SBC Life - Fall 2022 (Vol. 31, No. 1)

What Is A Pastor?

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Table of Contents 6

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The Sacred Role of a Pastor F E AT U R E D A R T I C L E S

Willie McLaurin Interim President and CEO

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Jonathan Howe Brandon Porter Executive Editors

What is a Pastor?

Andy Beachum Creative Director

14 Churches Declare Their Stance on Pastorship Through Ordination

20 As Church Staffs Grow, Ministry Leaders Look to the Bible for Titles

Allison Young Publication and Project Coordinator SBC Life is published three times per year: Fall, Spring, and Summer. It is distributed to pastors, ministers of education, ministers of music, full-time denominational workers, chaplains, missionaries, and vocational evangelists.

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26 Barber Names Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force Members

54 GuideStone Expands Focus on Helping Pastors Start Well, Finish Better

35 Court’s Term Delivers Wins for Life, Religious Liberty

58 Keahbone Uses Native American Resolution to Minister to Survivors of Forced Conversion

42 Send Relief Establishes Fund to Support Survivors of Sexual Abuse 46 SEBTS Launches Mandatory Sexual Abuse Prevention and Response Course 52 Washington to Champion Personal Evangelism in New Role at NAMB

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FROM THE SBC PRESIDENT

The Sacred Role of a Pastor

BY BART BARBER

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n 1963, Southern Baptists revised The Baptist Faith and Message. Among other changes, we changed the wording of what became Article VI, “The Church” (formerly Article XII, “The Gospel Church”). Prior to 1963, the last sentence of the article read as follows: “[A church’s] scriptural officers are bishops, or elders, and deacons.” We changed that article in 1963 to read “[A church’s] scriptural officers are pastors and deacons.”

That change is probably at least a minor contributor to some of the ways that we misunderstand one another six decades later when we have conversations about the officers of the church. For example, many of us have received requests from church members facing an illness for the deacons of the church to anoint them with oil and pray for them because they thought that the mention of “elders” in James 5:14 refers to deacons. It does not.

The word “pastor” is a perfectly good word for us to use, even though it appears less frequently than either “elder” or “overseer” in the New Testament as a title for the singular office that they all three describe. “Elder” prompts us to recall the leadership structure of the Old Testament. Moses had a team of elders who helped him to make and implement decisions for the people of Israel. “Overseer” suggests to us the role of spiritual authority over individual believers implicit in commanding someone to employ God’s Word in the tasks of teaching believers, rebuking believers, correcting believers, and training believers in righteousness.

What unique aspects of the pastoral office does the title “pastor” communicate?

The word “pastor” simply means “shepherd.” I

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believe that it reminds us of two important truths.

First, it is the only one of the three terms that God has used in Scripture to keep us pastors humble by reminding us of our subordination to Christ. In 1 Peter 5:4, after reminding elders to be shepherds (pastors) and overseers, Peter reminded them that the “Chief Shepherd” was going to appear at the end of our term of service to evaluate our work and reward those who serve as good under-shepherds. Sometimes we need that reminder.

Also, the title “pastor” bespeaks tenderness, care, and service. An “elder” might be autocratic, and an “overseer” might be abusive, but a good shepherd could be neither of those things. Certainly, the Chief Shepherd is not. Isaiah wrote of Him, “He protects his flock like a shepherd; he gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them in the fold of his garment. He gently leads those that are nursing.” What tenderness and care are found in the arms of our shepherd! So should it be with those who serve under Him. As the theme of our gathering next year in New Orleans for the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting, I have chosen 2 Corinthians 4:5. It reads, “For we are not proclaiming ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’s sake.” Both notes—subordination to Christ and service rendered to His flock—are sounded in this verse as a part of the apostle’s testimony.

What good news will it be for our family of churches if those in leadership should choose above all to serve the Lord and serve others with the hearts of caring shepherds?

F E AT U R E D A R T I C L E

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What is a Pastor?

BY BRANDON PORTER

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erhaps you’ve heard about the little boy who leaned over after the Sunday sermon to tell his mother, “I’ve decided to become a pastor when I grow up.”

“You have? Why did you decide that?” she asked.

“Well, I figure it’s more fun to stand up there and yell than it is to sit here and listen,” he replied.

For some, being a pastor is preaching a Sunday sermon. While a weekly message plays an important role, it is only the tip of the iceberg in pastoral ministry.

Baptist Press talked to eight pastors and theologians about the work of a pastor in a local church.

Pointing to texts such as Acts 20:28-35, Ephesians 4:11-16, 1 Timothy 3:1-7, 1 Timothy 5:17-19, Titus 1:5-9, Hebrews 13:7-17, and 1 Peter 5:1-5, they talked about the need for clarity and the extensive responsibilities that come with the role of a pastor.

As they discussed the biblical words such as elder, overseer, and shepherd, which they believe all point to one office in the local church, the men also fleshed out the practical applications of leading, feeding, and protecting the flock.

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According to Scripture, a pastor leads the church primarily through preaching the Scriptures and by equipping and leading church members to minister to one another and to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with non-Christians in order to win them to faith in Jesus.”

Steve Gaines, senior pastor Bellevue Baptist Church Memphis, Tennessee

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“Paul told elders from the Church at Ephesus to oversee and shepherd their flocks,” said Steve Gaines, senior pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis.

Gaines was a member of the committee that drafted the Baptist Faith and Message 2000. The statement of faith adopted by messengers to the 2000 SBC Annual Meeting says that pastor and deacon are the two biblical offices of the local church.

“According to Scripture, a pastor leads the church primarily through preaching the Scriptures and by equipping and leading church members to minister to one another and to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with non-Christians in order to win them to faith in Jesus,” Gaines said.

Jonathan Leeman, an elder at Cheverly Baptist Church in Bladensburg, Maryland, and editorial director for 9Marks, a parachurch organization focused on what it deems are the biblical marks of a healthy church, agrees and says of a pastor, “He’s a man authorized by God, affirmed by the congregation, to lead the congregation in the way of Christ through preaching, prayer, and general oversight.”

Leeman says it is the call to preach and lead that sets a pastor apart from the deacons in the church.

“If we’re drawing from Acts 6, they [pastors] have the responsibility for the preaching of the Word and general oversight of the church,” Leeman said. “Whereas, deacons have responsibility in that text for bringing unity to the church by addressing tangible needs and supporting the ministry of the pastors.”

Darryl Jones, senior pastor of The Rock Fellowship in Pembroke Pines, Florida, says protecting the flock from false teaching is an important part of the work he feels called to pursue as a pastor.

“Teach them the Word of God. Praying for them.

Teaching them spiritually and protecting them from false teachers and false doctrine,” he said.

This can prove to be a challenge in the information age. How can a pastor’s voice be heard by

the sheep in an age when there are so many competing voices?

This isn’t a new question for God’s people.

God has been caring for sheep for centuries. In fact, He is often heartbroken when His sheep are left to scatter.

God rebukes the “shepherds of Israel” in Ezekiel 34:1-6 when they do not care for the people of God. Jesus says He is the Good Shepherd in John 10:1-18 whose voice is recognized by the sheep.

The similarities between shepherds and pastors are brought to a crescendo in 1 Peter 5 when pastors are charged to shepherd the flock in 1 Peter 5:2, and in 1 Peter 5:4 they are reminded that the Chief Shepherd will appear. Scholars believe the Chief Shepherd to be, quite obviously, Jesus.

But sheep play a role in this shepherding.

They must be willing to be shepherded.

That can be tough to achieve within churches that value not only the autonomy of the local church, but the personal freedoms of each believer.

The BF&M says, “Each congregation operates under the Lordship of Christ through democratic processes.” Further, it affirms the individual responsibility of each believer: “In such a congregation each member is responsible and accountable to Christ as Lord.”

Gregory A. Wills, dean of the School of Theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, thinks about Hebrews 13:17 as he considers “the leadership or governing function” by which Christ calls the pastor to keep watch over the souls that have been placed in his care.

In that text, the author says pastors are “keeping watch” over the souls they lead. It is a sobering thought when considering the significant spiritual role a pastor should play in the life of a church member.

Thinking about Hebrews 13:17, a Crossway commentary records John Owen writing, “The work of these leaders is solely to take care of your souls: to keep them from evil, sin, and backsliding; to instruct them and feed them; to encourage

Juan Sanchez, senior pastor of High Pointe Baptist Church in Austin, Texas, gives the Convention sermon at the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting June 14, 2022, at the Anaheim Convention Center. Image by Karen McCutcheon

their obedience and faith, and so lead them safely to eternal rest.”

At High Pointe Baptist Church in Austin, Texas, Juan Sanchez says that is what he is trying to do.

“Essentially, what a pastor does is feed the flock and protect the flock. So, the image is that of the shepherd . . . to lead the sheep to green pastures and to protect them from wolves,” he said.

He looks to Ephesians 4:11-16 when he considers how a pastor-shepherd moves God’s people to fresh waters and fends off those who would try to harm them.

“What pastors do is they equip the saints for the work of ministry by preaching the Word, teaching the Word, and that’s how they both feed the church and protect the church,” he said.

Mark Vance, at Cornerstone Church in Ames, Iowa, is working, ultimately, to accomplish the same purpose.

Vance says he aims at four primary responsibilities in pastoral work: preaching and teaching the Word, shepherding or caring for God’s people, stewardship of the resources of the church, and being an example to the flock.

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What pastors do is they equip the saints for the work of ministry by preaching the Word, teaching the Word and that’s how they both feed the church and protect the church.”

Juan Sanchez, senior pastor High Pointe Baptist Church Austin, Texas He says pastors should be careful to hear the call of 1 Peter 5:1-5 and remember to focus on what the pastor looks like, not just what he does.

“I would also appeal if you want to see what the pastor looks like, we have not just text but we have context and historical examples,” Vance said. “What did Jesus’ apostles look like? What did the spiritual leadership look like in the book of Acts? Who are the men listed there?”

He believes that while the New Testament features the characteristics of the pastor, there are important pictures of what it looks like to shepherd well.

“We have the exemplary text of the storyline of the New Testament and the development of how spiritual leadership looks in the early church,” Vance said.

Because of the authority given to him, a pastor’s character is of primary importance, said Hershael York, longtime senior pastor of Buck Run Baptist Church in Frankfort, Kentucky.

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“When you think about someone who is a fantastic Sunday School teacher but they would not be a fantastic pastor, it comes down to authority,” said York, who is the dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

He sees authority shine through the role of pastor, whether the shepherd is delivering the Sunday message or interacting with church members throughout the week, and likens it to the authority a parent should have in a child’s life.

“There’s a difference when my neighbor sees one of my kids doing something they shouldn’t be doing and tells them to stop and when I tell them that I’m going to discipline them if they don’t stop,” he said. “The difference is authority.

“Like that, a Sunday School teacher would be someone that teaches the Word of God, but they don’t have the authority in the sense of reproving, rebuking, exhorting that a pastor does. But a pastor standing in the pulpit opening the Word of God . . . there is authority.”

And it’s not just in the minutes when the preacher is preaching. The pastor’s spiritual authority should extend when he’s meeting people one on one or leading in a smaller setting.

“The pastor has the right and responsibility to go to people and instruct them and correct them,” York said. “If someone falls into sin, the pastor has the responsibility to call them to repentance. Hopefully they will repent, but if not, then the pastor is to take the next steps of discipline in the church.”

North Carolina church planter Quintell Hill believes that calling remains the same no matter the context. “I’ve thought a lot about this question. If you shepherd the flock of God, the methodology may be different, but the task is the same.

We don’t deviate from the Book [Bible],” he said.

BRANDON PORTER is associate vice president for Convention news with the SBC Executive Committee in Nashville, Tennessee.

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Churches Declare Their Stance on Pastorship Through Ordination

BY SCOTT BARKLEY

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here may be nuances related to ordination and how it is observed from one church to another, but the qualifications for the pastor role are crystal clear, said a collection of Southern Baptist pastors and leaders. ‘“We avoid giving that terminology of ‘pastor’ to those who would not be qualified as elders biblically,” he said. “The simplest way I can summarize it is, ‘Who fits the qualifications of 1 Timothy 3? Titus 1?’ Those who are ordained are those who are qualified to serve in the office of pastor/elder/overseer.

“So, when it comes to the issue of gender, we don’t ordain women.”

Cornerstone Church sits near Iowa State University and draws a significant number of college students. Attendance can surpass 3,500 during the semester. Taking a complementarian position is countercultural, but something the church does nonetheless.

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Vance asserted that holding to a biblical model of ordination and the office of pastor does not diminish the role of women in ministry.

“This doesn’t mean women don’t serve in other ministry contexts,” he said. “They absolutely do. But ordination isn’t just a recognition of an ability to serve. It’s an appointment toward an office that comes with an authority that the New Testament prescribes as limited to men in the household of God.” The historic Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis and Cornerstone are similar in attendance size, but minister in different contexts. Still, there is clear-cut agreement on ordination between Vance and Bellevue Pastor Steve Gaines.

“To be ‘ordained’ as a pastor means to be ‘sanctified’ or ‘set apart’ for the purpose of fulfilling the biblical role of pastor within the context of a local congregation of Christ-followers,” said Gaines, who served on the study committee for the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, Southern Baptists’ statement of faith. “Only biblically qualified men should be ordained in a local church.”

Gender is one determining factor of who can serve as a pastor, but it’s hardly the only one.

“We look for men who are spiritually mature and qualify biblically to serve as a pastor,” Gaines said. “Our current pastors then interview a candidate to analyze his doctrine, the vibrancy of his walk with Christ and his Christian character. If he passes those examinations, he is recommended to the congregation to be set apart/ordained to be a pastor.”

Thereby, ordination is a factor in a Bellevue staff member’s ministry title.

“We refer to male and female non-ordained staff members who lead as ‘directors,’” Gaines said. “We do not refer to a non-ordained staff member as ‘pastor.’”

The Rock Fellowship is a young congregation in Pembroke Pines, Florida. Its first ordination was significant for the church.

“That was a big moment,” Pastor Daryl Jones said.

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A young seminary graduate had been given opportunities to preach and teach, with Jones also establishing a mentoring program in eldership. Observing spiritual growth and “the Holy Spirit’s empowerment,” Jones and others felt he had become ready to undertake other responsibilities as prescribed in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1.

That contrasts with another situation where a young man worked with the title of “minister,” who had not quite reached the level of pastor.

“I don’t use that term lightly,” said Jones, who noted that Scripture is “not ambiguous at all” when it comes the office being specific to men.

Hershael York, senior pastor of Buck Run Baptist Church in Frankfort, Kentucky, and dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, pointed to the practice of laying on of hands in the Bible as “a definite designation of someone as an elder, an overseer, a shepherd” to recognize someone’s “calling and gifting.”

The roots of ordination begin with the Word of God. From there, the responsibility of gauging candidates goes through a council of some type and, ultimately, the church itself.

“Accountability is a good thing,” York said.

“When people go off doing their own things without accountability, there’s just no guarantee that they’re going to remain true to their word and faithful to the Lord.

“Ordination is a way where we formally examine someone and declare them fit to be a pastor.”

Others have a differing perspective when it comes to ordination. Juan Sanchez, senior pastor of High Pointe Baptist in Austin, Texas, prefers that churches affirm pastors as opposed to ordaining them.

“In our context, we don’t have ordination services,” he said. “The church recognizes—based on the testing from the elders and observation of the congregation—that once someone is presented to the congregation as pastor, that person is the pastor.”

Ordination, as he has seen it, “seems to give someone a title or office divorced from the local church context.”

“I’ll give you an example,” he said. “I’m just one of the pastors at High Pointe. But if I were to move away [and get another job], I’m no longer a pastor because I’m no longer shepherding a local church. The way ordination is used today, once I leave . . . I would still be carrying the title of ‘pastor’ because I’m ordained.”

The point, he explained, is that the office of pastor is intimately connected to the local church. This bears itself out in how many typically find their next pastor.

Many churches appoint a search team to look through resumes and discuss candidates. They watch videos of sermons or travel to observe in person. Eventually a name emerges and more interviews are held with the search team and meetings with key groups in the church. A question-and-answer session may occur the day before the candidate preaches in view of a call on Sunday morning.

“I realize that I’m swimming against the stream here of traditional Baptist history,” Sanchez said. “But I do think that, intuitively, that’s what is practiced.”

Sanchez also pointed to 1 Timothy 3 in showing the office of pastor as reserved for men, while noting that the explanation actually begins a chapter earlier.

“In 1 Timothy 2, Paul is basically prohibiting women from teaching doctrine to men or having authority over men in the context of the local gathering,” he said.

Jonathan Leeman is an elder at Cheverly Baptist Church in Bladensburg, Maryland, and editorial director for 9Marks, a parachurch organization focused on what it deems are the biblical marks of a healthy church. Leeman agreed that the word “ordination” has some drawbacks.

“It’s a contested term that we have inherited and brings a lot of baggage from medieval Catholicism,” he said. “It can unhelpfully communicate, as it were, a mystical mark on the soul that a man receives once for all, whether or not he’s in this church or that church.”

Like Sanchez, he also pointed to 1 Timothy 2 on the roles of women in teaching and exercising authority over men regarding the pastorate.

“I understand the authority [Paul] has in 1 Timothy 2:12 is that of a pastor/overseer/elder,” Leeman said.

Accountability is a good thing. When people go off doing their own things without accountability, there’s just no guarantee that they’re going to remain true to their word and faithful to the Lord.

Ordination is a way where we formally examine someone and declare them fit to be a pastor.”

Hershael York, senior pastor Buck Run Baptist Church Frankfort, Kentucky

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“It does not have in mind congregational authority, which I understand to be shared by men and women by virtue of the priesthood of all believers. Nor does he have in mind any authority that a deacon might exercise over some tangible area of the church’s life. This is why I personally believe there’s room for female deacons, or deaconesses.”

When a church places the title of “pastor” on a staff person who does not meet the qualifications as leveled in Scripture, respondents stopped short of calling for disfellowshipping that church. However, at the very least such practices muddy the waters.

“That is a sloppy use of language,” York said.

“I would not put that title on anyone just because it happens to be a man. This is where, I think, Baptist churches have been less than careful with our language. At Buck Run, those who we designate as pastor, we mean by everything the Word means as shepherds and overseers.”

Gregory A. Wills, dean of the School of Theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, agrees.

“In my view, it’s unhelpful to call someone who is not in the office of pastor, by the title of pastor,” he said. “It promotes confusion between the actions of the individual and the office.”

Wills explained that all believers have a basic set of “pastoral duties” to each other.

“We exercise, by duty under Christ, a certain shepherding function toward all other believers,” he said. “Those who have some maturity and leadership [qualities] are going to have more opportunities and a broader, deeper sense of duty to exercise pastoral functions.

“We minister to one another [and] shepherd one another. But having those general duties is not the same thing as being in the office of pastor/elder/overseer.”

Regarding the Baptist Faith and Message, Vance said the text clearly limits the office of pastor to men. The overwhelming majority of Southern Baptist churches confirm this in practice. “We don’t have a preponderance . . . having women

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use the title of ‘pastor’ or preaching and teaching regularly,” he said.

He has expressed discouragement over talk of disfellowshipping any church that has such practices, but perhaps not in the direction one may expect.

“I know there’s a process [Southern Baptists] follow, but I’m discouraged because I think integrity demands that if you already know you’re out of line with where a group is, you should disfellowship yourself,” he said.

York pointed out that many Southern Baptist churches did just that after the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 was adopted to include Scripture and clearer language on gender roles and the pastorate.

“Those churches that left, they weren’t confused about what we meant,” he said.

Vance compared today’s discussion to someone agreeing to play soccer, then showing up in football gear. Both are sports. Both are active and fun. But each is distinct from the other.

In Southern Baptist life, there is a confessional statement “that tells us the game that we’re supposed to be playing.”

“It lacks a bit of honesty for folks to join a fellowship that is clearly complementarian and clearly states male eldership in its documents,” he said. “I find it to lack integrity to think that maybe you can enter the game to play a different one.”

SCOTT BARKLEY is national correspondent for Baptist Press.

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As Church Staffs Grow, Ministry Leaders Look to the Bible for Titles

BY TOBIN PERRY

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or generations of Southern Baptist churches, the term “pastor” had a clear and rarely debated meaning. He was the man who preached on Sundays and led the church throughout the week.

But with the rise of mega-churches inside and outside the SBC and the corresponding growth of church staffs, that simplicity has changed.

The National Congregation Study, released earlier this year, found that while fifty-four percent of churches were led by a “solo minister,” most churchgoers were in churches with multiple ministerial staff.

As the number of ministerial staff has grown in many Southern Baptist churches, a new question has emerged. What titles should churches give those in leadership? While no large-scale survey of Southern Baptist ministerial titling practices exists, interviews of a cross-section of Southern Baptist pastors show considerable agreement around the importance of using biblical language and the link between the role of the pastor and his authority in the local church, among other related topics.

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USING BIBLIC AL L ANGUAGE

Jonathan Leeman, who serves as the editorial director for 9Marks, a parachurch organization focused on what it deems are the biblical marks of a healthy church, notes that both the Bible and Southern Baptists’ statement of faith, the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, describe only two offices in the local church—pastor and deacon.

“Here’s why you want to use biblical language titles, like ‘pastor,’ because it insists that everybody meets the biblical criteria and qualifications set down by Paul, and therefore it protects the body from unqualified leaders,” Leeman said.

Leeman, who is also an elder at Cheverly Baptist Church in suburban Washington, DC, believes any leader described as pastor should have oversight over the entire church.

“What I would exhort all churches to do is to make sure that every pastor, every elder, whether staff or non-staff, number one, is understood to have oversight over the whole congregation, because that’s what he’s given by God,” Leeman said. “You don’t make him responsible just for his specific area of ministry. You can give him a specific area of ministry to emphasize and to focus on.

That’s fine, but you need to simultaneously recognize he’s still got to be involved in the decisions that involve all the [people].”

Leeman compares it to a household. A mother and father might split up household duties, with one parent taking care of home maintenance and the other paying bills, but they are both parents.

In the same way, two pastors might have specific responsibilities in the church, but they have shepherding responsibilities over the entire church.

“If you’re not going to give him oversight, don’t call him the youth pastor. Don’t call him the children’s pastor. Find another title,” Leeman said.

Juan Sanchez, who pastors High Pointe Baptist Church in Austin, Texas, believes all the roles in the local church can be divided into two categories. The first category centers on teaching and oversight and is properly called a pastor. The second centers on service and is called a deacon.

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“If these are the only two offices of a church, what we begin to think is, there’s some people that we pay that are doing deacon work and some people that we pay that are actually doing pastor work,” Sanchez said. “We just need to really define who’s doing what in order to make sure that there’s no confusion.”

Sanchez says this confusion goes beyond simply impacting multi-pastor churches. Many traditional Southern Baptist churches, he says, treat deacons as spiritual caretakers of the church, responsible for leading, feeding, and protecting the church.

“Deacons are simply servants set apart by the church,” said Sanchez, who is also an associate professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. “They’re official servants of the church. Everyone serves, but deacons are set apart servants, recognized by the church for specific tasks. Then pastors are those who are responsible for the feeding, protecting, and praying over the congregation.”

AUTHORITY AND OVERSIGHT IN THE ROLE OF PASTOR

Hershael York, who pastors Buck Run Baptist Church in Frankfort, Kentucky, describes oversight and authority as key differentiators between pastors and other church roles.

“The way we do it at Buck Run is those we designate as pastors, we mean by that everything that word means, that they are shepherds,” York said.

“They are overseers. They have a shepherding responsibility in the church.”

To illustrate this, York told the story of a woman the church hired as a children’s ministry director. From the beginning, York told her they wanted to get the children’s ministry to a point where they needed a children and family pastor.

She accepted the position with that in mind and grew the ministry.

Eventually, she recognized the ministry needed a pastor to children and families. She stepped aside when the church found a pastor to take that role.

“His responsibilities were broader,” York said.

“His responsibilities were truly to shepherd and pastor. Her responsibility was making sure that we had children’s workers staffed and that our children were being taught the Word of God. But when we brought in a man, we tasked him with, ‘We want you to minister to these families.

We want you to have a pastoral function in their family, so that they look to you as a shepherd.’

Whereas she sort of led from behind, she made sure that everything was done and that we had people in our rotation and all that, but she didn’t have a shepherding function. She grew it to the point where we needed someone to have a shepherding function over this ministry.”

Adam Pickard, who started Citizens Church in Kernersville, North Carolina, about sixteen months ago, says that his church outlines in its church bylaws and membership class a key differentiation between day-to-day staff and elders.

Staff leaders are called directors, whether they are managing the church’s youth ministry, children’s ministry, hospitality, or another area of the church.

Currently, Pickard serves as the church’s only elder. But as it raises up new elders, they won’t hold staff positions.

“I would kind of be the go-between, assisting with the overall vision, leading the vision, along with the help of the elders, but also leading my staff team in the week-to-week operations,” Pickard said.

USING PRECISE TER MINOLOGY

Mark Vance serves as the lead pastor of Cornerstone Church in Ames, Iowa, a Southern Baptist church that specifically prioritizes reaching college students and starting new churches near college campuses. The church has a full elder team of about twenty. A smaller group of eight to twelve (of which no more than half can be on staff) meets weekly as an elder council to provide direct oversight of the church.

Here’s why you want to use biblical language titles, like ‘pastor,’ because it insists that everybody meets the biblical criteria and qualifications set down

by Paul, and therefore it protects the body from unqualified leaders.”

Jonathan Leeman, editorial director 9Marks

“This is where I think the New Testament gives some flexibility,” Vance said. “It doesn’t mandate that you have to have an elder team that meets every single week, or your elder team needs to have twelve people. Those are local decisions.

Those are function decisions. But they need to abide by the basic forms and ideas that the New Testament sets out. That’s where I think in Baptist life there are 40,000 different churches in different contexts with different histories. I think it can and should look different in local settings, but it needs to, in those differences, still have a common

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thread core that’s established by the New Testament.”

The terminology matters, Vance says. Every person the church calls an elder fits the qualifications of elder, as outlined in Scripture.

Daryl Jones, who pastors the Rock Church in Miami, also says the terminology of whom a church describes as an elder or pastor is critical.

His church describes leaders as ministers when they do not fit the qualifications for elder.

Jones specifically referenced a young man in his church who was training to be a pastor. While being trained, the church referred to him as a minister. Because the young man wasn’t overseeing any ministry in the church or expressing any kind of authority within the church, the term pastor didn’t apply.

“I know that term [minister], biblically, could be a servant, a deacon,” Jones said. “It could be used a lot of different ways because it’s really about service, but we use that term, and we use it specifically to communicate this man is being trained in pastoral ministry, but he is not a pastor yet.”

York agrees that churches need to be careful when attaching the title of pastor to a position.

“If a church is not going to give someone pastoral oversight and authority, then I don’t think they should call them pastors,” York said. “I think they should call them directors. I do think the word minister is appropriate because that simply means a servant. We have all kinds of ministry in our church by both men and women, but that’s a different function from the pastor. I really think we need to protect the office and the function of the pastor.”

DEALING WITH GENDER IN CHURCH-STAFF ROLES

At the heart of the discussion about multi-staff churches in Southern Baptist life in recent years has been gender.

“At Bellevue, we have approximately forty other men who’ve been ordained as pastors,” said Steve Gaines, the senior pastor of Bellevue

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Baptist Church in Memphis. “They lead in various roles over various groups in our congregation. No woman at Bellevue is ordained as a pastor, because the New Testament never refers to a woman as a pastor.”

Instead, Gaines says, the church refers to male and female non-ordained staff as directors.

Vance notes the terminology of pastor is important, particularly because it relates to specific church functions.

“Some people say, ‘You have a woman who is a ministry director. We have one who is a pastor.

Isn’t that the same thing?’” Vance said. “My answer there is no. It’s not, because inside of the way that the New Testament has the pastor to function, the primary responsibility attached is the authoritative preaching of God’s Word.”

Vance doesn’t believe that this prohibits women from teaching in all contexts, but he says Cornerstone doesn’t have women preach and teach on weekends because of the sense of authority that comes along with it.

Despite recent controversies over how Southern Baptist churches use the term pastor, particularly as it relates to women in leadership, Sanchez believes there is an underlying unity within the convention on the topic.

“I just want to reiterate the fact that I think that most Baptists are genuine Bible-believers,” Sanchez said. “They’re faithful, committed to inerrancy. I don’t think most of them want women preaching. I think there’s a confusion, and it is rooted in our pragmatism. ‘Hey, if someone’s doing children’s work, they’re a children’s pastor.’ I don’t think that means they’re egalitarian. I just think it means we need to go back and understand from history, from Scripture, what a pastor is and what a deacon is, and then build from there.”

TOBIN PERRY is a writer and member of Center of Hope Church in Evansville, Indiana.

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S B C U P D AT E

Marshall Blalock speaks at the press conference following the SATF report at the 2022 SBC Annual Meeting in Anaheim, California.

Image by Adam Covington

Barber Names Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force Members

BY SCOTT BARKLEY

S

outhern Baptist Convention President Bart Barber has announced the members and leaders of those making up the Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force (ARITF).

Messengers to the annual meeting in Anaheim tasked Barber, pastor of First Baptist Church in Farmersville, Texas, with the responsibility as part of the approved recommendations from the Sexual Abuse Task Force, chaired by North Carolina pastor Bruce Frank. The recommendations were the result of a yearlong study and investigation by Guidepost Solutions into the SBC Executive Committee.

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“The purpose of this task force is to assist the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention in our efforts to shut the doors of our churches to those who would act as sexual predators and to wrap our arms around survivors and those who love them,” Barber said.

In addition to the formation of the ARITF, the recommendations included the establishment of a “Ministry Check” website. The ARITF will oversee and report back to the Convention on the feasibility, effectiveness, and costs of the website, which will be established and maintained by an independent contractor chosen by the task force.

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The purpose of this task force is to assist the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention in our efforts to shut the doors of our churches to those who would act as sexual predators and to wrap our arms around survivors and those who love them.”

Bart Barber, president Southern Baptist Convention

Marshall Blalock, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Charleston, South Carolina, serves as ARITF chair and Mike Keahbone, pastor of First Baptist Church in Lawton, Oklahoma, serves as vice chair. Others making up the task force are: Todd Benkert, pastor and lead elder, Oak Creek Community Church, Mishawaka, Indiana Melissa Bowen, member, First Baptist Church, Prattville, Alabama Brad Eubank, senior pastor, Petal First Baptist Church, Petal, Mississippi Cyndi Lott, member, Catawba Valley Baptist Church, Morganton, North Carolina Jon Nelson, lead pastor, Soma Community Church, Jefferson City, Missouri Jarrett Stephens, senior pastor, Champion Forest Baptist Church, Houston, Texas

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Gregory Wills, member, Travis Avenue Baptist Church, Fort Worth, Texas; professor, church history and Baptist heritage; and dean, School of Theology, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

“These task force members will be assisted in their work by a few consultants, whose names will be released later,” Barber said. He added that the consulting group would include survivors of clergy sexual abuse, pastors, lawyers, educators, and one person who was the object of a false accusation of sexual abuse in the past.

“Every member of the task force is an active member of a Southern Baptist church, representing a wide variety of church sizes from several geographic areas within the Convention,” he said. “Some of the members are also providing leadership to task forces serving their various state conventions.

“Between the task force members and the various consultants, the task force discussions will feature the input of top experts in the subject matters of sexual abuse, the law, Southern Baptist history and polity, trauma-informed counseling, and most importantly, the Bible.”

Per the recommendations, the ARITF is authorized to operate for one year, with messengers at subsequent annual meetings voting on whether to renew the group “as needed” and deliver a report each year of its existence. Barber will appoint any vacancies at the time as necessary.

SPECIFIC CHARGES OF THE ARITF INCLUDE:

• Study best practices in keeping with Southern Baptist church polity for feasibility and report back to the 2023 annual meeting on which reforms could be adopted by the Convention as well as how they should be implemented.

Such recommendations include a survivor care fund, memorial, auditing the Caring Well curriculum, and possibly creating a permanent committee or entity.

• Assist SBC entities in studying Guidepost recommendations and advise on implementing reforms relevant to each entity’s ministry assignment.

• Be a resource in abuse prevention, crisis response, and survivor care to “Baptist bodies” who voluntarily seek assistance. This can include providing a list of recommended, independent, qualified firms for training and inquiries and assisting state conventions with recommendations, upon request.

• Consult with the SBC Credentials Committee for revising the evaluation and submission process to include complaints of noncooperation due to sexual abuse and publish the revisions.

• Work with the Executive Committee and Credentials Committee to select an independent, qualified firm or firms to assist the Credentials Committee by providing factual findings for complaints of noncooperation due to sexual abuse. The ARITF will report back to the 2023 annual meeting on the selection.

Messengers in Anaheim approved what was considered a friendly amendment to the first recommendation for the ARITF. Instead of operating through recommendations produced by Guidepost as in the original language, ARITF members would do so in accordance with “best practices in keeping with Southern Baptist church polity.”

On June 8, Send Relief announced it will provide $3 million to fund the first year of work related to the SATF recommendations, with another $1 million toward the establishment of a survivor care fund to provide trauma care for survivors and trauma training for pastors.

The $3 million will come from Send Relief undesignated funds and not Cooperative Program, Annie Armstrong Easter Offering, or Lottie Moon Christmas Offering funds, said Send Relief President Bryant Wright, International Mission Board

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President Paul Chitwood, and North American Mission Board President Kevin Ezell in a joint statement.

The $1 million gift will come from Send Relief funds designated for its ongoing mission to protect children and families.

Whatever the ARITF produces, Barber said, will then be placed before Southern Baptists for a response. The ARITF will convene for an initial retreat with the outgoing Sexual Abuse Task Force before beginning its work.

“The authority to adopt the Task Force’s recommendations will rest with the messenger body of the Southern Baptist Convention,” Barber said.

“The ability to apply the resources and recommendations that this process produces resides with the various autonomous churches that cooperate through the Southern Baptist Convention.

“We can only be successful as we earn their confidence and supply their needs. I am confident that this task force is well equipped to do just that.”

A version of this article was published in Baptist Press on August 8, 2022.

SCOTT BARKLEY is national correspondent for Baptist Press.

YOBE STATE | NIGERIA

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Serving in Hostile Territory

f missionaries could choose their own assignments, one of the last places anyone would be likely to go is the town of Gashua, in Yobe state, Nigeria. Temperatures hover around 120 degrees, clouds of mosquitoes hang in the air, the drinking water carries various diseases and a poWdery dust causes chronic eye and respiratory problems. If that weren’t enough, Yobe state is ravaged by ongoing violence from local Islamist groups.

“If I followed my own wish, I would not go to Gashua,” Pastor Elijah Ogunyi said. Like Jonah, Elijah initially resisted God’s call, but God had been leading him toward a particular work since childhood.

“God had to cut my wings,” Elijah said.

“That is how I became a pastor.”

Future Witchdoctor Elijah was an unlikely candidate for a minister of the gospel. He was born into a polygamous family that practiced idol worship, and his grandfather was the village witchdoctor.

Though in line to inherit his grandfather’s priestly duties, Elijah injured his shoulder as a boy, preventing him from lifting the heavy stone idols.

From then on, his half-brother was assigned the ritual of sacrificing to the family gods. Elijah now credits his shoulder injury with helping him leave

the village, avoid polygamous marriages and stop worshiping idols.

After coming of age, Elijah left the village and traveled throughout Nigeria, using his training as an electrician to support himself. By the early 1990s, he had gotten married and settled in the central Nigerian city of Jos. In 1995, he began to dream of a frightening, dark figure. The dreams were so vivid that he feared going to sleep. Then, in one of his dreams, he received a Bible that he used to slay the Elijah and Felicia have suffered  health problems caused by the difficult environment where they minister.

vom.org

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dark figure, and he was never troubled by dreams of the frightening figure again. “That was when I discovered I was supposed to change my ways and totally surrender my life to Christ,” Elijah said.

After finding a church, Elijah began to serve as a prayer group leader when he wasn’t busy with his family or his work as an electrician. In 2006, he had to skip church meetings several days in a row while trying repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, to fix a faulty pump for a client. When Elijah finally prayed about it, he was convicted by the Holy Spirit that he had been too concerned about earning money instead of trusting God to take care of him. When Elijah fixed the pump afterward, it continued working. “Since then,” he said, “I believed that whatever God wanted me to do, I would do it.”

Sometime later, he sensed God’s call to attend seminary. “I said to myself, ‘I have five children; how am I going to cope?’” Elijah recalled. “[So] I ignored it.”

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That same year, he was offered a lucrative electrical contract. Every time the developer tried to contact him, however, the calls failed to go through, and Elijah lost the job. “I was so angry,” he said. “I went into my room to pray.

I asked God, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘The door of blessing will not open for you any longer.’” That was how God led him to seminary.

When Elijah completed seminary training in May 2014, he expected to continue serving at his church. But once again, God had other plans.

Sent into Danger God sent Elijah straight into the heart of Boko Haram territory, a part of northern Nigeria where the militant Islamist group has wreaked havoc for about 15 years.

At the time Elijah served there, Boko Haram, which had pledged allegiance to the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS), carried out almost daily attacks on Christians and government entities.

Daily tasks like grocery shopping can be burdensome when Muslim vendors charge Christians double the normal price for basic goods.

The Lord directed Elijah to a town called Gashua, in the Sahara Desert near the border with Niger. It was 250 miles away from his family’s home in Jos, and the rough car ride took him at least six hours each way over potholed and dangerous roads.

In 2017, Elijah and his wife, Felicia, moved to Gashua with their 11-year-old son, leaving their other children with adult siblings in Jos so they could continue their studies. “When I told my children we were moving, it was a big challenge,” Elijah said tearfully. “Two days before we left, my second daughter said, ‘Daddy, are you leaving us?’ I said, ‘Yes, we will leave … If God wants me to leave, I will.’”

The Ogunyi family served at a church that had been established years earlier

THE VOICE OF THE MARTYRS and had once had 100 members. By the time Elijah arrived, however, there were only five men, three women and five young people in the church. The other members had been frightened away by a large-scale 2011 Boko Haram attack and ongoing violence in Yobe state. “After the church was attacked, the people locked the place up and ran away,” Elijah said.

Elijah decided to focus his ministry work on young people, who are at risk because of the region’s extreme poverty and are targeted for recruitment by local Islamists. Christian youth in Gashua are so poor that many struggle to afford food and water. Elijah said boys are lured with gifts, and Christian girls are frequently kidnapped, drugged and forced to marry Muslim men. “Instead of us winning them, they are winning our children,” he said.

The area is 99 percent Muslim, and many people are hostile to Christians.

Market vendors often shamelessly charge Felicia double what they charge others.

The almajiri, Muslim children who help sustain mosques through begging and are given to the mosque for education, used to throw stones at Elijah and his family and call them infidels, but Elijah learned to keep a pack of cookies with him to give to the hungry children.

During the Muslim fasting season, he gives them water, and he has brought small gifts to those at his neighborhood mosque. Now, the children look out for Elijah and guard his house when he is gone. “They started loving us,” Elijah said.

Elijah’s church has been burglarized twice. After the second incident, the local Muslim leader chastised the offenders and promised Elijah it would not happen again. “I have forgiven all those who persecute me,” Elijah said, “because God teaches us to forgive. If I see them, I will

share the gospel with them.”

Ongoing Threats Though Elijah has won the friendship of many Muslim neighbors, he lives with the ever-present threat of a Boko Haram attack. A neighboring village 12 miles away has suffered recurring attacks by the Islamists, but so far God has protected Elijah and his family from harm. “When we hear that Boko Haram is coming, we run,” Elijah laughed. But beneath his good humor, the fear is real. “We are afraid … because we know they will look for pastors first,” he said.

“Persecution is a part of Christian life.

If truly we pastors are called by God, we should expect persecution.”

While Elijah fully expects to suffer persecution, his family’s greatest challenge has come from Gashua’s natural environment. They struggle with malaria, typhoid and kidney problems because of the poor water. Both Elijah and Felicia have chronic eye problems caused by the pervasive dust. And because of the desert heat and unreliability of electricity, it is difficult to keep medications at the required temperature.

“I have never seen a place that has as many mosquitoes as Gashua,” Elijah

said. “They fill your house ... when you open the windows. When you spray insecticide, they die and cover the ground like ants, but they come back again after three hours. Before you can get treatment for malaria, another mosquito bites you. It makes it difficult to be healthy. [But] we thank God that we are still alive until today.”

After living in Gashua for more than four years, the couple decided they needed to be based in Jos because of the decline in Felicia’s health. They remain committed to their work in Gashua, however, so Elijah travels back and forth to maintain his ministry. “We have made up our minds that it is better to die in battle for God than to die as a coward,” Elijah said. “I thank God for my wife, who is always supportive. She would rather die than leave God’s will.”

Having experienced God’s hand guiding him to Gashua, Elijah is committed to staying until God leads him elsewhere. In fact, he was asked to pastor another church but declined the offer because he did not sense God leading him to take it. “We will continue until we die,” he said. “Unless I hear His voice saying it is time for us to leave, we will continue.” 

Elijah’s adult children live in Jos, a treacherous six-hour drive from Gashua.

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S B C U P D AT E

US Supreme Court Building Image by Brandon Porter

Court’s Term Delivers Wins for Life, Religious Liberty

BY TOM STRODE

T

he US Supreme Court delivered deeply consequential victories for the sanctity of human life and religious freedom in its just-completed term, advocates for both causes said in assessing the justices’ work.

The justices issued their final opinions Thursday, June 30, to close a 2021–22 term in which they eliminated near the end two high court standards from five decades ago that were long opposed by pro-life and/or many religious liberty advocates.

On June 24, the Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that largely controlled its decision-making on the issue and

ushered in an abortion regime that produced a death toll estimated at more than sixty-three million preborn babies. The justices also reinforced during the term their recent pattern of rulings that safeguard both free exercise of religion and equal access to public benefits for faith-based organizations. They crowned a series of such opinions with a June 27 decision in which they all made clear the court’s test regarding government establishment of religion instituted in a 1971 case was dead.

“The opinions the justices released in this Supreme Court term demonstrated a commitment to protecting our foundational, Constitutional

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No decision proved as significant for Southern Baptists and other pro-lifers as the justices’ long-awaited reversal of the Roe decision, which struck down state restrictions on abortion. By a 5–4 majority June 24, the court overturned both Roe and the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey ruling that affirmed it, sending policy decisions on the issue back to the states.

rights to free speech and free exercise,” Southern Baptist public policy specialist Chelsea Sobolik told Baptist Press. “Additionally, they handed down a landmark pro-life decision that allows states the ability to take steps that will end abortion—a monumental decision that countless Christians have fervently prayed for.

“As this term wraps up, more Americans will now be able to legally protect the preborn, and we all will be able to continue faithfully living out our individual faith in the public square,” said Sobolik, former director of public policy for the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), in written comments.

The high court should receive “at least a 95 percent,” said Kevin Theriot, senior counsel for

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Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), when asked what grade he would give the justices for the term on such issues as abortion and religious liberty.

If “extra credit” is given, the justices deserve it “for taking on issues that are controversial and that courts in the past have been reluctant to take up and . . . for fixing long problems that have been around for fifty years,” Theriot told BP in a phone interview.

The term’s close brought about an official change of justices on the high court. Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in June 30 after the high court issued its final two opinions of the term and Associate Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement became effective. Jackson, who received Senate confirmation in April, became the first African-American woman to serve on the court.

No decision proved as significant for Southern Baptists and other pro-lifers as the justices’ long-awaited reversal of the Roe decision, which struck down state restrictions on abortion. By a 5–4 majority June 24, the court overturned both Roe and the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey ruling that affirmed it, sending policy decisions on the issue back to the states. About half of the fifty states have enacted or are soon expected to enact abortion bans throughout pregnancy or at some stage of pregnancy.

“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Associate Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the court’s unequivocal rejection of that opinion.

“Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences.”

The watershed decision came in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case regarding a Mississippi law that prohibits the abortion of preborn children whose gestational age is more than 15 weeks.

“The bottom line is the Supreme Court rightly held that this so-called right to abortion has no basis in the Constitution’s text or in our nation’s history, and it never has,” said ADF’s Theriot, who called it “awesome now that states can af-

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Pro-Life advocates assemble at the US Supreme Court building in Washington DC. Image Courtesy of Baptist Press | Karen McCutcheon

firm that life’s a human right and make sure that women have greater access to the support and the services that they need.”

The high court pronounced the death of the Lemon test, which was based on a standard offered in the 1971 Lemon v. Kurtzman opinion, in its June 27 ruling that the post-game, midfield prayer of a high school football coach did not violate the First Amendment’s ban on government establishment of religion. According to the now-discarded Lemon test, a law was required to have a secular purpose, not primarily promote or restrict religion and “not foster an excessive entanglement with religion” to avoid a violation of the Establishment Clause.

In the court’s 6–3 opinion in Kennedy v.

Bremerton School District, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch said the court “long ago abandoned Lemon and its [government] endorsement [of religion] test offshoot.” In a dissent joined by two others, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the court had now overruled Lemon “entirely and in all contexts. It is wrong to do so.”

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Instead of the Lemon test, the court has for years emphasized in its Establishment Clause decisions an “analysis focused on original meaning and history,” Gorsuch wrote.

The Lemon test “really was misused in a lot of ways to discriminate against religious people,” Theriot said in commending the court’s rejection of the standard. The justices’ reliance on coercion in now determining Establishment Clause violations “helps minimize the chance that the Establishment Clause is going to be used as a sword to discriminate against religious people instead of a shield to protect them from the government interference with their religious conviction.”

In the term’s decisions on a Maine schoolchoice program and especially Kennedy, the justices “really slammed the door” on government use of the Establishment Clause to discriminate against religious individuals, Theriot told BP. “The court said, ‘No, these folks have religious convictions, and you can’t use the First Amendment as a justification for censoring or discriminating against them,’” he said.

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flags on the City Hall plaza. In Shurtleff v. City of Boston, the justices said the policy also constituted discrimination based on “religious viewpoint.”

The high court pronounced the death of the Lemon test, which was based on a standard offered in the 1971 Lemon v.

Kurtzman opinion, in its June 27 ruling that the post-game, midfield prayer of a high school football coach did not violate the First Amendment’s ban on government establishment of religion.

In the term’s other rulings seen by most religious freedom advocates as victories, the Supreme Court: • Ruled in a 6-3 opinion the state of Maine offended the First Amendment’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion by prohibiting faithbased schools from participation in a tuition-assistance program. Carson v. Makin, issued June 21, was the latest in a series of decisions in recent years in which the high court has ruled states may not exclude religious individuals and institutions when it makes public benefits available to all. It also clarified the Free Exercise Clause bars such discrimination on the basis of not only religious status but on the basis of the use of such benefits.

• Decided unanimously May 2 the city of Boston violated the First Amendment’s right to free speech by prohibiting the flying of the Christian flag when it permitted other groups to fly their

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• Supported in an 8–1 ruling March 24 a condemned Texas inmate’s request to have his Southern Baptist pastor lay hands on and pray aloud for him when he receives a lethal injection. The justices said in Ramirez v. Collier the prisoner “is likely to succeed in showing [the state’s] policy substantially burdens his exercise of religion” by barring his pastor from ministering to him as requested.

The ERLC signed onto friend-of-the-court briefs in support of the parties that prevailed in all the church-state cases, as well as Dobbs. In the brief in the Dobbs case, the Southern Baptist entity urged the justices not only to uphold the Mississippi law but to reverse Roe. In other abortion-related actions during the term, the high court: • Ruled in an 8–1 decision March 3 that Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron will be allowed to defend the state’s 2018 ban of dismemberment or D&E abortions on unborn children who are still alive. Cameron had sought permission after another state official declined to continue defending the law.

• Decided in December 2021 the Texas ban on the abortion of a preborn child whose heartbeat can be detected may remain in effect while it is being challenged in court. The justices returned the case to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The law, which has been in effect for all but two days since September 1 of last year, prohibits abortions as early as five to six weeks into pregnancy.

A version of this article was published in Baptist Press on July 1, 2022.

TOM STRODE is Washington bureau chief for Baptist Press.

S B C U P D AT E

Send Relief Establishes Fund to Support Survivors of Sexual Abuse

BY BRANDON ELROD

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F

ollowing the recent report that addressed how Southern Baptists have handled sexual abuse allegations in the past, Send Relief is seeking to be a part of the solution by establishing a survivor care fund.

Send Relief, the compassion ministry arm of the Southern Baptist Convention of churches, committed $3 million in funding to the SBC’s Executive Committee ahead of the 2022 SBC Annual Meeting to be put toward the cost of implementing recommendations approved by messengers. In addition, Send Relief provided seed funding of $1 million for a sexual abuse survivor care fund that Southern Baptists can contribute to as well through SendRelief.org.

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The fund will provide survivors of sexual abuse within the SBC the opportunity to receive professional trauma counseling, and it will also help provide trauma-informed trainings for SBC pastors, churches, associations, and state conventions. Those trainings will help equip church leaders to better prevent sexual abuse from happening and minister to survivors in the tragic aftermath of abuse.”

“From the beginning, Send Relief has put a priority on protecting children and families,” Send Relief leaders wrote in a June 8 statement. “Doing so is not a distraction from our mission—it is an integral part of it.” One of Send Relief’s five stated ministry focus areas is “Protect children and families.”

The fund will provide survivors of sexual abuse within Southern Baptist churches the opportunity to receive professional trauma counseling, and it will also help provide trauma-informed trainings for Southern Baptist pastors, churches, associations, and state conventions. Those trainings will help equip church leaders to better prevent sexual abuse from happening and minister to survivors in the tragic aftermath of abuse.

Send Relief is a cooperative effort between the SBC’s International Mission Board (IMB) and North American Mission Board (NAMB) that

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provides Gospel-focused compassion ministry.

IMB president Paul Chitwood, NAMB president Kevin Ezell, and Send Relief president Bryant Wright announced that Send Relief would provide online opportunities for other SBC entities and individuals to give to the fund. That option is now available through Send Relief ’s website.

The one-time gifts totaling $4 million came from funds that were not designated for any specific fund or ministry project, the Send Relief statement said. Neither were the Send Relief funds given out of Cooperative Program donations or gifts to either of the mission board’s missions offerings, the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, or the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering.

“Our prayer—like those of all Southern Baptists—is for unity, healing, and courage as we advance the hope of the Gospel amidst a broken world,” said Chitwood, Ezell, and Wright in their joint statement.

Information about the availability of these resources will be made available soon.

If you are/have been a victim of sexual abuse or suspect sexual abuse by a pastor, staff member or member of a Southern Baptist church or entity, please reach out for help at 202-864-5578 or SBChotline@ guidepostsolutions.com. All calls are confidential.

A version of this article was published in Baptist Press on July 1, 2022.

BRANDON ELROD writes for the North American Mission Board.

S B C U P D AT E

Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary campus. Image Courtesy of SEBTS

SEBTS Launches Mandatory Sexual Abuse Prevention and Response Course

BY CHAD BURCHETT

I

n an effort to ensure that students are equipped to prevent and respond to abuse in their ministry contexts, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary has announced the launch of a mandatory sexual abuse prevention and response course starting August 2022.

“Sexual abuse in any form should not be tolerated. It is a sinful act against fellow image bearers and an affront to a holy God,” said SEBTS President Danny Akin. “Southeastern is committed to preventing sexual abuse and training students to respond well to survivors with proper care and advocacy.”

Undergraduate, graduate, and advanced students will be required to complete the course on sexual abuse prevention and response during their programs at Southeastern. The mandatory

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training course will provide an overview of practical strategies for preventing and responding to sexual abuse and will clarify biblical and theological foundations for caring well for survivors of abuse.

“As an institution, we recognize that fulfilling the Great Commission means teaching the whole counsel of God’s Word,” Akin said. “It means teaching disciples of Jesus to obey the second great commandment of neighbor love.”

In addition to contributions from Akin and from Southeastern Provost Keith Whitfield, instructors for the course include Bradley Hambrick, SEBTS assistant professor of biblical counseling, and Samantha Kilpatrick, attorney in the Kilpatrick Law Group and instructor in the Meredith College paralegal program.

Students in the course will receive a biblical and theological foundation for protecting the vulnerable as well as instruction on how to recognize vulnerabilities in ministry. The course is designed not only to inform students about proper responses to sexual abuse, but also about prevention and creating a culture of prevention and open communication. Instructors will also address implementing protective policies and reporting processes, understanding legal obligations, and navigating spiritual and interpersonal challenges relevant to sexual abuse.

“Studies show that one in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused by their eighteenth birthday,” said Kilpatrick, a member of Providence Baptist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. “Churches and ministries are not immune, but often can be more at risk due to lack of awareness or inconsistent prevention policy and practice. Unless we understand the prevalence and dynamics of sexual abuse, we are not well equipped to implement prevention policy, nor are we able to respond well in a Christ-honoring and trauma-informed manner.”

“This training is relevant and important in higher education,” she said. “It will train Southeastern students at all levels as they seek to go on mission. The concepts and principles in this training will benefit all students as they seek to serve both in ministry contexts and in secular spaces.”

Akin said the course is timely in light of recent developments in the Southern Baptist Convention, including the third-party investigation of the SBC Executive Committee’s handling of sexual abuse claims.

“The heartbreaking breadth of sexual abuse in the SBC is undeniable,” Akin said. “It is far more widespread than most realized. This training course is intended to address this reality.”

In his Statement on the SBC Task Force Report on Sexual Abuse, Akin urged students and staff to report sexual abuse and added that Southeastern is committed to preventing sexual abuse and to caring well for survivors.

“Sexual abuse in any form should not be tolerated. It is a sinful act against fellow image bearers and an affront to a holy God. Southeastern is committed to preventing sexual abuse and training students to respond well to survivors with proper care and advocacy.”

Danny Akin, president Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

“Let me encourage you that if you know of someone that has been sexually abused or is the victim of sexual abuse that you immediately report it to law enforcement,” Akin wrote. “After reporting it to law enforcement, you can send an email to reportabuse@sebts.edu. This email address is monitored by our Student Life team. We will follow up and respond quickly and decisively.”

If you are/have been a victim of sexual abuse or suspect sexual abuse by a pastor, staff member or member of a Southern Baptist church or entity, please reach out for help at 202-864-5578 or SBChotline@ guidepostsolutions.com. All calls are confidential.

A version of this article was published in Baptist Press on July 11, 2022.

CHAD BURCHETT writes for Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

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S B C U P D AT E

J. J. Washington, NAMB’s new national director of personal evangelism, preaches during the 2022 Until All Hear evangelism conference hosted by the Georgia Baptist Mission Board.

Washington previously served as the state director of evangelism for Georgia Baptists.

Image Courtesy of J. J. Washington

Washington to Champion Personal Evangelism in New Role at NAMB

BY BRANDON ELROD

J.

J. Washington’s transition to the national evangelism team at the North American Mission Board (NAMB) on July 18 is like the “Acts 1:8 principle playing out in my own life,” Washington said.

“My primary inspiration for considering this move is the opportunity to make a national impact for evangelism,” Washington said. “I did this as a local pastor, then I covered a region, then I

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went on to impact the state level at the Georgia Baptist Mission Board.”

Washington is NAMB’s new national director of personal evangelism as part of a team that is now led by senior executive director of evangelism and leadership, Tim Dowdy.

“Not only does J. J. bring experience as a pastor leading in the local church, but he has worked in Georgia as the state director of evangelism,”

Dowdy said. “So he knows how to help support and aid local churches in their efforts to take the Gospel to their communities.”

NAMB president Kevin Ezell announced Dowdy’s transition to leading the evangelism team during the 2022 SBC Annual Meeting in Anaheim, California. Dowdy served as lead pastor of Eagles Landing First Baptist Church in McDonough, Georgia, for thirty years and averaged 132 baptisms a year.

“Our mission to serve and equip pastors and churches with evangelism resources will continue as our urgent focus,” Ezell said. “Tim Dowdy is a great leader who is passionate about sharing Christ. With Tim leading strategy, vision, and day-to-day ministry, we also will be utilizing several leading pastors who will assist us in promoting evangelism to our churches and training Southern Baptists in evangelism.”

One key aspect of that strategy is the role Washington will play.

“Our goal is to help our family of churches share the Gospel everywhere with everyone,” Dowdy said. “J. J. brings the experience and commitment to personal evangelism to help our churches accomplish this mission.”

Over the last several years, Southern Baptists have seen a steady decline in baptisms year over year as more people across the United States, especially younger people, increasingly describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated.

“The vision is to take the Gospel to North America. That’s the mission. That’s what we’re trying to achieve,” Washington said. “I’ve been praying specifically about a strategy to try and achieve that goal. To do it, it’s going to take all Southern Baptists. That includes the local church, the association, the state conventions. All of us have the same goal of helping our churches in the area of evangelism.”

In his previous role as a state director of evangelism, Washington communicated and developed relationships with Southern Baptist leaders

in similar roles across the nation as they collaborated on best practices for serving churches.

Larry Anderson, director of healthy churches and evangelism for the Baptist Resource Network of Pennsylvania/South Jersey, currently serves as president of the fellowship of state evangelism directors.

“J. J.’s personality is contagious; he lights up a room with his joy and love for the Lord,” Anderson said. “I’m excited and proud that NAMB has brought him on board to serve in evangelism as his passion to reach the lost is unparalleled.”

In his role, Washington hopes to help NAMB’s evangelism team encourage and equip local churches in their efforts to share the Gospel in their communities. The goal, Washington said, will be to go beyond offering resources and inspiration.

“You can inspire your troops, but if you’ve not prepared them, they won’t know what to do,” Washington said. “We’ve got to find a way to equip our folks about the process, not just give them resources. We need to help them understand how to move into the conversation to then use the resource.”

Comparing evangelism to an investment portfolio, Washington described a local church’s need to diversify its evangelism “portfolio” through service, one-on-one, and group-based approaches.

“It sounds cliché, and we probably hear it a lot, but we need to keep the main thing the main thing, focusing on how we can reach our neighbors and the nations with the Gospel,” Washington said. “That’s what we’re all about. Keep the main thing the main thing, and let’s get it done.”

A version of this article was published in Baptist Press on July 15, 2022.

BRANDON ELROD writes for the North American Mission Board.

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S B C U P D AT E

Mark Dance is director of pastoral wellness with GuideStone Financial Resources.

Image Courtesy of Mark Dance

GuideStone Expands Focus on Helping Pastors Start Well, Finish Better

BY SCOTT BARKLEY

M

ark Dance remembers the time he lost focus—despite knowing better—and paying the price.

It was 1986 and Dance had just completed his business degree. Even back then, young people wanted to get the latest technology and his eyes were set on a new VCR. So, he drove to a Montgomery Ward department store and bought one on credit.

“I think it was about ten dollars a month for it,” he said. “I don’t remember exactly how much I ended up paying for it, but it was at least twice as much as the sticker price. Even though I had a business degree, I didn’t think about it.”

That mentality can come back on pastors, he said. Not thinking ahead or considering how

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habits compound into a lifestyle tend to sneak up later in life.

Dance was a pastor for twenty-seven years before starting Lifeway Pastors in 2014 and then taking on a similar role with Oklahoma Baptists.

When Hance Dilbeck, Oklahoma’s executive director, was named GuideStone’s next president last July, Dance followed him to become the entity’s director of pastoral wellness.

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He learned how to assess the environment, then work toward the best outcome while maximizing the virtue of patience—things he holds in common with a third cousin, famed fisherman Bill Dance.

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Our ministry will never be stronger than our marriage.

If our most important relationships are struggling, any applause we get for our ministry is empty.”

Mark Dance, director of pastoral wellness GuideStone Financial Resources

“My focus is to help pastors start and finish well,” he said. “We want them to get healthy and stay healthy. Our work is to build upon the definition of health that GuideStone has established throughout its history.”

That includes addressing emotional health as well as physical and financial. Pastors are tempted by the appearance of a successful ministry and, naturally, want it as well. But the late nights and endless hospital visits can lead to ignoring others.

“No one wants to start ministry with the intention of having broken relationships with his wife and kids,” Dance said.

Maintaining a healthy relationship with Christ and family are priorities, he said. But there is also the matter of knowing and growing from peers.

In Oklahoma, Dance led that effort by establishing more than one hundred cohorts for a pipeline to identify and develop others called to ministry. Groups ranged from juniors in high school to those into their tenth year leading a local church.

“We initially hoped for a couple of dozen cohorts,” said Dance. “When Hance learned that forty percent of Oklahoma pastors were going to

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be retiring in the next ten years, he felt we needed to ‘strengthen the bench,’ so to speak.”

During his career, Dance has noticed visible areas that affect pastor wellness.

“We want to live outside our means. That’s the typical top financial stressor,” he said.

“You don’t have to be proficient in everything, including money. Find someone who can teach you in that area not only for your own financial wellness but for the times you’re going to be at a finance committee meeting in your church.”

Physical health, perhaps the most visible wellness factor, has a history of being glossed over by ministers. “Our tribe doesn’t have the best track record for it,” Dance said.

Aside from pursuing a healthy devotional life, he also stressed the importance of pursuing your spouse.

“Our ministry will never be stronger than our marriage,” he said. “If our most important relationships are struggling, any applause we get for our ministry is empty.”

Discipline and maintaining guardrails are important.

Even though he hasn’t had credit card debt since paying off the VCR thirty-six years ago, Dance still uses them. He knows to not put more on a card than he can pay off at the end of the month.

There’s a metaphor to be considered—not bearing more than you’re supposed to handle.

“At GuideStone, our mental health claims have gone up forty percent in the last three years,” he said. “We’re not here just for your physical and financial health. It’s all interconnected.”

A version of this article was published in Baptist Press on July 22, 2022.

SCOTT BARKLEY is national correspondent for Baptist Press.

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S B C U P D AT E

At the 2022 SBC Annual Meeting in June, Mike Keahbone votes for the resolution he helped write addressing religious liberty and forced conversions among Native Americans.

Image by Adam Covington

Keahbone Uses Native American Resolution to Minister to Survivors of Forced Conversion

BY TIMOTHY COCKES

M

ike Keahbone, pastor of First Baptist Church Lawton, Oklahoma, not only played a crucial role in drafting a resolution decrying the forced conversion of Native peoples, but he has already begun to use the resolution as a way to minister to survivors.

Keahbone, a Native American with heritage from the Comanche, Kiowa, and Cherokee tribes, served on this year’s SBC Resolutions Committee and helped write the resolution titled, “On Religious Liberty, Forced Conversion, and the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report,” which was adopted by SBC messengers in June.

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July 9, Keahbone read the resolution from the platform at a “Road to Healing” tour event sponsored by the US Department of the Interior in conjunction with the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, who attended the event, is the first Indigenous person to serve in a presidential cabinet position.

The tour, a response to a recently released federal report documenting the forced assimilation and conversion of Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians in the US between 1819 and 1969, kicked off at Riverside Indian School in Anadarko, Oklahoma, which, according to media reports, is believed to be the oldest

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boarding school in Oklahoma, opening in 1871.

Keahbone said around seventy-five percent of the boarding schools mentioned in the federal report were located in Oklahoma, which is why he, an Oklahoma pastor, felt led to attend the Road to Healing event, an opportunity for past victims of mistreatment in the boarding schools to tell their stories in an open-mic time.

The accounts shared at the event included one from a survivor who recalled being checked in and immediately taken to a church and forced to ask God for forgiveness for being Native American.

Keahbone said he didn’t even realize any of the survivors of the abuse were still living and described what he heard as “soul-crushing but very healing.”

“The powerful thing in that moment was I got to stand up and share this resolution and to say that Southern Baptists, the largest Protestant denomination in the country, is standing with Native peoples,” he said. “The language in the resolution was so powerful in saying we stand against these things that hurt you, and we stand for the things that will help you.

“We’re the first denomination that I know to recognize this report and say, ‘We love you, we’re on your side, and we’re praying for you.’ I could see it in people’s faces, and I had a few people come talk to me about it after the event.”

For Keahbone, the report and the stories are personal. His great uncle, a Comanche tribe member named Perry Noyobad, lived in one of the boarding schools and was subjected to abuse such as punishment for speaking his native language.

Noyobad would later use that same language as a World War II code talker, helping the Allies communicate messages without fear of interception.

Keahbone said when his uncle was asked why he would serve his country in this way, he would say he was not fighting for what America was at the time, but for what he believed America could be.

The federal report released in May is Volume 1 of a full investigation carried out by the Bureau of

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Indian Affairs within the Department of the Interior. Titled “Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report,” the report said Native peoples were specifically targeted with these efforts of forced conversion and assimilation in order to systematically remove them from their native lands.

The instances of forced conversion or assimilation often took place in the form of mandatory boarding schools. Although Southern Baptists are not specifically named in the report, it does say many of these boarding school were run with the help of churches from various denominations.

The report was the inspiration for the resolution Keahbone wrote with fellow pastors J. T. English (Storyline Fellowship in Arvada, Colorado) and Jon Nelson (Soma Community Church in Jefferson City, Missouri).

“I read all ninety-five pages of the report and my initial response was filled with anger and sadness because it was starting to fill in the information gaps that I had lived with my entire life,” Keahbone said.

“I learned that some of my family members were just treated like wild animals and they were simply stuck in survival mode. It was gross, ugly, and it started to become personal.”

The resolution he helped craft rejects any type of forced conversion or assimilation of Native peoples as antithetical to Southern Baptist beliefs about the Great Commission, religious liberty, and soul freedom.

“I had never drafted a resolution in my life, and I had never even been to an SBC annual meeting in person before this year, but I really felt like this was an important thing for us to recognize,” Keahbone said.

“Bart Barber (chair of the 2022 Resolutions Committee) read every page of the report and got back with me and said we need to do something with this. Everybody on the committee was so supportive of the resolution and agreed it needed to be addressed. They allowed me to be the one

to present it, and the response from the Convention was overwhelming, awesome, and did a lot of good for my heart.”

When thinking about his own service to Southern Baptists, both as a pastor and as a member of the SBC Executive Committee, Keahbone remembers his uncle’s philosophy as well as the impact Southern Baptist ministry has had on his own life.

He recalls the way Southern Baptists ministered to him as a young boy growing up in the Comanche tribe, and explained his first exposure to Christianity and the Church was through Vacation Bible School at First Baptist Church Elgin, Oklahoma.

At VBS, he experienced “safety, kindness, and love,” he said. This Gospel impact still drives him as he serves Southern Baptists, both for who they are and who they could be.

“I understand the impact of the Gospel in my life, and I was introduced to that Gospel through

some godly and amazing wonderful Christian people at First Baptist Church Elgin,” Keahbone said.

“They became a family to me, and I became a part of something and I didn’t really realize it. All I knew was through these people I learned that God was real. I’ve just seen the Lord work too much and too often in my life to just give up on our Convention. I just believe it’s worth fighting for. Amidst all the ugliness that we see, we are still people who proclaim the Gospel and we take the Gospel all over the world. The Lord’s hand is on us, and He’s not done with us yet.”

A version of this article was published in Baptist Press on July 14, 2022.

TIMOTHY COCKES is a staff writer for Baptist Press.

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