Author: Chris Boyd

Top issues at the annual meeting in New Orleans include Saddleback, female pastors, abuse reform, and entity finances.

Long before the 10,000-plus messengers show up in a massive conference hall each June, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has already begun debating the issues at stake at its annual meeting.

Southern Baptists have come to expect the online back-and-forth in the weeks leading up to the gathering, with pastors and leaders taking sides, strategizing, and detailing arguments around the issues before the convention.

This year, as the denomination readies to meet in New Orleans June 11–14, the biggest disagreements aren’t over what they believe but what the SBC should do to uphold those convictions across 47,000 autonomous churches.

“There are serious disagreements, and we’re dealing with some very sophisticated and complex things in many ways … but the heart is really right,” said Jed Coppenger, a Tennessee pastor and the cofounder of a group called Baptist 21, on a recent podcast. “We got Bible-believing complementarian people who are disagreeing about bylaws and stuff like that, so it’s a tension, but don’t let it turn you off. The mission’s too important.”

The SBC will vote on whether to overturn a decision to disfellowship Saddleback Church (and one other congregation) for involving women as pastors and, in turn, will consider proposals around specifying appointing female pastors as grounds for removal from the convention.

Messengers will hear updates on the ongoing response to a 2022 investigation into the SBC’s handling of abuse, including the upcoming launch of a website database of abusive pastors. They’ll consider the financial state of the denomination’s entities, such as the Executive Committee (which handles SBC business outside the …

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Over 20 years and two presidencies, the school went millions beyond its budget while enrollment continued to decline.

A new report from trustees at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, details two decades of fiscal mismanagement, including a $140 million operating deficit.

According to an overview of the seminary’s finances released Wednesday, Southwestern ran an average deficit of $6.67 million per year from 2002 to 2022. During that time, the number of full-time Southern Baptist students at the school dropped by two-thirds (67%) while expenses went up by a third (35%).

The decline of SBC students was significant—since the tuition for them is subsidized by the Southern Baptist Convention’s Cooperative Program, which helps fund the denomination’s six seminaries.

Overall, the school’s enrollment declined from the equivalent of 2,138 full-time students (including non-SBC students) in 2003 to 1,126 full-time in the fall of 2022, according to data from the Association of Theological Schools. (The ATC counts full-time equivalents using a different standard than Southern Baptist seminaries.)

As a result, the school also collected less tuition money from students.

To offset the deficit, the school spent from its reserves and took distributions from its endowment.

“The failure of SWBTS to navigate internal and external headwinds has resulted in a prolonged season of deficit spending that has depleted cash reserves,” according to the summary released by the trustees, who also released two decades of audits.

Much of the overspending occurred during the tenure of Paige Patterson, who was president of Southwestern from 2003 to 2018, when he was fired for allegedly mishandling sexual abuse.

The report, however, does not detail any of the spending patterns during Patterson’s tenure. Instead, …

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The Duggar documentary shows how the fundamentalist movement got parenting and children wrong.

Families can be pernicious places for children.

Theologian Adrian Thatcher notes this in his book Theology and Families, which I read over a decade ago. Thatcher’s words were a steady refrain in my mind as I watched the new Amazon Prime docuseries Shiny Happy People.

American evangelicals have devoted an extraordinary amount of time, energy, and resources toward the goal of shoring up and strengthening the family. Yet such efforts have largely overlooked the painful truth that appears with chilling clarity in Shiny Happy People: that families can be pernicious places for children.

This claim might sound unnecessarily provocative. Isn’t the family God’s first created institution? Isn’t it the primary place God places children for their benefit? Isn’t it designed by God for the good of its members and broader society? Yes, yes, and yes. But there remains a distinction between “The Family” and “families.” Indeed, the gap between the family in theory and families in reality can be a yawning chasm—just ask the Duggar daughters.

In these and many other cases like it, abusers and their enablers are quick to see sin in young children and especially in the outside world, but not in themselves. It’s a malignant error.

One reason why families can be damaging places for children is because of their innate vulnerability. Due to their developmental immaturity and negligible socioeconomic power, kids are weak and wholly reliant on others to protect them and meet their needs.

Yet in my research on the lived theology of family in US evangelicalism, I found an alarming lack of awareness regarding childhood vulnerability. Among so-called quiverfull families, …

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Presbyterians expect less fight and more fatigue as they gather following the Covenant shooting and the deaths of Harry Reeder and Tim Keller.

In his first sermon since the death of his daughter and five others at The Covenant School in Nashville, Chad Scruggs, senior pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church, referenced Isaiah 40 to describe how his family is coping: “We aren’t yet soaring on wings like eagles. We aren’t yet running without being weary. We’re simply trying to walk without fainting.”

His denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), is also grieving. The PCA planned its upcoming general assembly (GA) as a celebration of its 50th anniversary, but leading up to the event, the country’s largest evangelical Presbyterian body has suffered a string of losses, including the Nashville shooting and the deaths of two prominent pastors.

At the end of March, the Covenant attack shook the denomination—no other US Christian school had ever been targeted in such a deadly crime. “In the wake of the horrid loss experienced by our friends at the Covenant School, it is right and good and even Christ-like for disorientation and grief to feel stronger and more formidable than feelings of hope,” wrote PCA pastor and author Scott Sauls in the hours after the shooting.

Six weeks later, Sauls was placed on indefinite leave from his position as pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville after the Nashville Presbytery received complaints that Sauls had created an unhealthy work environment. Sauls admitted to the allegations and is undergoing a restoration process set out by the presbytery.

Last month, Presbyterians were shocked to lose two nationally known pastors in a span of 24 hours. On May 18, Harry Reeder, senior pastor of Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, was killed in a car accident. The following …

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With shootings on the rise, more churches are dropping no-firearms policies and turning to gun-carriers in their flock, survey finds.

Most churches have some type of security measures in place during worship services. Pastors point to intentional plans and armed church members more than other measures, but compared to three years ago, fewer say they have plans and more say they have gun-carrying congregants.

Numerous fatal shootings have occurred at churches in recent years. In March, an armed assailant killed six people at The Covenant School, a Christian school in Nashville, Tenn. Shootings have also occurred at other places of worship like Jewish synagogues and Sikh temples.

When asked about their protocols when they gather for worship, around 4 in 5 US Protestant pastors (81%) say their church has some type of security measure in place, according to a study from Lifeway Research. Still, more than 1 in 6 (17%) say they don’t use any of the seven potential measures included in the study, and 2 percent aren’t sure.

“Churches are not immune to violence, disputes, domestic disagreements, vandalism and burglary,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research. “While loving one another is a core Christian teaching, churchgoers still sin, and non-churchgoers are invited and welcomed. So real security risks exist whether a congregation wants to acknowledge them or not.”

Security measures

In terms of security specifics, pastors are most likely to say their congregation has an intentional plan for an active shooter situation (57%). Additionally, most (54%) also say armed church members are part of the measures they have in place.

Around a quarter (26%) use radio communication among security personnel, while 1 in 5 say they have a no firearms policy in the building where they meet (21%) or armed …

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Instructions for publishers.

Dear Publisher,

Each year, Christianity Today honors a set of outstanding books encompassing a variety of subjects and genres. The CT Book Awards will be announced in December at christianitytoday.com. They also will be featured prominently in the January/February 2024 issue of CT and promoted in several CT newsletters. (In addition, publishers will have the opportunity to participate in a marketing promotion organized by CT’s marketing team, complete with site banners and paid Facebook promotion.)

Here are this year’s awards categories:

1. Apologetics/Evangelism

2a. Biblical Studies

2b. Bible and Devotional

3a. Children

3b. Young Adults

4. Christian Living/Spiritual Formation

5. The Church/Pastoral Leadership

6. Culture and the Arts

7. Fiction

8. History/Biography

9. Marriage and Family

10. Missions/The Global Church

11. Politics and Public Life

12a. Theology (popular)

12b. Theology (academic)

Nominations:

To be eligible for nomination, a book must be published between November 1, 2022 and October 31, 2023. We are looking for scholarly and popular-level works, and everything in between. A diverse panel of scholars, pastors, and other informed readers will evaluate the books.

Publishers can nominate as many books as they wish, and each nominee can be submitted in multiple categories. There is a $40 entry fee for each title submitted in each category. To enter your nominations, please click on this link and follow the prompts. (Note: You will be directed to upload a PDF of each book you wish to nominate.)

Finalist Books:

If your book is chosen as one of the four finalists in any category, we will contact you and ask that you send a copy of the book directly to the four judges assigned to that category. We will provide mailing addresses …

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Unless seminaries leave the ivory tower for local leaders in the public square. Like these ones have.

I recently received a handwritten letter from a pastor in India.

His name is Roy, but I didn’t know this gentleman, and we had never corresponded. Somehow he contacted me and told me about the two congregations he leads in Andhra Pradesh and of his great desire to study the Bible.

His ending struck me: “I have no money.”

Roy is not alone. Countless pastoral leaders worldwide are eager to faithfully lead their churches, but they lack access to training. This is especially the case in majority world contexts in Latin America, Africa, and Asia where the gospel continues to rapidly grow—with hundreds of new congregations birthed daily.

Founded in 1846, the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) now represents churches in over 130 countries and estimates there are 50,000 new baptized believers each day. These believers need pastoral leaders who are trained to effectively lead their congregations.

The challenge is highlighted when we draw a contrast with the United States, where there is one trained pastor for every 230 people. By comparison, majority world churches have one trained pastor for every 450,000 people.

This colossal leadership imbalance will only expand as the majority world church continues to surge and spread. Already, theological education is struggling to keep up, and unless something changes, the gap will only increase in the future.

If we are to meet the training needs of thousands of pastors like Roy, the worldwide trajectory must be reset. Theological education, no matter the form, has a long history of being fragmented, with most programs operating in silos, lacking a sense of collegiality. Regrettably, this inward posture makes training even less accessible to local ministries, weakening the collective …

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Cut off from the world, Cambodian churches emerged with new opportunities and challenges.

When the world locked down in early 2020, orders to Cambodia’s thriving garment factories dropped, shutting down factories and leaving more than 50,000 people jobless. The Cambodian government’s quick action kept COVID-19 at bay that year, yet the economic impact was devastating for many.

A COVID-19 outbreak in February 2021 led to several months-long lockdowns, where freedom of movement was limited in the worst-hit areas. Only authorized personnel could pass the police barricades that blocked off each zone. Much of life in the Southeast Asian country from education to job security was deeply affected.

Cambodian Protestants, which make up 1 to 2 percent of the population in the predominantly Buddhist country, have also seen their lives turned upside down since the pandemic. Churches that relied on foreign missionaries and funding were suddenly cut off. With churches closed, believers turned to online resources only to be led astray by false teaching. They struggled with isolation and addictions while stuck in their homes.

Yet the pandemic also opened up new opportunities: Churches learned to be more self-reliant, stepping up to provide food for impoverished neighbors, teach them about hygiene, and tell them about the hope they have in Jesus. They also learned to use the internet to record and share sermons—something foreign in a country that only started having reliable internet in the past decade—to reach more people.

CT spoke with five Christians in Cambodia—from a lay pastor in the factory district of the capital of Phnom Penh to a pastor of a small house church situated near the border of Thailand—about how the pandemic impacted their church and changed their ministry:

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Not everything that’s a sin is a crime—let alone one punishable by death.

This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.

In this day of social media mobs and troll-fueled extremism, it’s not unusual for a politician to be digitally attacked for being too weak and “not really one of us”—on a seemingly infinite number of topics.

Even so, one might be surprised to see Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)—not known for repudiating the far extremes of his base—labeled on various social media platforms as soft, weak, and compromising. Some even suggested that Cruz was rejecting the Word of God itself. His radically “progressive” idea? That Uganda shouldn’t criminalize homosexuality and execute gay people.

Normally, a social media controversy is the most ephemeral of pseudo-events. People who want to be noticed post shocking and even ridiculous things (“Y’all! It’s not just Target that’s gone woke; let’s boycott Chick-fil-A too!”) to get attention, knowing they’ll be denounced and quote tweeted, which will amplify their reach. They think that retweets and followers will somehow give them the belonging and significance they crave. Often, the best course is to ignore such things in the spirit of Proverbs 26:4—“Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you yourself will be just like him.”

Sometimes, though, their kind of trolling can lead to two catastrophic ends that should concern those of us who follow Christ: the unjust killing of human beings made in the image of God and, at the same time, the bearing of false witness about what the Christian gospel actually is.

At issue is a harsh new law signed by Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni that would not only outlaw homosexuality …

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Kids’ addictions to their phones isn’t a legislative issue. It’s a discipleship one.

As summer fast approaches, likely so will increased screen time as school lets out. But new data and a bipartisan consensus that phones are bad for kids may give parents pause.

A growing body of research, though certainly not indisputable, has pointed out that smartphones with unfettered access to the internet and social media have serious negative effects for younger users, particularly teenage girls. At the end of May, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued a formal warning and report about the effects of social media on child and teen mental health.

Since 2012, as smartphones were integrated into every part of our lives—and as that integration became an ever-earlier childhood milestone—youth mental health has plummeted. Teen anxiety, depression, and even suicidal ideation have all tracked eerily well with this technological shift.

As a society, we plopped Pandora’s box into the hands of 15-year-olds. Good luck, kiddos! Go wild. Instead, they became distraught, disconsolate, and utterly unwilling to give up their phones.

Two primary “solutions” to this problem have emerged: parental responsibility or government regulation. Both have obvious appeal. But both will likely ultimately prove inadequate—if not counterproductive—to the task at hand. No one family can entirely fix the kids and phones problem, but neither can Congress. In each case, the scale of the solution is wrong. And the place we have the best chance of getting the scale right is the local church.

The case for parental responsibility is simple and compelling. A responsible parent, knowing about the consequences of tobacco use, wouldn’t supply her child with cigarettes. A Christian parent, aware of spiritual formation, …

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