Pastor Joel Webbin and William Wolfe analyze the upcoming Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Indianapolis, debating if it represents a "fight by flight" scenario. They detail conservative strategies to retain voting power by redirecting Cooperative Program funds away from the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission while supporting candidates like Jared Moore and David Allen. Key agenda items include passing the Mike Law Amendment for male-only pastoral leadership and the Burns Amendment for financial transparency, aiming to halt the infiltration of critical theory. Ultimately, the discussion urges believers to strategically defend biblical fidelity against worldly ideologies through targeted giving and attendance. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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California Christians Leaving the SBC00:14:58
All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.
I'm your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries.
And in this episode, I am talking with my friend William Wolf about the SBC, about the upcoming convention, the law amendment that's on the books to vote for male pastors upholding biblical fidelity, 1 Timothy 3, Titus chapter 1, what the Bible teaches, and what the church has held for centuries and centuries and centuries until 15 minutes ago.
And I'm holding my book up right now, if you're watching the video, the book that I wrote a little while back, Fight by Flight.
And the reason why I wanted to mention this right at the very front is because I'm the guy who left California.
I'm the guy who literally wrote a book.
I mean, let's be honest, it's a glorified blog, but you know, a pamphlet, whatever you want to call it.
But I wrote something, published something about the idea of not just staying and fighting the good fight, but there is actually a way to leave without your leaving being just a retreat, without it being just a surrender.
However, there are some strong distinctions that William and I, you know, we flesh out in this episode where.
Leaving a blue state like California and where you geographically live as a Christian is not a one to one ratio for leaving the SBC as a local church.
It's not the same thing.
The fight by flight principle does not necessarily apply.
Some ways it does with the SBC, some ways it doesn't.
And that's what we get into in this conversation.
Should you stay?
Should you go?
What do you do if you're in the SBC?
Is it actually still winnable?
Is there actually still hope?
That's the episode.
I think you'll enjoy.
Tune in now.
Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
This is Theology Applied.
All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.
I am your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries.
And in this episode, I'm privileged to welcome back to the show William Wolf.
William, thanks for coming.
Joel, it's good to be back.
It's been a while.
It has.
It has been a while.
And you have been kind of running like a chicken with his head cut off, doing all kinds of different tasks because.
Something important is coming up.
What is it?
It is the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention next month, June 11th to 12th, in Indianapolis, Indiana.
And the organization that I've had the privilege to launch here over the last few months, the Center for Baptist Leadership, is dedicated to helping reform the Southern Baptist Convention and hopefully secure some big wins for the conservatives who are still fighting in the institution of the SBC.
Right.
And why does it matter?
I think there's lots of people today that would just say, you know, SBC, whatever, who cares, let it go.
Why is it worth fighting for?
Yeah, well, I think that when you look back over American history in general, or even sort of American Christian evangelical history throughout the last hundred years or so, we see that conservatives build things, liberals infiltrate and subvert them, and then conservatives pack their bags and go and start something else, leaving behind buildings, you know, institutional credibility.
Massive endowments and other things like that.
I mean, you can look at J. Gresham Machin as a great example.
I mean, he ultimately had to leave Princeton and go start something else, right?
And look, what he started was a good thing, but it's not the same thing as Princeton.
And we go all the way back to the beginning of America, like Harvard, Princeton, Yale, these were theological training grounds that are now completely captured by the radical Marxists.
So, in the long scope of things, it's important.
For people to remember that institutions are valuable and they're worth fighting for.
And the Southern Baptist Convention, as a critical Christian institution in the United States of America, has six of the 10 largest seminaries in our country.
It's got the largest international mission sending agency in the world.
It's got a massive domestic church planting and church revitalization arm in NAM and the Send Network.
And, you know, it really is sort of the center of what you could call the lone bulwark of the political conservatism in our country that's holding back the darkness and the madness.
And so, all that to say, Joel, it's a critical institution.
And what's been very interesting for me to realize is that the left values.
The Southern Baptist Convention as a target to subvert and infiltrate, it seems more than even some of the conservatives within the SBC value it as something worth defending and saving.
So we're trying to wake people up to that and get them back in the fight.
Right.
Yeah.
So I wrote a book called Fight by Flight.
And the principle that I was arguing is you know, sometimes you stay and you stand your ground, and sometimes you flee.
And there are categories in the Christian life where fleeing.
It falls well beneath the banner of something other than simply retreatism.
That it's not surrender, it's not giving up, it's not quitting, it's attacking to the rear, it's continuing the fight, but from a more strategic placement, a more strategic standpoint.
And that by fleeing, there's actually a voting with your feet.
You're actually crippling, whether it be a state or an institution or whatever it might be, by cutting off their line of support.
And so we know that we have biblical categories for this.
Jesus says, if a town doesn't receive you, Shake the dust off your feet.
And so that is a biblical principle, but it's not, it's a principle that I think we have to be careful not to give it a universal application.
So I tried to apply it primarily for where Christians live, not what denomination they're a part of.
I think the principle can apply, but it's not a situation where it must apply.
So I was primarily using my story of why I left California, but the Christian living in California who may be called to leave, to fight by flight, That's a different scenario than the SBC local church that's in the Southern Baptist Convention.
What would you?
I've got some ideas, but I'll let you go first.
What do you think some of the differences are between a Christian leaving a blue state versus why isn't just a one size fits all, one to one ratio of leave California, leave SBC?
What would you see the differences as?
Well, I think that one of the main differences is one of those differences that so many people greatly confuse.
In the Christian nationalism conversation, which one is the realm of the natural world, so you know, and one is the realm of sort of the ecclesiological world, right?
And those are two different realms, you know, in an important way.
So, when it comes to what state you live in, that's a matter of wisdom and prudence and prudential political application for, you know, looking for caring for your family, how your taxes are being spent, you know, what are your children going to be taught in schools.
Can you even afford to buy a house in this state?
How's homelessness?
How's crime?
How's the indoctrination?
Those are all questions of life in the political natural world.
Whereas what's going on within the Southern Baptist Convention is really a question of how are Christians associating together according to agreed upon theological standards, a confession of faith, and working together to advance the gospel.
So they really are, in some ways, Joel, they're sort of night and day considerations.
And really, the idea of sort of Getting out of a blue state and getting to a red state, you're still in America.
Now, some of the ways the principles can apply is in the Southern Baptist Convention, you can redirect some of your money away from some things and towards others.
But if you leave the SBC, you know, you're not even in it anymore, no more influence at all.
Right.
Yeah.
So I think that's well put.
I was thinking through it a little bit preparing for this conversation today.
And I was thinking, you know, if you're in California, so think of like the state being like the SBC, the whole convention, and think of like your town or your county, you know.
In California, being like your individual local church and the SBC.
And so I could see somebody to play the devil's advocate.
I could see them saying, Well, you know, I'm in California, but I live in Bakersfield or Modesto or, you know, an area that's smaller.
It's much more conservative.
So I'm in a red dot, you know, in a blue ocean.
And what I would say is, Well, praise God, in your town, there is far less crime.
In your town, there's far less degeneracy and perversion.
And maybe the school system is better than your town, although I would argue as a Christian, Please don't use the public school system.
But, you know, those kinds of things are improved in your town.
But by virtue of your town being in the larger state, you don't get to opt out of taxes.
You're still going to pay, especially in a state like California.
You know, Texas doesn't have a state tax, but California does.
And those state taxes, no matter how red your individual town in California might be, you're still paying the state taxes for a deep blue state.
And a portion of those taxes, not just a portion, but the lion's share, are going to go towards overt wickedness.
Whereas in the SBC, To now go to the other side of the coin, you could be in an individual local church where your pastor is biblically faithful as you could possibly imagine.
At the local level, you are with salt of the earth, seasoned saints that love the Lord, love the scripture, love you and your family, all the things that you're looking for in a local church.
And then your church is in the SBC, but there's no such thing as, well, I live in Bakersfield, I'm going to opt out of state taxes in California.
Whereas you can say, as an SBC church, we're an SBC church, but we are not going to support.
X, Y, and Z. Am I right about that?
That's how I've been informed.
What are some of the things that a local pastor and his elders could decide?
No, we, you know, as a congregation, we are not going to give our giving dollars to these, you know, subcategories of the SBC.
Is that true?
And what are some of those things they could opt out of?
Well, yeah, that is true.
And that's where it is, I think it is sometimes discouraging or disheartening to see conservative churches getting out of the SBC.
And I understand their frustration.
I really do.
And a lot of 1689 churches in particular are leaving the Southern Baptist Convention, to which I say, you know, we're losing our best fighters.
Come on back, boys.
We need you.
And so, but what I would encourage a church to do instead of getting out of the Southern Baptist Convention is continuing to give, you know, in order to make sure that you have a vote to help change things, but just specifically direct your giving to the entity within the Southern Baptist Convention that you trust the most.
Maybe that's the International Missions Board.
So you can give as a church directly to the International Missions Board and not give to the general pot, which is called the cooperative program.
You can make sure to, because if you give to the cooperative program, that money could go anywhere.
So it's a pass through.
So if you just give money to the Southern Baptist Convention Cooperative Program, that money might go to the ERLC.
And many people, many conservative churches, don't want their money going to the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
But by specifically allocating your Southern Baptist Convention dollars to something like the IMB, you can ensure that you still get a vote, you still have a say in the future of the convention and its direction, and then you can make sure that your money is not going to fund any of the entities that you don't currently approve of their activities.
But see, this is where, Joel, I have so many conservatives who say, shut down the ERLC, defund the ERLC, salt the earth on which it stands.
And again, I can understand their frustration.
And maybe we get to that point, but I would rather see over a period of time, we elect conservative president after conservative president in the Southern Baptist Convention.
We reconstitute the trustee board of the ERLC, and then they pick some incredibly based, hardcore conservative fighter to lead it.
And then that's our institution instead of just getting rid of it.
So that's what I'm aiming for.
Smart.
Yeah, that's very helpful and very practical.
What another question to just get again practical?
What is the minimum percentage that a local SBC church has to give?
So you're saying you could take the whole thing and direct it towards, you know, whatever you feel the best about.
But what is that number?
Is it 2%?
What is it?
Well, the total number of giving that you have to in order to send messengers.
That's what I'm thinking.
So you want to keep the vote.
I want to be able to send the max amount of messengers to.
To the convention to vote for the law amendment and all the things we'll talk about here in just a moment.
So, what is that minimum amount threshold financially that our church has to give in order to accomplish that?
Yeah, that's a great question, Joel.
And it actually, the formula works in favor of the smaller churches and it gives the churches power.
I was recently talking with Chase Davis about his exit out of Acts 29 and his effort to join the SBC.
And, you know, he said Acts 29 was essentially ruled by fiat, whereas the SBC is a beautiful, messy Baptist democracy.
And it is, right?
We have the chance to make real changes and have your voice heard.
So the way it works is by joining the Southern Baptist Convention, sort of a one time thing, and giving, I think it's $250 upon joining, then that sort of secures for you your baseline of two messengers per church.
So every, the smallest church gets two.
And then there's a formula that's used to calculate how many more you get on top of that with a maximum of 12.
And that formula, the formula that's most friendly, there are two formulas, but the one that's most friendly to smaller churches is that for every 1% of your church's undesignated receipts that you give to any Southern Baptist entity, program or effort, you get another additional messenger on top of that.
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Yeah.
So, you know, it's not hard actually at all for a church of maybe 100 to 120 people to get something like seven messengers to the convention.
And that would require that they give 7% of their total budget for the church.
But that full 7%, like you already stated previously, they could specifically designate towards not the cooperative slush fund that might go towards Brent Leatherwood or whatever, but they could specifically designate that towards the arena that they feel best about in the SBC.
So they give 7%, the full amount going to something that they actually believe in or at least hate the least.
And they could send seven messengers.
Is that right?
Yeah, that's right.
Or actually, I think now I don't have the formula right in front of me, but I actually think the way it works is that you would actually only have to give 5% because you get that two baseline.
You sort of join, you get these two baseline votes, and then it's for every 1% that you give, you get an additional vote.
So by giving 5%, actually, you would get seven votes, which is incredible.
I mean, again, like I said, I know I talked to a brother, a pastor in Missouri.
He has a church of less than 100 people.
They get 12 messengers.
But here's the problem, Joel that church of 100 people cannot find 12 people within it to take the time to come to our annual meeting, which that's part of this effort that I'm doing here, brother.
I'm trying to get out, spread the word, and tell people it's so important for you to come and show up and really hold out to Christians in America who feel, I feel like, downtrodden and maybe disenfranchised and powerless, particularly to our Southern Baptist brother and sister saying, like, You have a chance to change something.
You can win.
If you show up, if we show up, we can take this thing back and make it something that, as conservative, Bible-believing Christians, we can be proud of.
Amen.
So, with that, you know, like a church could have 12 messengers, but only three are able, for practical reasons, to attend.
Are you guys doing anything to try to help sponsor, you know, paying for flights or hotels?
Because, Lord knows, And you know that NAMM has been notorious for doing that in the past, taking all their wokest of the woke church planters and, you know, and using a portion of their budget to fund, you know, their flights and hotels so that they can all show up and vote for liberal, you know, liberal whatever in the SBC.
So do you guys have, you know, on the other side of the equation, some kind of conservative equivalence of that?
Like here's this little church.
They could send 12 messengers, they only got three that are able to get off of work, you know, or could.
Afford a plane ticket, but we're going to try to help, you know, get three more.
You know, do you have some kind of sponsorship?
Yeah, that's a great question.
And we absolutely do.
I know of a variety of people who are working on this and a variety of organizations, sort of on the conservative side of things.
But I would say most simply is that Center for Baptist Leadership is looking to help connect people with those who are willing to help provide travel stipends and scholarships.
And so you can reach out directly to me.
At Wolf at Center for Baptist Leadership.org.
That's Wolf with an E.
So W W O L F E at Center for Baptist Leadership.org.
Or you can email us at info at Center for Baptist Leadership.org.
I'll check both of those either way.
And if you are listening to this and you are a Southern Baptist who wants to come to Indianapolis but thinks that you would have a difficult time to do so because of the finances required, we also have, please reach out and we will help.
Close that gap for you.
We also have a list of housing that's being provided in the Indianapolis area that's free.
And so the first thing we can do is help connect you with somebody and help you avail yourself of free housing.
And then we can also help provide a stipend for the ticket as well.
And we're on crunch time for that.
And so if you are thinking I might not come, I may come depending on finances, don't let that be the burden.
Reach out to us and we'll help you out.
Awesome.
So in comparing these apples and oranges with, you know, the Whole flight, you know, fight by flight mentality, comparing it to, you know, a state and your geographic, you know, region that a Christian lives in in the United States versus the, you know, the convention, the, you know, the SBC and local churches.
You know, one of the distinctions that we already drew is, you know, if I live in California, no matter how conservative my individual town is, I'm going to be paying state taxes and I don't get to say with my state taxes, hey, I would like to opt out of any portion of my state taxes that might fund Planned Parenthood.
I don't have that option.
I'm going to be funding things that I detest, more importantly, things that God detests.
But one distinction between that, living in a certain state, versus being a local church in the SBC is you can.
You can say, Brent Leatherwood doesn't get a dime.
You can do that as a local church in the SBC.
Voting Power Beyond State Lines00:14:31
Another distinction that I think is worth bringing up is, you know, part of what I mapped out in the book that I wrote was, you know, for me, I was very convicted.
We moved in December of 2020.
That's when we, you know, came finally to the conclusion that it was time to go and all these kinds of things.
But, you know, December 2020, as you know, was one month too late for something significant that happened in November 2020, which is I, along with six million other conservatives, took my vote.
For Donald Trump and flushed it down the toilet.
Six million people in California voted for Donald Trump, but it wasn't even close.
It wasn't like, hey, Trump got six million and Biden got 6.5 or seven.
I believe Biden got 12 million votes.
So it's six million votes.
But then when you look at the Electoral College and you look at not the state of California, but you look at some of these swing states that were highly contested, and we'll never know how the fairest, most legitimate election of all time.
But let's just, You know, run with a narrative, you know, hypothetically for a moment and say that the votes were counted perfectly fairly and all these things went well.
These are still small, very small margins when you think of Arizona, you think of Pennsylvania, you think of Michigan.
You think, you know, there were four, you know, four to seven states that were highly contested, four in particular.
And I might be wrong in my numbers here.
I'm trying to work off memory, but I believe there were four of the seven swing states that ultimately went for Biden.
That four of those seven combined that were the thinnest.
Margins between Biden and Trump, four of those states collectively, their electoral vote would have made Trump the president in 2020.
And those four states, the amount, the margin that they lost, that Trump lost by collectively, all combined, was, I believe, 48,000 votes.
So think about that 6 million votes for Trump in California.
If this would be less than 1%, because 600,000 would be 10%, 60,000 to 1%, 48,000, less than 1%, if less than 1%, myself included, I bear responsibility for this.
I got out too late.
But if less than 1% of those 6 million Trump voters in California had moved to these four states, respectively, that I'm talking about, and voted for Donald J. Trump, he would have been the president of the United States.
And that makes it that you talk about loving your neighbor and things like that.
I'm not saying that he's a saint and that he's perfect, but the point is that he would have been a lot better than Biden.
I think of 13 service members in Afghanistan.
I think there are multiple things.
There are certain people that would be alive.
That are dead.
I mean, people lost their lives because of a presidential election.
And so, all that being said, my point is this it's an apple to oranges comparison.
Like you said earlier, night and day, apples, oranges.
Because with the SBC, if your local church loses the SBC, and you correct me if I'm wrong here, if I move out of California, I still get to vote in a national election.
I still live in America.
If I leave the SBC, that would not be likened to leaving California to move to Michigan.
That would be likened to leaving California and the US of A.
And moving to El Salvador, which would be fantastic, probably.
But you know, you get my point.
So, again, that's another state tax in California, you don't get to decide where it goes.
You're giving the SBC, you do.
Leave California, you still get to vote in a national election, and your vote probably is going to count a lot more if you're conservative.
You leave the SBC, it's like leaving the country.
You don't get a vote at all.
I think those are two, and I'm trying to be helpful here and win some people to your cause because I think it's a noble cause.
But I think those are two significant differences.
What do you think?
Look, I agree entirely.
Look, if history is written by the victors, victory belongs to those who show up, right?
And it's so important for conservatives to show up and vote, obviously, in presidential elections, to show up where it matters, too.
I mean, everything you're talking about in terms of the statistical allocations of votes from California versus these close swing states is absolutely right.
I believe that, in general, in political terms, it'd be a very smart strategy for all patriotic, biology respecting, reality loving.
Christian Americans to really kind of try to make red states absolutely inhospitable to the left.
That's what we should be doing, which I believe, you know, Governor DeSantis has done a good job of that in Florida.
But really, the first red state governor that says, my project is I'm going to make this state allergic to the insanity of the left, and not a single leftist is going to want to come live here or, quite frankly, feel welcome here.
I mean, that would be an amazing.
Political project to watch.
So that's fun.
That's a conversation for another day.
I love that political theory.
But you're right with the Southern Baptist Convention, Joel, the votes belong in the hands of the people.
And this is what happened during the conservative resurgence of old.
I mean, we had conventions where there were 35,000, 40,000, 45,000 Southern Baptists showing up to vote to keep the Southern Baptist Convention from falling into the hands of the old school theological liberals, the people who denied the inerrancy of scripture.
Who denied the validity of the authors of scripture, who denied the validity of the miracles of Jesus, questioned the very resurrection.
It was German higher criticism that was infiltrating the Southern Baptist Convention.
And as W.A. Criswell outlined in his famous sermon, the pattern of death for a denomination, whether we live or die, was really the title of it.
Whether we live or die, he said, if we allow this higher criticism to come into the SBC, it will kill our institutions, it will kill our denomination, and quite frankly, it will.
Kill our very own personal Christian faith.
Well, what's happening right now in the Southern Baptist Convention, Joel, is that it's not higher criticism, it's critical theory.
It's a new form of liberalism that's choking out the one true gospel handed down to the saints that we're called to defend.
As Galatians 5 9 says, a little leaven leavens the whole lump.
And we've got more than a little leaven in the SBC lump right now.
But all that to bring it back around to what you were saying is that in order to Turn this thing around and to take it back.
We just need conservatives to show up and bring their vote to Indianapolis this year and next year and wherever, you know, next year it's in Dallas and then I think it's maybe in Orlando the year after that.
But they need to sort of wake up.
You and I have talked before about the dangers of pietism and quietism and retreatism.
Well, Southern Baptists need to sort of wake up and come and show up and stop just ignoring things.
But Believing they can have an impact and a change.
Amen.
Yeah, I think, you know, part of it, institutional credibility and the, you know, the overall American public's trust in institutions is currently at an all time low.
And, you know, I've never spent a day in my life in the SBC.
So I think for me, that's part of it is, you know, I think some of these guys, it's like, you were raised on the pews of an SBC church.
Like, This is your heritage.
This is your background.
This is, yeah, the SBC is yours and you should fight for it.
I care about what happens to the SBC because I care about the evangelical church as a whole in America.
And if you think that the SBC going woke is not going to affect evangelicalism as a whole, then, you know, I've got oceanfront property in Kansas you might be interested in buying.
So, like, of course, it matters for all of us, SBC or not, regardless of your upbringing and whether or not you have that tradition and childhood, you know, lifelong SBC or I don't.
Many do.
But even for those who don't, it still matters.
And I guess what I'm saying is this.
I've never really been an institutional man.
I'm not a company man.
Companies, I'm too much of a liability.
They're not going to touch me.
So I don't have the right letters, the right papers.
You know, I haven't gone to the right institutions.
That's just, you know, in God's providence, that's just not me.
However, even for me, as a guy who, you know, is a part of an independent church that currently belongs to no denomination and is not really chomping at the bit to change that anytime soon, because everything right now seems like it's in massive flux.
And I don't know when the cements.
Going to dry and what the final result will be.
All those things being said, as a guy who's not a company man, we're not a part of a larger denomination with our local church, Covenant Bible Church in Central Texas.
I still recognize that the American public as a whole and Christians, you know, more specifically, life without any institutions is not a positive.
I think there's a lot of guys right now because of COVID and BLM and, you know, just one massive event after another these last three and a half years.
And we're like, who needs it?
I need it.
You need it.
We need a general public that needs institutions.
It does, absolutely.
And it takes time if you're just going to abandon the institutions we already have.
It takes a lot of time to build new institutions and build public trust and build up coffers and resources and to literally build cathedrals and buildings and seminaries and all these different things.
I don't have the time in the day.
Part of the strength of modern Western civilization is this specialization of labor that.
Yes, we need generalists, but we also need experts.
It is not wise or prudent for me as a father to make every single medical decision for my family by going on WebMD and never seeing a doctor.
I don't have the time of the day to have the equivalent of an MCAT.
I need someone to know medicine.
And right now, I don't trust many people, but that makes it all the more difficult.
Pertinent and valuable to have good, trustworthy Christian doctors and to have good, trustworthy Christian denominations, to have good, trustworthy Christians in media.
Right now, we can't trust news, academia, the church, sadly, medicine, government, like all of our major areas of social life and all of the major institutions within those arenas of social life have shot themselves in both feet, have been utterly discredited.
And I think as an American, There's an American spirit with this.
And as a Baptist, right?
Local autonomy of the, you know, the autonomy of the local church.
As an American, as an evangelical, as a Protestant, as a Baptist, all these things, there's something in me that kind of looks at all the institutions discrediting themselves and says, good riddance.
But when I pause and think about that a little bit more clearly and a little less emotionally, I realize, no, that's a nightmare.
That is a nightmare, a perfectly atomistic, autonomous, individualistic, no.
Like God works through cooperation.
He works through organizations.
He works through collectives.
He works through covenants.
These things are paramount.
They're vital for society to thrive.
And it's not just that SBC is the biggest, and it is the biggest.
But I think what I want the listeners to know is it's not only the biggest, but it's also the closest.
It's the most winnable.
There are other denominations that are far smaller and far more woke and liberal.
The SBC, not only does it matter because it's the biggest, it also is the least far gone.
And that's not to minimize any of the problems.
They're serious problems.
But the SBC is both the biggest and the most winnable.
I think of Jim Wilson, his decisive point, the strategic point, the book he wrote, Tactics of Warfare.
And he said, you want to look for something that is both winnable and significant.
We could win the proverbial Timbuktu with a population of 247 people in a fortnight.
And Timbuktu belongs to King Jesus.
And praise God for those 247 citizens of Timbuktu, but that doesn't necessarily push us over.
The edge to win the world.
You know, Manhattan, on the other hand, it would be significant, but Tim Keller is a good proof that, you know, New York discipled him a little bit more than Tim Keller discipled New York.
So, all that being, and of course, there are caveats and exceptions.
If you live in New York, you know, there are different, you know, but in general, speaking in generalities, there are things that are significant, but at least in the short run, they're not going to be won.
They're not winnable.
And there are things that are winnable, but they're relatively, in the big scheme of things, insignificant.
But the SBC seems to be.
The prime example.
I can hardly think of another that would be better of most winnable, most significant.
What do you think?
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Demand Financial Transparency Now00:10:09
I think that's exactly right, Joel.
The Southern Baptist Convention sits at the intersection of strategic and achievable when it comes to the institutional battle that's raging across our country right now.
And we have to credit our opponents, our enemies, for the audacity of forecasting their plans when the cultural Marxists said they were going to embark on a long march through the institutions of American life.
And that is exactly what they did.
They've captured the universities.
They've captured the public schools.
They've captured the mainline Protestant denominations.
Look at what happened to the United Methodist Church today.
I mean, United Methodist Church just last week as they adopted a full on pro LGBT position.
And it's fascinating, Joel, how the sexual revolution really functions as a new article of faith.
Faith.
It's a new piece of orthodoxy that has to ultimately be accepted by these progressive churches.
I mean, look at what happened to the Boy Scouts.
I'm sorry, Scouting America now, right?
And all the new Eagle Scout tricks or whatever they're going to be, right?
And so it's like, does this, I feel like God is giving these incredible warning signs to the Southern Baptist Convention.
Look at the Methodists, look at the Boy Scouts, look at your future.
Are you going to hold the line and defend biblical doctrine?
And the true gospel of Jesus Christ and all that it entails, are you going to compromise with the spirit of the age and go the way of these other apostate organizations?
But all that to say, the Southern Baptist Convention is winnable because it has our people in it.
We just need our people to wake up and show up.
Well said.
So, here at the end of the episode, I would be remiss.
I know that you've got a lot that you've been working on.
I'd be remiss if I did not give you.
Any and every opportunity to get anything out that you can think of.
So, I've got plenty of SBC guys who listen to this podcast.
Just leave it all on the field, William.
What do you got?
All right, let me tick through the major issues that are on the docket for the Southern Baptist Convention meeting this summer.
And then I'll just make a brief point about sort of the timing, the date, the location again.
And then I'll close with sort of one last little rallying cry.
Does that sound good?
Sounds great.
Okay, so the major issues facing Southern Baptists this year and why we need you to show up are first and foremost an effort called the Law Amendment.
The Law Amendment is an amendment to the Southern Baptist Constitution that simply reaffirms our commitment to male only pastors.
It's being offered by a man, Mike Law, that's where the name comes from, out of Arlington, Virginia.
He's a faithful Southern Baptist pastor who looked up one day and realized that within a five mile radius of him, there were five Southern Baptist churches.
With female pastors.
He sought to get clarification from the bureaucracy of the Southern Baptist Convention because this was clearly in contradiction to our statement of faith, which says that a pastor, elder, or overseer is a qualified male or biblically qualified male.
He was given the runaround by people like Jonathan Howe and others in the Southern Baptist Convention, Bart Barber, et cetera.
They would not give him answers, they would not clarify why they hadn't kicked these churches out.
And at the same time, Saddleback.
Was becoming under increasing consideration for being openly egalitarian as Rick Warren went to appoint a female and male co pastor combination to take over the church for him.
And so we had Saddleback on the West Coast and Mike Law on the East Coast driving this issue of egalitarianism versus complementarianism in the Southern Baptist Convention.
Mike ultimately went through the constitutional amendment route, and a constitutional amendment has to pass two years in a row on a two thirds majority vote.
He secured, surprisingly, and by God's great grace, the first passage of his amendment last year in New Orleans by what appeared to be about an 80 to 20 vote in the convention room.
Praise God.
Now it has to pass again here in Indianapolis.
And the liberals and the elites and the platform boys in the Southern Baptist Convention are coming after it guns a blazing.
Joel, it's interesting.
You and I actually talked about this perhaps on my last appearance on this, maybe eight months ago, where we were talking about how the shift in evangelicalism is going to be towards.
Pro egalitarianism and anti fundamentalism.
They don't want, they're trying to make complementarianism fundamentalism.
And you and I have issues with how weak complementarianism is, and they're trying to make it some tenant of fundamentalism.
So that's what the Big Tent Baptist boys want.
So we have to pass the Mike Law Amendment.
If the Southern Baptist Convention can't hold the line on male only pastors, you know, I'm not sure what our future looks like.
I'm not saying we quit then, but we'll see what goes on.
So come to pass the Mike Law Amendment, come to help a brother secure increased financial transparency.
We're simply asking for a vote to get more financial transparency from the entities provided to the churches.
This is an amendment offered by Rhett Burns from South Carolina.
It's the Burns Amendment.
And we're asking the Southern Baptist Convention's executive committee to just put that on the floor for a vote.
That's not a decision for them to make.
It's a decision for us as the messengers to make on whether or not we want more financial transparency in the Southern Baptist Convention.
Third, come and vote for a conservative president.
We have not had a solid conservative president in the Southern Baptist Convention for the last six years now.
And we are paying for it because the president appoints critical appointments to.
Trustee positions to committees to boards, and that all trickles down.
It leavens the lump of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Come and vote for an unapologetic conservative president who supports the law amendment, supports financial transparency, is going to make conservative appointments.
And this is a really important one if you're thinking through who to vote for for the Southern Baptist Convention presidency this year.
We've got six options do they recognize that wokeness has been an issue in the Southern Baptist Convention or not?
If one of the candidates is saying, Well, I don't really think we have an issue with wokeness, that tells me they don't know what time it is.
And that means I don't think that they deserve your vote.
So I think that there are two really good candidates out there Jared Moore and David Allen.
And then there are other candidates as well.
And so those would be the three most important things to consider as you're coming to the convention this year passing the law amendment, passing financial transparency, voting for a conservative president.
And again, the timing is June 11th to 12th in Indianapolis, Indiana.
If you are a Southern Baptist listening to Right Response Ministries, Theology Applied with Joel Webbin and William Wolf.
You need to plan to come now, June 11th and 12th in Indianapolis.
And if you need help, if you need travel assistance, please reach out to me.
You can find me on x at William underscore e. underscore Wolf.
You can find us at Baptist Leaders and you can email us at info at Center for Baptist Leadership.org.
Thanks for all that, Joel.
I appreciate it.
Absolutely wonderful.
Well said.
I don't typically do this because I don't want to, certainly don't want to ever pray to the Lord publicly for people to watch in a way that would be just.
Pious and trying to garnish, you know, the approval of man, but with all sincerity and seeking to honor God and Him first, I think, you know, this seems like one of those episodes where it would be nice to maybe conclude it with a word of prayer.
Would you mind just praying that God, in His providence and in His mercy, if it be His will, that He would preserve the SBC as a beacon of biblical fidelity?
Absolutely, Joel.
Thank you so much.
Yeah, let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for the opportunity.
To have this conversation as brothers in Christ and as those who want to see your gospel spread to the ends of the earth and for your kingdom to come, Lord, on earth as it is in heaven.
Lord, we thank you for the way that you have used the Southern Baptist Convention for many decades now to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ, to make disciples and to save sinners and to build churches as the gospel has gone forth and you have received glory.
For people bending the knee to King Jesus and repenting of their sins.
And Lord, we recognize now that we live in difficult times in which there are worldly ideologies and even demonic, dark spiritual influences seeking to destroy the witness and the purity of the Southern Baptist Convention.
And Lord, we pray and trust that they would not prevail.
We ask that you would show grace and favor to the Southern Baptist Convention even this year.
Lord, I pray that you would rally your people to show up in Indianapolis to fight and to contend for the faith.
Once for all, delivered to the saints and as stewarded and guarded by Southern Baptists in this country.
Lord, I pray that you would fill that convention with those who want to stand on your word, Lord, and defend the sanctity of your pulpit in your church and to proclaim that the role of pastor is for a biblically qualified male according to your wisdom and your creation order, God.
I pray that the Southern Baptist Convention would do this.
And Lord, we know the watching world will not like it.
But God, we pray that you would be glorified by it.
And we ask this in your name.
Amen.
Amen.
Well, thank you to all our Right Response listeners for tuning in.
And a special thanks to you, William Wolfe, for coming on the show.