What Can We Take Away from the 2024 Meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention?

Time will tell, but alarm bells are probably not warranted.

The Southern Baptist Convention (or SBC) is an annual meeting of messengers from Baptist churches across America. For two days each June, thousands of church members and pastors gather to do business as a voluntary convention of churches. The main interests and purposes of their cooperation are international missions, church planting and revitalization, and Christian education (particularly seminary education for pastors).

Since messengers from these voluntarily cooperating churches only meet for two days each year, there is always quite a bit of business to do in such a short time. And yet, it is also true that not much changes after just two days of meeting. The SBC annual convention functions by Roberts Rules and democratic processes, and the floor of the convention usually has more than a dozen microphones that are open to any and all messengers. Such a forum makes it quite surprising that there aren’t more shocking statements recorded each year.

To be sure, there were some shocking actions and affirmations this year. There was a resolution adopted that condemned most of the common practices of In Vitro Fertilization on the basis of the value of human life and the understanding that human life begins at the point of fertilization. There was a positive vote of ninety-two percent to consider the First Baptist Church of Alexandria, VA, “not in friendly cooperation” with the SBC because of that church’s ordination of female pastors and their stated conviction to continue doing so. And there was a positive vote of sixty-one percent to add an amendment to the SBC constitution (the so called “Law Amendment”) that would streamline the process for removing churches from cooperation with the SBC that ordain female pastors. This amendment vote was short of the necessary two-thirds to take effect, however, so it was not adopted.

The broader culture seems generally confused and appalled by such statements and actions from the SBC annual meeting. Articles in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Associated Press express disdain toward a Christian group or church in America that would limit the office of pastor to biblically qualified men. And these outlets also seem puzzled by the SBC’s removal of FBC Alexandria while the SBC simultaneously failed to pass the Law Amendment. Are SBC churches for or against female pastors?

Even within the ranks of the SBC, commentators of various sorts (including both pastors and church members) are offering conflicting explanations of what exactly to make of the votes coming out of the 2024 SBC annual meeting. One article from the Baptist Press explains the situation by parsing out a distinction between “senior” pastors and others (such as “women’s” pastors or “children’s” pastors). This author seems hopeful that the failure of the Law Amendment means the acceptance of female pastors other than the “senior” pastor. But interpreting the actions of the SBC meeting in such a way, as the author does, is not warranted.

Another article from Kentucky Today explains that complementarianism remains a deep conviction among Southern Baptists (if anything it is on the rise), but that there was some disagreement among the messengers this year about how to apply this conviction. In other words, the Law Amendment was not quite affirmed to the degree necessary for implementation, but this author believes the principle and doctrine that animated it has wide agreement among the SBC. Indeed, the overwhelming vote to remove FBC Alexandria (as well as the 2023 removal of three other churches for the same reason and with similar support) would appear to validate such a view.

The polity of Baptist churches and the nature of the Southern Baptist Convention each play a part in the inevitable difficulty for everyone to know exactly what any particular vote or action might mean. And this is true for both outsiders and insiders. Local Baptist churches are autonomous, which means that the resolutions and even the constitution of the SBC do not have any bearing whatever on what is believed or practiced on the local level. All that was believed and practiced among SBC churches on June 10, 2024, is exactly the same on June 14.

So too, during any given year the SBC annual meeting is populated by a large percentage of first-time or occasional messengers. As such, the vote of the messengers can and does vacillate, sometimes significantly. A perfect example of this is the Law Amendment, which received eighty percent approval during the SBC annual meeting in 2023 and only sixty-one percent in 2024. At least some of this swing (maybe a lot of it) must be attributed to the demographic of the messengers at each meeting, and not a twenty percent change of perspective on the part of SBC churches generally.

Time will tell if SBC churches on the whole are drifting away from conservative complementarianism, the sort that believes the pastoral office is limited by Scripture to only biblically qualified men. But one can hardly make the case that this is what happened at the annual meeting this year. No doubt, there is an ongoing debate among Southern Baptists about how they will proceed in the cultural milieu of our day. However, it is safe to say that the spectators outside of the SBC and even many within its broad boundaries will sometimes perceive what appears to be conflicting messages from the votes of the annual meeting.

If you really want to know how SBC churches are doing, what they believe, and how they are putting their beliefs into practice, then you ought to make plans to connect with an SBC church nearby. Don’t just attend one Sunday service, but go for a few months. Get to know some of the church members. Ask one of the pastors if he will join you for a few conversations over coffee or a meal. Listen carefully to many sermons and observe the lives of those who preach them.

The SBC is not a hierarchical denomination. It is a voluntary collection of local churches which are a far clearer expression of their faith and practice than any annual meeting of messengers from them.