Though I’ve long left the Southern Baptist Convention, I can’t help but find myself paying attention to the annual meetings every year. I don’t really know why—I guess life would be easier if I stopped caring completely. But I still have friends who are Southern Baptists, and there are still, interestingly enough, a handful of good churches and leaders in the denomination.
This week proved that as Willy Rice, and an actual conservative with actual convictions about the problems the SBC is facing, won the bid for presidency. And the fact that he won demonstrates that there are still people willing to fight for doctrinal integrity and orthopraxy among cooperating churches.
But not everyone. Not Jeff Iorg, former president of Gateway Seminary and current president and CEO of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee. In fact, Jeff Iorg wants Southern Baptists to spend less time talking about doctrininal integrity and frames his complaint as though doing so takes away from talking about evangelism.
After Southern Baptists spent significant time debating women pastors and confessional boundaries—a huge problem within many Southern Baptist churches—Iorg expressed deep frustration that the conversations at the annual meetings revolve around amendments, by-law changes, and denominational controversies rather than missionaries, church planting, and conversions.
The problem is that he frames it as though these things occupy opposite sides of a ledger. He speaks as though Southern Baptists are forced to choose between doctrinal integrity and evangelistic mission. That is a false choice. In fact, it is precisely the sort of thinking that has repeatedly gotten denominations into trouble throughout church history.
Imagine standing at the Council of Nicaea and saying,
