Feeding Maggots: How the Southern Baptist Convention's Voting System is Rigged
Have you ever opened a sack of flour that’s been sitting just a little too long in a damp basement? At first, it looks okay—sealed up, stacked neatly, part of the pantry. But peel it open, and the putrid smell is suddenly overwhelming. It’s filled with fat, white maggots, squirming over each other, feeding on what was supposed to good food.
These maggots didn’t plant the grain. They didn’t mill it. They didn’t package it and they certainly didn’t bake anything with it. They just showed up and started feasting, unnoticed. And the longer they’re left alone, the more they multiply.
That’s the best description I can come up with for the status quo of the Southern Baptist Convention. The entity heads, the megachurch pastors, the seminary presidents, the committee leaders, and the vast majority of the trustees—they don’t have to do anything. They don’t have to answer to the common Southern Baptist. They know their position is secure, and they know that when their time runs up, the system is rigged to usher them into their next cushy position.
Why?
Because the system is rigged.
The Southern Baptist Convention has always presented itself as a loosely knit association of like-minded, but independent Baptist churches. These churches, they say, cooperate primarily for the cause of missions. The Southern Baptist Convention, they say, isn’t a denomination in the strictest sense, as there is no top-down hierarchy, no rules or laws that churches are forced to follow, and churches are free to disassociate at any time.
And while this may technically be true, let’s be real, that isn’t how the Southern Baptist Convention operates. While churches, on paper, may technically and legally be independent, to hold any leadership role in what has become nothing more than a bunch of obsessed and incessant ladder-climbers (more on that in a future article), the pastors, leaders, entity heads, trustees—they must follow an unwritten code of conduct. Otherwise, the system is against you.