Naples, Florida might be in the crosshairs of Hurricane Milton as it rushes ashore over the next few days. But in Megan Basham’s book, Shepherds For Sale, there is a remarkable story about First Baptist Church in Naples and a storm it faced several years ago.
It seems around 2019, the church was needing to call a new senior pastor. Southern Baptist churches typically form a search committee at the local level to handle the process of recruitment. The autonomy of the local church always has been regarded as very important.
In this particular case, a black gentleman was considered for the position. A number of members opposed his candidacy, and 19% voted against him.
Some of the church’s leaders began to stigmatize these folks. It was reported in the media that a prominent Texas megachurch pastor– Jack Graham– accused the members of slander, lies and racism. JD Greear and Bart Barber– current and future Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) presidents, respectively– openly condemned these members also.
The SBC’s national leadership had been emphasizing that it was necessary for churches to have more black pastors. This was an agenda item that had been “talked up” for a number of years.
It turns out the other pastoral staff at First Baptist Naples had brought in a consultant tied to the national convention (SBC); and that consultant took moves to exclude a certain member who was on the pastoral search committee and who also was a deacon. This gentleman, who was in his eighties, was removed from both positions apparently because he opposed the hiring of this new pastor.
A new search committee was formed; and hundreds of church members concerned about the series of events sought a business meeting.
JD Greear intervened in the process to push for the black gentleman to get the pastoral appointment. Another national figure who intervened on his behalf was Kevin Ezell who led the North American Mission Board. You therefore had national figures trying to influence the members of a local church to vote a certain way regarding a candidate for senior pastor. In my experience, this is highly unusual.
It turns out the black applicant did not possess certain qualifications that ordinarily would have been regarded as critical for this position. He also had posted to his Twitter account his praise of Kamala Harris; and had endorsed a certain woke perspective. This indicated he did not possess an authentically Christian worldview.
The church member who was excluded from the process sought to make amends and seek explanations for why he was treated as he was.
The final outcome was that a number of people who publicly opposed the hiring of this pastor were thrown out of the church after having been members for decades. Basham reported that some of them lost their jobs also.
JD Greear at a national meeting referred to individual Southern Baptists as “neo-confederates” and “closet racists” if they did not go along with the various woke approaches that were being floated within the Southern Baptist Convention.
This used to be a conservative denomination, by the way.
If you disagree with liberal chances are that you will be called, homophoic, xenophobic, etc.
That is precisely what happened, Fred, judging by Ms. Basham’s account. And they got thrown out. I think it is problematic– and in fact, distressing and repugnant– that the national Convention is instigating this social engineering within the churches, and sowing division.