Springfield | The highlight of the event may have been having a photo made with the outgoing President of the Southern Baptist Convention, dressed in his Texas flag shirt and cowboy hat, standing next to a cardboard cutout of a cow like those he raises back home in Farmersville. More likely it was the opportunity to hear Bart Barber address the issues facing the convention going into its annual meeting in Indianapolis in June.
“I just want to scandalize you today by telling you the President of the Southern Baptist Convention is Baptist, very Baptist, so excessively Baptist,” Barber said to chuckles from the crowd. He was pointing to the autonomous nature of the local Baptist church, and addressed the three big issues he expects messengers to take up at the SBC Annual Meeting in Indianapolis in June.
“I don’t get to decide what we do about any of those things,” he said. Yet his influence over the convention after a troubled season is felt, and his humble leadership was acknowledged by the Illinois pastors and leaders who met with Barber at the IBSA Building in April.
There were an abundance of lighter moments. Barber grew up as a St. Louis Cardinals fan in northern Arkansas. IBSA Executive Director Nate Adams presented Barber a souvenir Cards jersey with the number 65. Barber is the 65th President of the SBC.
In the gathering, Barber addressed the importance of the Cooperative Program as its 100th anniversary approaches in 2025. He participated in a question-and-answer session, and named as three top issues response to sexual abuse, calls for financial transparency in SBC entities, and the pending vote on the Law Amendment which would clarify the definitions of men and women in ministry.
“The complementarian-egalitarianism question has been settled in the Southern Baptist Convention,” Barber said, citing the nearly identical votes to dismiss two churches with women pastors—one a normative size church and the other a megachurch—in 2023. “Complementarian says men and women are gifted for service, gifted by God, equally redeemed, but they have different roles in the church particularly related to proclamation and governance,” he said.
The (Mike) Law Amendment to the SBC Constitution defining “pastor” as a male-only office will come up for a second vote at the 2024 Annual Meeting. The voice vote in 2023 will be followed by a ballot vote in Indianapolis, Barber stated. “We will mark a ballot and turn it in,” he promised. Some groups, including the National African American Fellowship, were critical that a ballot vote was not held in New Orleans last year.
“I don’t think we have to have a constitutional amendment to decide (the definition of pastor) for us,” Barber said. “I think the Baptist Faith and Message is clear already, and is more clear than this amendment.”
Barber is concerned that amendment makes the definition of pastor less clear, because it expands the meaning to “different kinds” of pastors. It also expands Article 3 in the SBC Constitution related to “friendly cooperation.”
Barber appointed a study group on “cooperation” and its role in defining or dismissing a church from the denomination based on its “friendly cooperation.” A report from that group is expected in Indianapolis. The Credentials Committee recommended to the SBC Executive Committee the dismissal of four churches in 2023 and four more this year.
As for churches that have threatened to leave the SBC based on approval or failure of the Law Amendment, Barber said they should wait to see the actions the convention takes after the vote. “Everybody should just keep their powder dry and see how it all turns out,” he summarized.
The next 100
The tenor of Barber’s talks was candid, which those in attendance appreciated. It was also uplifting for a brother from Texas to make the trip to Illinois to share a word prior to our next big meeting together in neighboring Indiana. “We’re going to send more messengers than usual,” Adams said. He urged Illinois pastors to encourage their church members’ attendance at the convention as well.
“Heaven is working to bind us together,” Barber said, “so we can serve together, so we can glorify God together, that’s encouraging to me.”
Part of Barber’s visit to Illinois was to encourage churches in their Cooperative Program giving ahead of CP’s 100th anniversary in 2025. He talked about the morality, beauty, goodness, and ethical nature of shared support for missions.
“In the Cooperative Program, we as church leaders get an opportunity to model and practice without hypocrisy what we ask the members of our churches to do,” Barber said.
With a doctorate in history, Barber was able to tell stories from the beginning of the modern missions movement at the Haystack Revival in 1806, and the muddled election of 1902 as support for his concept of cooperation.
First century churches were his primary example, churches that had “a vision that was bigger than just their thing. These were churches that had just gotten started. They were struggling to survive…. They had every reason to care only about what they had going on in their difficult place. But God caused them to love beyond the borders of their church, and it led them to cooperate and to overcome.”
> Highlights from the Q&A session with Barber will be featured in the May issue of the Illinois Baptist and posted online at IllinoisBaptist.org.