By Will Hall, Message Executive Editor
BETH MOORE: SBC is misogynistic
LifeWay’s top seller of books and Bible studies sparked a social media battle when she announced she would be preaching on Mother’s Day at a large church.
A number of Southern Baptist Convention theologians weighed in and Beth Moore fired back, unleashing her discontent even with evangelicals’ support of Donald J. Trump during the 2016 presidential election.
One of the first critics to comment was Owen Strachan, associate professor of Christian theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri.
Strachan blogged, May 7, that it was against God’s Word and design for “a woman to teach and preach to adult men.” Calling it a “sinful practice,” he added that “to do so is to bring the church body into disobedience against God.”
Moore tweeted May 11 that she was “compelled to my bones by the Holy Spirit … to draw attention to the sexism and misogyny that is rampant in segments of the SBC, cloaked by piety and bearing the stench of hypocrisy. …” and appeared to peg her distress to several high-profile SBC pastors who supported then-candidate Trump.
“I had the eye opening experience of my life in 2016. A fog cleared for me that was the most disturbing, terrifying thing I’d ever seen. All these years I’d given the benefit of the doubt that these men were the way they were because they were trying to be obedient to Scripture … Then I realized it was not over Scripture at all. It was over sin. It was over power. It was over misogyny. Sexism. It was about arrogance. About protecting systems. It involved covering abuses and misuses of power. …”
But she also argued that the prohibitions against women preachers in 1 Timothy and 1 Corinthians should be grappled with “alongside other words Paul wrote” that were “equally inspired.” Moreover, she insisted that these examples needed to be balanced against “the attitudes & practices of Christ Jesus … toward women,” noting that “He had women followers! Evangelists!”
Meanwhile, Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, who once advocated for the ordination of women, said in a podcast, May 10, that the issue is about biblical authority.
Citing Paul’s prohibition against a woman having authority over a man (1 Timothy 2:12), Mohler said, “This is where you go back to the original controversy in evangelicalism and in Southern Baptist life … biblical authority. Did the Holy Spirit inspire Paul to say that or not? If the Holy Spirit did inspire Paul to say that, then it’s the Word of God.”
NAMB: Fewer church plants, baptisms
The Southern Baptist Convention’s 2019 Book of Reports cited a number of successes for the North American Mission Board, noting the printing of nearly 2 million “3 Circle Life Conversation Guides,” 130,000 downloads of a related phone app, and, distribution of 10,000 evangelism kits.
However, church plants hit a new low, dropping from 1,003 in 2011 (Kevin Ezell’s first full year as NAMB president) to 624 last year, about half of the stated goal of planting 1,200 churches each year.
Church planting is NAMB’s primary vehicle for evangelism, and the results as measured by baptisms have been likewise negative, dropping from 333,000 in 2011 to 246,000 in 2018.
Last October, Johnny Hunt, former pastor of the First Baptist Church in Woodstock, Georgia, and a past SBC president, was named NAMB’s new senior vice president of evangelism and leadership, specifically to revive soul-winning among Southern Baptists. However, the budget for evangelization was cut from $14.7 million spent in 2018 to $7 million planned for 2019.
Church planting appears to benefit from the more than $7 million cut to evangelization, increasing to $75.4 million in 2019, up from $68.3 million for 2018 and nearly $53.4 million more than the $22 million spent in 2010-2011.
LIFEWAY’S NEW CEO: Colorado pastor, industry outsider
A LifeWay trustee search committee has nominated a Colorado pastor as the next president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources.
Mandrell is an outsider to business and publishing, but the search team praised him for his vision and leadership, according to a LifeWay press release, especially for growing Storyline Fellowship in Arvada, Colorado, from a North American Mission Board church plant launched with 250 people in 2015 to a congregation averaging 1,600 in weekly attendance last year.
He previously served as pastor of Englewood Baptist Church in Jackson, Tennessee, when the congregation grew from 1,800 to 2,600 in weekly attendance during a seven-year period, 2006-2013. Prior to being installed to that position, he was the college pastor for the congregation and simultaneously served as director of discipleship ministries at Union University (a Southern Baptist school), also in Jackson.
His work experience includes serving on staff with Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, K-Life Ministries of Orlando, Florida, and Sterling Christian School in Sterling, Illinois.
In January, LifeWay indicated it would be closing “some” of its bookstores due to declining sales. At the same time, Baptist Press published an analysis of LifeWay’s audits which showed “total operating expenses exceeded sales” eight years in a row, growing in deficit each year from $2.3 million to $35.5 million.
Then on March 20 LifeWay announced it would shutter all 170 of its brick and mortar shops.
Just weeks prior, on March 4, LifeWay retroactively shared that CEO Thom Rainer had expressed “a desire to move forward with his retirement effective Feb. 28,” after he had announced plans in August 2018 to remain one more year or until a “new CEO is named.”
Rainer’s announcement resulted in the 10 month search that ended with the naming of Mandrell.
