This article reported on TVC’s live streamed service. Below is from the church’s other service, which was uploaded to their YouTube the following day.
SBC President Responds to Chandler’s Restoration
In less than two weeks, two SBC pastors have been restored to ministry: Chandler and former SBC president Johnny Hunt.
Hunt, unlike Chandler, has been credibly accused of sexually assaulting another pastor’s wife in 2010, accusations that came to light earlier this year in the Guidepost Solutions report.
Last week, four pastors, independent of the SBC and Hunt’s founding church, cleared the former pastor for ministry, saying that they believe Hunt’s “greatest days of ministry” are ahead of him.
In response, current SBC president Bart Barber said he would “defrock” Hunt if he had the authority to do so, adding, “These four pastors do not speak for the Southern Baptist Convention.”
In light of this, former SBC Executive Committee member Rod Martin prompted Barber to weigh in on Chandler’s restoration via Twitter, saying he’d be “impressed” if Barber responded as strongly against Chandler as he did Hunt.
“I’ve a feeling that my odds of impressing you are rather low,” Barber joked. “But since I am neither young nor restless nor reformed, I think all factors suggest that I would be more likely to call out Chandler than Hunt.”
“As things stand, though, here are some differences between the situations,” Barber continued. “1. Hunt was the subject of a third-party investigation in response to allegations that he sexually assaulted a woman half his age in ways that would, to my knowledge, constitute a felony in any jurisdiction in the US. 1b. Chandler was removed from active ministry temporarily in response to allegations that he had a text-message relationship with a woman in his church that had crossed some sort of boundary, reportedly neither romantic nor sexual. No allegation of anything criminal, right?”
Barber further expressed, “The specific points of criticism I made of the Hunt restoration process are all different for Chandler. The SBC resolutions are inapplicable. The church was explicitly involved in the restoration process. Etc. Is the situation with Chandler uncomfortably reminiscent of some other troublesome situations? Yes. We’ve had so many scandals, it’s hard not to be cynical…to be waiting for the other shoe to drop. But based upon the available evidence, Hunt vs Chandler are quite different.”
“In today’s climate, I think this much is certain,” Barber concluded, “No one is going to be successful in the long term in hiding pastoral scandals. If there’s more to the Chandler story, it will come out. Until then, there’s no reason for me to be trying to fill in the blanks with the worst answers.”
