South Baptist Convention Ousts Churches Over LGTBQ Inclusion. The SBC Under Turmoil

According to the AP, The actions were announced at a meeting marked by warnings from two top leaders that the SBC, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, was damaging itself with divisions over several critical issues including race.

We should mourn when closet racists and neo-Confederates feel more at home in our churches than do many of our people of color.

J.D. Greear. SBC President

The two churches expelled for LGTBQ+ inclusion are St. Matthews Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, and Towne View Baptist Church, in Kennesaw, Georgia.

Rev. Jim Conrad, pastor of Towne View Baptist, told the AP he does not plan to appeal the ejection of his church, and plans to temporarily affiliate (for the time being) with The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which allows them to dictate their own policies concerning LGTBQ+.

In October 2019 Conrad began to allow sodomite worshippers to join after two married men and their three adopted children asked if they could attend – a decision Conrad still defends.

The alternative would have been to say, ‘We’re probably not ready for this,’ but I couldn’t do that.

Conrad has pastored Towne View Baptist since 1994.

St. Matthews Baptist Church in Louisville, along with 11 other churches, lost their affiliation the Kentucky Baptist Convention in 2018 due to their monetary contributions to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which at the time lifted their restrictions on hiring LGTBQ+ employees.

The AP also reports two other churches that were ousted by the SBC. West Side Baptist Church in Sharpsville, Pennsylvania, was expelled because they knowingly employed a pastor who was a convicted sex offender. Antioch Baptist Church in Sevierville, Tennessee, was ousted because the pastor was convicted of statutory rape.

The SBC in their two-day conference meetings beginning yesterday was to also address much of the unrest and division among the convention.

This sound of war in the camp of Southern Baptists is concerning to me, and I know it is also concerning to many of you. While we hear and see how the American culture is so out of control, my friends, our own culture within the Southern Baptist family is also out of control.

In this fever-pitch environment, each of us needs to be very careful with the words we write, speak, tweet or post. As SBC leaders and followers of Jesus, our public behavior matters.

Ronnie Floyd. Executive committee president

J.D. Greerar also addressed many of the racial tensions among the SBC. Some Black pastors have left the SBC and others are protesting, according to the report, ‘pronouncements by the SBC’s six seminary presidents — all of them white — restricting how the subject of systemic racism can be taught at their schools.’

Greerar said Black pastors should be included in their convention discussions on the topic, which includes talks about the SBC’s beliefs on the concept of Critical Race Theory, which the report states many of the SBC’s ministers reject.

The reality is that if we in the SBC had shown as much sorrow for the painful legacy that racism and discrimination has left in our country as we have passion to decry CRT, we probably wouldn’t be in this mess.

Do we want to be a Gospel people, or a Southern culture people? Which is the more important part of our name — Southern or Baptist?

J.D. Greerar

The AP reports, After the two speeches, the executive committee unanimously adopted an expansion plan called Vision 2025. It would increase full-time Southern Baptist international missionaries from 3,700 to 4,200, boost the number of congregations by 5,000 and seek to reverse the decline in baptizing 12- to 17-year-olds.

Floyd said SBC churches are baptizing 38% fewer teenagers than in 2000.

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AUTHOR COMMENTARY

There are two main points:

Firstly, no way, no how, is it acceptable to allow something that God’s word explicitly calls an abomination into a congregation of believers.

Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.

Leviticus 18:22

[11] And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. [12] For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.

Ephesians 5:11-12

But the main reason I am reporting on this is to show the hypocrisy of the SBC. The SBC is very worldly and sensual; so for them to banish some of their churches because of sodomy is hypocritical. Their churches and organizations are constantly having problems with sexual sins among the congregations, staff, and youth groups. The translations they endorse (CSB, NASB, ESV) take it VERY easy on sin in general, but sodomy especially; so how can you (the SBC) fault these fake pastors who are going along with your preferred translations?

The SBC is laden with all kinds of problems. The SBC is a nice name that really means “Modernist Reformed-Calvinists.” Many of them are now peddling this new brain-think known as “New Calvinism.” It’s watered down Calvinism with a worldly spin. It is sometimes associated with “Lordship Salvation.”

As I said, their churches and organizations are very worldly and sin is never really kicked at all, but is glorified in many aspects. But that’s all these conventions and organizations these days, so what’s the difference? They, like all the other government controlled organizations shut their doors when the government told them to: and now fought it. Need I say anymore?

The SBC has been getting more and more charismatic this last decade as denominations across the board are having to compete (and I mean compete) with the charismatic-apostolic churches that are raking in the most money and affection.

The SBC is loaded full of Freemasons and it is no secret either as the leadership allows this.

People such as John MacArthur, R.C. Sproul, Jon Piper, David Platt, Paul Washer, Matt Chandler, Tim Challies, Todd Friel, etc., are good examples of this belief. Avoid them.

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