How does the SBC president accomplish that?
Well, I mean, I don’t know, except if there’s a bully pulpit associated with it. And so, you know formally or officially not much but informally if I get asked that question, that’s going to be my answer—the fear of God, to just highlight it and call attention to it.
Maybe appoint a Resolutions Committee that would take a resolution on that or something. I don’t know, but just to get the idea in front of people again, and then I think also the Law of God, you know, we’ve lost any sense of that. I think out of our emphasis on grace and concerns to not be legalists, any sense of God’s Law has been lost. The God who gave us the Gospel gave us the Law and God loves his Law as much as he loves His Gospel. The Law was never designed to save anybody, and it doesn’t save any sin.
The Gospel saves us from sin, but the Law is what shows us our need to be saved. Then, as saved people, the Law shows us what pleases God. So, “if you love me, keep my commandments,” Jesus said, and that’s serious, but I don’t think we talk about that much.
I don’t know if you’ve done this, but I’ve quit doing it because it’s so embarrassing. I used to ask church groups I was in front of, “How many of you believe in the Ten Commandments?” Every hand goes up. Okay, “How many of you can name them?” People don’t even know the commandments anymore. We just assume them. We need to recover an emphasis on the Law of God and then certainly the Gospel of God.
I think we’ve assumed the Gospel. We’ve talked about it a lot. We put it on our banners, but what is the Gospel?
We need to be crystal clear on it. And again, we ask that question of everybody who seeks membership in this church, and I’ve had answers all over the map, and it doesn’t mean they’re not saved. They’re just not Gospel literate.
Well, if we’re going to be a Gospel people, we better become literate in the Gospel—knowing what it is and what it’s not. It’s vitally important throughout Scripture. We see that in Galatians 1 so we can’t afford to assume the Gospel anymore.
Then the Lordship of Christ. That gets back to your question about politics. Christ is Lord everywhere. You don’t quit being a Christian when you jump in the voting booth, and you don’t get to say, “Well, I’m a Christian over here, but I got to do my job over here and in order to make a living I got to go against the ways of Christ.” No, you don’t. Christ is Lord everywhere. We need to recover that.
So those are kind of the spiritual areas of reformation.
One of the structural things is a complete reevaluation of our trustee system in the SBC. We may have too many trustees on boards. One question I would love to ask is: what does it cost to have a trustee on your institution or agency board, and what is involved in the meetings?
I’d like to do a cost/benefit analysis for that, and, then secondly, the way trustees are trained. I’ve never been a trustee on any of our boards, but I’ve talked to several of them. One of them told me last year “we get wined and dined, and they put us through orientation and give us all these gifts.”
I’ve talked to enough trustees that I get the impression that some of them think their primary job is to defend the institution rather than recognize you hold the institution in trust for the churches. And so somehow, we need to separate the institutional advantage from the stewardship and trust that’s being held for the churches. That is an issue that I think warrants a great deal of attention.
The Credentials Committee—they may be in a no-win position, I don’t know—but they don’t seem to be doing much. I’ve asked people to submit things to the Credentials Committee and never hear from the committee. I know that personally because I’ve done it. Other pastors have talked to me about it.
Somehow, we need to revamp that. It seems like that might have been put together pretty quickly, and we just need to decide where are the borders of the convention? Let’s enforce the borders, not just the doctrines we say we believe but remember we’re on a subsoil as well. Where are we on the reality that we have got to acknowledge? We probably need to revisit what we believe about these realities of maleness and femaleness. They are probably things we all assumed but we probably need to back up and ask those questions again.
Are we sufficiently prepared for the onslaught that is coming, from what Carl Trueman’s called, the rise and triumph of the modern self? I don’t know that we are, and confessionally, we may not be able to do any more than what we’ve done, but we at least need to be talking about those things and addressing those matters.
Then just getting more churches involved. I don’t know what the answer is to that, but you know, if we get eight or nine percent of our churches to show up, that’s a pretty good year.
How do you get more churches involved?
I’ve had a lot of them contact me. It’s really fascinating. I mean, several of them are saying “We’ve never sent messengers before, and we’re sending messengers to Anaheim.” Or “my wife and I are going to the meeting, and it’s the first time this church has ever had a messenger.”
I think we just need to educate them. What does it mean to be Southern Baptist? You know, you’re in this denomination, you’re in this convention of churches, we do a lot of wonderful things, but those wonderful things need accountability and the accountability comes from the churches. The churches own the institutions. That doesn’t mean everybody’s a boss, but we do talk about the church being headquarters. So local churches need to show up to a business meeting two days a year. It’s expensive, but you’ve got to do it.
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People talk about changing the voting system I don’t know, it’s way above my ability to think about, but somehow we need to remind the bread and butter churches of the SBC that this is your denomination. You have to get involved in this.
How would you lead through the response to the report of the Sexual Abuse Task Force?
I have thought about it, but I don’t, of course, know what’s in it. I don’t know all the players. I’m not thrilled over all the ways that it happened. I mean, I praise God that we have focused attention on this, but I think we’re naive if we don’t question whether or not some of this is—well-intentioned and rightly motivated—has also been driven by the cultural wins, and my fear is that we’re going to be taking our cues from culture. If we do that, then I would hope to have enough courage and guts to say, “Wait a minute, we have a book and this is what God says. So look at all the evidence and if the evidence is there, own it.”
Sex abuse is horrible. I mean, it’s just horrific. And we’ve dealt with this church, my family. It’s abominable, and it ought to be dealt with. It goes back to what I think is a more kind of fundamental underlying reality and that’s our churches. If our churches were healthier, we wouldn’t be having these kinds of problems so prolific in them. You know, church discipline exists for a purpose and too often, these kinds of situations arise because there’s not proper discipline being administered to protect people and to care for the one who’s actually the perpetrator of it.
Whether he’s a believer or not a believer you’re caring for his soul by doing what Jesus tells you to do. So, you know, acknowledge whatever’s true in that and then pray. Be humbled before God rightly so, but look to the Scriptures and say, “God, what, what is it you say about this? This is not catching you off guard. And these things may be new to us because hadn’t faced him before, or maybe we’ve covered him up or denied him or whatever, but your word is enough for this. So, give us wisdom from your word to go forward, follow the Scripture, whatever the cost, regardless of consequences, doesn’t matter. We’re going to honor you through this.”
