Thousands of Southern Baptists began to descend on New Orleans over the weekend for the 2023 SBC Annual Meeting. Sometimes called the world’s largest deliberative body, over 13,000 messengers plus vendors and guests are expected to crowd into the vast Ernest N. Morial Convention Center on the banks of the Mississippi river.
New Orleans is no stranger to Baptists. It has been the home of one of six SBC seminaries for over 100 years. But the city, long known for Mardi Gras, has developed a year-round nightlife. The neon draped, music-thumping, open-air party wagons rolling down Canal Street, which separates the Central Business District from the French Quarter, gave ample evidence of this.
Numerous rainbow attired partygoers in town over the weekend to celebrate LGBTQ Pridefest provided an additional ingredient to the mix of peoples and worldviews on the streets around the hotels and restaurants near the convention center.
Add in several thousand Southern Baptist pastors, wives, kids, grandmas, and grandpas, many waiting in line for a seat at Café du Monde, and the scene on the streets of the Quarter Saturday night provided a diorama of modern American culture. Yet the beignets brought them together.
Baptist family reunion
At the airport baggage carousels, the convention center halls, and churches across the city Sunday morning, it was easy to see the bond that unites is strong. Hugs, smiles, and catching-up-conversations abounded. Remarks about how tall the kids have gotten could be heard as old seminary friends and former church-mates reconnected once again. The genuine love between people who labored together for the Lord was evident.
In pews at church and lines for messenger registration other bonds were on display, connections discovered through “extended family.” While the SBC has nearly 50,000 churches and over 13 million members, often strangers talking together could be overheard discovering mutual friends in ministry. The thousands of living, breathing Baptists that exist as dots on a map or social media profiles most of the year all converge on one city every June creating an enormous family reunion. It is those relationships and a love for the mission that are essential to the oftentimes messy work of maintaining cooperation.
The big uneasy
Behind the joy of renewing old friendships and consuming seafood and chicory coffee, there’s a sense of concern about the messy work. The questions were already being asked in the days leading up to the convention, in the airports on Saturday, in the exhibit hall on Sunday. There will be votes. There may be amendments proposed. There’s uneasiness about how the gathered messengers respond to the questions regarding the role of women in ministry. This has overshadowed a contested presidential election. It has overshadowed the expected release of the long-worked-for Ministry Check website. This is the one issue that seems to be thick in the air around the convention.
Yet the primary position on the issue is not really in question. Convention churches are overwhelmingly complementarian in their doctrine. The tension is how the questions this year will be resolved. Will the appeals of two churches deemed “not in friendly cooperation” by the Executive Committee due to women serving in roles as pastors be denied by the messengers? The greater question is if the messengers will seek to alter the language of the constitution or the Baptist Faith and Message (2000) to provide more restrictive verbiage regarding the role of women in ministry. Will they choose to provide specific examples of doctrines or practices that would clearly indicate that a church does not have a faith and practice that closely identifies with the BF&M 2000 mean? What effect might that have on cooperation where churches hold differing views and practices on other issues? Will the messengers affirm the EC’s decision on these churches and make no other changes?
One thing is sure. No one knows how 13,000 messengers in the room will vote on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Ben Jones is in New Orleans.