My Thoughts on SBC21

I was asked to write something in advance of the upcoming Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in Nashville. Having spent many years attending (and working for) SBC churches, I have what I would consider a unique insight into how the system works.

There is no love lost between me & the SBC. This is not because I was mistreated by anyone in an SBC church or was abused by a pastor of an SBC church – it is because I have seen, with my own eyes, how the quest for the ‘greater good’ is placed above victims of sexual abuse. I was made aware of this happening in a church where I had previously worked. An older married small groups leader groomed and sexually abused the daughter of one of the couples in his group. This man was in his 50’s; his victim in her teens. The matter was quietly swept under the rug. The abuser was allowed to withdraw his membership, slink away, and integrate into a new SBC congregation. The victim and her family, who were longtime members of the church, left too – wounded and scarred by how their daughter had been cast aside & allowed to be painted as the seductress.

Does this man’s new church know what he did? Did anyone call to warn them?

This is a common story – a common scenario in SBC churches. Whenever there is a scandal, the knee-jerk reaction is to protect the church, to keep it quiet as to not taint ‘our witness’. I have news for you SBC – this has RUINED your witness. Your desire to ‘protect the base’ is nothing more than the likemindedness of power-drunk men to hold on to their power and their money. 

I like to break things down to what’s really going on. I worked in an SBC mega church long enough to know that the only thing that matters is to keep the givers, giving. Stories are spun, messages massaged, announcements scripted – all to keep THE GIVING UNITS content. People love to feel like they are part of something bigger, that the church they attend is accomplishing great things – so when a troublesome topic like sexual abuse threatens to throw a monkey wrench into their nice little bubble, it can’t be tolerated. The victim has to be villianized & the abuse minimized so the church can keep taking up the Lottie Moon Christmas offering every year. It just makes people feel better to not know about ‘those things’.

Nothing will change in the SBC until the men who currently run it are run off. It’s too late for them. They have too much to lose to really deal with the sexual abuse crisis. They no doubt have whiteboards set up in conference rooms with pie charts – all trying to figure out how to minimize the sexual abuse crisis that is destroying them from within. Their singular goal is to keep the money coming in, and if the majority of the people who sit in the pews of SBC churches don’t want to hear about their sexual abuse problem, that’s the crowd they will pander to.

In reality, the SBC is nothing more than a religious chamber of commerce. They have no power over cooperating churches. They take 10% of a cooperating church’s budget and it’s gets split into different ministries (or paychecks) in the SBC. The cooperating churches just have to abide by the set of rules and keep giving their money. No one tells anyone else what to do – just keep sending in that monthly check.

Personally I don’t see a lot of hope for the SBC. The recent exposure of letters and audio clips is just the tip of the iceberg of what goes on behind the scenes. The Caring Well initiative was just a tactic to appease the survivors of abuse in the SBC. I know of churches who never even VIEWED the material that was sent to them. They just didn’t care. It wasn’t important to them. It will NEVER be important to them.

So what’s the solution? My personal opinion is that anyone who is supporting an SBC church with their tithes and offerings AND cares about the sexual abuse problem in SBC churches should walk away. Take your money with you. The only way there could be hope for the SBC is to hit them in their pocketbooks. If enough people withdrew their giving, you would have their undivided attention. The likelihood of that ever happening – slim. Like I said, most people sitting the pews just don’t care enough to do anything about the sexual abuse problem. They trust that the SBC is handling it and they don’t want to rock the boat. 

That’s the sad reality.

I walked away from the SBC because I support survivors. 

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” – Upton Sinclair