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Jeff Iorg Encapsulates the Laodicean SBC

Jesus uses the pen of John in Revelation 3:14-22 to rebuke the lukewarm Laodiceans, who had all the signs of church “success” but, upon spiritual examination, were “wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.”

Similarly, the signs of unwieldy, biblically adrift secularism and pragmatism are all over today’s Southern Baptist Convention for those who have eyes to see. In the aftermath of each year’s annual meeting (this year being no exception), social media erupts with calls to “leave it to the goats,” regroup for next year, or engage in some form of “quiet quitting” where a cooperating church slowly disengages from SBC participation both practically and financially.

Undeniably, business meeting-disengaged churches are the status quo in the SBC, with most churches and members either uninterested or unable to afford to send representatives each year. This status quo invariably benefits SBC entities, the pastor-author-influencer class pew-sitters colloquially refer to as “Big Eva,” “The Platform,” or “The Evangelical Intelligentsia,” and the myriad of ashamed-and-renamed, market-tuned churches currently “doing church” any way they want while maintaining SBC affiliation to placate old tithers and/or building branded parachurch empires to expand their spiritual marketability.

As it is, the SBC’s come-as-you-are volunteerism results in dissonance. On the one hand, Convention entities and leaders must toe the line on general claims of doctrine, morality, and ethics lest they risk the wrath of culturally conservative churches that remain the vast majority. On the other hand, the SBC operates without a real institutional mechanism to address church-level doctrinal and methodological corruption. This becomes noticeably dissonant as leaders say one thing (“We have doctrinal fidelity!”) while doing another (laissez-faire methodology). Of course, the unspeakable motivation that makes this tension tolerable is the SBC’s financial stability and influence (for those not in the know, influence in the SBC is often dubbed “gospel effectiveness”). The dirty little secret of doctrinal/methodological chaos among SBC churches must, therefore, remain buried under a sea of unspoken questions, masked by praise for convention “diversity” and disguised with ever more generalized calls for unity of purpose from those practicing what is now aptly described as “managerial Christianity.”

In any case, the Convention is no more biblically faithful than its cooperating churches, which are no more faithful than their pulpits – pulpits that sadly remain filled with spiritual retailers selling personal religious benefits rather than demanding repentance. These impastors are man-pleasers, busy sermonizing the latest hit movie, dropping eggs out of helicopters, and scheming ever more creative ways to cater the gospel to the impenitent.

Iorg Lets the Slip Show

Fortunately for truth-seeking pew-sitters willing to understand the forces behind all this, recently elected president of the SBC Executive Committee (EC) and former Gateway Seminary president Jeff Iorg exposed perhaps the most fundamental biblical corruption behind the pragmatism that plagues America’s largest Protestant denomination. In an apparent attempt to add a theological veneer to Bruce Frank-style antidoctrinalism, Iorg turned what was supposed to be the first half of the 2024 Annual Meeting’s Executive Committee report into a pharisaical, finger-wagging guilt trip that chastised Southern Baptists for replacing their “eternal mission” with political activism, social justice, Convention reform, and doctrinal conformity – what he categorized as “mission substitutes.”

The Gospel Card™ has long been a staple of Big Eva pragmatists, but witnessing a former SBC seminary and current president of the EC twist scripture to support it made clear just how fundamental the Gospel Card perversion has become in the SBC. This time around, it involved Iorg telling Baptists that “mission discipline” demands we set aside obedient, holy living and instead usurp God’s eternal purpose and mission of saving souls. Without our diligent commitment to the real mission and rejecting non-soul-saving substitutes, Iorg insisted, “the Christian movement would come to an end.”

Iorg excoriated Christians who – under instructions like Colossians 3:23 – dared prioritize godly, obedient participation in civil self-government or Christian ministry. This was despite scriptural mandates for Christian obedience in governance (Rom. 13), justice (Micah 6:8), stewardship of the SBC (Luke 14:28), and doctrinal contention (2 Tim. 2:15) – all of which bear evangelical witness to God’s holiness and worship worthiness.

Yet despite SBC pastors routinely announcing metrics for baptisms, “decisions for Christ,” or “people reached,” scripture neither delegates God’s soul-saving eternal purpose to us nor provides a biblical standard by which Christians know what is enough regarding their personal soul-saving effectiveness. This inconvenient truth did not deter Iorg as he filled his sermon with the unmeasurable, unmeetable demands of eternity. Like the heavy burdens Pharisees placed on weary shoulders, Baptists in the convention hall were shouldered with similarly nebulous legalisms and subjective moral/ethical imperatives for Christian living. And, of course, another pitch for the big tent, repentance-free, “belong before you believe” evangelism that – for the time being – continues to protect the SBC’s official metrics from following its doctrinal decline. Iorg’s wide-gate evangelistic call invited gays, lesbians, adulterers, pedophiles, and Democrats into “our movement,” grouping them with Republican, independent, race, ethnicity, and culture as categories of “lost people Jesus loves,” and whose “conversion” would require us to tolerate the “messiness of Christian diversity.”

Predictably missing from this call was repentance, the essential little detail that would erase Iorg’s first five invitee categories as they became those Paul joyfully described: “And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11).

Iorg revealed why the SBC remains a stubbornly lukewarm organization that refuses to synchronize its associational standard with its doctrinal statement, instead continuing to say one thing while functionally doing something else. His sermon pitted evangelism against holy, obedient Christian living while stubbornly refusing to define the boundaries of either. This refusal saw Iorg talking out of both sides of his mouth for the duration, describing the “substitute missions” as “well-intentioned,” “marks of discipleship,” “important,” and “needing ‘appropriate’ attention” one moment only to (sometimes in the same breath) disqualify them as “detrimental to our mission,” “the good crowding out the best,” and “failing to fulfill God’s eternal mission.”

Iorg turned his chosen passage (Ephesians 3:8-11) on its head, making God’s eternal purpose and salvific work something we do. In claiming, “God’s mission is eternal. So, therefore, ours must be as well,” Iorg took God’s all-powerful imperative of gathering His church off Christ’s shoulders and placed it squarely on the shoulders of the church itself – where it becomes an immeasurable, impossible, and soul-crushing burden. And as every call for doctrinal fidelity, holy public living, and holding the Southern Baptist Convention accountable is unimportant compared to the eternal, immeasurable, overriding mission of salvation we’ve snatched from God, our only option as good Baptists is to stop all our pesky politicking, doctrinal arguments, and (of course) our attempts at SBC accountability as we “reach people for Jesus” by uncritically welcoming everyone into the “movement” through our wide gate instead of Christ’s narrow one.

Such is the present state of Evangelicalism: Churches welcome unrepentant sinners to partake in the spiritual benefits of the “movement” while squashing the disciplinary responsibilities and inconvenient concerns for holiness among the faithful. As demonstrated by Jeff Iorg, perhaps the most insidious way of doing this is by replacing believers’ God-given duties of Christian obedience with the soul-saving duties of the Lord – duties believers can’t possibly measure or truly fulfill. And for now, it’s working to keep the SBC ship afloat or at least give us more time to rearrange the deck chairs.

The Law Amendment Defeat

The defeat of the Law Amendment via a Hawthorne effect-free anonymous ballot successfully maintained the “hear no orthopraxy, see no orthopraxy” status quo. At the same time, the approval of the 2023 Cooperation Group’s recommendations to the Executive Committee allows SBC leadership to suggest additional wiggle room in the SBC governing documents, quite possibly neutering the Credentials Committee’s Berean role in determining “friendly cooperation” and potentially leaving obedient messengers without the objective doctrinal comparisons needed to disaffiliate disobedient churches in the face of their emotional appeals on the convention floor. 

In his Baptist Press article following the Annual Meeting that was lauded by platform SBCers including James Merritt, Jared Cornutt, and Jonathan Howe, Texas pastor Andrew Hébert said the Law Amendment failure demonstrated that the SBC can have “doctrinal fidelity without methodological conformity.” In other words, the SBC could “walk and chew gum at the same time.” Yet, in the context of allowing churches that employ women in the pastoral office by name or role, this lack of methodological conformity is a direct result of doctrinal infidelity. And it continues to be a spiritual price the SBC is willing to pay.

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NAMB Training Manual Uncovered Revealing Woke ‘Leavening’ of the SBC’s SEND Network

As we continue to catalog the mission drift and downgrade of the SBC, along with the questionable players looking to toss a little leaven about, reformed Pastor Michael Clary shared a training manual for the North American Mission Board’s 2019 Send Philly event showing what sort of ideology that NAMB through their SEND network is funding, permeating through this missional mindset. This thread is adapted from his feed:

Some say the SBC isn’t woke & there’s nothing to be alarmed about. Don’t be so sure.

Paul said “a little leaven leavens the lump.”

The broader SBC may not be full-blown woke, but some places are.

A friend recently shared notes from a SEND Philly training.

See for yourself🧵 

My friend attended a training who’s purpose was “to assist planters, pastors, ministry leaders and lay persons with a heart to serve those within the urban context.” 

The “urban context” is defined according to progressive priorities using leftist buzzwords.

Page 8 describes “marginalized” people as “the other.”
They are subject to:
* Systemic racism
* System disparity
* Modern day slavery and
* Environmental oppression

Jesus’ ministry is presented as a social justice crusade to empower “the least of these.”

This is a misuse of that text. The “least of these” in Mt25 refers to Christians who are socially ostracized because of their faithfulness to Jesus. It doesn’t teach social activism. 

The biblical justification they provide is simply to accept the social justice framing as valid and then quote texts where Jesus ministers to people who fit those categories.

* Poor
* Women
* Disabled
* Strangers
* Prostitutes
* Criminals

Jesus is the “marginalized savior”

Ministry leaders are instructed to do “incarnational ministry” like Jesus (dubbed “biblical justice”) by focusing on marginalized peoples.

The definition of biblical justice is provided by Ron Sider, a well known progressive social justice advocate.

What does this kind of incarnational ministry look like in practice? A buffet of buzzwords.

* Opposing systemic oppression
* Protest events
* Recognizing inequity
* Use your power/privilege to be a voice
* Advocate for the oppressed

Preaching the gospel is barely acknowledged.

The pastor’s #1 task is to preach Christ & him crucified.

Trainings like this take a church planter’s zeal & guilts them into using worldly means to accomplish spiritual ends.

They’re taught that Jesus is more of an activist than savior.

It’s a false gospel that cannot save.

According to Linked in, the author of this training material is still employed by NAMB.

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Good News! Jared Moore Announces Bid To Become New SBC President

In news we’re happy to hear, Jared Moore, the pastor of Homesteads Baptist Church in Crossville, TN, and author of the excellent The Lust of the Flesh, has thrown his hat in the ring and announced he’s running for Southern Baptist Convention president, revealing his plans and visions in a Credo spaces.

This is a very good thing. Moore has a track record of theological faithfulness and soundness, as well as being one of the leading voices against Side B Theology, battling back against the progressive push inside the church.

He’s also staunchly supportive of the Mike Law amendment. He claims that he’d do all he could to fire Ethics and Religious Commission (ERLC) President Brent Leatherwood, who he has suggested is more liberal than Russell Moore.

We’ve previously done an interview with Moore here:

Podcast: Interview with Dr. Jared Moore on the Gay Error in Solid Pulpits



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SBC Lawyers File Brief Asking Supreme Court To Side AGAINST Confirmed Sex-Abuse Victim. But Do They Have a Point?

Lawyers representing the Southern Baptist Convention have filed an amicus brief encouraging the Supreme Court of Kentucky to rule AGAINST a verified sex abuse victim, understanding that a ruling in her favor would negatively impact them.

Several years ago, Samantha Killary claimed that her father, a police officer who adopted her when she was two, sexually abused her throughout her childhood until she turned 18 in 2009. She recorded him admitting it and turned in the tapes, resulting in a guilty plea and 15 years in prison.

She later sued her father’s girlfriend, whom he dated from 2001-2003, and her grandfather. Like her father, they were also police officers, and she alleges they both knew of the abuse but failed to report it. She sued the police station as well for employing all three.

A judge initially dismissed the case against her, saying that the statute of limitations of five years had passed. But then the state legislature doubled the statute to 10 years in 2017, and then four years later made it so that claims against “non-perpetrators” could be brought forward against law enforcement and religious organizations if they knew about the abuse but failed to lawfully report it.

As a result, the Court of Appeals reopened Killary’s case. The state Supreme Court is weighing whether or not the legislature’s expansion of the statute of limitations can be applied retroactively, enabling her to bring another suit against her father’s girlfriend from 20 years ago, her grandfather, and the police station responsible for employing them all.

Enter the SBC. Lawyers for the Southern Baptist Convention, Lifeway, the Executive Committee, and SBTS filed an amicus brief encouraging the Supreme Court to throw out Killary’s lawsuit and not to revive tort claims against “non-perpetrator parties.”

This is because they are one of those “non-perpetrator parties” currently involved in a similar lawsuit. Hannah-Kate Williams, a young woman with a troubled history, contends that her father sexually, physically, and psychologically abused her from her teens to childhood. She claims she reported the abuse at the age of 8 to SBC church staff and later on others, but they did nothing other than tell her, “I’m praying for you.” 

Unlike Killary, these allegations from Williams have not been proven or substantiated. 


The SBC says that victims of child abuse should certainly get justice, but insists that retroactively applying expired timelines against those who had no part in the abuse is not the way to do it, notwithstanding the fact that it violates due process claims.

Here, their motivations are clear. They don’t believe that the new 2021 laws against “non-perpetrator parties” should be allowed to proceed. If the Supreme Court agrees, Williams’ lawsuit against them would be dead in the water and dismissed.

But if the court agrees that these parties can be charged, it would open them up to far greater liability and directly impact other case they’re involved in.

.

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SBC Prez. Bart Barber Hopeful Hundreds of Black Churches Won’t Be Expelled Under His Watch (But They Probably Will)

Two days ago, NAAF, the National African American Fellowship of the SBC, a race-based special interest group that represents 4,000 SBC churches that identify as “Black Churches,” released an open letter that was sent to President Bart Barber in opposition to ratification and enforcement of the Mike Law Amendment as a standard by which “friendly cooperation” would be determined. 

The fellowship believes that women should be allowed to receive pastoral titles and serve in pastoral roles. They believe this issue may “disproportionately impact NAAF affiliated congregations” because “Many of our churches assign the title “pastor” to women who oversee ministries of the church under
the authority of a male Senior Pastor, i.e., Children’s Pastor, Worship Pastor, Discipleship Pastor.” To that end, they’re requesting that the entire convention should engage in a year of prayer, study, and discussion to “allow a diversity of voices and perspectives to be heard.”

Institutionalists like Bart Barber, James Merritt, JD Greear, and Ed Litton are working together with a left-leaning segment of the convention, and playing the race card, with the agenda of either rallying the convention to reject the Mike Law amendment at its second vote at the 2024 convention or neutering the meaning of “friendly cooperation,” so that the amendment isn’t enforced as a standard for friendly cooperation. 

The use of the race card is a potent move, considering the way that the institutionalists of the SBC have embraced and weaponized Critical Race Theory and Standpoint Epistemology. 

Bart Barber received the letter on July 3. One week later, when the letter was made public by NAAF, Bart Barber and Baptist Press simultaneously made press releases that praised the effort. Barber said it is important to “find common ground and make decisions together.”

The positive spin that Barber put on this effort shows that the institutionalists have plans to keep the tent as large as they can at the expense of scriptural fidelity. Christians should always pray, but it is pointless to pray to ask God whether we should compromise on our faithfulness to scripture.

A counsel to compromise on the truth of scripture isn’t a “Jerusalem Council,” as James Merritt called it. Rather it is a council of self-important fools who believe that their opinion matters as much as God’s word.

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Southern Baptist Convention ERLC Head Brent Leatherwood Lobbies Tennessee Court to Bury Transgender School Shooter’s Manifesto

In recent months, following the Covenant School Shooting, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission head Brent Leatherwood has been outspoken in support of gun control legislation, throwing the lobbying power of the Southern Baptist Convention behind the gun control proposals of Tennessee Governor Bill Lee. 

Leatherwood, whose three children attend Covenant School, supports the governor’s bid to bring red-flag gun control laws to Tennessee, which would result in the removal of guns from the possession of citizens without due process. But actions have consequences, and this move could be used in the future to nullify the second amendment rights of Christians who are deemed ideological enemies of the secular status quo.

The real story behind the Covenant School shooting is the fact that the shooter, Audrey Hale, a former student of the school, was an ideologically driven transgender activist who targeted the school for holding views diametrically opposed to her own. Hale detailed these reasons in a manifesto, which is being withheld from the public.

In addition to lobbying for gun control, Brent Leatherwood has joined the fight to prevent the release of the transgender shooter’s manifesto. Leatherwood claims that those who oppose the move to withhold the documents are “unhinged activists, unthinking partisans, conspiracy theorists, and various media outlets that value clicks over their community.”

If the manifesto was released and the public received a clear picture that the shooter was a mentally ill sexual deviant who chose to target the school because it held a Biblical view of sexuality, the push for gun control in the state would lose its momentum and politicians could focus on the real ideological issues behind the shooting.

If the manifesto were truly a nothing-burger that contained no new information regarding motive, there would be no reason for all of the legal gamesmanship on the part of Leatherwood and others to shield it from the public’s view.

Ironically, the ERLC head, who claims to have the ethical high ground, is trying to hide what happened in a desperate bid to salvage political gun-grab legislation. Several state legislators saw through these efforts in the spring session, resulting in a tabling of Governor Lee’s proposal. The governor has vowed to take up the gun control legislation in a fall special session.

Brent Leatherwood and the ERLC will continue to lobby for gun control, using Southern Baptist tithe dollars for a purpose that would undoubtedly lack support from most Southern Baptist church members.

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Guidepost Sex Abuse Registry’s Unbiblical ‘Credible Accusation’ Definition Sets the Stage For SBC Equivalent of Salem Witch Trials

In reflection on the spectacle of the Salem Witch Trials, secular-leftist historians often use the trials as a tool to mock the Puritans. Secularists blame the Salem Witch Trials on the Puritans’ fundamentalist beliefs, casting blame for the show trials on belief in the Bible as the standard for law. Contrary to the typical caricature of what took place in 17th century Massachusetts, the primary reason for the evil in Salem was not adherence to scriptural standards but rather the adoption of extrabiblical ideologies and anti-biblical standards for justice. 

In the years leading up to the Salem Witch Trials, through his work Against Modern Sadducism, Joseph Glanvill popularized the idea that ghosts, witches, and evil spirits commonly used the power of Satan to seduce willing participants to torment innocent victims. Consequently, evil spiritual entities became the obsession of many in Salem. Puritan people who were once focused on the providence and power of the Sovereign God became fearfully fixated on the power and influence of Satan. In a community filled with family rivalries, envy, and interpersonal disputes, the environment was ripe for the spectacle that would ensue. 

The Salem Witch Trials began with the unexplained hysterical fits of several pre-teen girls, whose conditions were blamed on unpopular scapegoats within the community who were portrayed as willing pawns of the devil. The trials relied heavily on spectral evidence, unprovable personal testimony in which an ‘afflicted’ individuals claimed that they saw a vision of the shape of the accused afflicting them through the power of the devil. Other evidence deemed admissible in court was the presence of birthmarks or moles on the bodies of the accused.

The logic of witch trials based on spectral evidence and physical anomalies was comparable to the logic portrayed in the witch trials of Monty Python. Once several members of the community were accused, tried, and executed on this unbiblical basis, new accusations and trials of individuals accused of witchcraft became a nearly monthly occurrence. The hysteria spread and pragmatic community members saw it as an opportunity to gain the upper hand over those they despised. Instead of settling personal or property disputes biblically, witch trial, accusations became the trump card of Salem. The end result was 200 accusations and 20 executions of alleged witches from February 1692 to May 1693. Another 100 were awaiting execution when Governor William Phips halted the trials and executions.

In the wake of the Salem Witch trials, influential Quaker author Thomas Maule criticized the unbiblical nature of spectral evidence in his 1695 work Truth Held Forth and Maintained. Maule famously stated, “For it were better that one hundred Witches should live, than that one person be put to death for a Witch, which is not a Witch.” Maule believed in the existence of witches, but he believed that God would one day punish the prosecutors of the Salem Witch Trials for their miscarriage of justice and failure to conduct trials on the basis of Biblical standards. For his criticisms, Maule would be arrested by the local Puritan government 3 times, fined 3 times, jailed for a year, and finally acquitted by a jury who defied the tyranny of local Puritan judges who demanded that the jury find him guilty.

The standard for guilt and innocence found in the law of God clearly shows that God intends for the burden of proof to be placed upon the accuser or prosecution in a case. Those who make a false accusation should also bear the punishment that would have been received by those whom they falsely accused. 

“A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established. If a malicious witness arises to accuse a person of wrongdoing, then both parties to the dispute shall appear before the Lord, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days. The judges shall inquire diligently, and if the witness is a false witness and has accused his brother falsely, then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother. So you shall purge the evil[c] from your midst. And the rest shall hear and fear, and shall never again commit any such evil among you.” Deuteronomy 19:15-20

The burden of proof principle found in the law of the Old Testament was reiterated by the Apostles to the Church as a standard to determine whether an accusation should be considered or disregarded.

Do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses. 1 Timothy 5:19

The general equity of these Biblical principles and the legal miscarriages of incidents like the Salem Witch Trial were at the forefront of the minds of the framers of the United States’ Bill of Rights when they crafted the 5th amendment. These protections were further extended in the 14th amendment to extend protections against miscarriages of justice to the state level and further establish a “Burden of Proof” standard for convictions. 

There are many similarities between the Salem Witch Trials and the SBC Sex Abuse Controversy. The Salem Witch Trials began with the hysteria of pre-teen girls, and the SBC Sex Abuse Controversy began with the hysteria of Russell Moore, who responded to the valid criticism from the executive committee of the SBC like a pre-teen girl.

As a result of less-than-conservative stances by Moore while at the helm of the ERLC, many churches reduced their giving to the SBC. When surveys of churches revealed this reality, the executive committee called Moore to account. As a parting shot in opposition to the conservative-lead committee, Moore made the outlandish accusation that the SBC executive committee was harboring sex-abuse in the convention by maintaining an extensive list of sexual abusers that went unpunished. In reality, this list was little more than a compilation of publicly available information on sexual abuse in general, the equivalent of a curated google newsfeed that targeted the keywords “Church Sex Abuse”. 

In the Salem Witch Trials, theologically adrift Puritans adopted extrabiblical standards for guilt and innocence that allowed for the admissibility of spectral evidence. In the SBC, theologically adrift egalitarians and spineless evangellyfish leaders at the helm of ARITF (Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force) have jettisoned the biblical standards for guilt and innocence, allowing for Guidepost Solutions, a secularist organization that promotes sexual deviancy, to create a standard of guilt for the upcoming convention Sex Abuse Database.

The standard of guilt implemented in the database would be “credible accusation”, meaning that anyone who is accused could be evaluated by an “approved” third party research firm and then deemed to be more likely guilty than not guilty on the basis of potentially anonymous accusations. There is no reason to believe that after hiring Guidepost Solutions to create the misleading sex abuse report and the sex abuse database, that ARITF would not place Guidepost Solutions at the top of a short list of approved firms who would determine the credibility of accusations. The “Credible accusation” standard of ARITF is the modern equivalent of the Spectral evidence used in the Salem Witch Trials.

The dissenters of the Salem Witch Trials stood against the tyranny of the theologically adrift Puritan-led government. Just as Thomas Maule stood against the tyranny of spectral evidence, a number of conservatives have sounded the alarm against the ARITF idea of guilt on the basis of “credible accusation”.

The question is whether the SBC will bow to the pressures of the #metoo and #churchtoo movements by adopting the spurious standard of “credible accusation”, or take a stand on Biblical truth. In the spirit of Thomas Maule, It would be better for 100 abusers to remain in the church than for 1 innocent servant of God to be falsely listed in a public registry of abusers and have his life destroyed and ministry ended on the basis of a “credible accusation” determined by an unaccountable firm of Pagan bureaucrats who make determinations on the basis of an anti-Christian pro-LGBTQ worldview.

God makes clear that not a single sinner can hide from his sight. Not a single sexual abuser in the SBC will be able to obscure his sin from the just judge. All will be held accountable. Does the SBC trust itself to the just judge, or will it whore itself out to pagan organizations like Guidepost for the world’s version of justice.

 And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. Hebrews 4:13

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Woman Pastor Whose Church Was Booted by SBC Responds During Sermon

(The Dissenter) In recent years, there has been a growing trend in some Christian denominations toward the ordination of women as pastors and the trend has been growing in the Southern Baptist Convention as well. However, this trend is not without controversy, and the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has made it clear, despite its many, many flaws, that they do not believe that women should be in positions of pastoral leadership.

This is due to the undeniable teaching of Scripture, specifically 1 Timothy 2:12 which states “I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.” Additionally, 1 Corinthians 14:34 says “Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says.”

Furthermore, the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, which is the SBC’s statement of faith, affirms that “While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.” Despite women preachers and pastors being overlooked in years past even in light of this clear, biblical teaching, the SBC has now decided to take action against churches that ordain women.

Recently, the SBC expelled five churches from their convention because they had women pastors. Linda Barnes Popham, a pastor at one of these expelled churches, Fern Creek Baptist in Louisville, Ky, spoke out against this decision in an interview with NPR. Popham, who has been serving at the church for 40 years, with 30 of those years as a pastor, said that…. to continue reading. click here.

Editor’s Note. This article was published at The Dissenter

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Another 170 SBC Churches with Women ‘Pastors’ Come to Light

Three years ago, we did an expose demonstrating that 10% Of The Biggest Southern Baptist Churches Are Pastored By Women. This was around the time that SBTS president Al Mohler commented on RNS Ryan Burge article Most Southern Baptist Women Would Welcome a Woman Pastor. It’s Unlikely to Happen, where Mohler forcefully denied that SBC churches would stand for it and claimed that not a single SBC church has a woman pastor on staff.

And if you just take the headline at face value, it tells us that the majority of Southern Baptist women, the word of the headline was, “most,” would welcome a woman as pastor of the church. That’s rather stunning when you consider the fact that out of the almost 40,000 churches associated with the Southern Baptist Convention, not one of them has a woman as pastor. 

And:

The problem with that is not one of those churches has a woman as pastor… We’re talking about 40,000 churches. And at the moment, I don’t believe that a single one of them has a woman as pastor…Again, the math, 40,000 roughly, and the other column zero. That’s not a close call…Again, 40,000 in one column, zero in the other…If Southern Baptists want Southern Baptist churches to have pastors who are women, they can do it, but they don’t do it.

We noted that when you consider the top 500 biggest churches in the SBC, not only do 10% of these churches have formalized pastrixes in leadership, but another 91 churches have women on staff with the title of either “Minister” – such as “Women’s Minister,” “Youth Minister,” “Singles Minister” – or, to a lesser extent, “Ministry Director” or “Director of Women’s Ministries.”

While some are serving in faithful, biblically appropriate roles (if with loftier-than-needed titles), many who function in their given roles are doing so with the same authority and positioning in the church as the elders and authority of a pastor but without that specific title. This is the game many churches play.

Since many of the biggest churches do not list their staff, we excluded them. This meant that if you combined the two groups, at least ONE-THIRD of the country’s top 450 largest SBC churches have women pastrixes or women “Ministers” employed on staff. There’s more, however.

Recently, Arlington Baptist Church Mike Law filed a motion to amend the SBC constitution, clarifying that it “Does not affirm, appoint, or employ a woman as a pastor of any kind.” He reveals that he felt the need to offer this amendment because “five Southern Baptist churches, roughly within a five-mile radius of my own congregation, are employing women as pastors of various kinds, including women serving as “Sr. Pastor.”

As part of this amendment plea, he produces evidence that at least 170 SBC churches* list women as either Senior pastor, Lead pastor, Associate pastor, Assistant pastor, Children’s pastor, Youth pastor, or Elders of some kind. 217 pages of screenshots, websites and links buttressing his position. A typical example would be:

Will the SBC deal with it? Given that there is no appetite from leadership to tackle the issue in any serious way, we’re not holding our breaths.

  • Regarding the 170 churches, Law offers a few caveats.

Note #1: Affiliations are listed per the SBC Workspace Database. According to Annual Church
Profile Coordinator for Lifeway:
“The information on the Affiliations tab [in the SBC Workspace Database] represents the
current affiliations of the congregation. If a relationship with the SBC is shown on the
Affiliations tab, then it is believed that the congregation is in friendly cooperation with
the SBC.” 1
Note #2: Some churches are in this document without “Southern Baptist Convention” being
listed as one of their affiliations. For example, a church might be affiliated with the NorthStar
Church Network and the Baptist General Association of Virginia, but not have the Southern
Baptist Convention listed as one of their affiliations. Such a church remains listed because of one
or more of the following are true:
1) They are listed on the churches.sbc.net website (the website has SBC|Churches up in
the right hand corner, and it states that these are “Our Churches”).
2) They are listed in the SBC Workspace database.
3) Local and State Associations often relate to the SBC on a national level, so there is an
open question of whether they are considered to be in friendly cooperation with the
Southern Baptist Convention for the purposes of seating messengers.
For these reasons the relationship between these churches and the SBC needs to be clarified.
Note#3: I have not examined all of the churches in the Southern Baptist Convention. These are
either churches I personally discovered along the way of writing to the SBC Executive
Committee, churches who disclosed their female pastors to me through correspondence, or
churches who were brought to my attention through colleagues.

Categories
News

Rick Warren Boasts of His Accomplishments After Being Ousted From SBC. ‘I Have 11 Million Social Media Followers’

Last summer, Warren made a surprise appearance at the SBC 2022 convention and spoke for several minutes uninterrupted, using his time to list all the accomplishments he has done as the largest Southern Baptist church in the world in order to stave off criticism he has received for ordaining women pastors a year earlier, bragging about all his accomplishments while telling attendees they need to stop “bickering over secondary issues” like what gender the pastor is, and instead focus on the Great Commission.

Saddleback has been the subject of a few controversies over the last few years, after it was uncovered that they have several gay-affirming church leaders on staff who run a gay-affirming ministry for parents of LGBTQ+ children (the same as Andy Stanley’s North Point Church) and for having a “Blacks Only worship service” where no white members were allowed in, so the “black fold” could have a “safe space” to “heal.” They also came under fire after they blasted white Christians for having ‘no discernment’ and accusing them of not caring about black people.

Warren believed that his 25,000 members, 14 campus Saddleback Church was too important to disfellowship from, and he made it clear what the SBC would be losing if they walked away from him.

Because Southern Baptist gave me a passion for evangelism and mission, we baptized 56,631 new believers and as a Southern Baptist Church, sent 26,869 members overseas to 197 nations. Because Southern Baptist taught me the value of a membership covenant, 78,157 members of our church signed our membership covenant after taking a four-hour membership class.

Because Southern Baptist taught me to emphasize the priority of Bible study, we now have 9173 home Bible studies in homes in 162 southern California cities. Because Southern Baptist taught me the value of church planting…we planted 90 In Orange County alone, and literally 1000s around the world.

Because Southern Baptists taught me to honor and love the local church, I’ve had the privilege for 43 years of training 1.1 million pastors. Sorry, friends, that’s more than all the seminaries put together.

Not one to walk humbly in his accomplishments, earlier this year he claimed he had a better track record than Jesus because he himself has baptized 57,000 people.

“…I’m the only pastor our people have ever known. 70-something percent of the church, I baptized in the 43 years that I was pastor. I baptized 57,000 believers in the 43 years I’ve pastored. I don’t know any church that’s ever done that. In Acts it says, the Lord added daily to the church. That would mean 365 a year, at minimum. One a day. Well, in the 43 years I’ve pastored, we baptized five people every day for 43 years. That’s unheard of.”

With the news that the SBC voted to disfellowship, he fell back to his trademark move, saying that they’ll “respond to the #SBC in OUR time and way through direct channels” while dropping more accolades and accomplishments.

Warren is nothing if not predictable.