⛪️ This Sunday

Paul’s Appeal to Caesar

Acts 25 · Sunday, June 7 · 9:45 AM

Kam Harper preaching. Pastor Garrison and family travel to the SBC Annual Meeting in Orlando.

Church family,

More than half the churches in our local Baptist association had no pastor at some point last year.

That fact has been working on me for months. Next week I am going to Orlando, and one of the reasons I am going is to do something about it.

What the SBC is

The Southern Baptist Convention is not a denomination that owns us. We are not a “branch.” FBC Wisner is a fully autonomous local church that chooses to cooperate with around 47,000 other Southern Baptist congregations. We pool resources for things none of us could do alone. Six seminaries that train pastors. The International Mission Board, with around 3,500 missionaries on the field. The North American Mission Board, planting churches in places like North Dakota and Boston. Disaster relief teams that show up after every hurricane.

We do that through the Cooperative Program. FBC Wisner sends 10 percent of our undesignated receipts to the SBC every year, shared between our state convention and the national convention. That is the money the messengers in Orlando are about to vote on.

The schedule

The SBC Pastors’ Conference runs Sunday and Monday, June 7 and 8. The Annual Meeting follows on Tuesday and Wednesday, June 9 and 10. Two days of preaching and prayer, then two days of business. Around 10,000 messengers from churches all over the country will be on the floor.

Why I am going personally

Four reasons.

First, your money. I want to know, eyes on, ears in the room, exactly how the dollars you put in the plate are being spent. The budget vote happens out loud and in public, and I plan to be there for it.

Second, your voice. Wisner is a small town in Franklin Parish, Louisiana. Our church is not on anyone’s radar. But our messenger card counts the same as the messenger from the biggest church in Texas. The only way the small, rural, faithful congregations of America get heard at the SBC is if we show up.

Third, connection. Every year I sit in hallways and hotel lobbies with pastors who are walking the same road I am walking. The friendships and the encouragement that come out of those conversations carry me through the year.

Fourth, resources. Many of the tools we use here at FBC, our discipleship curriculum, our missions partnerships, the ministry helps we will lean on for VBS this summer, have come from things I picked up at past conventions. I will be looking for whatever can serve you better here in Wisner.

The Mohler Amendment

One of the biggest conversations on the floor will be a proposed constitutional amendment from Dr. Al Mohler, marketed as the “Truth and Unity Amendment.” The amendment would add language to the SBC constitution defining churches in “friendly cooperation” as those that do not affirm a woman to serve in the office of pastor or to preach to the assembled congregation. I am going to Orlando to vote against it.

I want to be clear about what I am not saying. I hold the Baptist Faith and Message gladly. I believe what the Baptist Faith and Message teaches about the office of pastor. My opposition to this amendment is not theological disagreement. It is polity disagreement.

The local church is the foundational unit in Baptist life. Each congregation is autonomous. We do not have a bishop. The convention does not pastor us. We voluntarily cooperate with other Baptist churches to do things none of us could do alone, and then we operate, here in Wisner, according to the wisdom of this body and the leadership of the Holy Spirit.

Dr. Mohler served on the Baptist Faith and Message revision committee in 2000. At the press conference announcing that confession, the committee was asked about churches with women in pastoral roles. Dr. Mohler’s answer is on the record:

In that same press conference, the chair of the committee, Dr. Adrian Rogers, said this:

The 2000 Mohler said the convention does not have the right to limit a local church’s call. The 2026 Mohler is proposing the convention exercise exactly that power. His position has shifted, by his own writing. The 2000 position is the historic Baptist position. The 2000 position is the right one.

I want FBC Wisner to be a church that advocates for that polity. The SBC does not tell us what to do. We partner together to do what none of us could do alone, and then we operate according to the wisdom of this body. That is not contention. That is Baptist polity working the way it was designed to work.

When I come back, I will tell you how the vote went.

The motion I am bringing

While I am there, I am also bringing a motion of my own to the floor. Here is the substance.

The six SBC seminaries train nearly one in five seminary students in America. Strong enrollment, full classrooms. But the Book of Reports cannot tell us how many of those funded students intend to pastor a local church. We do not know what their gifts produce.

I told you about our local association. The picture is the same across the country. One in three SBC churches in Mississippi are without a pastor. Six hundred in North Carolina. Seventeen percent of churches in our own state of Louisiana. The average pastor in America is 57. He was 50 in the year 2000.

My motion asks the Executive Committee, working with the six SBC seminaries, to develop a standardized reporting format starting with the 2027 Book of Reports. Each seminary would report how many of its currently enrolled students intend to enter pastoral ministry in a local church, other vocational ministry within a local church, missions through SBC entities, or other ministry roles. By degree program. Annually.

We are not asking the seminaries to predict the future. We are asking them to report what their students are already telling them. You already know we want to see this addressed, we are trying to do our part here at FBC, raising up preachers and ministry leaders from our own pulpit. But we cannot do it alone. We need every part of the system working together, and the seminaries are central to that work. Cooperative Program dollars come from churches like ours. They pay for the pipeline. They ought to know what their gifts produce.

Two motions, one polity

What I am voting against and what I am voting for come from the same place. The SBC is at its best when it does the work no single church can do alone, training pastors, sending missionaries, planting churches, showing up after the hurricane. The SBC is at its worst when it tries to act like a national church board over autonomous local congregations. The first is cooperation. The second is overreach. I want to push our convention toward more of the first and less of the second.

The family side

Braiden and the kids are riding down with me. We will be in Orlando together for the convention, and then we are staying for some family vacation before driving back to Wisner. We will be out of pocket from Sunday, June 7, through Wednesday, June 17.

The Informer will be on pause for the next two weeks while we are away. The next issue will land Monday, June 22. In the meantime, watch our Facebook page and fbcwisner.org for anything urgent.

While I am gone, the pulpit is in good hands. Kam Harper is preaching this Sunday, June 7, on Acts 25, Paul’s appeal to Caesar. Micah Beach is preaching the following Sunday, June 14, on Acts 26, Paul before King Agrippa. Both are faithful brothers, and you are going to be fed both weeks. Jessica is in the office Monday through Friday from 8 to noon all summer for anything you need.

I will be back in the pulpit on Sunday, June 21, Father’s Day, in Acts 27. We will also have a church business meeting that evening at 5:00 PM. Members and friends welcome.

In the Peace of Christ,
Pastor Garrison

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