My Thoughts from the SBC Annual Meeting 2024

June 18, 2024

Dear Church Family,

Every year the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention come together for our Annual Meeting. This year it was held in Indianapolis. After dropping the older kids off with grandparents in nearby Louisville, Kayla, Betty, and I attended the meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday, June 11-12.

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) Annual Meeting is essentially a gigantic business meeting conducted by the churches of the SBC. The SBC is a convention of churches who closely identify with the "Baptist Faith and Message 2000" (BFM2000). They come together in friendly cooperation with one another for the sake of sending missionaries and training people for gospel ministry. This means that the SBC is directed by the churches rather than the churches being directed by the SBC. This is why churches send "Messengers" from their church every year to the SBC Annual Meeting to discuss the business of the convention. With all of that in mind, I would like to give you some of my take-aways from this year's meeting:

1. Southern Baptists love God’s Word:

Southern Baptists love God's Word and are committed to obeying it. We may not always agree on every point, but there are many very clear points of scripture that we do agree on. One of those points is God's design for the office of pastor in the church.

Southern Baptists desire fidelity to God’s design for the office of pastor. We do not always agree on the best way to handle this issue (see my point about the "Law" amendment below), but we do have a large consensus on what scripture actually says. Scripture teaches that the office of pastor is reserved for biblically qualified men (1 Timothy 2:12, 3:1-7), which is also affirmed by the BFM2000: "While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor/elder/overseer is limited to men as qualified by Scripture."

Unfortunately, there are a number of churches in the SBC which do not subscribe to this teaching. While we believe that every church has the right and responsibility to determine their own beliefs and practices, the SBC does not have a responsibility to affirm churches with errant and unbiblical doctrines that directly disagree with the BFM2000. That is why the churches of the SBC, after all due process and deliberation, overwhelmingly voted this year to deem First Baptist Church Alexandria, VA, which unapologetically employs female pastors, as no longer being in friendly cooperation with the SBC. This is the second year in a row that the SBC churches have voted to affirm God's design for the office of pastor, which shows that Southern Baptists still love God's Word and desire to be faithful to it. 

1. Southern Baptists Love Reaching the Lost:

This year we commissioned 83 missionaries through the International Mission Board (IMB)! The IMB is the SBC's international missionary entity, and the commissioning service is always everyone's favorite part of the Annual Meeting. This is what our cooperation is all about… sending people to reach the lost with the gospel. And what was an added point of encouragement and prayer is that most of the missionaries we commissioned are going to countries where sharing the gospel is illegal. Therefore, most of their identities could not even be shared. Please be praying for our missionaries!

But international missions is not all that Southern Baptists care about. We also celebrated all that God is doing through the North American Mission Board (NAMB). NAMB is the SBC's domestic mission entity, which is tasked with church planting, revitalization, and evangelism. We know there are lost people here in North America, and there is a great work that needs to be done here as well. I am thankful for church planting and evangelism that is being equipped by NAMB, but I'm also very excited about the church revitalization efforts that I am seeing. Here in our own state, NAMB has partnered with the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention (SBTC) to produce a ministry to equip pastors and leaders of established churches called "Regenesis." This is essentially a cohort for church leaders to learn from each other and to build and encourage healthy churches that are focused on reaching the lost in their communities. God's church is God's design for reaching the lost. So, I am excited to continue learning better ways for us to fulfill that role!

1. Southern Baptists Love Training People for the Ministry:

One of the first things Southern Baptists did after forming our convention was to build institutions to train people for missions and young men for pastoral ministry. Now there are 6 seminaries belonging to the SBC, and every year the president of each seminary gives a report of their institution.

Dr. Albert Mohler is the president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (my alma mater and the first SBC seminary). He made a point that of the seminaries in America that are still faithful to God’s Word and actually growing, the SBC’s 6 seminaries are all included. This means that God is blessing our institutions, and I believe it is because of their faithfulness to rightly dispense the teaching of God's Word in all 6 seminaries. This is an amazing reality considering the current state of higher education in our country, and we need to thank the Lord that we are able to train more people than ever for gospel ministry!

1. Southern Baptists Love the Younger Generation:

Dr. Mohler made another point during his seminary report. He said that we should be thankful because as a denomination, we actually have young people. This is always abundantly clear when you attend the SBC Annual Meeting. The presence of young families with young children is delightfully evident. With some hundreds of children (and likely over a thousand by my estimation) walking around with their families and playing in the open spaces, it is clear that we are a collaboration of churches that love children and want to see young people know and love the Lord.

There were strollers everywhere! We had our four-month-old, Betty, with us and, instead of getting looks of annoyance, we received so many smiles, compliments, and encouragements from joy-filled people who loved to see yet another family with a little one who was being raised in the fear and admonition of the Lord. In fact, during the proceedings, a lost child was found and we stopped our business to announced that the child had been found and was safe. The parents and child were quickly reunited. But just a few hours before that, Kayla and I had remarked to each other that if you were ever to lose your child somewhere, the SBC Annual Meeting would be the last place you would worry about their safety. Southern Baptists love the little children and want them to know the Lord. And that gives me about as much joy as anything else that happened at the meeting.

1. But Southern Baptists Have Work to Do:

While Southern Baptists are committed to God's Word and to cooperating with one another to send missionaries, we do have points of disagreement. One area that many godly and well-meaning people disagree on is how we should handle the issue of SBC churches who have female pastors. Last year a pastor named Mike Law (hence the name “Law” amendment) made a motion to add a 6th qualification to the SBC constitution, which would have clarified that the Convention will only deem a church to be in friendly cooperation if it "affirms, appoints, or employed only men as any kind of pastor or elder as qualified by Scripture". This was overwhelmingly affirmed last year, but it requires two consecutive years of at least 2/3 affirmative vote to amend the SBC constitution. This year I again voted for this amendment because I believe churches are not taking this issue as seriously as we ought to as a clear biblical matter, Baptist distinctive, and culturally relevant theological issue of our time.

Unfortunately, the "Law" amendment only received 61.45% of the vote falling short of the 2/3 majority it needed to pass. Since the roles of men and women is such a culturally relevant issue, I do not believe this conversation is over. Many argue that this amendment is redundant because we already affirm that the office of pastor is reserved for biblically qualified men in the BFM2000, and that churches already must closely identify with the BFM2000 to be in friendly cooperation. While this is true, it seems that there are some who are hesitant to hold churches accountable to the BFM2000. There are estimated to be around 1,800 churches who employ female pastors in the SBC. I do not want to go on a headhunt for these churches, but I do wonder why these churches want to be called Southern Baptist churches when they do not actually adhere to Southern Baptist doctrine? And while there may be some nuanced issues in the BFM2000 that allow for some disagreements, do we really think that this very clear biblical teaching and Baptist distinctive is nuanced and unclear?

I think the answers to these questions are obvious, but I also think the failure of the "Law" amendment is not the end of the world. My expectation, though, is for the Credentials Committee (which is responsible for evaluating whether a church is in friendly cooperation) to continue to do its due diligence to keep churches accountable to what we say we believe. It is important that sister churches hold each other accountable to truth, just as it is important for brothers and sisters to hold each other accountable to truth. That said, we as individuals and as a church must first look to take the log out of our own eyes before we help others with their speck. This leads me to my last point.

1. We Are Going Do What God Has Called Us to Do:

At Second Baptist Church Angleton (SBCA), we are Southern Baptists because we too love God's Word. So, we are going to continue to preach and obey God’s Word. True faith means that we are not merely hearers of God's Word, but also doers. We want the Bible to inform everything we think and everything we do. And so, we are constantly asking God to show us from scripture how we can be more faithful to Him in how we do Sunday morning worship, how we develop leaders, how we exercise hospitality, how our committees and teams function, how we make disciples, etc. Regardless of what it is, we want to make sure God is the one directing us, and we know that His Word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.

That is why we are going to hold to God’s clear instructions on the Church and its officers, Pastors and Deacons. In our last business meeting we read some proposed changes to our church bylaws regarding several things including Section C- Duties of the Pastors, Ministry Staff, and Deacons. In that section, it simply reiterates the biblical qualifications for the office of pastor and our expectations of pastoral roles here at SBCA. It also gives guidance on ways both men and women can serve as non-pastor ministry staff, such as ministry directors and coordinators. This is our attempt at ensuring that we at SBCA are being as clear and consistent about this issue as we can be. If you as a member have any questions about this proposed amendment or have not yet seen it, please reach out to me at brian@yoursecondfamily.org.

Finally, we are going to invest the gospel in the younger generation and focus on relational discipleship. The best things about the SBC are the encouragement you receive from relationships with godly people who are focused on the gospel and seeing the younger generation growing up right in front of you. That is what we want even more of at SBCA. We have an amazing church with wonderful godly people. And we actually love one another… for real life! And now more than ever we are going to press on to capitalize on these relationships through D-Groups to intentionally help one another grow in our personal walks with Christ. And on top of that, we are going to take what we have been given and make sure to invest it in the lives of the younger generation. For the sake of relational discipleship and gospel investment in the younger generation we are going to invest in ministry space, ministry programming, and ministry leadership, because we know from God's Word that He wants us to make disciples and He wants us to proclaim His truth to our children.

Conclusion:

The SBC does not dictate to the churches who we are able to be. Instead, the SBC is a cooperation of like-minded churches. That simply means that we will always choose God's Word and His calling on us as a church above SBC directives. But my hope and prayer is that SBC directives will continue to line up with God's Word and His calling for our church. So, even though it is not a perfect organization, as long as the churches of the SBC continue to uphold God's truth and cooperate for gospel missions, then we will cooperate with them to see God glorified and sinners saved. Please continue to pray for and support both the Southern Baptist Convention and Second Baptist Church Angleton. 

Sincerely,

Pastor Brian Van Doren