Dear Church Family,
A few weeks ago on June 10-11, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) met for its 167th Session in Dallas, Texas. Pastor Bryan, Pastor Evan, and I attended with our wives to be our church’s messengers at the meeting. During these two days, our convention of churches gathers to conduct the business of our convention. These days are filled with reports, motions, and resolutions. Often, I leave the convention encouraged because there are always highlights that we can celebrate.
Points of Celebration
- Once again, we commissioned more missionaries to the mission fields around the world. What you may not know is that many of those missionaries are going to mission fields that are closed to the Gospel and are outright hostile to the Gospel being spread in those countries. Because of this many of the missionaries are commissioned publicly by the convention while they stand behind a screen to where you can only see their silhouette because it is too dangerous to let their identity be known. This is a sobering and inspiring event to see because you know that those silhouetted images are getting ready to risk their lives for the spread of the Gospel.
- We also celebrated more church plants being started in America than in recent years. This was encouraging to hear because we have seen a slide in the amount of church plants over the past some years.
- Also, we heard of the financial strength and numerical growth in students in all six of our seminaries where we train men and women for the Gospel ministry. Strong, healthy, theologically conservative seminaries are vital to the mission in which we have been given as Christians and specifically Southern Baptists.
Along with the points that we need to celebrate, there are also a few areas we need to give continued attention to.
Issues to Watch
To talk about the first two issues, I want to share with you what Heath Lambert, a fellow pastor from Jacksonville, Florida, shared in summation of the two issues and I will add my remarks as well.
The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission
“This issue had to do with the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC). The ERLC is the public policy arm of the SBC and has been controversial for years now as growing numbers of Southern Baptists sense an increasing gap between what they believe and how they are represented by that entity. For years, there has been talk about defunding or abolishing the ERLC. One effort at the SBC in 2024 received thousands of votes but fell short of the required majority.
Everyone knew that a similar effort would come in 2025. In Dallas, when the motion was made and the votes were counted, 42.8% of people voted to abolish the ERLC and 56.8% voted to retain it.
When that result was announced, there was applause, but Southern Baptists must know these numbers are bad news regardless of how they voted. That reality is not about how anyone feels about the ERLC but is about the way relationships work. No pastor in the convention could continue in office if a no-confidence vote this Sunday resulted in over 42% of their congregation wanting them removed. It is impossible for a voluntary group of Christians to continue with this kind of division. Something must change.”
We will deal with this issue again especially if the ERLC does not self-correct to the assignment they have been given to reflect the general consensus of the convention on the moral issues of our day and abandon their efforts to advocate for the position of the ERLC president. Change must come to this entity for it to be helpful for its intended purpose.
Female Pastors
“A second issue relates to the issue of women pastors. The beginnings of the current debate traces back to the meeting of the SBC in Anaheim, California in 2022. At that convention, the SBC Credentials Committee, the committee tasked with identifying churches who are eligible to be part of the SBC, asked for more guidance about whether churches with female pastors could rightly vote at the convention.
The SBC is clear in its confessional document, The Baptist Faith and Message (BFM), that only qualified men can serve as pastors in a local church. This conviction is not now and never has been a question in the larger convention. The question raised by the Credentials Committee was whether a church in violation of that article may be a member in good standing.
The SBC has been debating the issue since 2022. The SBC does not believe that churches with female pastors should be part of the convention and have made this clear in every vote in the last three years. Large majorities have repeatedly approved amendments to the SBC constitution to make this clear. But the messengers at SBC 2024 failed to achieve the required supermajority by just a few points after several convention leaders argued it was unnecessary.
When the Credentials Committee failed to recommend removal for another church endorsing female pastors in 2025, messengers showed up in Dallas promising to fix the situation once and for all. But once again, while 60% of messengers voted in favor of convictional clarity, they failed to reach the supermajority required to change the constitution.”
Just like the situation with the ERLC, this issue is not going away and will be addressed again at the convention next year. Our statement of faith is clear, (BFM 2000) the issue is, will our credentials committee make judgements consistent with the plain message of our theological confession. If not, we will be down this road again.
Financial Transparency
There has been a mounting call for the entities of our convention to give a heightened report of financial transparency back to our convention. The common response we have heard from those entities and leadership within the SBC is for us to trust the trustee system that is in place. Each of our six seminaries, our two mission agencies, and publishing arm known as Lifeway have trustee boards that are in place to hold in trust those entities for the Southern Baptist Convention. As a trustee at one of our seminaries, (SEBTS), this call is one that should be heard and implemented. As a trustee you receive a lot of reports and information, but often it is overwhelming, and normally it is hard to process all the information before the board meetings that you attend. Recently there has been a call for all our entities to voluntarily provide the standard information that other non-profit entities provide as well, known as Form 990. Our entities are not required to file this information with the IRS due to an exemption. This call to provide the information was not asking our entities to file it with the IRS, only to provide 990 level information to the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention. I was in favor of this motion because it would help build back trust which has been hurt over a numbers of years, and it would also make this information much easier for the trustees to access as well. Currently you must sift through information, ask questions, and make requests for this information, which makes it a much more daunting task to have the financial transparency that is needed, especially in a timely manner. But sadly, the messengers approved a new business and financial plan for convention entities, that rejected an amendment that would have required a level of financial transparency comparable to IRS Form 990 disclosures. I am convinced that this is also an issue that will surface once again in coming conventions.
Convention Takeaways
There is much to celebrate!
- Thank God we are a convention that stands on the Word of God! As a convention we passed resolutions, which are official position statements that reflect the will of our convention on a host of issues such as banning pornography, sports betting, religious freedom, and affirming God’s design for gender, marriage, and the family. You can go to this link if you want to read the texts of these resolutions. https://www.sbc.net/resource-library/resolutions/
- Thank God we are seeing more missionaries going to the international mission field, and that we are planting more churches in North America.
- Thank God that all our six seminaries are theologically and financially strong!
- Thank God that we saw an increase in baptisms in the last year as well in our convention!
There are Issues to Watch
As we celebrate the advancement of the Gospel, we also must stay vigilant and make sure that we hold firm to the issues that I outlined above.
It matters that the ERLC reflects the general will of our convention and does not find itself a source of divisiveness in our convention.
It matters that we have a biblical understanding and practice as it relates to who the pastors are in our churches.
It matters that we have solid financial trust in our institutions so we can continue to see the financial giving grow so we can support the spread of the Gospel around the world.
I love you and I love being your pastor!
