). Inside the big tent of the SBC there are smaller cooperating groups that exert influence on the whole. Pillar is one of those groups consisting of approximately 300 SBC churches. These churches are like Redeemer in basically every way. They are marked by gospel proclamation, in person Bible expositional preaching, elder leadership, Biblical authority in all things, theologically baptistic, and focused on planting new churches along these lines. July 30 one of the board members – Ryan Hutchinson, Senior Vice-President of SEBTS – will be at Redeemer to preach and tell us more about joining with the Pillar Network of SBC churches. Exciting times.
Praise the Lord for His work in the SBC during a time of radical church decay and decline in America. May we be faithful and ever press to see our partnership be true to the word, ethic, and mission of Jesus,
Pastor Vic