Pastors and church members in the Southern Baptist Convention recently launched the Center for Baptist Leadership, a new entity seeking to revitalize the country’s largest association of Protestant churches amid a leftward theological and cultural drift.
The SBC has faced controversy in recent years over issues like the advent of churches with female pastors and the encroachment of critical theory in key institutions. The Center for Baptist Leadership seeks to cultivate “courageous and uncompromising Baptist leadership” which is “grounded in Scripture, creation order, and historic Baptist commitments, embodied in antifragile Baptist churches and institutions, and proclaimed with a prophetic and attractional voice.”
William Wolfe, the executive director of the Center for Baptist Leadership, said in an interview with The Sentinel that the new entity will “reverse the downward slide and recover the SBC back to conservative theological and cultural commitments, for the sake of our gospel mission.”
“The SBC is a critical Christian institution in America and the world. The Left knows this, which is why they are doing everything they can to subvert and destroy it,” Wolfe remarked. “CBL is here to help renew the SBC from within, defend it from the progressive forces seeking its destruction, and serve as a better Baptist voice in the public square.”
As previously reported by The Sentinel, attendees at the SBC annual meeting last year voted in favor of an amendment clarifying that churches must appoint "only men as any kind of pastor or elder as qualified by Scripture" in order to stay in “friendly cooperation” with the denomination, additionally removing multiple prominent churches which had ordained female ministers.
Former SBC leaders nevertheless passed another motion authorizing SBC President Bart Barber to appoint a “broadly representative task force” of twenty people to examine how churches should be deemed “in friendly cooperation on questions of faith and practice,” but at least six of the twenty current task force members lead churches where women bear the titles of “pastor” or “minister,” as revealed by a recent analysis from The Sentinel.
Wolfe noted the importance of conservative SBC churches sending as many authorized attendees to the June annual meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana, as they are permitted, so that the amendment affirming the male pastorate can be added to the SBC constitution. The meeting will also address matters such as implementing abuse reform and increasing financial transparency.
“We have two main timelines in mind: the long, slow work of institutional revitalization, and the year-over-year work of equipping SBC messengers to vote for change at our annual meetings,” Wolfe continued. “CBL wants to see the SBC be biblical and faithful to our Baptist confessions and commitments. The goal of all this work is to help advance the uncompromised gospel message of Jesus Christ in and through SBC entities and local churches."
Wolfe, who formerly served in senior roles at the Defense Department and the State Department during the Trump administration, added that he desires to “provide conservative Southern Baptists with better representation on political and cultural issues” in the nation’s capital, an asset which the denomination has not had “for years now.” Another major issue in the denomination is indeed the reality of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the public policy advocacy arm of the SBC, failing to represent the interests of conservative members on issues such as abortion, firearm rights, and illegal immigration.
The Center for Baptist Leadership is an independent center supported by the Christian organization American Reformer, whose mission includes helping Christian institutions “stay faithful and flourish under current cultural conditions.” Josh Abbotoy, the executive director of American Reformer, said in comments to The Sentinel that “supporting the mission of CBL advances of our own, and under William Wolfe's executive leadership with a strong and broad advisory board, we have no doubt that CBL will have immediate and lasting impact."
Members of the advisory board include longtime conservative leaders such as Mark Coppenger, a retired ethics professor who taught at two SBC seminaries; Tom Ascol, the senior pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, Florida; Lewis Richardson, the senior pastor of Woodlawn Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Dusty Deevers, a pastor at Grace Reformed Baptist Church in Elgin, Oklahoma, and a member of the Oklahoma State Senate.
Jared Moore and Michael Clary, pastors who are respectively candidates for SBC President and First Vice President, each serve as contributing scholars at the Center for Baptist Leadership.
Ascol said in a statement to The Sentinel that he believes the Center for Baptist Leadership will ensure through their efforts that the “work of Christ's kingdom through the people known as Southern Baptists will be strengthened and expanded in the years ahead.”
“For more than 175 years the SBC has been an instrument for great good by enabling like-minded Baptist churches to link arms in eliciting, combining, and directing energies for the propagation of the gospel,” Ascol commented. “Satan and his servants hate this and have repeatedly unleashed massive resources and efforts to destroy the SBC's effectiveness. By God's grace, those efforts have been repeatedly withstood. Today the SBC faces another assault by evil forces. The need of the hour is for clear thinking and courageous leadership.”
When asked how faithful conservative Southern Baptists can save their denomination, Wolfe said the most important action is attending the annual meeting in Indianapolis: “If you want to see change in the SBC, you have to come and vote for it. We need to flood the meeting in Indianapolis with conservatives. If you're in the SBC, start making travel plans today.”
