I first met Josh Powell in a Sunday school class in LaGrange, Ky., around 26 years ago. It was 2000, and we were both Deep South boys about to embark on studies at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Our wives talked about how we’d all relocated from the South to a city that didn’t feel very southern (Louisville, despite what some argue, ain’t the South). Josh and I sparred good-naturedly (as we would many times over the years) over our beloved college football teams — his based in Columbia, S.C.; mine in Athens, Ga. We both grew up in the country, both lifelong Southern Baptists, both connoisseurs of genuine country music, and both deeply committed to sound doctrine and the local church. I left the encounter thinking “My kind of guy.”
All these years later, that remains true. My friend is now a candidate for the presidency of our denomination, and because of all the good things I know to be true of Josh and the past 26 years of his faithful work in local church ministry, I intend to check the box by his name next month in Orlando.
Before I enumerate my reasons, I want to make clear that I do not personally know Willy Rice, so my endorsement of Josh is unrelated to what I see as shortcomings in him as a potential president. I’ve heard nothing but good things about this brother from people I know and trust, so I’m assuming nothing but the best of him. I have great respect for his decades of faithful service to the local church. My points below should not be taken to insinuate that their opposite is true of Brother Rice. No doubt, many, or perhaps all, could be said of him.
We live in fascinating times in the SBC: Theological and political conservatives thoroughly dominate, yet it seems two conservative camps have arisen with solid candidates running against one another while a vocal minority swears we are slouching steadily toward theological liberalism. As an aside, if the latter notion were true, I would no longer be a part of the SBC. I don’t believe liberalism crouches on our doorstep, but every generation must guard the deposit of God’s truth given to us and the doctrines it authoritatively teaches.
That said, here’s why I support Josh:
- He’s a proven leader who, despite not seeking leadership offices, gets nominated by people who know and trust him for those high offices. This is consistent with Proverbs 27:2, “Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; a stranger, and not your own lips.”
- He’s a humble man and an “ordinary” person in the best sense of that second attribute. Virtually anyone would be comfortable approaching Josh. He is simultaneously even keeled and intensely convictional. He holds immovably to sound biblical doctrine but isn’t always spoiling for a fight. In an age that seems to prize loud activists, Josh exhibits the cool head of a leader and not the high voltage of an activist. Quarrelsomeness may be the order of the day in U.S. politics, but Scripture condemns it in God’s man (1 Tim. 3:3; 2 Tim. 2:25).
- He’s deeply committed to the ministry of God’s Word in the local church. He is an expository preacher whose confidence in the transforming power of God’s inspired, inerrant, authoritative, all-sufficient Word is evident in the churches he’s served in Kentucky and South Carolina.
- He’s an excellent family man. Josh and Allison have been deeply devoted to one another for nearly three decades, and their four children exhibit clear marks of discipleship in the home. The proving ground for a leader in the local church begins in his home (1 Tim. 3:4).
- He is committed to sound doctrine as found in Scripture, is unquestionably complementarian, and holds tightly to the historic biblical ideals of marriage and gender. Josh is a confessional Baptist, committed to the doctrines and moral issues as spelled out in the BF&M 2000.
- He is deeply conversant with Baptist history in general and SBC history in particular. Josh and I sat in class together many times in seminary, and he was always one of our best budding historians. To take the SBC where it’s going, it’s important to have an intimate understanding of where we’ve been. We survived the inerrancy controversy, the battle for the Bible. By God’s grace, we’ll probably survive skirmishes over its application. A president who understands that is unlikely to overreact or underreact when the devil’s darts fly.
- He is more focused on SBC priorities than fixated on its problems. Sometimes, obsessing over divisions only widens that gap. In the SBC, the messengers — meaning the rank-and-file — function as the change agent and the gatekeepers of orthodox doctrine and practice. Southern Baptists tend to get things right — even if it takes a few attempts. A good leader like Josh understands this well.
There’s much more I could say about Josh. This issue of TBC includes in-depth interviews with both candidates and longer forms of both appear on our website. As Orlando approaches with great haste, let us pray for the man who emerges as SBC leader, asking God to make him a godly, faithful man we need to pilot us through the culturally tumultuous waters of the early 21st century.