In this episode of Theology Applied, Pastor Joel Webber talks with William Wolfe about the upcoming Southern Baptist Convention's upcoming convention, the law amendment that requires male pastors to uphold biblical fidelity, 1 Timothy 3:1, Titus 1, and what the Bible teaches.
00:00:00.000All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.
00:00:02.560I'm your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries.
00:00:05.540And in this episode, I am talking with my friend William Wolfe about the SBC, about
00:00:10.340the upcoming convention, the law amendment that's on the books to vote for male pastors
00:00:15.720upholding biblical fidelity, 1 Timothy 3, Titus chapter 1, what the Bible teaches and
00:00:20.720what the church has held for centuries and centuries and centuries until 15 minutes ago.
00:00:25.780And I'm holding my book up right now if you're watching the video.
00:00:28.920the book that I wrote a little while back, Fight by Flight. And the reason why I wanted to mention
00:00:35.360this right at the very front is because I'm the guy who left California. I'm the guy who literally
00:00:41.220wrote a book. I mean, let's be honest, it's a glorified blog, but a pamphlet, whatever you
00:00:46.560want to call it. But I wrote something, published something about the idea of not just staying and
00:00:51.520fighting the good fight, but there is actually a way to leave without your leaving being just a
00:00:56.520retreat, without it being just a surrender. However, there are some strong distinctions
00:01:02.100that William and I, you know, we flesh out in this episode where leaving a blue state like
00:01:07.180California and where you geographically live as a Christian is not a one-to-one ratio for leaving
00:01:14.120the SBC as a local church. It's not the same thing. The fight-by-flight principle does not
00:01:20.500necessarily apply. Some ways it does with the SBC, some ways it doesn't. And that's what we get
00:01:26.180into in this conversation. Should you stay? Should you go? What do you do if you're in the SBC? Is
00:01:31.520it actually still winnable? Is there actually still hope? That's the episode I think you'll
00:01:36.500enjoy. Tune in now. Applying God's word to every aspect of life. This is Theology Applied.
00:01:49.000All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied. I am your host, Pastor Joel
00:01:53.280Webman with Right Response Ministries. And in this episode, I'm privileged to welcome back to
00:01:57.000the show, William Wolfe. William, thanks for coming. Joel, it's good to be back. It's been a
00:02:01.940while. It has. It has been a while. And you have been kind of running like a chicken with his head
00:02:06.940cut off, doing all kinds of different tasks because something important is coming up. What is it?
00:02:13.260It is the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention next month, June 11th to 12th in
00:02:19.240indianapolis indiana and the organization that i've had the privilege to launch here over the
00:02:24.680last few months the center for baptist leadership is dedicated to helping reform the southern
00:02:29.500baptist convention and hopefully secure some big wins for the conservatives who are still fighting
00:02:34.360in the institution of the sbc right why does it matter i think there's you know lots of people
00:02:40.440today that would just say you know sbc whatever who cares let it go uh why why is it worth fighting
00:02:47.460for? Yeah, well, I think that when you look back over American history in general, or even sort of
00:02:54.280American Christian evangelical history throughout the last hundred years or so, we see that
00:03:00.720conservatives build things, liberals infiltrate and subvert them, and then conservatives pack
00:03:08.920their bags and go and start something else, leaving behind buildings, you know, institutional
00:03:15.120credibility, massive endowments, and other things like that. I mean, you can look at Jay Gresham
00:03:20.480Machen as a great example. I mean, he ultimately, he had to leave Princeton and go start something
00:03:26.640else, right? And look, what he started was a good thing, but it's not the same thing as Princeton.
00:03:31.280I mean, you go all the way back to the beginning of America, like Harvard, Princeton, Yale, these
00:03:36.520were theological training grounds that are now completely captured by the radical Marxists. So
00:03:43.160So in the long scope of things, it's important for people to remember that institutions are valuable and they're worth fighting for.
00:03:50.540And the Southern Baptist Convention, as a critical Christian institution in the United States of America, has six of the 10 largest seminaries in our country.
00:03:59.060It's got the largest international mission sending agency in the world.
00:04:03.300It's got a massive domestic church planting and church revitalization arm in NAM and the SEND network.
00:04:10.660And it really is sort of the center of what you could call the lone bulwark of the political conservatism in our country that's holding back the darkness and the madness.
00:04:22.400And so all that to say, Joel, it's a critical institution.
00:04:25.120And what's been very interesting for me to realize is that the left values the Southern Baptist Convention as a target to subvert and infiltrate.
00:04:34.760It seems more than even some of the conservatives within the SBC value it as something worth defending and saving.
00:04:42.000So we're trying to wake people up to that and get them back in the fight.
00:04:45.840Right. Yeah. So I wrote a book called Fight by Flight.
00:04:50.540And the principle that I was arguing is, you know, sometimes you stay and you stand your ground and sometimes you flee.0.51
00:04:57.980And there are categories in the Christian life where fleeing, it falls well beneath the banner of something.
00:05:04.760other than simply retreatism, that it's not surrender. It's not giving up. It's not quitting.
00:05:10.400It's, you know, it's attacking to the rear. It's, you know, continuing the fight, but from a more
00:05:16.640strategic placement, a more strategic standpoint. And that by fleeing, there's actually a voting
00:05:22.880with your feet. You're actually crippling, whether it be a state or an institution or whatever it
00:05:27.860might be, by cutting off their line of support. And so, you know, we know that we have biblical
00:05:33.200categories for this. Jesus says, if a town doesn't receive you, shake the dust off your feet. And so
00:05:37.600that is a biblical principle. Um, but it's not, uh, it's a principle that I think we have to be
00:05:43.180careful not to, uh, not to give it a universal application. So, so I tried to apply it primarily
00:05:49.480for where Christians live, not what denomination they're a part of. Um, I think the principle can
00:05:55.140apply, but it's not a situation where it must apply. So I was primarily using my story of why
00:06:00.540I left California. Um, but the Christian living in California who may be called to leave to fight0.99
00:06:06.480by flight, um, that's a different scenario than the, you know, the SBC local church that's in,
00:06:13.920you know, in the Southern Baptist convention. Uh, what, what would you, I've got some ideas,
00:06:18.540but I'll let you go first. What do you think some of the differences are between a Christian
00:06:22.100leaving a blue state versus why, why isn't just a one size fits fits all one to one ratio of
00:06:28.220leave California, leave SBC? What would you see the differences as?
00:06:33.480Well, I think that one of the main differences is one of those differences that so many people
00:06:39.080greatly confuse in the Christian nationalism conversation, which one is the realm of the
00:06:46.400natural world. So, you know, and one is the realm of sort of the ecclesiological world, right? And
00:06:52.640those are two different realms, you know, in an important way. So when it comes to what state
00:06:58.080you live in, that's a matter of wisdom and prudence and prudential political application
00:07:05.200for, you know, looking for caring for your family, how your taxes are being spent, you know, what are
00:07:10.480your children going to be taught in schools? Can you even afford to buy a house in the state?
00:07:15.980How's homelessness? How's crime? You know, how's the indoctrination, right? Those are all questions
00:07:22.020of life in the political, natural world, whereas what's going on within the Southern Baptist
00:07:28.760Convention is really a question of how are Christians associating together according to
00:07:34.800agreed-upon theological standards, a confession of faith, and working together to advance the
00:07:40.480gospel. So they really are, in some ways, Joel, they're sort of night-and-day considerations,
00:07:45.660and really the idea of sort of getting out of a blue state and getting to a red state,
00:07:49.900that you're still in America. Now, some of the ways the principles can apply is in the Southern
00:07:54.420Baptist convention, you can redirect some of your money away from some things and towards others.
00:07:59.500But if you leave the SBC, you know, you're not even in it anymore, no more influence at all.
00:08:06.160Right. Yeah. So I think that's well put. I was thinking through it a little bit preparing for
00:08:12.000this conversation today. And I was thinking, you know, if you're in California, so
00:08:15.880think of like the state being like the SBC, the whole convention and think of like your town or
00:08:22.360your county, you know, in California being like your individual local church and the SBC. And so
00:08:27.520I could see somebody to play the devil's advocate. I could see them saying, well, you know, I'm in
00:08:32.500California and but I live in Bakersfield or Modesto or, you know, an area that's smaller. It's much
00:08:39.880more conservative. So I'm in a red dot, you know, in a blue ocean. And what I would say is
00:08:45.700well, praise God in your town, there is far less crime. In your town, there's far less degeneracy
00:08:52.060and perversion. And maybe the school system is better than your town. Although I would argue
00:08:56.340as a Christian, please don't use the public school system. But those kinds of things are0.95
00:09:00.380improved in your town. But by virtue of your town being in the larger state, you don't get to opt
00:09:06.800out of taxes. You're still going to pay, especially in a state like California. Texas doesn't have a
00:09:11.220state tax, but California does. And those state taxes, no matter how red your individual town in
00:09:17.460California might be, you're still paying the state taxes for a deep blue state. And a portion of those
00:09:24.080taxes, not just a portion, but the lion's share are going to go towards overt wickedness. Whereas
00:09:30.100in the SBC, to now go to the other side of the coin, you could be in an individual local church
00:09:35.260where your pastor is as biblically faithful as you could possibly imagine. At the local level,
00:09:40.540you are with salt of the earth, seasoned saints that love the Lord, love the scripture, love you
00:09:46.480and your family, all the things that you're looking for in a local church. And then your
00:09:52.260church is in the SBC, but there's no such thing as, well, I live in Bakersfield. I'm going to opt
00:09:57.300out of state taxes in California. Whereas you can say as an SBC church, we're an SBC church,
00:10:03.440but we are not going to support X, Y, and Z. Am I right about that? That's how I've been informed.
00:10:08.980What are some of the things that a local pastor and his elders could decide, no, as a congregation, we are not going to give our giving dollars to these subcategories of the SBC?
00:10:38.980I really do. And a lot of 1689 churches in particular are leaving the Southern Baptist Convention, to which I say, you know, we're losing our best fighters.
00:10:48.860Come on back, boys. We need you. And so but what I would encourage a church to do instead of getting out of the Southern Baptist Convention is continuing to give, you know, in order to make sure that you have a vote to help change things.
00:11:03.360but just specifically direct your giving to the entity within the Southern Baptist Convention that you trust the most.
00:11:11.580Maybe that's the International Missions Board.
00:11:13.720So you can give as a church directly to the International Missions Board and not give to the general pot, which is called the cooperative program.
00:11:23.740You can make sure to because if you give to the cooperative program, that money could go anywhere.
00:11:29.420So if you just give money to the Southern Baptist Convention Cooperative Program, that money might go to the ERLC.
00:11:36.080And many people, many conservative churches don't want their money going to the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
00:11:42.320But by specifically allocating your Southern Baptist Convention dollars to something like the IMB, you can ensure that you still get a vote.
00:11:51.160you still have a say in the future of the convention and its direction. And then you
00:11:55.620can make sure that your money is not going to fund any of the entities that you don't currently
00:12:00.580approve of their activities. But see, this is where, Joel, I have so many conservatives who say
00:12:06.360shut down the ERLC, defund the ERLC, salt the earth on which it stands. And again, I can
00:12:13.500understand their frustration. And maybe we get to that point, but I would rather see over a period
00:12:20.160time, we elect conservative president after conservative president in the Southern Baptist
00:12:24.480Convention. We reconstitute the trustee board of the ERLC, you know, and then they pick some,
00:12:33.120you know, some incredibly based, hardcore conservative fighter to lead it. And then
00:12:38.760that's our institution, you know, instead of just getting rid of it. So that's what I'm aiming for.
00:12:44.500Smart. Yeah, that's very helpful and very practical. What, uh, another question to just
00:12:50.420get again, practical, what is the minimum percentage that a local SBC church has to
00:12:56.300give? So you're saying you could take the whole thing and direct it towards, you know, whatever
00:13:00.400you feel the best about. Um, but what is that number? Is it 2%? What is it? Well, the total,
00:13:08.020the total number of giving that you have in order to send messengers. That's what I'm thinking. So
00:13:13.440you want to keep the vote. I want to be able to send the max amount of messengers to the convention
00:13:19.960to vote for, you know, the law amendment and, you know, all the things we'll talk about here in just
00:13:25.180a moment. So what is that minimum amount threshold financially that our church has to give in order
00:13:31.080to accomplish that? Yeah, that's a great question, Joel. And it actually, the formula works in favor
00:13:37.480of the smaller churches. And it gives the churches power. I was recently talking with
00:13:44.800Chase Davis about his exit out of Acts 29 and his effort to join the SBC. And he said Acts 29 was
00:13:52.780essentially ruled by fiat, whereas the SBC is a beautiful, messy Baptist democracy. And it is,1.00
00:13:59.120right? We have the chance to make real changes and have your voice heard. So the way it works is
00:14:04.120by joining the Southern Baptist Convention, sort of a one-time thing, and giving, I think it's $250
00:14:11.980upon joining, then that sort of secures for you your baseline of two messengers per church. So
00:14:21.580every, the smallest church gets two, and then there's a formula that's used to calculate how
00:14:27.080many more you get on top of that with a maximum of 12. And that formula, the formula that's most
00:14:35.160friendly, there are two formulas, but the one that's most friendly to smaller churches,
00:14:40.000it's that for every 1% of your church's undesignated receipts that you give to any
00:14:49.560Southern Baptist entity, you know, program or effort, you get another additional messenger
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00:17:05.320This is for yourself as an individual or maybe for you and your family, your kids.
00:18:06.680So, you know, it's not hard actually at all for a church of maybe 100 to 120 people to
00:18:13.140get something like seven messengers to the convention.
00:18:16.700And that would require that they give 7% of their total budget for the church. But that full 7%, like you already stated previously, they could specifically designate towards, you know, not the cooperative, you know, slush fund that might go towards, you know, Brent Leatherwood or whatever, but they could specifically designate that towards the arena that they feel best about in the SBC.
00:18:42.120So they give a 7% the full amount going to something that they actually believe in or at least hate the least, and they could send seven messengers.
00:18:56.280Or actually, I think now I don't have the formula right in front of me, but I actually think the way it works is that you would actually only have to give 5% because you get that two baseline.
00:19:06.600You join, you get these two baseline votes, and then it's for every 1% that you give, you get an additional vote.
00:19:15.500So by giving 5%, actually, you would get seven votes, which is incredible.
00:19:21.560I mean, again, like I said, I talked to a brother, a pastor in Missouri.
00:19:26.180He has a church of less than 100 people.
00:19:30.460But here's the problem, Joel, is that church of 100 people cannot find 12 people within it to take the time to come to our annual meeting, which that's part of this effort that I'm doing here, brother, is I'm trying to get out, spread the word and tell people it's so important for you to come and show up and really hold out to Christians in America who feel, I feel like downtrodden and maybe disenfranchised and powerless, you know, particularly to our Southern Baptist brother and sister saying like,
00:19:59.400you have a chance to change something you can win if you show up if we show up we can take this
00:20:06.320thing back and make it something that as conservative bible believing christians we can be
00:20:10.340proud of amen so um with that you know like a church could have 12 messengers uh but only three
00:20:19.320are able um for practical reasons to attend are you guys doing anything to try to uh help sponsor
00:20:27.720you know paying for flights or hotels because lord knows and you know uh that nam has been
00:20:34.360notorious for doing that in the past taking all their wokest of the woke church planters and
00:20:39.240you know and using a portion of their budget to fund you know their flights and hotels so that
00:20:45.020they can all show up and vote for liberal you know you know liberal whatever in the sbc so
00:20:51.740do you guys have you know on the other side of the equation some kind of conservative equivalence of
00:20:56.540that like here's this little church they could send 12 messengers they only got three that are
00:21:01.380able to get off of work you know or could afford a plane ticket but we're going to try to help you
00:21:05.860know get three more you know do you have some kind of sponsorship yeah that's we that's a great
00:21:12.100question and we absolutely do i know of a variety of people who are um working on this and a variety
00:21:18.320of organizations sort of on the conservative side of things but i would say most simply is that um
00:21:23.900Center for Baptist Leadership is looking to help connect people with those who are willing
00:21:29.400to help provide travel stipends and scholarships.
00:21:33.200And so you can reach out directly to me at wwolf at centerforbaptistleadership.org.
00:21:41.020That's Wolf with an E, so W-W-O-L-F-E at centerforbaptistleadership.org.
00:21:47.040Or you can email us at info at centerforbaptistleadership.org.
00:21:52.940And if you are listening to this and you are a Southern Baptist who wants to come to Indianapolis but thinks that you would have a difficult time to do so because of the finances required, we also have please reach out and we will help close that gap for you.
00:22:07.800We also have a list of housing that's being provided in the Indianapolis area that's free.
00:22:13.020And so the first thing we can do is help connect you with somebody and help you avail yourself of free housing.
00:22:18.720And then we can also help provide a stipend for the ticket as well.
00:25:57.820I think of 13 service members in Afghanistan.
00:26:00.320I think there are multiple things with people. There are certain people that would be alive that are dead. I mean, people lost their lives because of a presidential election. And so all that being said, my point is this. It's an apple to oranges comparison. Like you said earlier, night and day, apples, oranges, because with the SBC, if your local church loses the SBC, and you correct me if I'm wrong here, if I move out of California, I still get to vote in a national election.
00:26:26.640I still live in America. If I leave the SBC, that would not be likened to leaving California to move
00:26:32.520to Michigan. That would be likened to leaving California and the US of A and moving to El
00:26:38.340Salvador, which would be fantastic probably. But you get my point. So again, that's another
00:26:44.280state tax in California. You don't get to decide where it goes. You're giving the SBC, you do.
00:26:50.480Leave California, you still get to vote in a national election and your vote probably is
00:26:54.580going to count a lot more if you're conservative you leave the sbc it's like leaving the country
00:26:59.220you don't get a vote at all i think those are two and i'm trying to be helpful here and win some
00:27:04.140people to your cause because i think it's a noble cause but i think those are two significant
00:27:08.140differences what do you think look i i agree entirely look if history is written by the victors
00:27:14.960victory belongs to those who show up right and and it's so important for conservatives to show up
00:27:22.600and vote, obviously, in presidential elections to show up where it matters to. I mean, everything
00:27:27.160you're talking about in terms of the statistical allocations of votes from California versus
00:27:33.980these close swing states is absolutely right. I believe that in general, in political terms,
00:27:40.640it'd be a very smart strategy for all patriotic, biology-respecting, reality-loving
00:27:49.560christian americans to really kind of try to make red states absolutely inhospitable to the left
00:27:58.320that's what we should be doing which i believe you know governor de santis has done a good job
00:28:02.980of that in florida but but really the first red state governor that says my project is i'm going
00:28:09.560to make this state allergic to the insanity of the left and not a single leftist is going to
00:28:15.420want to come live here or, quite frankly, feel welcome here. I mean, that would be an amazing
00:28:21.020political project to watch. So that's fun. That's a conversation for another day. I love that
00:28:25.420political theory. But you're right. With the Southern Baptist Convention, Joel, the votes
00:28:30.060belong in the hands of the people. And this is what happened during the conservative resurgence
00:28:34.960of old. I mean, we had conventions where there were 35,000, 40,000, 45,000 Southern Baptists
00:28:43.060showing up to vote to keep the Southern Baptist Convention from falling into the hands of the
00:28:48.800old school theological liberals, the people who denied the inerrancy of scripture, who denied the
00:28:54.820validity of the authors of scripture, who denied the validity of the miracles of Jesus, questioned
00:29:01.160the very resurrection. It was German higher criticism that was infiltrating the Southern
00:29:06.560Baptist Convention, and as W.A. Criswell outlined in his famous sermon, the pattern of death for0.78
00:29:13.940a denomination, whether we live or die was really the title of it. Whether we live or die, he said,
00:29:20.180if we allow this higher criticism to come into the SBC, it will kill our institutions, it will
00:29:26.100kill our denomination, and quite frankly, it will kill our very own personal Christian faith.
00:29:31.060Well, what's happening right now in the Southern Baptist Convention, Joel, is that it's not
00:29:34.500higher criticism. It's critical theory. It's a new form of liberalism that's choking out the
00:29:41.600one true gospel handed down to the saints that were called to defend. As Galatians 5.9 says,
00:29:47.960a little leaven leavens the whole lump. And we've got more than a little leaven in the SBC lump
00:29:52.960right now. But all that to bring it back around to what you were saying is that in order to turn
00:29:58.660this thing around and to take it back. We just need conservatives to show up and bring their
00:30:04.680vote to Indianapolis this year and next year and wherever, you know, next year it's in Dallas. And
00:30:10.400then I think it's maybe in Orlando the year after that, but they need to sort of wake up. You and
00:30:15.840I've talked before about the dangers of pietism and quietism and retreatism. Well, Southern
00:30:21.580Baptists need to sort of wake up and come and show up and stop just ignoring things but believing
00:30:29.480they can have an impact and a change. Amen. Yeah, I think, you know, part of it,
00:30:35.040institutional credibility and the, you know, the overall American public's trust in institutions
00:30:42.580is currently at an all-time low. And, you know, I've never spent a day in my life in the SBC.
00:30:50.740So I think for me, that's part of it is, um, I, you know, I, I think some of these guys
00:30:56.800it's like, you were raised on the pews of an SBC church.