PITTSBURGH — Trustees for the North American Mission Board (NAMB) had much to celebrate in their meetings that took place Oct. 4-5. Their time in Pittsburgh started with a vision tour that included visits with church planters and the city’s Send Relief Ministry Center. Then, Monday evening, the group gathered for a celebration dinner and heard the news that in 2021, Southern Baptists gave a record high amount to the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering®.

North American Mission Board (NAMB) president Kevin Ezell shares news with NAMB trustees that the 2021 Annie Armstrong Easter Offering® for North American Missions reached a record high. NAMB trustees met Oct. 4-5 in Pittsburgh for their regularly scheduled fall meetings. Photo by Alexandra Toy.

“The hard part about this year is we didn’t really know exactly what to expect,” Ezell told trustees, referring to the COVID-19 pandemic and other unrest. “But thank goodness, Southern Baptists love their missionaries and give sacrificially, and that’s why it’s humbling and with a great sense of gratitude that we can share the total this year is $66.5 million.”

The 2021 offering represented an 8 percent gain over 2019’s record total of $61.6 million and a 22 percent increase from the $54.3 million Southern Baptist’s gave in 2010. The offering is spent in the year it is given and all of it goes to support missionaries and ministry on the field.

On their vision tour earlier in the day, trustees heard church planters share some of the challenges of ministry outside the Bible Belt. Recruiting church planters has been a challenge, with some lean years in the mid-2010’s. But in 2019 Rob Wilton came to the city to plant Vintage Church Pittsburgh and serve as NAMB’s Send City Missionary there. In the last three years, Pittsburgh’s church plant count has grown to 14 with a goal of having 25 plants by 2025.

“Of all our 32 Send Cities, Pittsburgh was the most challenging,” Ezell told trustees Monday night. “We couldn’t figure out why because it’s beautiful and has a great history. We had eight plants at one point and went down to four, and we needed a pastor to focus on this city.”

That pastor ended up being George Wright, who led Shandon Baptist Church in Columbia, S.C., at the time. Wright joined Ezell to talk about planting efforts in Pittsburgh. Although it was established in 1907, Shandon had never planted a church out of its congregation.

During their Oct. 4-5 meeting in Pittsburgh, trustees with the North American Mission Board (NAMB) heard reports from church planting missionaries about ministry work in the city. Here, Pittsburgh city missionary Rob Wilton, who is planting Vintage Church Pittsburgh, shares with trustees. Photo by Alexandra Toy.

“There was a great culture of generosity and giving to the mission, but not a culture of going,” Wright said. “We heard there was a need in Pittsburgh and came up here and saw there was a tremendous opportunity. It changed our culture in a major way. We sent a whole group of people here to plant. That led to some incredible stories of God at work that Shandon didn’t really experience before.”

Wright has led vision tours in Pittsburgh with other pastors as he recruits additional churches to support the work in Pittsburgh. Eventually, 23 people came from Shandon to plant the church. After a strong launch, the plant soon faced a leadership crisis.

Ezell said having a strong sending church like Shandon made all the difference.

“What I so appreciate is that George and Shandon were all about planting a church, not planting a planter,” Ezell said. “They said, ‘We are all in with Pittsburgh, with or without the person who we thought was going to lead it.’”

Wright sees his involvement in Pittsburgh as practicing good stewardship.

At a dinner attended by North American Mission Board trustees, church planters and staff, George Wright, left, shares about his church’s involvement as a sending church in Pittsburgh: “We have to be involved in a city where it is a challenge,” Wright said, “because the Lord has entrusted us with a lot of great blessings, and they are not to stay with us.” Wright is senior pastor of Shades Mountain Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. He formerly pastored Shandon Baptist Church in Columbia, S.C., and led them to plant a church in Pittsburgh. Trustees for the North American Mission Board met Oct. 4-5 in Pittsburgh for their regularly scheduled fall meetings. Photo by Alexandra Toy.

“As a pastor who has received a lot of great blessings from pastoring in the South, I feel a sense of responsibility,” said Wright. “We have to be involved in a city where it is a challenge because the Lord has entrusted us with a lot of great blessings, and they are not to stay with us.”

Wright now serves as senior pastor of Shades Mountain Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.

Expanded Focus for Send Relief

At NAMB’s full board meeting on Tuesday afternoon, Tanya York, a member of Buck Run Baptist Church in Frankfort, Ky., and chairperson of NAMB’s Send Relief committee, said Send Relief is expanding its Children and Families emphasis so it will now include ministry to protect human life and dignity from conception to death.

“This will start with crisis pregnancy and go all the way up through the aging and elderly,” York said.

Ezell said Send Relief will focus on the ministry side of protecting life while the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission will continue to advocate on the political and policy side.

“We need to come alongside young ladies who are walking through that and minister to them,” Ezell said. “Shame on us if we just preach something and don’t actually put a hand out to meet a need and help change a life.”

Other highlights from the meeting included:

NAMB’s Chaplain Commission reported that Southern Baptist chaplains are seeing strong salvation numbers despite ongoing challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the end of 2021’s second quarter, chaplains reported 45,470 gospel presentations with 5,137 professions of faith and 854 baptisms.
Trustees unanimously approved a Fiscal Year 2022 operating budget of $122.8 million. The budget reflects a return to pre-COVID-19 levels.
Two trustees who are leaving the board because of location changes were recognized for their years of service. Jon Anderson, who served from the Maryland-Delaware Baptist Convention, has relocated to Maine. Randy Bradley, who served from South Carolina, is retiring as an associational mission strategist and deploying to the mission field with the International Mission Board in early 2022. Ezell thanked both men for their years of leadership on the board.

Ezell closed the meeting with a call to stay focused on NAMB’s ultimate mission.

“We need to go back up to 30,000 feet and remind ourselves that it’s all about planting churches everywhere for everyone, whether it is in an urban area or a rural area,” Ezell told trustees. “It’s about meeting needs and changing lives everywhere through Send Relief. And ultimately, it’s all about the gospel. I don’t want to ever take for granted the opportunities we have that God gives us. What an incredible opportunity that God lets us do this.”

NASHVILLE (BP) – Members of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee voted for the waiving of attorney client privilege within the scope of an independent third-party investigation of the EC concerning the handling of sexual abuse claims. The Sexual Abuse Task Force, assembled by SBC President Ed Litton, was mandated by messengers to the 2021 SBC Annual Meeting in June and will oversee the investigation.

Trustees met for more than three and a half hours via Zoom before the group voted in favor of a motion to waive privilege by a margin of 44-31. Three members abstained from the vote. Six members of the committee resigned between today’s meeting and the meeting on Sept. 28.

The motion, made by EC member Jared Wellman, calls for a selective waiving of attorney client privilege “that includes an investigation into any allegations of abuse, mishandling of abuse, mistreatment of victims, a pattern of intimidation of victims or advocates, and resistance to sexual abuse reform initiatives of the actions and decisions of staff and members of the Executive Committee from January 1, 2000, to June 14, 2021.”

“I’m encouraged by today’s vote that honors the will of the messengers who spoke clearly in Nashville and in recent days about their desire for a transparent investigation,” Wellman said.

Litton said, “I am grateful, especially after many difficult weeks of discussion, that the full, transparent, and unimpeded investigation will now commence. Even so, it is critical to remember that today’s vote marks not the end, but the beginning of this process.”

The selective waiving of privilege means that documents and interviews must fit in a limited window:

Allegations of abuse by Executive Committee members.
Mishandling of abuse allegations by Executive Committee members between Jan. 1, 2000, to June 14, 2021.
Allegations of mistreatment of sexual abuse victims by Executive Committee members from Jan. 1, 2000, to June 14, 2021.
Patterns of intimidation of sexual abuse victims or advocates from Jan. 1, 2000, to June 14, 2021.
Resistance to sexual abuse reform initiatives from Jan. 1, 2000, to June 14, 2021.

The motion also gave EC Chairman Rolland Slade authority to execute the contract between the EC, the Sexual Abuse Task Force and Guidepost Solutions that was sent to trustees on Oct. 1. Guidepost is the third-party firm selected by the task force to carry out the investigation.

The contract calls for the creation of a Committee of Cooperation of the Executive Committee, which will be composed of four members from the EC. Two of the members will be chosen by the Sexual Abuse Task Force, and two members will be chosen by the EC. The committee will be led by SBC President Ed Litton.

At the end of the meeting, the EC voted to give Slade the authority to appoint the two members to be selected by the EC.

The members of the committee must be among those appointed to their first term on the EC in June 2021. This move allows participating EC members to be outside the scope of the Guidepost investigation.

According to the contract, the committee “is charged with:”

Financial oversight of the independent investigation in addition to the financial oversight exercised by the Task Force.
Electing, in cooperation with the Task Force, a liaison between the Executive Committee and Guidepost Solutions to ensure smooth flow of information and response to information requests.
Receipt of periodic monthly updates noting document, witness, and information requests made to the Executive Committee, to ensure information sought is consistent with and responded to in cooperation with the Motion passed by the Messengers at the SBC Convention in June 2021.
Ensuring that the Executive Committee and SBC are fully cooperative in this matter.

SBC EC President Ronnie Floyd said, “We thank all of the trustees for their diligence in addressing complex questions brought to bear by this process.”

He pledged the EC will work with the task force as they move forward.

“Now that the Executive Committee’s Board of Trustees have made their decision, the leadership and staff of the Executive Committee will provide support to Guidepost on implementing next steps to facilitate their investigation,” he said.

Bruce Frank, task force chair, responded to the EC on behalf of the task force, saying, “The task force is pleased with the strong vote today by the Executive Committee to abide by the moral imperative directed by the messengers, seminary presidents, state leaders and many, many more.”

Frank said Guidepost will begin its investigative work immediately. It is required to present a public report 30 days before the 2022 SBC Annual Meeting in Anaheim.

Near the end of the meeting, Slade spoke pastorally to the group reflecting on the process since messengers voted June 15 in Nashville.

“I’d like to really express my relief that this present challenge seems to be behind us,” he said. “Also, I want to express sorrow over the conduct that we have displayed as Southern Baptists over the course was absolutely a necessary deliberative process.”

Slade called on Southern Baptists to stop attacking one another and to “move down this road together.”

“Most importantly, it’s time to know for sure where we have fallen short on the question of sexual abuse within the Southern Baptist convention, so that we can correct any errors and move into the future as a convention, that’s the most safe for our most vulnerable members,” he said.

Floyd said, “I appreciate the statement of our Chairman Slade at the end of the meeting, including his call to come together now to serve Southern Baptists.”

Litton said, “Sexual abuse is antithetical to the Gospel of Christ. It has no place in the Southern Baptist Convention. And it is my prayer that all Southern Baptists will remain resolute in our commitment to preventing abuse, caring for survivors, and taking whatever steps are necessary to implement reforms.”

MOBILE, Ala. (BP) – Attendees at the Shrink the Divide racial reconciliation gathering at Redemption Church in Mobile, Ala., Sunday night (Oct. 3) took their seats, perhaps beside those who appeared most familiar. Then they were asked to change.

“The leadership told everybody to move next to someone who doesn’t look like them,” host pastor Ed Litton, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, told Baptist Press Monday (Oct. 4). “It was natural. If there was awkwardness, and there usually is, that dissipated rapidly. People really enjoyed being together last night.”

Litton was one of two keynote speakers at the fourth annual event sponsored by the Pledge Group, a seven-year-old Christian multidenominational and multiracial group of Mobile-area pastors committed to working for racial reconciliation in Mobile.

Speaking to the diverse audience, Litton referenced Southern Baptists.

“I’ll tell you what’s hurting us today. Nobody in the Southern Baptist Convention, nobody in my church, and probably nobody in your church would ever want to be called a bigot,” Litton said, “but indifference is killing us.”

In comments to Baptist Press, Litton said Southern Baptists have made tremendous progress toward racial reconciliation in the past 25 years, but said work remains.

“I would say that many of us don’t think of ourselves as bigots. We don’t think of ourselves as prejudiced, and we disdain that, we hate that terminology, which is not a bad thing,” he said. “The problem is, we live indifferent of the suffering or the needs of many of those in our community who really don’t share a lot with us, in common with us, so we have to cross those barriers.

“Listen, this is the leading problem to why our baptisms are down, is that we tend to homogenize, we go with people who look like us, people we feel comfortable with. So racial reconciliation is impossible without the Gospel.”

Pledge Group President Roy Hill, discipleship pastor of DaySpring Baptist Church, said the group has seen progress in Mobile in building cross-cultural relationships and partnerships.

“We have seen a lot of relationships made among pastors,” Hill said. “We feel like the emphasis of the Pledge Group is Gospel-centered, Gospel-driven racial reconciliation. It has to happen in the churches and we’ve believed from the beginning that for it to happen in the churches, it needs to happen with the pastors.

“And so we’ve seen a number of pastors who’ve established really strong relationships with one another across racial lines.”

The Collective, a diverse group of worship leaders in Mobile, led worship at the event and has been effective, Hill said, in leading worship at events across the city. Seven churches were represented in worship at the event. Richie Riles, men’s basketball coach at the University of South Alabama, was a keynote speaker.

Litton used the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10 to emphasize that Jesus wants believers to “feel what the victim’s feeling.” Referencing the woman at the well in John 4, Litton showed that Jesus crossed racial lines in ministry, and that His disciples should do the same.

Litton encouraged humility and said personal suffering allows us to connect with others who suffer.

“Time doesn’t heal all wounds. Ignoring doesn’t heal all wounds. Just praying and saying it’s going to get better doesn’t heal all wounds. Believing in a God Who heals, yes, that’s what heals wounds,” Litton said. “But it also requires that we make intentional treatments of those wounds, that we are persistent and consistent with one another, that we are always a source in the Body of Christ, all of our churches, to experience love and prayer and care for one another.”

The Pledge Group offers Bible studies and videos on its website, ShrinktheDivide.com, and promotes a personal pledge to work toward reconciliation:

In my daily context, I will recognize and engage with persons of other races, speaking a warm greeting to them as fellow travelers on the journey of life;
In my prayers, I will pray regularly for racial unity and harmony and for spiritual revival in our shared local communities and in our nation;
In my personal initiative, I will pro-actively foster and deepen relationships with persons across racial, socio-economic, ethnic and denominational lines.

The full program can be viewed here and on the Pledge Group’s Facebook page.