Nashville, Tenn. | Southern Baptist Convention President Bart Barber named fellow Texas pastor Jared Wellman to chair the group studying “friendly cooperation” as a standard for church membership in the denomination.
“I am concerned about the way that we’re defining friendly cooperation,” Barber said in an exclusive interview with the Illinois Baptist just ahead of the announcement. “I think that with increasing frequency, we’re adding items to Article 3 [of the SBC Constitution] to create more and more clearly defined rigid bases for excluding churches from Southern Baptist Convention’s cooperation. And I think that that’s really bad for the health of the Convention.”
For Barber, whose own position on the limitation of the office of pastor to men is clear, the issue is more than that definition. “My ambition for this task force is beyond that, really. It’s beyond cleaning up Article III. It’s beyond cleaning up Bylaw 8. The fact of the matter is we have ongoing concern this is a multi-decadal situation” that affects cooperation more broadly.
“We have ongoing concern about the future of the Cooperative Program,” Barber said. He hopes the cooperation study group will help draw Southern Baptists together around missions and the historic central funding stream for our shared work.
Messengers at the 2023 SBC Annual Meeting in New Orleans authorized the SBC President to appoint the study group after five former SBC Presidents stood together on the floor urging clarification of “friendly cooperation.”
“Lack of friendly cooperation” was cited as the reason five churches that had women serving in pastoral roles had their SBC membership revoked by the EC in February. Two of those churches, including Saddleback Church, the SBC’s second largest congregation led for 40 years by Rick Warren, appealed their dismissal at the Annual Meeting. Messengers declined to reinstate either church by about 90% of the ballot votes.
J.D. Greear, who preceded Barber as SBC President, said this week that passage of an amendment to the SBC Constitution, approved in New Orleans at the first of two required votes, will cause the Credentials Committee to go on “a national hunt” for churches who apply the title pastor to women.
While Greear stated unequivocally that the office of pastor is reserved for men, he told the Baptist Press This Week podcast, “…Southern Baptists have a long history of agreeing on primary and secondary things, even as they allow freedom in tertiary things or how we apply things.”
Using pastor to describe associate or staff positions would be one of those third-level issues, along with predestination, limited atonement, and irresistible grace, Greear said.
In July, Greear supported a call for prayer over the limitation of “pastor” to men by the National African American Fellowship, which claims 4,000 member churches in the SBC. He said if the convention passes the amendment on its second reading in Indianapolis next June, the Credentials Committee “will have no choice” but to disfellowship churches using staff titles in this way.
The cooperation study group is one current effort to bring more thoughtful consideration to the issue.
Wellman chaired the SBC Executive Committee (EC) during part of the turbulent period involving claims of mishandling sex abuse claims by earlier EC staff and leaders. Wellman resigned from that position in April so that he could be nominated for the post of EC President and CEO. His nomination failed after a bruising meeting of the EC trustees in May.
Barber said he will name the remaining members of the study group by the end of August.
Changes on ARITF
In other action, Barber named three replacements for the Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force (ARITF) after their resignations, including chair Marshall Blalock. The new chair is Josh Wester, pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Greensboro, North Carolina. ARITF members Cyndi Lott and Jarrett Stevens also resigned.
In an announcement, Barber thanked all three for their service. Barber said Blalock “deserves the gratitude and affection of all Southern Baptists. His leadership of the Task Force as chair for the past year has been exemplary.”
At the time of the SBC Annual Meeting, the ARITF panel unveiled the Ministry Check website which will track convictions and “credible claims” of sex abuse in SBC churches. The website was activated, but information from an existing database of abuse claims had not been uploaded because the content had not been vetted.
One member of the panel expressed disappointment at a press conference in New Orleans that the site was not fully functional. “I was a little discouraged that we weren’t further along,” clinical psychologist Heather Evans said, but abuse survivors present at the time “had tears of gratitude that really humbled me and sobered me.
“This takes a commitment to culture change that won’t be done by next year’s convention and cannot be done solely by an implementation task force,” Evans said. “It has to be a commitment in the higher up level and a commitment at the local level.”
Blalock said at the time that he hoped the database work and permanent funding for its operation would be finished by the 2024 Annual Meeting in Indianapolis.