Why the SBC Is Worth It

Kate Shellnutt at Christianity Today was the reporter who surprised me, and herself, with a question that touched upon my most profound personal thoughts about being elected as President of the Southern Baptist Convention (skip to 19:05 in the interview below).

In particular, I want to expand upon one statement that I made: "Every way that I've served Southern Baptists has left scars—every way that I've done it—but this family of churches is worth it." I have no desire to elaborate upon the scars, but I do want to take a few moments to talk about why the SBC is valuable to individual pastors, to member churches, and to the world outside the Southern Baptist Convention.

Why This Message Is Timely

It always matters to speak to the value of the SBC, because since the formation of this family of churches, there has never been a moment when there were not some individuals and churches contemplating departure from the Convention. Churches left to join the new Campbellite movement (which later became the Church of Christ denomination), the anti-missions ("hardshell") movement, T.P. Crawford's "Gospel Missions" movement, the "associational Baptist" denominations (the BMAA and the ABA), the Independent Baptists, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, and a dozen other assorted destinations.

This moment in time is no different. Well-known Southern Baptists like Russell Moore and Beth Moore (unrelated) have recently left the Southern Baptist Convention, and their departures have received a significant amount of attention. Their departures were attributed to the idea that the Southern Baptist Convention is too strict, too dour, too hostile, too beholden to the politics of the far-Right in America, and too corrupt. Other Southern Baptists like Josh Buice have led their churches to depart from the Southern Baptist Convention because it is too lax, too winsome, too accommodating, too behloding to the politics of the far-Left in America, and too corrupt. Are these people looking at the same family of churches? They are, and they are all sincere in their observations, just as most of those who have left the SBC since 1845 have been.

Some people will no doubt point out that none of these departures have managed, over the course of nearly 185 years, to scuttle the ship of the SBC. Indeed, Southern Baptists have, by many measures, fared far better than any of the other outlets preferred by the departees. Right now, even in the midst of some controversy, Cooperatieve Program giving is strong and strengthening (although the nation's economic indicators are ominous). Sometimes in our history, the departures have arguably been the very cause of seasons of significant growth and improved effectiveness for Southern Baptists—controversy can be costly and distracting. Considering all of this evidence, some people might say, "Why argue the value of the SBC to those who want to leave?" Because there is always somewhere else to go, and because churches' decisions about affiliation with other churches should always be based upon the best way for those churches to pursue the Great Commission, those who see the value of the Southern Baptist Convention should never cease making the case for cooperation within this fellowship of churches.

Toward that end, over the next few days, I am going to be authoring a series of blog articles making the case for why affiliation with the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention is a reasonable and valuable partnership for your church. That is, the reasons I will be giving in this series of posts are reasons why your church should stay in the SBC.

But, Should Your Church Stay?

Well, hold on a minute. I don't know for sure that your church should stay, because a lot of people could be reading this post from a lot of different sorts of churches. The Southern Baptist Convention is a wonderful fellowship of churches, but it is not the right place for every church. Whether you belong here depends upon your church's theology, mission, and temperament.

If your church's theology fits within The Baptist Faith & Message, you can know for certain that you have a theological home in the Southern Baptist Convention. Our statement of faith is in some places deliberately precise and in some places deliberately vague. I grew up across the street from a godly Methodist woman. She was a blessing to me. She didn't belong in the Southern Baptist Convention. I attended school with a good friend who wound up serving in Anabaptist and Methodist churches because he did not belong in the Southern Baptist Convention. I received a congratulatory message after my recent election from a well-known Presbyterian. He does not belong in the Southern Baptist Convention. Sometimes, to say that a church does not belong in the Southern Baptist Convention is not an attempt to defame or insult anyone, or even an attempt to break personal fellowship with them; it's just an honest effort to describe them and seek a good ecclesiological home for them. Southern Baptist churches have in common some shared theological convictions that define boundaries for our cooperation and affiliation with one another.

If your church's mission includes cooperating with other churches to fund and otherwise support a variety of activities—activities that make all of our churches more effective in our Great-Commission work—then you can know for certain that you have a missiological home in the Southern Baptist Convention. Several of the departures that I mentioned above in this essay (for example, T.P. Crawford's "Gospel Missions" movement) involved people who shared the Convention's general theological beliefs but who did NOT think that individual local churches should cooperate with one another in quite the Southern Baptist way to send missionaries, train pastors, print Bibles, respond to disasters, or some of the other dozens of things that Southern Baptists cooperate with one another to do. Understand, they thought all of those things should be done, but they disagreed with the idea that multiple local churches could form a structure like the SBC through which to do it. Most Baptist churches have not had any qualms about cooperating in this way, but if your church does, you likely should not be affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.

If your church's temperament is one of cooperation, then the Southern Baptist Convention is a good fit for the personality of your church. Some churches or believers just don't want to see value in other churches, other ministries, other pastors, and other believers as potential partners for gospel work. I'm reminded of what a family friend once said: "I've decided to become an Independent Baptist, and the first thing I've decided to be independent from is other Independent Baptists." There are people like that—good people sometimes—who just place a very low value on the idea of cooperation with other believers or churches who don't dot all their 'i's and cross all their 't's just the same way. Some of my readers will be familiar with the idea of secondary separation, often applied to minor doctrines, that have marked some of the more stringent Independent Baptist churches. This idea of separation, however, is not the exclusive property of groups like the Independent Baptists; sometimes the theological Left, especially in more strident forms of contemporary "cancel culture," can have its own disassociative strictures. If you or your church has a long list of doctrines or political positions that would mandate something like secondary separation, you're probably going to be happier somewhere other than the SBC.

But that's likely not most of you who are reading this essay. For you, the conservative, missions-minded Baptist in a church who can affirm The Baptist Faith & Message, I hope you'll find the forthcoming series of articles helpful.