Power of the vote

Messengers’ views coalesce through several key ballots

An Illinois Baptist Team Report

By the time it ended, messengers to the 2023 Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting in New Orleans took clear action on several key issues facing the denomination, but reaching those conclusions took time, was kind of messy, and is somewhat unfinished.

Messengers voted to change the SBC constitution to clarify the role of pastor as a biblical office for men only. They voted to uphold the dismissal of three churches, two for having women pastors and one for mishandling sexual abuse claims. They agreed to a one-year study of the definition of “friendly cooperation,” the basis on which those churches were disfellowshipped. And they voted to continue the work of preventing sexual abuse in SBC churches and tracking abusers, while still developing criteria for determining credible accusations.

Among other things.

Messengers also sang, worshipped, dispatched missionaries, approved entity reports, and lined up at microphones—that sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t—to make a record 30 motions about the operation and direction of the denomination that has recently wrestled with its future amid cries about mission drift and cultural liberalism.

At the center of the three-ring confab was a ring- master who didn’t know his own fate in SBC leadership until halfway through the big church business meeting he engineered. A Texas pastor of a not-big church who loves Baptist polity and congregational government wanted this Annual Meeting to feel more like the meetings back home in Farmersville, where everyone who wants to speak does and where every voice is welcome.

Even when he had to rule some of them out of order, according to Roberts.

Attendance wasn’t quite as high as at the 2021 Nashville meeting after the pandemic year, but it was close with 12,737 elected messengers. (That included 186 messengers and 46 guests from Illinois.) Moving from Charlotte to a city with more convention space and hotel rooms proved wise. Counting registered guests and exhibitors, 18,901 people braved the heat, humidity, and high calorie counts in the Big Easy to do the Lord’s work.

Near the end of the first day’s closing session, Bart Barber learned he had turned away a rare challenge to a sitting president and would serve the customary second one-year term. (See story on page 1.)

And as results were announced on a string of ballots, the will of the convention was becoming clearer.