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(That’s the Ryman Auditorium, above. It may not have much to do with my blog, but I liked the photo).

Ah, the Southern Baptist Convention and some inside baseball! 

I hadn’t planned on saying much about the SBC, simply because of my thinking that it would be of limited interest, especially to non-Southern Baptists. 

But I’ve received a significant number of requests to talk about it, to share my take, and see if there are any universal encouragements to be found there. 

I still think it’s pretty much inside baseball talk. Most Baptists are more concerned with the temperature of their Sunday School rooms and who is going to look after the kids in the church nursery rather than the doings at the world’s largest church business meeting.

With all that in mind, here’s my take. This is solely Tony’s impressions – I in no fashion am speaking for anyone else, group, entity, whatever. 

You can find out all the details you want by visiting this site. It’s all here. You can do a deep dive if you like, or not. You can form your own opinion, which I recommend. 

So, in no particular order, here are my admittedly scattered and definitely subjective thoughts.

1. Some would have you believe that the Southern Baptist Convention is going all “woke.” Uh, no. We as a convention do “resolutions,” which aren’t legally binding in any way. They’re simply a stance that the Convention in session takes. Churches aren’t obligated in any way to embrace or follow them. One thing I’m having to constantly explain to people, even Baptists, is that a local congregation doesn’t answer to any hierarchy. We are bottom up in structure, not top down. There is no ruling body. Churches can voluntarily cooperate on the local, state, or national level, but no one in Nashville tells us what to do, by golly.
2. That “woke” thing? I imagine it grows out of a debate over Critical Race Theory that’s been meandering around for the last couple of years. Some perhaps thought the convention was “selling out,” whatever that means. CRT was never mentioned by name, and I personally have some serious issues over any ideology that pits one race against another. But if the issue is one of hearing out my African-American brothers and sisters, and being willing to learn and change for the good of the Kingdom, you can bet I can get behind that. The messengers to the convention thought so, too. As an aside – did you know that nearly a quarter of Southern Baptist churches are predominately non-Anglo?
3. One writer said “The 2021 SBC was essentially a family squabble worked out through a democratic polity on the national stage.” That’s pretty accurate. Know what, though? I never got the sense that there was any real anger. Some drama, sure. Emotional moments – true that. I have to say, though, some parts were laugh-out-loud funny, and they didn’t mean to be. I’d mention some, but since humor can be in the eye of the beholder, I’ll keep my own counsel. 
4. When the NY Times, Newsweek, the Washington Post, etc., all had news coverage of the convention, maybe it isn’t as inside baseball as I thought. The Nashville paper had multipage coverage. I wonder why this was such a big deal in the secular press?
5. Jay Strother noted this: “We reached ‘peak Baptist’ when the discussion on a motion asking to extend the time for motions took all the time allocated for motions. You can’t make this stuff up.” Agreed. For the record, I cordially detest church business meetings. They tend to affect my health, and the doctor took me off of them. But this is a church business meeting on steroids, and it is executed on such a grand and spectacular scale, I can’t help but watch. 
6. J.D. Greear has his critics, for sure. But doggone, if that ol’ boy didn’t handle the potentially treacherous moments with skill, verve, and aplomb. He was simply chill, and it served him and us well. But there also needs to be a hat tip to Barry McCarty, who’s been at the chief parliamentarian post for, I dunno, decades. Barry was right at J.D.’s side, always with a bemused grin, and keeping things moving along properly and in order. I’d note that there were some folks at microphones who didn’t appreciate not having their moment of pale glory because it would be a breach of how things are done. Well, we have rules for a reason. When you have almost 16,000 folks, any of whom can have their say on a really large stage, someone (or someones) has to referee. 
7. Southern Baptists took a clear, passionate, unquestioned stand against abortion. Yay that. I never had any question about our stance on abortion anyway, but that particular resolution. Man.
8. The SBC is only in existance a couple of days a year. Without getting in the weeds, there is an Executive Committee who manages the daily affairs of the convention, more or less. Ronnie Floyd (who was a classmate of mine at Southwestern Seminary, but I only knew him in passing) is the president and CEO (can’t say I love that CEO term.) There was lots of talk about how the Executive Committee handled allegations of sexual abuse in some churches, and Ronnie was in the process of hiring an outside group to investigate the Committee’s culpability. Well, the messengers said, “Hold on, y’all. Rather than the EC retaining the services of a group to investigate themselves, it’s probably a lot more proper and transparent if the Convention President (Ed Litton) puts together a task force to do the investigating.” Done. That’s really something right there. Five proposed resolutions called for the executive committee to be investigated by a third-party organization. That chain of events is open to all sorts of interpretation and speculation.
9. I’m gonna classify the 2021 SBC as the first Hipster Convention. There were almost 16,000 messengers, another 3000 or so friends and family, and who knows how many other hangers-on. I’d confidently say there were 20,000 folks milling around. In a really casual survey I took, I asked several folks what they thought the median age was of the people attending. The general consensus was early to mid-40’s. A hand-raised survey during one of the sessions showed that the majority of participants were first-timers – they’d never been to a SBC before. I saw PLENTY of tattoos, Spurgeon beards, fiip-flops, and shorts. And familles. Lots of families. Some of the senior adults (and I’m part of those ranks now) were walking around in an absolute daze. They couldn’t figure it out. It’s no exaggeration to say that less than 1% of the men there had on neckties. About as dressy as it got was a polo shirt with a sports coat and nice jeans, and even that look was rare. Question: What’s wrong with any of that?
10. Those aforementioned hipsters? I sensed that they were thoroughly unimpressed with any politicking and posturing. They didn’t care about the Conservative Resurgence other than a historical footnote. Again, this is a subjective gut assessment, but I felt like this new crop of leaders were more interested in reaching the nations with the gospel of Jesus Christ – and have fun and find joy in the process. Imagine that. Ronnie Floyd made a comment at one point about the necessity of not alienating the SBC base. I don’t think there is such a thing. That was one diverse group I spent time with last week. Good, good people.
11. Am I encouraged by what I saw? You bet I was. Nope, that’s not the SBC I’ve grown up with. And that’s okay. I can’t help getting older, but I can avoid being a dinosaur, succumbing to that “we’ve never done it that way before” mindset. I won’t let the parade pass me by. Break me off a piece of what I saw. 
12. Finally, Ed Stetzer is one of the smartest people I’ve ever run across. He scares some folks to death. His take in Christianity Today – which some days, I question as a media outlet, because sometimes they get a little “out there” for my theological tastes – is a good one, whether you agree with his conclusions or not. Read it here. 

I was in “the room where it happened.” I’m calling it as I saw it. If you were there, you might’ve seen something I didn’t. That’s okay. I’ve offered a subjective view, and, as always, you can find objectvivity elsewhere, the “just the facts, ma’am” stuff. 

Enough inside baseball. I’ll be back next week with typical Tony stuff.

Be blessed. Be well. Comment away!