The 2024 Annual Meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) looms right around the corner. Officially, it begins tomorrow. However, SBC leaders have been busy setting the stage for it for the past week. The day beforehand, as well, Southern Baptists hold a very special magic ritual. In Christianese, they call this ritual a prayer meeting. And nothing could really set the stage better than how that ritual turned out this year. Today, let’s look at their stage-setting and the hilarious results of a ritual they all claim is absolutely essential for the denomination’s success.

(Faction names are mine; the factions themselves don’t have official names. The “Old Guard” are hardliners who reject the very idea of a sex abuse scandal in the SBC, while “Pretend Progressives” talk more about reform and action to prevent sex abuse and eliminate racism.)

(This post went live on Patreon on 6/11/2024. Its audio ‘cast lives there too and is available right now!)

Countdown: 10ish days out from the 2024 Annual Meeting

Baptist Press (BP) has been busy this past week. Being the SBC’s official news site, that’s to be expected. Here’s their pre-2024 Annual Meeting setup:

May 29th:
The site’s handlers successfully ignored their looming scandal (archive) about Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SWBTS). At the end of May, the feds charged former SWBTS employee Matthew Queen for falsifying evidence to cover up an sexual assault allegedly committed by SWBTS student Christian Flores. In addition, someone identified another SWBTS employee, Heath Woolman, as part of that cover-up attempt. However, the BP article refers to SWBTS only in the post’s title and tags. In addition to this odd omission, their story presents Flores as attending Texas Baptist College. Somehow, the story’s writer forgot to inform readers is SWBTS’s own affiliated undergrad college. (We talked about this whole situation here.)

June 3rd:
Eagerly, BP told readers about “The SBC Pastors’ Conference App” (archive). Basically, it’s a scheduler for 2024 Annual Meeting attendees. According to its Google Play Store entry, the SBC’s top-ranked Executive Committee produced this app. I hope the saps who downloaded it are aware of its data-collection and -sharing policies (image archive). Personally, I wouldn’t use it on a dare.

(See also: Attack of the evangelism apps!)

On this day, BP also ran a post about the Great Commission Resurgence (GCR), a failed evangelism initiative from around 2010. In the story, the GCR evaluation committee offered recommendations (archive). (We talked about that here.)

June 4th:
The day after revealing that Cooperative Program giving has been on the downturn for decades now (as revealed by that evaluation committee), BP reports that this denominational fundraising program’s donation levels have sucked slightly less this year (archive).

As well, BP reports that the SBC’s sex abuse task force released their recommendations (archive). As their big proposal, they suggest a “Ministry Check” website that allows anybody to look up criminal charges and civil-court cases involving sex abuse. (Yep, and it’ll happen sometime around the heat death of the universe.)

In another story, Bart Barber—their current president—offered tips to ensure a smooth, timely experience for attendees who want to raise official motions before their leaders (archive). These include simplifying one’s words during motions. Also, Barber suggests changes to voting to end discussion of a motion. Somebody must think this year’s meeting is gonna have a lot of motions raised and a lot of endless bickering. Gosh, I wonder why?

Of note, Bart Barber is a Pretend Progressive. In the SBC right now, two factions prepare for mortal combat in the arena. One of them, the Old Guard, consists of mostly hardliners who think the denomination is nowhere near conservative enough yet. On the other side, the Pretend Progressives act like they care deeply about reforming the SBC and taking better care of sex abuse victims. At heart, though, these factions don’t differ much. For one thing, they both hope the flocks will forget about reform and sex abuse until everyone in both factions has retired.

Countdown: The week before the 2024 Annual Meeting

June 7th:
Chuck Kelley contributes a post about how the SBC can “break the grip of decline” (archive). He appears to have published it a week earlier on his personal site (archive). Titled “The Road Not Traveled,” it directly quotes the famous poem “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost.

If you’re a seasoned SBC-watcher, his essay—which you can find in PDF format here—includes quite a few interesting metrics we haven’t seen before. Among other things, we learn that not only is Cooperative Program giving trending ever-downward, but the percentage of SBC churches who give nothing whatsoever to it has steadily risen. Also, he appears to think the North American Mission Board (NAMB) is ineffective and wasteful, and I suspect most SBC people think that as well.

Interestingly, Kelley claims in his essay that the SBC came into existence because of the Great Commission. As we can see in his essay, evangelicals believe this is a supposed order from Jesus to convert everyone on Earth:

No, silly Chuck Kelley. In reality, the SBC came into existence because Baptists in the Southern United States wanted to allow slave-owning members to become missionaries, while those in the North wanted to completely reject slavery. When the Northern Baptists won that fight, the Southern ones broke away to form the SBC. (Source; archive.)

June 9th:
BP lovingly praises Jeff Iorg (archive), the new president and CEO of the Executive Committee (EC). In his writeup, Jeff Iorg offers a church sermon about a businessman who Jesused his way out of personal responsibility.

During his sermon, Iorg describes the businessman’s offenses as “wicked and evil.” In fact, they threatened to wreck the businessman’s family and business! But then, the businessman psychically apologizes to Jesus. Immediately, he and his crimes drop right out of existence. Of course, we never learn how he made amends or confessed to the authorities. Nope. It all just vanished through Jesus Power.

That day, BP also reports on an absolutely failtastic prayer meeting held right before the 2024 Annual Meeting (archive). We’ll talk more about that in a minute.

Countdown: One day away from the 2024 Annual Meeting

June 10th:
Today, BP reports on one of the pre-meeting panels held by the Women’s Ministry Union (archive; WMU). It’s a major but largely powerless SBC group. WMU director and treasurer Sandy Wisdom-Martin runs a panel that offers suggestions about helping those who suffer from mental illnesses as part of an overall evangelism strategy. Their main speaker, Julie Busler, reveals that Jesus did nothing to magically heal her. Making matters worse, Busler’s minister husband reveals that he didn’t prioritize his wife’s health over his job for the longest time.

BP runs a second story about Jeff Iorg. This time, it’s about his first meeting with the Executive Committee (archive). He tells his underlings that he wants the EC to work “quietly and efficiently.” Unstated: …and without getting into endless squabbles with other SBC leaders and entities. At present, the EC faces huge money troubles due to the SBC’s sex abuse megascandal. Very clearly, that looming bill has got Iorg nervous.

As for the megascandal itself, Iorg tells the EC that well gyarsh, Shaggy, all families have evil and corruption in them. The SBC is just like a family that way! (I mean, all they’re doing is claiming to speak for the god of the universe! What, suddenly they’re being held to a higher standard? UNFAIR!)

BP also reports that the EC refused to release their IRS Form 990s to the public (archive). But don’t worry y’all’s pretty lil feather heads bout it none! The EC totally promises they’ll be more transparent in their operations. Totally.

In the same story, International Mission Board (IMB) president Paul Chitwood ominously warns that the EC’s Form 990 could totally blow the cover of foreign missionaries and donors in dangerous, anti-Christian countries. Oh, okay. Yes. I see. That’s totally why the flocks can’t see these forms. It’s not because they completely contradict whatever SBC leaders are saying about their funds and outlay. No, not at all!

Segue: A surprising common denominator out of all of these stories

Looking over these BP stories, interesting trends come to my attention.

On page 4 of the GCR’s evaluation committee’s report, Sandy Wisdom-Martin shows up as a quote. She’s the leader of WMU.

Several times, Chuck Kelley shows up in that report as well. The report mentions his recent book about the failure of the GCR. As part of their evaluation process, the evaluation committee interviewed Kelley as well. I’m not surprised in the least to see his essay on BP.

The GCR itself was almost entirely an Old Guard affair. By contrast, the evaluation appears to be an almost entirely Pretend Progressive effort. The upstart Pretend Progressives have been hammering at the decline in Cooperative Program giving, transparency and completeness in reporting, improving American evangelism metrics, and improving NAMB and IMB effectiveness and efficiency.

Iorg is likely Old Guard, but most of these other names in BP stories are Pretend Progressive sympathizers. Just going by BP’s reporting, it’s pretty easy to see who the site favors right now.

Christianese 101: “Prayer Meeting”

Earlier, I mentioned that yesterday a bunch of SBC-lings held a prayer meeting to kick off the 2024 Annual Meeting. In Christianese, a “prayer meeting” is what it says on the tin: A meeting at which participants pray.

Almost always, they pray on their own. In my first big Pentecostal church, before every church service a bunch of people met in our church for a prayer meeting. They clustered together in one of two darkened prayer alcoves right off either side of the pulpit to pray. Women prayed on one side, men on the other. In addition, groups of people might meet at someone’s house to pray.

Pentecostals can get pretty rowdy at prayer meetings. When I wrote about my Evil Ex Biff’s college group PRAYER WARRIORS FOR JESUS, both he and James walked around our assigned conference room while waving their arms and shout-babbling in “tongues.” They got really sweaty doing this! But it never felt right to me. Prayer was supposed to be a conversation between a Christian and Jesus, I felt, and it seemed strange to shout at a god.

Evangelicals have prayer meetings too, except they meet right in the church sanctuary where the pews and pulpit are. Sometimes, one of their leaders may speak aloud a prayer that they listen to and affirm individually.

A very failtastic prayer meeting to start the 2024 Annual Meeting

In the BP story about it (relink), we learn:

The SBC Prayer Gathering, now in its fourth year, has become the unofficial launch of on-site annual meeting events and one that leaders Robby Gallaty and Bill Elliff hope sets a tone to keep Christ at the center of this week’s discussions.

“We’re going to focus on silence and solitude,” said Gallaty, senior pastor of Long Hollow Baptist Church in Hendersonville, Tenn., at the opening. “We’re setting the stage for God to move.”

Oh, okay. So it’s been running only four years. But it’s going to keep attendees’ minds on Jesus while they’re buzzing around.

By the way, we’ve seen Gallaty’s name before. Last year, he showed up in a discussion about discipleship, which is a form of evangelical control-lust—and an illustration of their dysfunctional authoritarianism. Back in 2020, Gallaty told reporters that he’d lost two ministry friends just in the past year to suicide.

If anybody knows how poorly evangelical ideology translates to real life, it ought to be him. But somehow, he’s escaped the gaining of that wisdom.

During the prayer meeting, Shane Pruitt led “focused times of prayer for the next generation.” I can see why: He’s the “Next Gen director” for NAMB. In other words, he professionally seeks to increase the SBC’s recruitment of children, teens, and college-age people.

And yes, Shane Pruitt has shown up around here too. Just a couple of weeks ago, we discussed his very earthly recruitment strategies. In 2022, he seized upon J.D. Greear’s “Who’s Your One” failed evangelism campaign and decided to give it another go.

A NAMB associate of Pruitt’s, Paul Worcester, showed up to pray as well. And yes, he’s shown up briefly around here. In fact, he showed up with Pruitt in that recent post a couple weeks ago (relink).

Of note, Pruitt, Worcester, and Gallaty all show up in the header image to BP’s article about the prayer meeting. Each man prays in a different position: Pruitt covers his face; Gallaty kneels with his hands held aloft palms up; Worcester cowers on his knees and elbows, palms flat against the floor and his nose almost butting against it.

(Oh, to be a psychologist specializing in body language! I wonder what hypocrisy each of these guys hides hardest? I bet their performative prayer postures could tell us.)

HOW many people attended this prayer meeting at the 2024 Annual Meeting?

In the BP article about the prayer meeting, we learn that “hundreds” showed up for it. Granted, many travelers to the 2024 Annual Meeting are likely still getting into town and situating themselves in their hotel rooms and whatnot. But “hundreds” for a prayer meeting does not sound ideal—not when considering that about 16,000 people are expected to show up for the official meeting (archive).

And then there are the pictures of the meeting. BP printed both of these pictures. In their own ways, they each tell a very specific story. Here’s the prayer meeting:

It doesn’t look like more than 20 people attended. That is sparse.

And now, let’s compare that picture to the one taken of the WMU mental-health meeting:

This one is standing room only. The other depicts numerous empty seats. If “hundreds” are at this prayer meeting, I’ve got to wonder where they are.

(Also, a note to the two very red-faced men immediately behind the foreground guy in the first picture: I respectfully suggest they get their blood pressure checked and a lipid panel run. They both look like they’re either super-sunburned or one big surprise away from a stroke.)

I suspect these pregame warmups reflect faction warfare looming ahead at the 2024 Annual Meeting

Now, I might just be speculating out of my ass here. But I suspect strongly that the prayer meeting is an Old Guard effort, while the WMU panels are meant for Pretend Progressives.

Here’s why I think that:

When the Old Guard talks about reforms, their ideas always somehow coincidentally involve them getting yet more power over their flocks. They’re also big proponents of just Jesusing harder to resolve all of the SBC’s problems. Also, we already know that at least one person named as an important figure at the prayer meeting is big on discipleship. For decades, that has been the Old Guard’s ultimate desire for the SBC as a whole.

But when Pretend Progressives get together, they at least make gestures and mouth-noises about reform and real action. The attendees who support Pretend Progressives often want real reform and action taken. And there are a lot of them. Likewise, we know that Sandy Wisdom-Martin, leader of the WMU, is on good terms with this faction. If not, they wouldn’t have quoted her in their GCR evaluation report.

What’s funny is that it’s beyond obvious from those two pictures that the WMU beat the prayer meeting for attendance. This might be another good year for the Pretend Progressives!

However, please always remember this: Neither faction’s leaders are the good guys here.

There’s not much difference at all between the factions’ leaders in terms of theology, nor in how they want the SBC as an entity to reward their leadership. If the Pretend Progressive faction could win attendees’ votes without faffing about with gestures toward reform, they would drop that idea in a New York microsecond.

So let’s see how these people who claim to speak for a god do business on the ground, shall we?

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Captain Cassidy

Captain Cassidy is a Gen-X ex-Christian and writer. She writes about how people engage with science, religion, art, and each other. She lives in Idaho with her husband, Mr. Captain, and their squawky orange tabby cat, Princess Bother Pretty Toes. And at any given time, she is running out of bookcase space.

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