Brothers and Sisters in Christ at North Lexington Baptist Church:
More than 10,500 messengers from all 50 U.S. States and a few territories gathered in Dallas this week for the annual meeting of our Southern Baptist Convention. Pastor Gavin and I arrived on Sunday after enjoying worship together at Fairview Baptist Church in Sherman, TX.
Sunday afternoon we registered, and thankfully we avoided the long lines that formed as the day progressed. We were pre-registered, which truly helps speed along the registration process. Next year, that will be something our church members will want to do ahead of the Orlando Convention. Already, I’m talking with Pastor Gavin about how to ensure we get a sufficient number of hotel rooms for our church messengers who are able to attend. Hotel registration will open in October 2025 for next summer. In the meantime, be planning to attend the NC State Baptist Convention on November 10th and 11th in Greensboro.
The convention overwhelmingly re-elected SBC President Clint Pressley, the senior pastor of Hickory Grove Baptist Church in Charlotte. We also elected an evangelist from Raleigh, NC, named Daniel Ritchie. You may have already heard of him, but his testimony is truly inspiring. I hope North Lexington will have a chance to have him as a guest speaker in the coming months. I think he would be a tremendous encouragement to our family of faith.
The resolutions this year focused on celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Cooperative Program, the 100th anniversary of the Baptist Faith and Message, and making strong statements about a biblical worldview of human sexuality, gender, and marriage. The convention messengers chose to retain the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission by a narrow margin, overwhelmingly approved a nearly $200 million Cooperative Program allocation budget to fund our missionaries, to provide tuition assistance to Southern Baptist seminary students, and to underwrite our administrative functions.
Additionally, for the first time, the convention approved a $3 million priority allocation to continue paying legal expenses that have arisen out of a group of lawsuits brought against the Convention by a former president and a missions professor. Both of these men have confessed to past sexual immorality, but they assert the convention has “defamed” them by following a biblical process of discipline. I am hopeful these matters will be resolved before we gather in Orlando. Let’s all pray for God’s will to be done in these litigious matters.
On a more positive note, the worship at the convention was truly wonderful. We had an impromptu worship hour led by Shane and Shane, a gifted team of music evangelists. In fact, their exhortations to the messengers were probably the best sermons we heard all week. The convention sermon was preached by SC State Baptist Executive Tony Wolf, who encouraged churches to continue supporting our cooperative mission funding with greater sacrifice.
Regrettably, the convention messengers did not adopt substantive measures to require greater financial transparency from our entities. This is something Pastor Gavin will be explaining to the church, and I am happy to participate via zoom in any post-convention briefing that he directs. This decision has wide-reaching implications for every Southern Baptist Church and will necessitate some difficult conversations as churches like North Lexington begin to understand how convention leaders have scuttled growing concerns about the need for more openness regarding our convention’s finances.
I am praying for you all this Sunday, and I am thankful for the confidence North Lexington put in Pastor Gavin and me to represent our Lord as messengers from our church.
In Christ,
Ben
North Lexington Baptist Church 