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Though I’ve long left the Southern Baptist Convention, I can’t help but find myself paying attention to the annual meetings every year. I don’t really know why—I guess life would be easier if I stopped caring completely. But I still have friends who are Southern Baptists, and there are still, interestingly enough, a handful of good churches and leaders in the denomination.
This week proved that as Willy Rice, and an actual conservative with actual convictions about the problems the SBC is facing, won the bid for presidency. And the fact that he won demonstrates that there are still people willing to fight for doctrinal integrity and orthopraxy among cooperating churches.
But not everyone. Not Jeff Iorg, former president of Gateway Seminary and current president and CEO of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee. In fact, Jeff Iorg wants Southern Baptists to spend less time talking about doctrininal integrity and frames his complaint as though doing so takes away from talking about evangelism.
After Southern Baptists spent significant time debating women pastors and confessional boundaries—a huge problem within many Southern Baptist churches—Iorg expressed deep frustration that the conversations at the annual meetings revolve around amendments, by-law changes, and denominational controversies rather than missionaries, church planting, and conversions.
The problem is that he frames it as though these things occupy opposite sides of a ledger. He speaks as though Southern Baptists are forced to choose between doctrinal integrity and evangelistic mission. That is a false choice. In fact, it is precisely the sort of thinking that has repeatedly gotten denominations into trouble throughout church history.
Imagine standing at the Council of Nicaea and saying,
“Brothers, we should spend less time talking about creeds and more time talking about evangelism.”
The obvious response would have been immediate and devastating:
“We’re talking about creeds because we’re talking about the Christ we’re evangelizing people to.”
The controversy at Nicaea was not a distraction from the church’s mission. It was a defense of the church’s mission. If Arius was right, then the gospel itself was at stake. If Arius was wrong, then the church had a responsibility to say so clearly, publicly, and without apology.
That same principle applies today. Southern Baptists are not arguing over the color of the carpet or the font used in the Annual Church Profile. They are debating whether churches that openly reject biblical qualifications for pastors should remain in friendly cooperation with the Convention.
That is not some side quest pulling us away from the Great Commission. It is a question about whether Southern Baptists’ stated beliefs actually mean anything.
If the Baptist Faith and Message teaches that the office of pastor is reserved for qualified men, then Southern Baptists have every right—and every obligation—to discuss what should happen when churches reject that teaching.
Frankly, I am weary of denominational leaders who speak as though concern for doctrinal fidelity is evidence of misplaced priorities. Former SBC president James Merrit did the same thing a few years ago, shaming Southern Baptists for being concerned with Critical Race Theory taking over the denomination and its churches and entities.
The New Testament simply does not permit that kind of thinking. Paul spent an extraordinary amount of time confronting false doctrine, rebuking error, warning churches, correcting churches, naming dangerous teachers, and defending the truth.
Apparently the Apostle never learned that theological controversy was beneath him.
Apparently he wrongly thought that what a church believes will inevitably determine what a church proclaims. 🙄
The irony in Iorg’s remarks is that the very missionaries he celebrates are sent on the basis of doctrinal agreement. Mission boards examine theology. Churches examine theology. Seminaries teach theology. Ordination councils examine theology.
Every missionary who carries the gospel across an ocean does so because somebody believed doctrine was important enough to define, defend, and preserve. Nobody suddenly becomes indifferent to truth once the airplane leaves the runway.
What Iorg seems unable to grasp is that many Southern Baptists are discussing these issues because they do care deeply about evangelism, missions, and church planting. They understand that doctrine and mission are inseparable companions.
So no, you should not apologize for caring about such things that seek to uphold your confession or for caring about doctrinal integrity. You should not apologize for believing that cooperation should actually mean something.
The Southern Baptists who are willing to talk about these issues are doing so because they matter. They matter because truth matters. They matter because the gospel matters.
And they matter because the Christ we proclaim is too important to be treated as an afterthought while denominational leaders scold people for caring about what the Bible teaches.
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