DALLAS (BP)—Austin pastor Juan Sanchez is urging Southern Baptists to re-visit an amendment at their annual meeting this June that addresses the definition of pastor/elder/overseer in the Southern Baptist Convention constitution.

Virginia pastor Mike Law originally presented an amendment to Article III of the constitution—which came to be known as the Law Amendment—at the 2022 annual meeting in Anaheim.

It asked for the addition of a sixth item that noted a cooperating church would “not affirm, appoint or employ a woman as a pastor of any kind.”

The next year in New Orleans, Sanchez, pastor of High Pointe Baptist Church in Austin, offered what Law accepted as a friendly amendment for churches that affirm, appoint or employ “only men as any kind of pastor or elder as qualified by Scripture.”

The amendment received the first of two required successive 2/3 vote of approval by messengers, but failed to reach that mark last year in Indianapolis.

Support for the Law Amendment received momentum recently over the shared exchange of correspondence from the credentials committee regarding the submission of NewSpring Church in Anderson, S.C., and its employment of a woman as teaching pastor.

The committee informed the submitter no action would be taken, and NewSpring remained in friendly cooperation with the SBC.

The decision “makes it clear that the committee needs stronger and clearer guidance in making decisions about which churches closely identify with the SBC and our confession of faith, particularly regarding churches with women serving with the title and office of ‘pastor,’” Sanchez wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

An “Open Letter to Our Southern Baptist Family” asks messengers in Dallas to give the majority vote needed to suspend the convention’s sixth standing rule.

The rule states all motions to amend the SBC’s governing documents or the Baptist Faith & Message not presented to messengers by the Executive Committee automatically will be referred to the Executive Committee for review and reporting to the next annual meeting.

The letter’s supporters say that time gap won’t do.

“Because we have already debated this language at the last two conventions, we do not believe that we need to spend another year waiting for the Executive Committee to decide whether to put the amendment before the convention for a vote,” said the letter.

In addition to Sanchez, those undersigning are:

• Nate Akin, executive director, Pillar Network
• HB Charles, pastor-teacher of Shiloh Metropolitan Church in Jacksonville, Fla.
• Jed Coppenger, lead pastor of First Baptist Church in Cumming, Ga.
• Aaron Harvie, senior pastor of Highview Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky.
• Brian Payne, pastor of Lakeview Baptist Church in Auburn, Ala.
• Clay Smith, senior pastor of Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Ga.

(RNS)—The Southern Baptist Convention’s credentials committee had a problem.

It had been asked to determine whether to expel one of the denomination’s largest churches for violating the SBC’s ban on women serving as pastors.

But the committee could not agree on what the word “pastor” meant in a rule that said only men can be pastors. Did it refer to the church’s senior pastor? Or did it mean any role with the title of pastor—such as a music pastor, youth pastor or children’s pastor?

The committee asked the messengers to the denomination’s 2022 annual meeting for help. What the committee got was an earful instead.

“If we eventually have to form a study committee over every word in our confession of faith, then we’re doomed, and we’re no longer a confessional people,” Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, told the meeting, adding Southern Baptists know exactly what a pastor is.

Nearly three years—and a failed constitutional amendment—later, confusion remains about how the ban on women pastors should be applied.

Continued confusion

In mid-February, the SBC’s Executive Committee voted to expel a church in Alaska after its pastor signed a letter saying Jesus did not put limits on the roles women could play in ministry.

But the credentials committee, which makes recommendations to the Executive Committee on such issues, deemed a South Carolina megachurch, which has a woman teaching pastor who preaches regularly, remained in “friendly cooperation” with the SBC.

That did not please Clint Pressley, the SBC’s current president.

“My understanding is that our credentials committee deemed a church in friendly cooperation that has a female teaching pastor,” Pressley, a North Carolina pastor, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“The committee needs to take another look at this one. Our statement of faith is clear about qualifications for a pastor.”

Things changed after church leaders signed a letter

Mark Goodman, pastor of Rabbit Creek Church in Anchorage, Alaska, said he was saddened to no longer be part of the SBC, after spending his whole life in the denomination.

“I jokingly say I’ve been a Baptist longer than I’ve been a Christian, because my parents took me to a Baptist church while I was still in the womb,” Goodman said in a recent interview.

Goodman said the church had first heard from the credentials committee last year, after someone complained about Lori Pepiton, the congregation’s longtime pastor to children and families.

After exchanging emails, the committee closed its inquiry, having found no conflicts with the SBC’s beliefs.

“Again, thank you for your cooperation and for the information you provided,” the committee wrote in an email dated Oct. 24.

“We value the partnership of Rabbit Creek Church with the Southern Baptist Convention and pray for your continued ministry.”

Things changed when Goodman and other leaders at the church signed a letter in March which argued for no limits on the roles women can hold.

Signing that letter went too far, the credentials committee decided, as it gave public support to beliefs that contradicted SBC teaching.

Goodman said that in signing that letter, he was speaking for himself, not the congregation. Not everyone in the church holds the same beliefs, and the church has not taken an official stand on the issue.

The SBC holds complementarian beliefs—the idea that women and men have different roles to play in marriages and in churches. Churches that allow women pastors are often referred to as egalitarian.

Among the members at Rabbit Creek is Randy Covington, the leader of Alaska Baptist Resource Network, the state convention for SBC churches in Alaska.

He told Baptist Press there was no conflict between Rabbit Creek’s beliefs and the SBC.

‘Feels like kind of a witch hunt’

“They do not have egalitarian views,” Covington said. “Their positive impact on the community of Anchorage cannot be overlooked.”

Meredith Stone, executive director of Waco-based Baptist Women in Ministry, said the removal of Rabbit Creek Church was disappointing. She found it odd the church essentially was being punished because its pastor signed a letter.

“It feels like kind of a witch hunt,” she said.

Stone also wonders whether SBC pastors—and not just churches—are being put on notice any disagreement with the SBC statement of faith on the issue of women in ministry will not be tolerated.

That’s not how the SBC handles other issues, such as baptism or who can take Communion. The SBC statement of faith says only those who have been baptized by immersion can take part in Communion.

“But they’re not kicking churches out because someone who was sprinkled for their baptism took Communion,” she said.

Inconsistent application alleged

NewSpring Church, a megachurch in South Carolina where Meredith Knox serves as a teaching pastor and preaches regularly, remains in friendly cooperation with the SBC. That decision has led to public criticism of the credentials committee.

Suzanne Swift, the risk and legal services director for NewSpring, said in an email only men can be lead pastor or elders at the church, but women are allowed to be leaders and to preach.

“We recognize a biblical distinction between the office of elder/overseer—reserved for qualified men—and the shepherding and leadership responsibilities that both men and women may carry,” Swift said.

“The term ‘pastor’ at NewSpring refers to shepherding care rather than the formal office of elder. While women are not ordained as elders, they play an essential role in pastoral care, leadership, and teaching, all under the biblical framework of male eldership.”

A media representative for the SBC’s Executive Committee referred RNS to the credentials committee for comment, which did not immediately respond to that request.

At the SBC annual meeting in 2024, messengers failed to confirm a proposed change, known as the Law Amendment, that only would have allowed churches that have “only men as any kind of pastor or elder as qualified by Scripture” to be part of the SBC.

The amendment to the SBC constitution passed by a two-thirds majority in 2023 but fell short of that mark in 2024 during a required second vote—meaning it failed.

‘Inconsistency is pretty glaring to me’

The credentials committee decision on NewSpring baffled Jared Cornutt, pastor of North Shelby Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.

In an interview, Cornutt said a past credentials committee had recommended the Executive Committee expel Saddleback Church for having a woman teaching pastor. So why not NewSpring?

“This is exactly like Saddleback,” he said. “The inconsistency is pretty glaring to me.”

Cornutt, who backed a successful 2023 change to the SBC’s statement of faith meant to clarify the definition of pastor, said some churches are using the word in a way that’s not “biblically permissible.”

“There is no difference between a senior pastor, associate pastor or children’s pastor,” he said. “If you have the title pastor, then you have the office of pastor.”

The easiest solution, said Cornutt, is for churches to change the titles they use. Rather than calling someone a children’s pastor, call them a children’s ministry director, he said. The title of pastor should be limited to men who preach or have authority in the church.

He said one reason the Law Amendment failed is a system already was in place to deal with churches that have women pastors. Now that system has failed.

He predicts the Law Amendment—named for Virginia pastor Mike Law, who proposed it—or something like it will be reintroduced this year.

“I can’t see how it won’t pass,” he said.

The belief that only men can be pastors was added to the SBC’s statement of faith in 2000.

Impact of social media

But no churches were removed on a national level for violating that until 2023, when the Executive Committee voted out Saddleback.

That’s for a number of reasons, said Griffin Gulledge, pastor of Fayetteville First Baptist Church, about 45 minutes south of Atlanta.

Until the advent of social media, he said, most Southern Baptists had no idea who was serving on the staff of other churches. So even if a church like Saddleback ordained a woman as pastor, few people would know.

“How many Southern Baptists 10 years ago could name a single staff member at Saddleback apart from Rick Warren?” said Gulledge, referring to Saddleback’s legendary pastor, who retired from the church in 2022.

By contrast, Saddleback announced the ordination of three women staffers as pastors on the church Facebook page in 2021—setting off a denomination-wide debate.

The debate intensified after the church named Stacie Wood, wife of Andy Wood, who succeeded Warren, as a teaching pastor.

He also said that for pragmatic reasons, churches have for years used the term “pastor” incorrectly applying it to a wide variety of roles.

He said Southern Baptists agree on what a pastor is. But they have not always been consistent in how they use the word.

Changing that will be complicated, Gulledge said. Some would prefer churches just change titles for staffers, while others want a more top-down approach along the lines of a Law Amendment.

He does not see much widescale support for women pastors.

“There is zero chance that what the future holds for the Southern Baptist Convention is a consensus that allows for women pastors,” he said.

Goodman worries that the more the SBC draws hard lines, the more it will shrink.

“They keep narrowing the understanding of what it means to be a Southern Baptist church,” the Alaska pastor said.

NASHVILLE (BP)—A rewritten business and financial plan to be presented at the June Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting is designed to strengthen transparency and oversight for trustees who are approved to those positions by messengers, SBC Executive Committee President Jeff Iorg said.

“One of our trustees said a strength of the new document is how remarkably consistent it is with upholding trustee governance of the entities,” Iorg said on Feb. 20.

“One of the goals was to clarify that the business and financial plan must reflect the constitution and bylaw standards and that the boards are ultimately accountable for the entities. I agree that this is a strength of the document as well.”

Iorg gave five convictions that guided the creation of the document in his address to Executive Committee members on Feb. 17. The first is that Southern Baptists govern entities by electing trustees, who are expected to fulfill the business and financial plan.

The other guiding convictions are:

• The plan must emerge from the SBC constitution and bylaws.
• The plan must focus on general principles rather than specific methodologies.
• It must call for transparency by entities in business and financial decisions.
• It must use plain language, with technical or legal jargon appearing only where necessary for clarity.

At 1,956 words, the proposed business and financial plan is substantially shorter than the current version that weighs in at over 3,300 words. That wasn’t necessarily the focus, but a byproduct of a desire to simplify the plan and use more basic language, Iorg noted.

“The goal was to write a document that eliminated duplications and removed archaic issues, and when it turned out to be shorter, that was a benefit,” he said.

A section about new enterprises that included hospital propositions was removed, for instance, as was another about publications. Almost all publications are hosted on websites now, Iorg explained.

“Those kinds of things were removed because they aren’t applicable anymore to the way we do business,” he said.

Accountability strengthened

Iorg cited to Executive Committee members various areas of the plan where trustee accountability was strengthened and reiterated those in a phone call with Baptist Press.

Those steps expand trustee accountability and oversight in areas such as audit practices, use of restricted funds, compensation and executive expenses, fundraising practices and internal controls.

The proposed plan states that any member in good standing at a Southern Baptist church in friendly cooperation with the SBC can receive descriptions of compensation processes, personnel practices and salary structures from entities upon written request to the respective entity’s chief financial officer.

Currently, the business and financial plan states church members may have access to such information, but no clear path is given for obtaining it.

The revised plan came about largely due to referrals of motions adopted by messengers at SBC annual meetings in recent years that related to business and financial components of the SBC and its entities. An overall response to those concerns through a new business and financial plan was the best course, Iorg told trustees Feb. 17.

Recommending the new plan doesn’t set anything in stone, he said.

“If we discover deficiencies, the Business and Financial Plan can be amended until we feel it is adequate for its purpose,” Iorg said.

“My hope is we will adopt the revised plan, live with it for the next two years, and then adjust any deficiencies or shortcomings as we find them.”

NEW YORK (BP)—A document submitted by the attorney of Matt Queen contains excerpts from 59 letters of support for the former Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary professor alongside pleas for leniency from Queen himself as his sentencing date approaches for lying to federal investigators.

Queen, 50, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Southern New York on Oct. 16 to making a false statement related to a Department of Justice investigation into the Southern Baptist Convention and some of its entities. He resigned his pastorate at Friendly Avenue Baptist Church in Greensboro, N.C., three weeks later.

Sentencing for Queen is set for March 5.

His attorney, Sam Schmidt, wrote in a Presentence Report that his client does not deny he falsified the date on notes provided to federal investigators, though the contents were accurate.

“Dr. Queen acknowledged [it] … shortly after he lied about it,” Schmidt wrote. “He admitted it to counsel. He admitted it in his motion to dismiss. He admitted it when he pled guilty.”

“Severe consequences” and financial loss for his actions have already been felt, including losing his pastorate as well as speaking engagements and publication opportunities. Queen has been “repeatedly denigrated in the secular and Christian press,” Schmidt added, and “a number of ‘friends’ have distanced themselves from him.”

‘Downward spiral in his mental health’

Those are in addition to the emotional and psychological punishment.

Queen explained through his attorney how a “tumultuous five-year period (2018-2023)” that ended with his time as interim provost and vice president for academic administration at Southwestern led to being “anxious and overwhelmed” as the DOJ investigation unfolded.

Isolation exacerbated the “self-doubt, fear, confusion and uncertainty … within me, and I felt lost. I lost about forty pounds and was eating and sleeping very little,” he said.

A letter from Queen’s wife, Hope, told of the “downward spiral in his mental health which was fueled by the dysfunctional atmosphere at the seminary.”

Fears of dismissal and orders to not speak to anyone also prompted her husband not to seek help from a counselor or attorney.

“Matt’s anxiety grew. On a regular basis, I walked into our bedroom and found him on our bed with his chest heaving and limbs shaking. I watched with concern but felt trapped without a way for him to get help due to the instruction not to tell anyone about the investigation,” she said.

The stress led Queen to contemplate suicide, according to his wife, who persuaded him to seek help at a hospital.

“The government was also concerned about Dr. Queen’s mental health as a result of its indictment,” Schmidt said. “It insisted that one of the conditions of his release on bail was for him to obtain the services of a therapist. He did and continues to see his therapist.”

Schmidt posited, “There is no identifiable purpose for imposing a period of incarceration” on Queen, urging Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to accept a United States Department of Probation recommendation that Queen be sentenced to one year of probation and a $2,000 fine.

‘I have learned from my mistake’

Statements from Queen accompany the document.

“While I have repented of my sin before God, made it right with the government by correcting my false statement to them, and have pled guilty before this Court, I will forever live with the knowledge that I lied, an action contrary to my faith, my character and my morals,” he said.

“I am daily reminded that my lie has disappointed my God, my wife, my daughters, my parents, my brothers, my church, my friends, and my students.

“… I commit to you, your Honor, to apply the lessons I have learned from my mistake for the remainder of my life and ministry. I sincerely request your mercy, your Honor, as you decide my sentence.”

The letters of support testify to Queen’s character, Schmidt said, and “recognize that this man is not characterized solely by his error.”

Nickie Buckner, a friend of Queen’s since the sixth grade who considered himself a nonbeliever, recognized Queen’s “unshakeable belief in God” and said, “[Queen] genuinely wants to help people regardless of who they are or what they believe.”

Former Southwestern professor John Massey explained Queen gave not only his time, but also his money to students in need and “has been among the most popular professors in denominational life because of his love for students and accessibility to them at any time.”

Former student and friend Matt Henslee said he leaned on Queen during his own tough emotional and psychological times.

“Dr. Queen was a phone call away to pray for me, encourage me and offer me wisdom or practical steps to deal with what was going on,” he said.

Ryan Stokes, a former SWBTS professor, said Queen “holds himself to the highest conceivable moral standards, has an unusually sensitive conscience and exhibits an overriding concern that he deal with others fairly, compassionately and honestly. … If it is possible to be pathologically good, that is what Matt is.”

NASHVILLE (RNS)—A proposed online database that would list the names of abusive Southern Baptist pastors is now on hold, with no names likely to be added to the website by the denomination’s annual meeting this summer.

Instead, Southern Baptist leaders working to address abuse in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination say they will focus on helping churches access other databases of abusers and training churches to do better background checks.

However, the so-called Ministry Check database, which was a centerpiece of reforms approved by Southern Baptist messengers is now on the back burner.

“At this point, it’s not a focus for us,” Jeff Iorg, head of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, told reporters at a Feb. 18 news conference during the committee’s meeting in Nashville.

The proposed database has been derailed by denominational apathy, legal worries and a desire to protect donations to the Southern Baptist Convention’s mission programs, RNS previously reported.

Sexual abuse survivors have been advocating for a database of abusers since at least 2007, when ABC News’ “20/20” published a report on abuse among Southern Baptist pastors.

The Executive Committee rejected the idea in 2008, but it resurfaced in 2021 after a Guidepost Solutions investigation found Southern Baptists long had downplayed the issue of abuse in the denomination and mistreated abuse survivors who tried to raise the alarm about the issue.

That led to initiating reforms, which were to include building education for churches and creating the Ministry Check database. For years, an SBC task force charged with implementing reforms said the database would soon go live, once concerns about finances and legal issues were overcome.

A website for SBC abuse reform, which SBC leaders called “historic” when it was launched in 2023, included a link to the Ministry Check website. However, no names appear on that site.

“Coming soon, Ministry Check will provide leaders with the ability to search for information about individuals who have been convicted, found liable or confessed to abuse,” the website reads.

Advocates decry failure to develop database

The delay in adding names to the database, among other delays, led some advocates to wash their hands of the SBC’s abuse reform efforts.

“Accountability is illusion and institutional reform is a hall of mirrors,” wrote Christa Brown, a longtime advocate of SBC reforms, and other abuse survivors in a recent editorial.

Iorg did not rule out future work on the database but said it would not happen soon. Jeff Dalrymple, who was recently named to head up the SBC’s response to sexual abuse, also said he would not rule out future work on a database.

A now-disbanded task force charged with implementing the SBC reforms, including the database, started a nonprofit last year called the Abuse Reform Commission. However, its proposal for funding was rejected by the heads of the mission boards.

Earlier in the meeting, Iorg outlined a set of priorities for responding to and preventing abuse, including providing more training for churches and working more closely with the denomination’s state conventions of churches. He also gave thanks for Dalrymple’s new role, which he said would help move the reforms and response to abuse forward.

Taking steps to prevent abuse

Iorg said more data was needed about the scope of abuse in the denomination and steps churches are taking to prevent it and respond when it happens.

A 2024 report from Lifeway Research, which is owned by the SBC’s publishing house, found only 58 percent of churches did background checks on those who work with children. Those checks are considered one of the essential steps in abuse prevention.

Dalrymple, who previously was executive director of the Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention, a nonprofit that addresses abuse, said helping churches deal with abuse was part of his calling in life.

The news the database has stalled was both disappointing and expected for abuse survivors Jules Woodson and Tiffany Thigpen, who have long advocated for reforms. Both said because the SBC does not oversee its pastors and because abusers only make it onto criminal databases after convicted, a list of abusive pastors is necessary.

After years of delay, Thigpen said at least survivors have an answer about the future of the database.

“I’m just glad it was said out loud,” she said. “So now we are off the hook for hope.”

Thigpen said the Feb. 18 meeting felt like the end of an era for survivors who have pushed for reform and that SBC leaders have moved on. But she said even though the database seemed doomed, Southern Baptists no longer can say abuse is not a problem.

Woodson said the move away from a database showed the will of church messengers doesn’t matter in the end. Southern Baptist leaders, she said, will do what they think is best, no matter what anyone else says.

She compared the SBC abuse issues to a house on fire—and instead of calling the fire department, Southern Baptists asked a board of directors to put the fire out. That left them standing around with buckets while things burn.

“They should have called the fire department,” she said.

Abuse crisis sparks financial difficulty

The cost of dealing with abuse was also on the minds of Iorg and other Baptist leaders meeting in Nashville. Legal costs from the Guidepost investigation and the abuse crisis generally have totaled $13 million and drained the Executive Committee’s reserves.

Executive Committee members recommended a 2025 budget for the denomination’s Cooperative Program that includes a $3 million “priority allocation” for legal costs.

That allocation will have to be approved by SBC messengers this summer at the denomination’s meetings in Dallas and likely will be controversial. Cooperative Program funds from churches are used to pay for missionaries, seminary education, church planting and other national ministries—and previous attempts to tap SBC’s Cooperative Program funds to address the issue of abuse stalled.

So far, SBC abuse reforms have been funded by an initial $4 million from Send Relief, a joint venture of the SBC’s International Mission Board and North American Mission Board. No permanent funding plan is in place.

Iorg said the “priority allocation” has been the subject of vigorous debate and called it “the most palatable of a lot of bad options.”

He also said the messengers to past SBC meetings authorized the investigation into abuse, and the legal cost is part of the consequences of that decision. He noted the Executive Committee is trying to sell its building, which could help with legal costs.

When asked if he regretted past decisions that led to the costs, Iorg said addressing abuse was the right thing to do, though he wished Southern Baptists had found a way to do it that was not as costly or disruptive.

During the meeting, Southern Baptist leaders also removed two churches from the denomination—one in California over the issue of abuse, and a second in Alaska due to having “egalitarian” views about the roles of men and women in leadership.

The SBC’s statement of faith has restricted the role of pastor to men, and in recent years, the denomination has become more aggressive in removing churches with women pastors.

NASHVILLE (RNS)—Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee struck a hopeful and defiant tone Feb. 17, acknowledging the fiscal woes facing the convention, yet insisting the nation’s largest Protestant denomination remains a force for good in the world.

“Some critics persistently claim we are corrupt, and the entire Southern Baptist enterprise needs to be dismantled,” Executive Committee President Jeff Iorg told committee members in an impassioned speech. “They are wrong.”

The denomination would not fail on his watch, Iorg added, saying he hopes the SBC’s thousands of pastors feel the same way.

Iorg, a former seminary president, had been on his way to retirement last year before accepting the role of president of the Executive Committee.

Convention leaders hope his tenure will bring an end to several years of instability and conflict for the Nashville-based committee, which manages the denomination’s business in between the SBC’s annual June gatherings.

When he was elected president, Iorg became the first permanent leader since 2021 and its third since 2018.

His predecessor, Ronnie Floyd, resigned in October 2021 after a two-year tenure marked by the SBC’s sexual abuse crisis.

Floyd’s predecessor, Frank Page, stepped down in 2018 for misconduct.

An interim leader that followed Floyd also resigned after admitting he falsified his resume.

Taking steps to address sexual abuse

The Executive Committee’s staff had begun to make progress in addressing abuse by hiring Jeff Dalrymple as a national director to oversee several proposed reforms, Iorg reported.

Iorg also outlined five steps the committee planned to take to implement the abuse reforms, including strengthening training materials and working more closely with the denomination’s state conventions to address abuse.

The abuse reforms, including a database to track abusive pastors, have largely stalled over the past three years, in part because there was no permanent funding and because implementing reforms had been left in the hands of a volunteer task force.

Last year, the SBC’s annual meeting charged the Executive Committee with getting the reforms back on track.

Iorg said the committee’s plans for responding to abuse were shaped in part by the response to a hotline set up by the SBC in 2022 for reporting abuse claims. The hotline has received 1,008 contacts since then, said Iorg.

Two-thirds of those contacts—674 in all—had to do with abuse. Of those, 41 percent dealt with alleged abuse of adults, while 59 percent were reports of alleged abuse of minors.

Iorg said those reports suggest sexual abuse is a serious issue for the SBC to deal with—but asserted it is not widespread.

“Abuse is not frequently being reported in Southern Baptist churches,” Iorg said. “We have widely publicized this issue for the past five years and encouraged people to come forward with information and allegations. We now have verified, third-party data.”

Iorg added the hotline call data was not a comprehensive look at the scope of abuse in the SBC and more data was needed.

SBC faces financial challenges

He also laid out the committee’s financial challenges—caused mainly by ongoing legal costs related to a 2021 investigation into abuse.

A report from the investigation found SBC leaders had downplayed the prevalence of abuse in the denomination and had mistreated abuse survivors who tried to raise the alarm.

Two of the leaders named in that report for alleged abusive conduct are now suing the denomination.

Legal costs from the investigation have totaled more than $13 million, Iorg told the committee, draining the committee’s reserves.

To defray those costs, the committee is marketing its Nashville office with a $35 million price tag, hoping to bring in an influx of cash.

Leaders are also proposing to set aside $3 million in the SBC’s annual budget for legal fees, to be taken out of the SBC’s Cooperative Program, which raises funds for missionaries, seminaries, new church starts and other national ministries.

The proposal was approved by the committee Tuesday morning and now will be presented to messengers at the SBC’s annual meeting, set for this June in Dallas. Leaders would prefer to use Cooperative Program funds for missions and ministry, Iorg said.

But the denomination’s legal bills have come due—and more likely will accrue in the future. The denomination’s churches approved the investigation, said Iorg, and the legal fees are part of the cost that came along with that decision.

“Here’s our present reality,” he said. “Decisions were made by the messengers in 2021. Those decisions have consequences. Those consequences have costs, and those bills are due, and they must be paid.”

Iorg said he believed the SBC’s churches would step up to pay those bills and would rally together to set up the denomination to focus on its mission in the future.

His comments, which were greeted with a standing ovation, came on the heels of a rousing speech by SBC President and North Carolina pastor Clint Pressley, who was elected last year. Pressley urged his fellow leaders to celebrate the good things the denomination does—and to work together to address the denomination’s challenges.

In particular, he pointed to the denomination’s Cooperative Program, which turns 100 this year. That program—which raises hundreds of millions of dollars every year from local churches—was beset by troubles in its early years, which coincided with the Great Depression and were marked by two major embezzling scandals in the late 1920s.

Rather than giving up, Pressley said, Baptists faced their problems head-on and made things better. He called on the committee members and other SBC leaders, including heads of the SBC’s mission boards, seminaries and other entities, to do the same.

“Leaders don’t panic,” he said. “But they do act.”

AUSTIN (BP)—The Supreme Court of Texas issued a ruling Feb. 14 on two questions raised in a case brought against former Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary President Paige Patterson and the seminary by a plaintiff known as Jane Roe.

On May 3, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit certified two questions for the Supreme Court of Texas:

• Can a person who supplies defamatory material to another for publication be liable for defamation?
• If so, can a defamation plaintiff survive summary judgment by presenting evidence that a defendant was involved in preparing a defamatory publication, without identifying any specific statements made by the defendant?

 “We answer yes to the two certified questions,” Justice Jane N. Bland wrote on the high court’s behalf.

“First, a person who supplies defamatory material to another for publication may be liable if the person intends or knows that the defamatory material will be published.

“Second, a plaintiff may survive summary judgment without identifying the specific statements the defendant made in supplying the defamatory material if the evidence is legally sufficient to support a finding that the defendant was the source of the defamatory content.”

Those two questions involve two items—a press release from Patterson’s lawyer and a letter submitted by Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary donors to the seminary’s board of trustees.

The plaintiff, a former Southwestern Seminary student identified in the case as Jane Roe, claims that Patterson and the seminary failed to protect her from rape by another student and defamed her afterward.

The press release stated that Roe “had given … many contradictory statements.” The circuit court agreed the statement could be construed as defamatory, but asked the state supreme court to weigh in on whether a third party (i.e. Patterson) could be held liable for defamation.

In the instance of the letter to trustees, the role of Patterson to his then-chief of staff, Scott Colter, comes into question. At issue is whether Colter was acting as Patterson’s agent and “for the accomplishment of the objective of the agency.”

The case is now returned to the Fifth Circuit to proceed.

“To prove a claim for defamation for an identified publication, a plaintiff must show that the defendant supplied the defamatory content through direct or circumstantial evidence,” Bland wrote.

“That evidence need not establish verbatim the underlying provision of defamatory content so long as the evidence demonstrates that the defendant was a source of the identified statements alleged to be defamatory.

“We answer yes to the Fifth Circuit’s certified questions and leave the application of the law to the facts of this case to that court.”

(RNS)—In late January, North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein announced $30 million in grants to fund his state’s recovery from Hurricane Helene.

Included in that total was $6 million for two faith-based groups helping rebuild homes after the storm: $3 million for Habitat for Humanity, a housing nonprofit based on Christian principles; and $3 million for Baptists on Mission, an auxiliary of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.

The Baptists plan to use their $3 million to buy building supplies to repair as many as 1,000 homes in the coming year, said Richard Brunson, executive director of Baptists on Mission.

Brunson told Religion News Service accepting the grants made sense.

“More than half the cost of building is labor, but with volunteers providing the labor we can double or even triple the number of families that we can get back in their homes,” Brunson said in accepting the grant. He also thanked Stein for a previous state grant of $5 million for disaster relief.

Violation of the Baptist Faith & Message?

But the Baptists’ decision to accept the grant comes as faith-based groups such as Church World Service, Lutheran Services in America, Catholic Charities and World Relief have been under fire for accepting federal funds for helping immigrants and refugees.

President Donald Trump’s political allies have called the grants “money laundering” and “illegal,” while some of the president’s religious allies accuse charities of selling their faith out to liberals.

The Center for Baptist Leadership, run by former Trump administration staffer William Wolfe, claimed that a ministry center run by Send Relief, a Southern Baptist ministry, violated the denomination’s official statement of faith by accepting government funds in a partnership with World Relief to assist refugees.

“The fact that Send Relief took federal grant funding from the Biden State Department, laundered through World Relief, is shocking,” the Center for Baptist Leadership claimed.

To back the claim, the center pointed to a section of the Baptist Faith & Message that opposed any taxes that would benefit churches—a reference to long-held Baptist opposition to state churches.

“The church should not resort to the civil power to carry on its work,” the Baptist Faith & Message states. “The gospel of Christ contemplates spiritual means alone for the pursuit of its ends.”

The criticism is at odds with last week’s announcement that Paula White-Cain, a close adviser to Trump, would head the White House Faith Office, which promotes partnerships between faith groups and the government.

The first such office began in the George W. Bush administration, which built on federal legislation called Charitable Choice that began to loosen restrictions on government grants to faith groups.

Trump’s recent executive order establishing the faith office said faith groups should be able “to compete on a level playing field for grants, contracts, programs, and other Federal funding opportunities.”

Appealing to Baptist history and polity

Texas pastor Bart Barber, an expert on SBC polity, said Baptists have long opposed direct government funding of churches.

Early American Baptists Roger Williams and Isaac Backus clashed with government leaders over state funding to establish a church in New England. In Virginia, Baptist leader John Leland opposed a “general assessment bill” in the 1780s that would have taxed everyone and sent the money to the church of their choice.

“They thought it would make Baptists, Methodists, everybody happy,” said Barber. Instead, Baptists sank the bill.

“We’re just not in favor of tax money being used to support ministry objectives,” said Barber, past president of the SBC.

Barber felt so strongly about separation of church and state funding, his North Texas church, First Baptist Church in Farmersville, did not apply for a Paycheck Protection Plan loan during the COVID-19 pandemic, which would have been used to pay the salaries of pastors. For Barber, that was out of bounds.

First Baptist did allow the local city to build a parking lot on a property the church owns. The city needed more parking, Barber said, and the church would be able to use the lot on Sundays or for special events.

The difference, said Barber, is that the parking lot was a secular amenity that the church also supported, while the PPP loan represented government funding for a purely religious purpose.

Barber also said many Baptist charities, such as children’s homes or hospitals, have received grants from the government for the work they do for the community. That, he said, is not seen as a violation of the SBC’s statement of faith or of Baptist principles.

What about Baptist institutions?

Al Mohler, longtime president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said until recently, there had been a consensus among leaders of national entities on the issue of government funds.

“When I was elected president, there was an absolute consensus among SBC leaders that SBC institutions should not take government money of any kind,” he said.

That consensus was so strong, SBC seminaries only accepted funds under the G.I. Bill because they paid for the tuition of specific individuals. Mohler said that by the same logic, Baptist colleges and universities eventually began to take government funds, like Pell grants and federal student loans.

His seminary, however, decided not to accept federal student loans, foregoing millions. Nor did the seminary take out a PPP loan.

“I believe it’s a simple principle of maintaining our independence from the government and our ability to be absolutely free from government interference,” he said. Other seminaries, he added, have made their peace with taking the loans.

When it comes to other charitable work, such as health care or disaster relief, government funding and oversight are difficult to avoid, but Mohler said such payments don’t compare to theological education or pastors’ salaries.

He also believes the Baptist Faith & Message assumes a strict line between the church and the government.

“It definitely wants the church to be free from the interference of the state and Southern Baptist institutions, to follow the very same … principles,” he said. “I have colleagues who hold different positions, but, you know, they’re the ones who moved.”

The Center for Baptist Leadership did not respond to a question of whether it objects to Baptists accepting funding like PPP loans.

The SBC Executive Committee, which handles day-to-day operations of the denomination, did not respond to a question of whether accepting government grants violated the Baptist Faith & Message.

The Executive Committee, like a number of SBC state conventions, institutions and churches, did take a PPP loan.

“Because of our partnership with more than 47,000 churches, Southern Baptists’ generosity and gifts from thousands of private donors, the North American Mission Board and Send Relief are not dependent on government funding,” a spokesman for the SBC’s North American Mission Board told RNS.

“There are times, in relief settings, when we collaborate with other nongovernmental organizations that have received government grants. Sometimes, those organizations provide food, funding or other material goods that we utilize for our response. We would never accept any assistance that would require us to compromise our faith and ministry in any way.”

In North Carolina, Brunson said Southern Baptists will help rebuild after disasters whether the government provides funding or not. If Baptists on Mission can get a family back in their home by doing what he called “essential rapid repairs” for about $20,000 while using volunteer labor, he said, “as far as I am concerned, God is providing these funds.”

DALLAS (BP)—The National Hispanic Baptist Network has elevated its executive director, Bruno Molina, from a part-time role to a new full-time role to oversee the organization’s diverse offering of support to Hispanic churches and leaders across the Southern Baptist Convention.

“I’m thrilled that, after two years of serving in this role on a part-time volunteer basis, I can focus full-time on reaching the Hispanic community and through them realizing our vision ‘that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God (1 Kings 8:60),’” Molina said.

Jesse Rincones, chairman of the network’s board of directors, said he is glad the network now has Molina serving as executive director on a full-time basis.

“He not only had the vision of what [the National Hispanic Baptist Network] can and will become, but his life-long service to Hispanic Baptists will serve him well as he serves Hispanic Baptists all across the United States,” said Rincones, who also is the executive director of the Convención Bautista Hispana de Texas and the pastor of Alliance Church in Lubbock.

“The work of the National Hispanic Baptist Network is needed now more than ever. The 3,400 Hispanic churches in the SBC need a network like this at the national level. It’s exciting to see how God is already working to bring unity, collaboration, and culturally contextualized resources and experiences that is so needed in our churches,” Rincones said.

Molina added: “I’m grateful to God for a grant from the Lilly Foundation, in collaboration with the Hispanic Baptist Convention of Texas, that has made my full-time service possible, along with our communications coordinator, David Inestroza, Hispanic consultant for the Alabama Baptist Convention.”

Molina will oversee the network’s daily operations. This includes its 11 current ministry teams: prayer, evangelism, discipleship, missions mobilization, emerging leaders, revitalization, finance, education, women’s ministry, pastoral care and church planting.

He served bivocationally with the Navigators ministry, and for the last 16 years Molina has been the language and interfaith evangelism associate for the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention.

In addition to being a former pastor, church planter and human resources manager, he is an adjunct professor of apologetics, theology and world religions at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

He also teaches at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, taught at Louisiana Baptist University, the Baptist Seminary in Havana, Cuba, and Baptist Seminary in Nogales, Mexico.

Molina earned his bachelor’s degree from New York University in International Relations and Spanish, and both his Master of Arts in Theology and Ph.D. in World Christian Studies from Southwestern Seminary.

George Liele, a former slave, not only was the first ordained African American Baptist preacher in America, but also was the world’s first Baptist missionary.

In 1750, shortly after the end of the Great Awakening in America’s British-controlled colonies, Virginia Loyalist Henry Sharp’s slave, Nancy, gave birth to George, a son who took his slave father’s name, Liele.

Baby George became one of Virginia’s 101,000 African slaves, a result of the 1705 Virginia General Assembly Declaration.

Slaves were “real estate” to their Virginia owners, and they suffered a life of cruelty and punishment—whipping, branding, severing ears, maiming and hanging. If a slave’s “correction” caused death, the master was declared “free of all punishment … as if such accident never happened.”

America’s African slave trade proved prosperous during the 1730s and 1740s, a time of spiritual revival encouraged by ministers like Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, David Brainard and others.

The religious movement awakened the colonists’ declining lukewarm faith, bringing them face to face with a living, personal Christ and triggering an avalanche of Baptist growth.

Sometime before 1770, Henry Sharp moved George with him to St. George’s Parish (later Burke County) in Georgia. In 1735, the British prohibited black slavery there, but on Jan. 1, 1750, the House of Commons decided to permit slavery.

In fewer than 30 years, Georgia’s slave population grew from 500 slaves to 18,000. The slaves’ hard work made the Lowcountry’s white plantation owners wealthy.

Answered God’s call

In Georgia, Sharp became a deacon in the Buckhead Creek Baptist Church, a white congregation led by Pastor Matthew Moore, who encouraged George to attend worship services.

During one Sunday service in 1773, God touched the 23-year-old’s heart, calling him to a life of love and ministry to the other slaves on Master Sharp’s plantation. George enthusiastically gave his life to Jesus and answered his call to Christ’s ministry.

Moore baptized George, accepting him into the church. Sharp’s plantation became George’s new mission field. He taught the slaves to sing hymns, share the Bible and explain the gospel’s saving message.

Impressed by George’s innate ministry skills, Buckhead Creek Baptist Church licensed him to preach, and Henry Sharp granted him freedom from slavery.

George soon became a minister and preacher to slaves in Silver Bluff, S.C., south of Augusta, Ga., forming a 30-member congregation of new African American believers. In December 1773, Liele organized the First African Baptist Church in Savannah, Ga., the oldest Black church in North America.

Four of his converts—Andrew Bryan, Hannah Bryan, Kate Hogg and Hagar Simpson—formed the church’s early membership. When Liele was ordained, he became the first ordained African American Baptist preacher in America.

A few years earlier, on March 22, 1765, Britain passed the Stamp Act, imposing unfair taxes on angry colonists. When British troops landed in Boston to enforce the act, their actions resulted in the 1770 Boston Massacre, a deadly incident that triggered America’s rebellion against Britain.

Five years later, on April 19, 1775, the first shots of the Revolutionary War were fired at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts. The British freed tens of thousands of Black slaves who agreed to fight against the colonists.

Journey to Jamaica

George’s former owner, Henry Sharp, fought with the British, dying of battle-sustained injuries in 1783. Fortunately, Sharp had given Liele his manumission papers, documentation that saved Liele from long-term imprisonment when Sharp’s children tried to re-enslave him.

Moses Kirkland, a British colonel, helped him after his release from prison. A grateful Liele repaid Kirkland by working for him as an indentured servant. When Kirkland escaped to Jamaica in 1782-1783, George, his wife Hannah and their four children accompanied him.

Kirkland and the Liele family landed in Kingston, Jamaica, where George discovered a ripe mission field of hundreds of thousands of African slaves working the sugar cane plantations. The slaves suffered with cruel owners, back-breaking work and little food. Thousands were starving to death.

George planted a church, baptizing hundreds of professing converts in a nearby river every three months. He never accepted payment, supporting his family through farming and hauling goods by wagon.

For “preaching sedition” and “agitating the slaves,” George frequently was imprisoned by Jamaican authorities, once for three years.

By the end of his life, George Liele, referred to as “the Negro slavery’s prophet of deliverance,” helped found three Baptist churches: First Bryan Baptist Church and First African Baptist Church in Savannah, Ga., and the first Negro Baptist Church in Jamaica. He also established schools to educate Jamaica’s slaves.

Liele encouraged and taught his new converts to preach the gospel to the world.

Author David Shannon wrote: “The Christianity practiced by Liele was not limited to one nation, colony, or ethnic group, but was a faith found and spread through interaction with colonists and national leaders in the Americas and England.

“In turn, this broad vision of Christianity shaped and spread a variety of Christian experience that became widespread and influential in black, white and integrated congregations in Georgia, South Carolina, Jamaica, Nova Scotia, Sierra Leone and beyond.”

Liele died in 1828 in Kingston, Jamaica, and is buried there in an unmarked grave.

Baptist missionary William Carey often has been called “the father of the modern missionary movement.”

But George Liele left America to preach Christ in Jamaica a decade before Carey departed from England to preach in India, earning the title of “the world’s first Baptist missionary.”

FORT WORTH (BP)—The loss of a rule that prevented officials from entering churches to arrest immigrants accused of being in the United States illegally has hurt the church’s witness, the National Hispanic Baptist Network said Jan. 29 in calling for the rule’s reinstatement.

The network, a group representing more than 3,300 Southern Baptist churches, released its statement in Spanish and English nine days after the Department of Homeland Security overturned a 14-year-old rule that had prevented such arrests at and near sensitive locations including churches and schools.

Attendance at Hispanic congregations already has declined since Homeland Security revoked the protections Jan. 20, National Hispanic Baptist Network Executive Director Bruno Molina said.

“People are rightly concerned. They think they’re going to get arrested at church,” Molina told Baptist Press. “That’s why we’re asking DHS to revoke the revocation, as it were, because people should be allowed—even if they are considered criminals—to seek spiritual guidance.

“And there’s no reason why, if they are looking to arrest somebody, they can’t wait until they exit the Bible study or church service and arrest them at least a block from the church location.”

Allow churches to fulfill ‘God-given mission’

A statement posted on the network’s website says the National Hispanic Baptist Network recognizes a need for community safety, proclaims a biblical authority of law enforcement and concurrently embraces the religious liberty Southern Baptists also extol.

“We recognize that, on the one hand, government ‘does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil (Romans 13:4).’ On the other hand, we also recognize that God is ‘not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9),’” the statement reads.

“Consequently, it grieves us deeply that our churches are no longer protected and that anyone would be denied their opportunity to receive spiritual guidance in our churches for fear of being arrested. We respectfully and strongly exhort DHS to reinstate the ‘Sensitive Locations Protections’ for churches so that we can fulfill our God-given mission to minister to the least of these and the stranger among us.”

‘Fix the system’ without hindering the gospel

Brent Leatherwood, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, has said that while the immigration system needs revisions, the revocation of the sensitive locations protections causes problems that are best avoided.

“No church that I’m aware of harbors criminal actors, whether they’re here legally or illegally, and no church leader wants that,” Leatherwood told Baptist Press shortly after DHS revoked the protections.

“President Trump is right to fix our broken immigration system—something we’ve long called for—but it must be done so without turning churches into wards of the state or expecting pastors to ask for papers of people coming through their doors.

“The unintended impact of this change will be that many law-abiding immigrants will be fearful to attend our churches, and our central mission of gospel proclamation and biblical formation will be inhibited.”

Leatherwood also offered general remarks on a better way to achieve intended goals.

“The best way to go about this is a comprehensive approach that rids our country of dangerous illegal criminals, sets up strong protections at our borders and welcomes those who are fleeing persecution,” Leatherwood said.

“Not only can this be done in a way that respects religious liberty, it is something that would be strongly supported by our churches.”

Leatherwood described the revocation of sensitive locations protections as “the type of move that leads to more questions and confusion than anything.”

‘It’s a kingdom issue’

Molina appreciates Southern Baptists are hearing the concerns that more adversely impact Hispanic churches.

“We’re all Southern Baptists,” he said. “I think this is something that needs to be brought to the forefront so that, first of all, it’s addressed because it’s a kingdom issue—our ability to get the gospel out—and also so that Hispanic Southern Baptists particularly who are disproportionately impacted by this know that the denomination does have their back.”

Molina described the Homeland Security revocation and the applicable protocol as very fluid, with some national news reports indicating law enforcement officers are looking only for individuals with outstanding warrants for criminal charges, and others indicating they simply are looking for those suspected of being in the country illegally.

Documented immigrants “are also anxious,” Molina said, “because you see the reports on TV, on both English and Spanish networks, where the people who are detained are sometimes even citizens or have legal status, but they get kind of caught up in the dragnet—they ask for their papers and things of this nature—and intimidated, and then they’re let go.

“But it has also raised the level of anxiety among legal immigrants.”

Southern Baptist messengers to at least six annual meetings have adopted resolutions on immigration, most recently the 2023 resolution “On Wisely Engaging Immigration.”

While no resolution has necessarily broached the subject of arrests during worship, a clause in the latest resolution states that messengers “commend the good work of Southern Baptists among immigrants and refugees and encourage pastors and their congregations to continue sharing the gospel and providing Christlike care for the countless men, women, and children in harm’s way.”