SBC President Bart Barber

Bart Barber’s impact on the Southern Baptist Convention may not be tallied for some years, but after one year as SBC President, it can be said that he changed the way we did business at the Annual Meeting, bringing record numbers of people to the microphones to make motions like the church business meetings at home. He guided sessions that upheld dismissal of two churches with women pastors, and passed the first reading of a constitutional amendment limiting pastors to men. The Farmersville, Texas pastor and rancher also renewed the task force implementing sex abuse reform, after appointing the group last year.

Illinois Baptist media editor Eric Reed inter-

Q: Let’s start with the convention in New Orleans. You’ve talked about having meetings where everybody is heard and everybody has opportunity to speak. Did the convention produce what you hoped for in tenor and participation?

A: Yes. You’ve accurately picked up on something there. It’s probably by this point, at 53 years old, it’s less the matter of being a conscious goal and more the matter of just being my nature. We have monthly business meetings here at Farmersville. Even before that, I was on a parliamentary procedure team in the FFA (Future Farmers of America) when I was in high school, and so I did this competitively. And I believe in our polity. I’m a congregationalist by conviction, by way of biblical exposition, I think. I remember when we were coming into the last opportunity to introduce new motions. I was working so hard to let everybody who wanted to make a motion make a motion. I don’t know how to be any different than that coming into Indianapolis next year.

Q: Trevin Wax has written recently that the SBC is “comfortably complementarian,” given the first passage of the Law amendment limiting “pastor” to men, and about 90% of messengers voting to uphold the dismissal Saddleback and Fern Creek churches for having women pastors. Have we reached a point where it’s settled?

A: I find that I’m most likely to get in trouble when I adopt other people’s terminology, so I think the best thing is to talk about underlying questions here. The Southern Baptist Convention is a complementarian convention. And I think the data that I can point to are clear on that matter. The votes that we had in New Orleans, 90% to 10% on the appeals about disfellowshipping, that’s pretty resounding as far as outcomes go.

And I do want to say that I’m proud of the messengers in that for years, there’s been hand wringing about the idea of celebrity culture in the SBC. And yet the margins were nearly identical across all of those questions. It seemed to me that our messengers were voting not on the basis of personalities, not on the basis viewed Barber the week before Interim CEO of the Executive Committee Willie McLauren resigned, so that event wasn’t covered. The conversation addressed women in ministry, and possible broadening of “friendly cooperation” as grounds for disfellowshipping churches. He’s concerned about that. of either admiration or any kind of antipathy or animosity toward individual people, but instead, they were just expressing their convictions with their ballots. And so I think those votes are good data that point toward the settled complementarian conviction of the SBC.

The hour-long interview, here condensed for length, started with an update on his cattle that include Bully Graham and Lottie Moooon (pictured on page 1). And there was brief discussion of baseball: He’s a diehard St. Louis Cardinals fan and recently added Yadier Moooolina to the herd. Then the talk turned to the issues.

Q: How does that impact the question of women in pastoral roles?

A: What we really find at this moment is people who have embraced kind of a plural elder understanding of the ecclesiology of the church. And they would look and say, The Baptist Faith and Message talks about the office of pastor and limits it to men. Maybe we’ve got five or six people in our church who are in that office of pastor, elder, or overseer, and none of them are women.

And then you had some other churches in the SBC that are saying, We believe also in the office of pastor, and we believe the office of pastor is limited to men and not women. We don’t have a lot of people in our church who are in that office. It’s just that we feel free to use the label pastor to describe people who are not in the office of pastor.

The question here really is, can you use the word pastor to refer to someone who’s not in the office of pastor as described in The Baptist Faith and Message? That’s a question we need to discuss further. It’s not really a mature question for us.

Q: Well, just for clarification, the word pastor applies to an office, but it also describes a set of nurturing and shepherding gifts.

A: And that’s where the difference of opinion is. Here’s the thing: Our church at Farmersville does not use the word pastor beyond people who occupy the office of elder, pastor, overseer. If a church is doing that, then I would love the opportunity to persuade them why they should think about not doing that. But I think that by delivering ultimatums at the Convention level, we’re shutting down the opportunity for persuasion.

This question about using the title

“pastor” outside of the office is a question that we haven’t even really started talking to each other about. Where are the books about that, or the conferences to discuss different points of view, or the journal articles? If we prematurely boot people out of the Convention, we lose the opportunity to persuade people who might be persuadable.

Q: The NAAF raised the question—

A: Yes, the National African American Fellowship asked for prayer and dialogue, and I’m working to facilitate both of those things, not just dialogue with me, but dialogue with one another. And what could possibly be wrong with doing that? I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to come up with good conversation and good solutions by which we can continue to cooperate with one another to pursue the Great Commission.

Q: Five former presidents stood when the motion was made for you to appoint a study group about defining “friendly cooperation.” Do you think they were right in their evident concern?

A: I am concerned about the way that we’re defining friendly cooperation. I think that with increasing frequency, we’re adding items to Article 3 to create more and more clearly defined rigid bases for excluding churches from Southern Baptist Convention’s cooperation. And I think that that’s really bad for the health of the convention.

My ambition for this task force is beyond that, really. It’s beyond cleaning up Article 3. It’s beyond cleaning up Bylaw 8. The fact of the matter is we have ongoing concern about the future of the Cooperative Program.

Q: How do you see the CP related to that?

A: We’re on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the Cooperative Program. I have heard from people wondering whether we have to plan for a future of the SBC that outlives the role the Cooperative Program has had up to this point. I’m resolved to say that the Cooperative Program may die, but I’m going to die first.

Q: Back to the Law amendment. Could you see the possibility that a second vote on the amendment in Indianapolis might fail, resulting in time for a more thoughtful process going forward?

A: I think we’re going to have conversation no matter what happens. The passage of that amendment does not remove a single church from friendly cooperation with the SBC. It does provide the basis for people who wish to do so to report churches to the Credentials Committee. But then the Credentials Committee has to take action. Then it goes to the Executive Committee….The Credentials Committee is going to have conversation about it. The Executive Committee is going to have conversation about it. We’re going to have this conversation for several years, I think, whatever the outcome of the amendment is.

I want to rally Southern Baptists around a vision for cooperation that we had in 1925 that’s still good in 2025. If there are ways that we need to tweak our governing documents or to figure out a pathway forward to have that same idea, then I want our task force to do it. But the primary thing that I want us to accomplish—I want to get our hearts and our spirit back into the idea of cooperating with one another, to reach the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ, starting here at home and going to every corner of the globe.

Q: What you’re talking about is more than a name change or a campaign.

A: I tell you, I heard people 15-20 years ago say, well, that name is an old name. The youngsters don’t like the word program. And cooperative is an old word too. But I tell you, more than ever, I think the name is perfect. I think it says what it is. I think we need to bring people to the idea that we value cooperation more than we value individuality, that we value cooperation so much that we’re comfortable saying I’m going to take my money and I’m going to give it to our plan.

Q: Some churches especially in larger Southern states have escrowed their CP giving, or have given directly to particular SBC entities instead. How do we address that?

A: More and more people are trying to use that as a lever to move the Convention. They’re trying to use that as a lever to say, this is my protest, this is how I’m going to make things different. The Cooperative Program ceases to be a political manipulation tool if you have fair votes at the meetings. Because the church down the street from yours is probably not going to change what they’re doing just because you did something about your Cooperative Program funding.

As God gives me strength to do so, I’m going to moderate the meeting in such a way that everybody gets a fair bite at the apple. I want everybody who’s there to leave with confidence that they’re fairly included in this process, even if they lose on one thing that they would like to change. They can go home and say most of our sister churches just don’t agree with me about this, but we still ought to support what we’re doing cooperatively within the SBC. We still ought to be giving through the Cooperative Program.

Q: After the failure of Jared Wellman’s nomination to be CEO of the Executive Committee, there was discussion about the tendency of people to adhere to their own narrative instead of listening to the larger conversation. How do we rebuild the trust between the leadership and the pew?

A: Our fundamental problem with that is the advent of social media, which is really sort of in its adolescence. I think we’re still trying to figure out how to use it. There’s a fine line to walk there. I’m probably more engaged on social media than some of my predecessors in the office of president.

Frankly, there are people who have criticized that and have said, man, you ought to just stay off of social media entirely, or just post cow pictures. But the thing is, if you cede the battlefield completely to the worst actors then that doesn’t help anybody getting healthier.

And I think that some of the pressure for transparency that’s found in social media is healthy for us.

Southern Baptists gossiped for sure before there was social media. And social media has amplified that sometimes in some of the worst

To lead SBC examination of “friendly cooperation”

Nashville, Tenn. | Southern Baptist Convention President Bart Barber named fellow Texas pastor Jared Wellman to chair the group studying “friendly cooperation” as a standard for church membership in the denomination.

“I am concerned about the way that we’re defining friendly cooperation.” Barber said in an exclusive interview with the Illinois Baptist. “The fact of the matter is we have ongoing concern this is a multi-decadal situation” that affects cooperation more broadly.

He hopes the cooperation study group will help draw Southern Baptists together around missions and the historic central funding stream for our shared work.

Messengers at the 2023 SBC Annual Meeting in New Orleans authorized the SBC President to appoint the study group after five former SBC Presidents stood together on the floor urging clarification of cooperation used as reason for five church dismissals in 2022.

J.D. Greear, who preceded Barber as SBC President, said that passage of an amendment to the SBC Constitution, approved in New Orleans at the first of two required votes, will cause the Credentials Committee to go on “a national hunt” for churches who apply the title pastor to women.

While Greear stated unequivocally that the office of pastor is reserved for men, he told the Baptist Press This Week podcast, “… Southern Baptists have a long history of agreeing on primary and secondary things, even as they allow freedom in tertiary things or how we apply things.” ways. But social media is also an amazing blessing and you don’t hear enough about that.

Using “pastor” to describe associate or staff positions would be one of those third-level issues, along with predestination, limited atonement, and irresistible grace, Greear said.

Wellman chaired the SBC Executive Committee (EC) during part of the turbulent period involving claims of mishandling sex abuse claims by earlier EC staff and leaders. His nomination as EC CEO failed in a May meeting of the EC trustees.

This December, get on Twitter and tweet something about your church meeting your Lottie Moon Christmas Offering goal. Odds are good that an IMB missionary will reply and say thank you. Yeah, that’s happening a lot in the last couple of years. And that kind of immediate connection and feedback is unprecedented and beautifully healthy.

Q: With 21,000 Twitter (X) followers, you appear to be making it work.

A: This is one of those corny things I do: I made a video with my cow, Lottie Moooon, promoting the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. I made the Lottie Moooon Seal of Approval. And every time the church said that they met their goal, I tweeted that back out.

PASTURE, BARBER—“My sister snapped this picture,” the SBC President posted on his X (Twitter) account, “and I’m just not going to try to explain it to you.”

We need that kind of positive encouragement about what we’re doing to cooperate with one another. I think there’s tremendous potential for good through social media.

Q: Are you thinking about what you will do after the convention in Indianapolis?

A: I have a powerful love for the Southern Baptist Convention and a very strong sense of ambition. The people of the Southern Baptist Convention have given me the task of presiding well in the preceding year and this year. And my ambition is to do my duty. My ambition is to be able to look Southern Baptists in the eye when the final gavel falls in Indianapolis and to know that with integrity and honesty and fairness to everyone, I served our family of churches the way I was asked to serve.

And I am content to do that and fade back into obscurity.

Q: And tend to the herd.

A: And tend to the herd.

Barber names replacements, including chair

Nashville, Tenn. | Three members of the Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force (ARITF) resigned two months after the panel was renewed for a second one-year term and charged with finishing the abuse tracking and prevention they started in 2022. The resignations include chair Marshall Blalock. Members Cyndi Lott and Jarrett Stevens also resigned.

SBC President Bart Barber appointed replacements. The chair is Josh Wester, Greensboro, NC.

Barber thanked all three for their service. He said Blalock “deserves the gratitude and affection of all Southern Baptists. His leadership of the Task Force as chair for the past year has been exemplary.”

Messengers to the 2023 SBC Annual Meeting voted to give the task force another year to complete its work. At the convention, the panel unveiled the Ministry Check website which will track convictions and “credible claims” of sex abuse in SBC churches. The website was activated, but information from an existing database of abuse claims had not been uploaded because the content had not been vetted.

The ARITF did not bring a motion to use a subsidiary of Guidepost Solutions to vet the content and operate the site in the future, after criticisms arose for possible continued involvement of the SBC with the New Yorkbased firm.

Guidepost Solutions was criticized for its public statements in support of LGBTQ issues which were in direct opposition to SBC theology.

Guidepost later created a separate organization to service faith-based clients. The new company was under consideration by ARITF to run the Ministry Check website. More public complaints shut down that plan.

Blalock said he hoped the database work and permanent funding for its operation would be finished by the 2024 Annual Meeting in Indianapolis. Now it will be up to Wester and his revised team to get the job done.

—IB Staff