On Monday, June 10, 2024, about 350 SCBaptists gathered in an Indiana hotel conference room to fellowship, encourage one another, and be reminded of why we do what we do. The SCBaptist spirit of cooperation was rich and powerful. That was my favorite moment of the entire week. In the aftermath, as always, news headlines and various mischaracterizations have complicated the story of the SBC 2024. A few common questions I have received are below, along with the responses I have given.
WHAT IS THE STORY COMING OUT OF THE SBC 2024?
Eighty-three new missionaries were commissioned through the IMB, five of whom were SCBaptists. That doesn’t include several other commissioning ceremonies throughout the year. We celebrated 11,000 church plants through NAMB since 2010 (that’s roughly one-fourth of the total cooperating church count in the SBC), many of which are home to SCBaptists as pastor/planters or launch team members. Through our cooperation with NAMB and the IMB, SCBaptist missionaries are in every time zone across the planet right now. The sun never sets on the SCBaptist witness.
We celebrated 226,000 baptisms in 2023 — a 26 percent increase over the previous year! We saw a 19 percent increase in South Carolina! Four hundred and sixty-four SCBaptists were credentialed as messengers. The ARITF completed its assignment with the launch of its “Essentials” curriculum and a plan for the Executive Committee to take up the work long-term. There was a palpable, refreshing Christian fellowship in every meeting. In short, Southern Baptists are ministering, evangelizing, discipling, training, sending, and planting in a healthy rhythm, and joy fills the room when they get together to celebrate it.
DOES THE SBC NOW AFFIRM WOMEN AS PASTORS?
Baptist people of good charity have agreed, throughout the course of the debated “Law” amendment, that the amendment itself was not necessary. Our confession, the BF&M 2000, is clear: “While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor/elder/overseer is limited to men as qualified by Scripture” (Article VI). In 2023, messengers were unseated from two churches over the issue, and in 2024, another. So, no. Regardless of what you read in the headlines, Southern Baptists do not now affirm women pastors. The proposed constitutional amendment was an effort to add our clear confessional stance into our governing documents. The decision on governing documents failed, but the position on complementarianism persists. Nothing has changed about the Southern Baptist position on women pastors.
What is clear, however, is that a majority of messengers (61.45 percent) wanted to make this confessional stance and organizational restriction even clearer, and I believe many still do. I expect that over the next several years, the conversation will continue and we will come to agree, even more unitedly, on the way forward. To allow the grace of time in governance changes will be, I believe, a healthy and productive exercise in Baptist cooperation. The office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture. This is what Southern Baptists believed yesterday, and it is what Southern Baptists believe today.
WHAT WILL BE THE MAJOR ISSUES HEADING INTO DALLAS 2025?
The 2025 Convention will mark the centennial celebration of both the Cooperative Program and the Baptist Faith and Message. Since 1925, our people have deployed over $20 billion through the Cooperative Program, advancing the gospel of Jesus Christ all over the world. While various issues pop up from year to year, I believe (and sincerely hope) that the focus of the 2025 Convention in Dallas, Texas, will be on the celebration of and recommitment to our Cooperative Program. And SCBaptists are already well on our way.
NOW WHAT?
The SBC 2024 is history, and the SBC 2025 is 12 months in our future. Right now, we must all get back to the real work of our cooperation: evangelism, discipleship, education, mobilization, church strengthening, and building up one another in love. SCBaptists do this better than any Baptist people I know. So, let’s get to work. Together.
— Tony Wolfe is executive director-treasurer of the South Carolina Baptist Convention.