The Southern Baptist Convention

Dangerous days ahead for the nation's largest Protestant denomination

Later this morning in New Orleans, LA, the Southern Baptist Convention will convene its annual meeting. For the next two days, the 47,000 churches and 13 million members that make it the largest Protestant denomination will celebrate missions, conduct business, make decisions and—more problematically—air their dirty laundry.

In the months long run-up to the meeting there’s been no shortage of controversies, so I thought I’d try to explain the larger issues facing us. I use “us” because I’ve been a Southern Baptist pastor long enough to have witnessed several previous seasons of conflict; although what we’re facing now seems to me (and to many others) to be more challenging than any of the earlier ones. Today, many church leaders and laypeople alike are questioning how the convention can go on in light of the forces trying to tear us apart.

That’s not to say that we’re in the same position of several other major denominations recently fragmented by internal conflict. It’s a pretty long list and includes such well known groups as the Episcopal Church, the Presbytarian Church of the United States of America and, just a few months ago, the United Methodists. All experienced schisms over theological issues related to homosexuality that revealed a deep divide regarding the authority of Scripture. Such isn’t the case with Southern Baptists. For us, the divide is less about the authority of Scripture—there’s no real debate over that—but how Scripture is interpreted.

As far as I can tell there are four immediate crises that we’re facing with a larger and more menacing one in the background. The first four will be addressed in the very public setting of our national convention. I’ll try to give some insight to each of those below. But there’s a fifth issue that’s harder to pin down that I believe poses more long-term danger to our denomination. I’ll give a few thoughts on it toward the end of this post.

Saddleback Church

The first controversy is Saddleback Church in Los Angeles, CA, a Southern Baptist congregation despite its name and location. It’s a complicated situation. Essentially, the SBC’s Credentials Committee, the body charged with determining which churches are allowed to vote at the convention and which churches are not, expelled Saddlback from the denomination in February of this year for hiring a married couple as its new pastoral leadership. Andy and Stacie Wood were called last year as “co-pastors” to succeed church founder and long-time pastor Rick Warren. The Credentials Committee’s action set off a firestorm of controversy in which Rick Warren himself has played a prominent role. The SBC’s leadership has announced that the matter will be brought to the convention itself for resolution. So the messengers to the convention (we use the term “messengers” for the representatives from member churches authorized to vote) will vote on a motion to either sustain the Credentials Committe in their dis-fellowshiping of Saddleback Church for having a female in pastoral leadership or over-ruling the committee and reinstating the church into “friendly cooperation” (our term for churches that are members of the convention) with the SBC.

The situation, as complex as it is, has a couple of larger dimensions. First, where Southern Baptists stand on the issue is largely determined by age. Older, more traditional Baptists tend to view it through the lens of local church autonomy, a cherished belief and defining conviction. Whatever one’s view of women in pastoral leadership, local churches have the right to choose their own leaders. For the younger group, though, the principle of male headship—and how they choose to define it—is so important that it overrules any notion of local church autonomy.

The second dimension is the ripple effects it may have on our African American churches, a group within the convention that historically has been more prone to have women pastors than their white counterparts. Dwight McKissic, a key African American pastor within the Southern Baptist Convention, has made it clear that he and his colleagues view the issue of women pastors as one more way in which they feel ostracized by the convention. If the convention votes to sutain the Credentials Committe and so boot out Saddleback from the SBC, an untended consequence may be the exodus of many African American churches along with the California mega-church.

The Law Amendment

The second controversy comes out of the first. Called the Law Amendment, it’s based on a motion to be brought to the convention by Mike Law, a pastor from Arlington, Virginia:

In a letter titled “A Call to Keep Our Unity,” Pastor Mike Law of Arlington Baptist Church in Arlington, Virginia, writes to the SBC’s Executive Committee in support of an amendment to the convention’s constitution. The proposed amendment states cooperating churches cannot “affirm, appoint, or employ a woman as a pastor of any kind.”

Again, there’s an important backstory to this situation. When the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 was adopted as our denomination’s official doctrinal statement, it was done so as a “confession” not a “creed.” There’s an important distinction between the two. A confession is a generally accepted statement of beliefs held in common but without binding authority on local congregations. A creed, on the other hand, is a requirement for membership in a particular body. The BF&M 2000 was put forward as a confession because that’s been the historic position of Baptists. We don’t believe in creeds because we believe every creed is an interpretation of the Bible and try to base all our binding agreements only on the Bible. But now, with the Law Amendment, the idea is to take what was a confession—and yes, the verbiage in the BF&M 2000 says that women may not serve in a pastoral office—and use it with the force of a creed. Namely, to dis-fellowship churches who don’t buy into all of its restrictions. Submitted out of the conflict surrounding the Credentials Committee’s expulsion of Saddleback Church, the Law Amendment is an attempt to bring clarity and finality to the issue of women serving as pastors within the SBC. But many would point to the amendment in a different light, one that has less to do with clarity than with control. From this perspective, the Law Amendment, if adopted, would serve notice on local churches that they no longer have the right to determine their own leadership.

Sexual Abuse Taskforce

The third controversy surrounds the matter of the Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force, a group put together at last year’s convention in order to create an online data base (called “Ministry Check”) as a resource for local churches to use as they hire ministers. Guidepost Solutions, a third-party agency, was hired to develop and implement the system. Growing out of the sexual abuse scandals of the last few years within the SBC, the action was necessary because we lacked a centralized effort to provide local SBC churches with the resources necessary to hire trustworthy ministers. Unfortunately, as essential as is the task of protecting our people from abusers, the implementation of the ministry has been far more difficult and expensive than anyone envisioned. The SBC Executive Committee (our central administrative group) has been forced to spend several millions of unbudgeted dollars—an amount sure to grow in coming years—in order to pay Guidepost Solutions for their work, funds that otherwise would have gone to missions causes. As vital as is the work of the taskforce to the safety of our people and the health of our convention, the money being spent is unsustainable and an alternative solution must be found.

The Presidential Election

The fourth item of business is the election of the next president, a position of enormous power that in many ways sets the tone and direction for our denomination during his tenure. The two candidates are the incumbant Brett Barber, a mainstream candidate; and Mike Stone, the former Chairman of the Executive Committee and a vocal leader of the conservative faction of the convention. Brett is a voice for historic Baptists while Stone—he formerly served as Chairman of the Executive Committee before resigning in protest of the sexual abuse investigations two years ago—has resurfaced and now carries the banner for the conservatives. Here’s a good explanation of the two and where they stand:

At first glance, little separates the two candidates. Barber, pastor of First Baptist Church in Farmersville, Texas, believes the Bible is inerrant, champions the SBC’s missionaries and defends the long-held Baptist beliefs that homosexuality is a sin, abortion is evil and only men should be pastor. He prefers to dress in a suit while preaching. Stone, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Blackshear, Georgia, has the same view on the Bible and theological issues as Barber, also supports missions — his daughter is overseas on a short-term mission to Madrid — and, like Barber, prefers a formal look when preaching.

Despite their similarities in doctrine and practice, the two pastors represent an ongoing dispute over the SBC’s current direction and future. That dispute has been fueled by the rise of the Conservative Baptist Network — a group with close ties to disgraced former SBC leader Paige Patterson — along with allies such as Florida-based Founders Ministries. This faction, which helped ignite the national debate over critical race theory, argues the SBC has become too liberal, in particular on issues of race and sexuality — and for a while, had referred to itself as a group of pirates striving to take control of the denomination. Leaders allied with the CBN have also resisted sexual abuse reforms.

The Drive toward Centralization

I said at the top of this post that there was a larger issue looming on the horizon, beyond the four obvious ones. So I want to finish with a few thoughts—my own thoughts—about what all this means and where it’s headed. I think the simplest way to understand what I’m getting at is to ask a simple question: Has the Southern Baptist Convention grown too large?

Not that there’s anything wrong with size in and of itself. But the problem is the amount of resources and beauracracy necessary to support the size. And I believe that’s what we’re witnessing now with all the fragmentation, the fracturing and the general squabbling over who’s in and who’s out, who’s in power and who’s not. We’re seeing the inexorable drive toward a centralized authority structure. We have a centralized funding mechanism called the Cooperative Program. We have a centralized bureaucracy called the Executive Committee overseeing the system. We have an expectation of centralized support for all the centralized agencies. And now we have a centralized creed called the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 being used as a club to keep unruly churches in line. To a denomination that was cobbled together from small churches with a common interest in gospel ministry and a love of freedom, this relatively recent drive to invest power in a small circle who will tell us what to do, how to do it and who we can do it with seems a far reach.

Can a denomination founded on the voluntary cooperation of local churches survive as a corporate entity enforcing control on all its members?

What’s next for the SBC?

I believe these are dangerous days for the Southern Baptist Convention. But I also believe that the growth of our denomination through the decades has been due more to God’s grace working through local congregations than to the institutions that have been built on their backs. We seem to have forgotten how the New Testament gives only two visions of the church: the universal church that includes all believers in all places through all the ages; and the local church which is that community of believers we know by name. All other visions of the church—denominations, traditions, institutions, boards, agencies—are man-made. It’s time for the SBC, I think, to turn back toward the local church. It really is the source of our strength, the foundation of our passion and the explanation of our success.