For SBC, is 'Southern' more important than 'Baptist'?

When megachurch pastor J.D. Greear became the 62nd president of the Southern Baptist Convention, he saw all kinds of statistics headed in all kinds of directions.

After decades of growth, America's largest Protestant flock faced steady decline as many members joined thriving nondenominational evangelical and charismatic churches. Ominously, baptism statistics were falling even faster. On the other side of the 2018 ledger, worship attendance and giving to SBC's national Cooperative Program budget were holding strong.

But one set of numbers caught Greear's attention, he told the SBC's executive committee, as he nears the end of his three years in office.

"Listen, I made diversity … one of my goals coming into this office, not because it's cool, or trendy, or woke," he said. "It's because in the last 30 years the largest growth we've seen in the Southern Baptist Convention has been among Black, Latino and Asian congregations. They are a huge part of our future. … Praise God, brothers and sisters."

-snip-

"I've read reports online that I was privately funded by George Soros with the agenda of steering the SBC toward political liberalism," he said. "My office has gotten calls from people who say they've heard that I am friends – good friends – with Nancy Pelosi and that we text each other regularly, that I am a Marxist, a card-carrying member of the Black Lives Matter movement and that I fly around on a private jet paid for by Cooperative Program dollars."

Read more: https://www.timesrecordnews.com/story/life/2021/03/13/sbc-southern-more-important-than-baptist/6940851002/
(Wichita Falls Times Record News)