Incoming SBC President Ed Litton (left) pauses for selfie with outgoing SBC President J.D. Greear, who had just passed off the gavel to Litton. Photo by Robin Jackson

The convention’s 15,726 messengers – the most since 1995 – seemed to follow Greear’s lead, taking action to protect victims and hold leaders accountable even when it meant overturning the decisions of convention committees – especially the Executive Committee.

Messengers called for creation of a task force, appointed by the new SBC president, to oversee an independent review of the Executive Committee over allegations of mishandling reports of sexual abuse. They overwhelmingly defeated a revision of the SBC Business and Financial Plan proposed by the EC.

Ed Litton, pastor of Redemption Church in Saraland, Ala., was elected SBC president in a runoff with a 52 percent majority over Georgia pastor Mike Stone, immediate past chairman of the SBC Executive Committee and a steering council member for the Conservative Baptist Network (CBN), a group alleging leftward drift in the convention. Litton has suggested the CBN is unnecessary because Southern Baptists are unwaveringly conservative.

Albert Mohler (left) and Ed Litton (right) brought a moment of unity when the two publicly affirmed one another during Mohler’s Southern Baptist Theological Seminary report. Photos by Abbey Sprinkle and Robin Jackson

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Albert Mohler and Northwest Baptist Convention executive director Randy Adams also were nominated for president but failed to make the two-person runoff.

Southern Baptists “are a family, and at times we may seem dysfunctional,” Litton told reporters after his election. “But we love each other.”

Messengers presented 32 motions from the convention floor, the most since 2010.

While at times tense, the debate was punctuated with moments of unity. A day after the presidential election, Litton took a floor microphone as a messenger to commend Mohler as a “statesman” and “gift of God” to Southern Baptists during Mohler’s Southern Baptist Theological Seminary report. Mohler responded by congratulating Litton publicly on his victory.

Committees face resistance

The Executive Committee (an 86-member body charged with acting on the SBC’s behalf between annual meetings) drew opposition at multiple junctures, with messengers claiming the EC had too much authority and needed to be held accountable.

Tennessee pastor Grant Gaines moved that the new SBC president appoint a task force to oversee a previously announced investigation into alleged EC mishandling of sexual abuse claims. Initially, the motion was referred to the EC by the Committee on Order of Business, but messengers overturned the ruling by a two-thirds vote and overwhelmingly adopted the motion Wednesday (June 16).

The EC had voted June 14 not even to consider a similar proposal by one of its own members, Jared Wellman of Texas.

EC President Ronnie Floyd said in a statement following the convention’s action, “Today’s decision, in whose outcome we are confident, will have the ultimate blessing of removing all doubt in the minds of our community of Southern Baptists allowing us to chart a more confident future, together.”

Messengers line up to speak to a motion. Photo by Karen McCutcheon

The EC encountered an overwhelming defeat in a proposed revision to the SBC’s Business and Financial Plan. EC officer Robyn Hari said the proposal sought to strike a balance between accountability and autonomy of the SBC entities. But messenger Vance Pitman of Nevada called the proposal “an unprecedented expansion of the Executive Committee powers.” The recommendation failed on a raised-hand vote.

The convention approved Vision 2025, a five-year plan setting a series of goals for Great Commission advancement. Messengers added to the EC’s five proposed Vision 2025 goals on missions, evangelism and CP giving a sixth stating the convention’s intent to eliminate all incidents of racism and sexual abuse. They also amended a goal placing emphasis on reaching teenagers to those under age 18.

Another EC recommendation rejected by messengers was a proposed revision of Lifeway Christian Resources’ Mission and Ministry Statement. The proposal, initiated at the request of Lifeway trustees, was defeated on a ballot vote after messenger Michael Schultz of Kentucky spoke against its adoption due to a proposed deletion of Lifeway’s responsibility to assist churches with “homeschool ministries.”

The EC also lost an officer when Tom Tucker, a vocational evangelist from South Carolina, was not given a second term by messengers, who voted against an attempt to overturn the Committee on Nominations, which had declined to renominate him. Tucker, a member of the CBN steering council, had been reelected as vice chairman June 14 by the EC, which acted despite the knowledge that while eligible to serve, his term was expiring and he was not among nominees to the EC for the coming year, and that he could only fulfill the post if messengers amended the 2021 Committee on Nominations report to include Tucker among nominees.

Tucker’s term was originally set to expire in 2020, but was extended a year by the cancellation of the 2020 SBC Annual Meeting because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Tucker was then elected EC vice chairman in June 2020.

Messengers vote by raised ballot during a business session of the 2021 SBC Annual Meeting. Photo by Eric Brown

Messengers accepted EC proposals granting the second of two required approvals to an SBC constitutional amendment listing racism and mishandling sex abuse as grounds for disfellowshipping a church.

The EC was not the only committee to have a recommendation overturned by messengers. The Resolutions Committee declined to bring to the floor a resolution submitted by Oklahoma messenger Bill Ascol that called for abolishing abortion, but messengers voted by a two-thirds majority to consider it. Then they adopted the resolution after a one-word amendment to soften its initial rejection of any “incremental approach to ending abortion.”

Diversity

The SBC constitutional amendment against racism was among several ways messengers attempted to catalyze ethnic diversity in the convention.

Juan Sanchez, pastor of High Pointe Baptist Church in Austin, Texas, became the first Hispanic elected convention preacher. He will deliver the convention sermon next year in Anaheim, Calif. Messengers also elected a Hispanic first vice president, Ramón Medina, lead pastor of the Spanish ministry at Champion Forest Baptist Church in Houston. Medina was elected in a runoff over another Hispanic nominated for the post, Georgia pastor Javier Chavez.

Southern Baptists tapped to serve on committees likewise were diverse. A majority (51 percent) of Greear’s presidential appointments to committees were non-Anglo, as were 30 percent of those elected to serve on boards and committees.

In his final presidential address, Greear drew a standing ovation when he addressed racial tension within the SBC and told “people of color”: “We need you.”

Critical race theory (CRT) – the subject of a 2019 SBC resolution that has sparked controversy over the past two years – drew several mentions during the convention, including messenger motions and resolution submissions calling for its denunciation as well as questions to SBC presidents during their reports. Yet no official convention action addressed CRT by name.

Instead, messengers adopted a broad resolution regarding race and racial reconciliation. The resolution repudiated “any theory or worldview that denies that racism, oppression, or discrimination is rooted, ultimately, in anything other than sin.” It also reaffirmed a resolution regarding racial reconciliation on the SBC’s 150th anniversary in 1995 in which messengers apologized to African Americans for “condoning and/or perpetuating individual and systemic racism.”

Other resolutions adopted by messengers covered, among other topics, the Equality Act, the Hyde Amendment and permanent disqualification from the pastorate of those who have committed sexual abuse.

In other business:

Messengers elected Lee Brand Jr., a Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary administrator, as first vice president over California pastor Anthony Dockery. Medina was elected second vice president in a runoff over Sanchez. Brand and Sanchez are members of the CBN’s steering council. Missouri Baptist Convention executive director John Yeats was reelected recording secretary for the 24th time over Virginia pastor Adam Blosser.
Don Currence, administrative pastor at First Baptist Church in Ozark, Mo., was reelected registration secretary by acclamation. He was nominated by Kathy Litton, wife of Ed Litton, who was elected registration secretary over Currence in 2019 but stepped down when her husband’s candidacy for SBC president was announced.
Sixty-four new International Mission Board missionaries were appointed June 14 in a Sending Celebration. They will join 3,631 IMB missionaries already on the field around the world. The vast majority of the new missionaries stood behind a screen during the service, as they could not be identified due to security concerns in their locations of service.
The North American Mission Board reported that Southern Baptists have planted more than 8,200 churches in the past decade. They comprise nearly 17 percent of all Southern Baptist churches and represent nearly 19 percent of all baptisms reported in the SBC.
Florida pastor Willy Rice preached the convention sermon, urging Southern Baptists to avoid factions and build their testimony on the Gospel.

Next year’s SBC Annual Meeting is slated for June 14-15, 2022, in Anaheim, Calif.

NASHVILLE (BP) – Florida pastor Willy Rice gave Southern Baptists somewhat of an investment pitch Wednesday (June 16). Go for gold, silver and precious jewels, he said, not the wood, hay and straw that has its short-term advantages but little benefit in terms of longevity.

Rice, senior pastor of Calvary Church in Clearwater, Fla., delivered the convention sermon for the 2021 SBC Annual Meeting based on 1 Corinthians 3:3-17. The passage, he explained, gives a clear picture of division in the early church that grew out of competing allegiances to leadership. Such misplaced devotion, he pointed out, can be observed today.

While the Corinthian church also dealt with challenges over doctrinal confusion and moral compromise, Rice noted there was a greater internal threat. Four factions had emerged of those declaring their devotion to Paul, Apollos, Peter and the Lord Himself. Rice added that Southern Baptists could take note of those divisions in order to heal the current rift in the Convention.

One of those is being sure of your leader’s allegiance.

“There is no evidence of the individuals [in this passage] sowing division,” said Rice. “But clearly, there were those in the Corinthian fellowship using unhelpful labels and promoting division.”

In short, Rice explained, a kind of early church “celebrity culture” had appeared. In the letter to the Corinthian church, Paul was moving quickly to condemn it.

“We have seen the product of a celebrity culture, where pastors and leaders become the star of the show, photobombing Jesus at every turn,” Rice preached. “What does it say about us when we have more green rooms than prayer rooms?”

While attending the annual meeting is good in its own right, Rice encouraged messengers in remembering the real point of their ministry.

“Hell does not quake when the SBC passes a resolution and Heaven does not rejoice when we raise our ballots in the air,” he said. “… The real work of Southern Baptists is out there, not in here.”

That “real work,” he said, shows itself in the student pastor setting out chairs for a Bible study. It appears in volunteers blowing up balloons for Vacation Bible School. It manifests in a couple arriving in a faraway land, ready to present the Gospel to an unreached people group.

“What happens in here (the annual meeting) only matters to the extent that it sustains and provides for what happens out there,” Rice said.

The Gospel – pure and unadulterated – is the gold, silver and precious stones upon which Christians are to build their testimony, Rice maintained. The eventual fire of judgement reveals our witness and ministry for what it really is.

“Whenever we substitute the message of truth for worldly ideologies or flawed philosophies, we trade precious gold and precious jewels for wood, hay and straw,” he said.

Rice pointed to the discussion over critical race theory, which he said “offers a flawed diagnosis, hopeless prognosis and writes a powerless prescription rooted in materialistic humanism and political power. … It cannot cure the deepest ills in the human heart.

“Every idea,” he continued, “every teaching must be tested against the message of Scripture, and we must always anchor ourselves to those truths or we will drift where we do not want to go. ”

While Rice said topics like CRT and Marxism are real subjects that cannot be overlooked, he said neither can the fact that a lot of Christians on social media just act like jerks.

“If you seek to contend for the truth but don’t do so in the fullness the Holy Spirit, has it occurred to you that you’re doing more damage to the truth than your most virulent adversary?” he asked, adding that the fruit of the spirit needs to be modeled not only for unbelievers, but for brothers and sisters in Christ with whom we simply hold a disagreement.

At the end of the day, he said, a Gospel witness is tarnished.

“I do not want to compromise the truth, but neither do I want to be known as the church of angry old men with rocks in their hands,” Rice said.

Regarding the subject of justice, he continued on where the topic has its roots.

“Justice is not an idea born in the halls of Ivy League schools or the hearts of atheistic philosophers,” Rice preached. “It’s born in the heart of God, who is just. We wouldn’t even know what justice is if it weren’t from God. It comes from God and His word and Jesus told us to pursue it.”

He then pointed to Southern Baptists’ ongoing process of addressing racial reconciliation.

“We must be for biblical justice. … We should value the voices of those who have suffered injustice, including many of our Black brothers and sisters,” Rice said. “It is beyond the pale of comprehension that a Christian body against an all-too-familiar backdrop of a not-too-distant history would engage in sideshow debates that shut down, shut out and shut up our own brothers and sisters in the faith.”

That principle also applies to valuing women in ministry.

“We did not build one of the largest missionary forces in the history of Christendom by telling Lottie Moon to go home,” Rice said. “Most of our daughters, sisters and mothers only desire to obey the demand of the risen Christ and submit to every word of His authority. Yet, some grow disheartened when shepherds in the church become more agitated over peripheral debates than they are over leaders who have betrayed their sacred duty to care for the flock.”

In closing, Rice encouraged Southern Baptists to dwell on what’s at stake in their interactions and witness, saying, “Only an eternal perspective grants us both wisdom and courage to face the challenges of this present moment.

“We know eternity is coming, and with it both a day of reward and ruin. When the fire comes, we’ll see the gold, silver and precious stones for what they are.”

Rice further cautioned others against “tak[ing] a careless sledgehammer to the house of God just to make a name for yourself. Eternity is coming, and God is watching.”

Over recent days, he admitted, his heart had been broken for how many had compromised their witness.

“I thought, ‘We’re better than this.’ But then again, maybe we’re not,” Rice said. “We may not be better than this, but Jesus is.”

It comes back to the basics of our testimony and faith, he added.

“The foundation Jesus sets will endure,” Rice testified. “And because that foundation endures, so will we. Because it will continue to hold, we will continue to work.”

NASHVILLE (BP) – The Send Conference en Español training sessions Monday morning (June 14) at the Music City Center preceding the 2021 SBC Annual Meeting attracted dozens of Hispanics to each of the workshops designed to equip, enrich and encourage them in missions.

Each of the workshops was specifically designed in Spanish to equip each member of the family to take the Gospel to their city, community and nation while developing disciples that would do the same.

Oscar Tortolero, Hispanic mobilizer for the International Mission Board (IMB), led a workshop for pastors, wives and lay leaders on mobilizing the church for international missions. South Asia missionary Maria* told pastors that more Hispanics are needed in the field and are essential to mission work.

She explained that Hispanics’ ability to blend into the local community because of how they look is incredibly useful to take the Gospel further, even in places where evangelizing can result in jail time.

At the workshop “¿Que Significa Vivir Enviada?” led by Hispanic Council member and author Clara Molina, women learned what a woman on mission looks like and the values she embodies.

“You have to recognize that God is the one who sends you, God decides where you’re going, how long you’re going for and when you’re coming back and you rejoice in the results of the work He does through you,” Molina said.

Ramon Osorio, the North American Mission Board’s (NAMB) director of ethnic church planting, laid out all the discipleship resources available for ministering effectively to immigrants.

During the 45-minute workshop, at which chairs were quickly scarce, Osorio went over the process of gathering demographic information on immigrant populations, determining the spiritual health of a community and the predominant psychographics affecting immigrants in America.

“Understanding these factors is essential to properly engaging and ministering to immigrants in your area,” he said. Some of the most important psychographics influencing immigrant behavior in the United States includes a sense of insecurity and a lack of empowerment in all areas of life.

The new social media platform Equipa by Lifeway was introduced to a group of more than a dozen Hispanic pastors during one of two Lifeway workshops. Ariel Irizarry, leader and developer of Lifeway’s Equipa, helped attendants sign up for the platform and gave them a tour of its discipleship capabilities.

“Equipa is designed for all tech levels, all Spanish language variations and different spiritual maturity levels,” said Irizarry.

Other workshop sessions zeroed in on ministry to fathers, leaders developing other leaders, improving Sunday worship service, church planting and Christ-centered discipleship.

Those who attended the workshop sessions commented afterwards the sessions were useful, and they soon hoped to implement their new knowledge in their local contexts.

NASHVILLE (BP) — What happens to a messenger’s ballot after it’s placed in an usher’s bucket? Photographer Eric Brown — with approval from SBC Registration Secretary Don Currence — captured moments along the journey of the ballots from the first round of the June 15 SBC presidential election as they made their way from the floor to the SBC Tellers’ counting room.