DURHAM, N.C.—When J.D. Greear addressed the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee in February, he joked that he was looking forward to receiving this summer the most coveted title in the convention: “former SBC president.” But thanks to cancelation of this year’s SBC annual meeting over the COVID-19 pandemic, he will have to wait another year before assuming that title.

In the meantime, he will continue to emphasize his hallmark issues of evangelism, ethnic diversity and combatting sexual abuse, he told the TEXAN, even as obstacles to accomplishing those aims persist.

“This third year, amongst many divisions in our nation, Southern Baptists have been given a great opportunity by God to show a watching world that unity can be found only in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus,” said Greear, pastor of the The Summit Church in Durham, N.C. “In this united front, we wish to continue to see our convention reflect the diversity among us and the diversity found in the coming kingdom, while engaging in the next generation, [fostering] a renewed focus on evangelism and seeing how … our cooperative resources can lead to more church planting and missionaries sent.”

Greear becomes the first person to serve three successive years as SBC president since R.G. Lee held the office from 1949-52. The SBC Constitution since has been amended to limit the president to two successive one-year terms, with a one-year break required before he can be elected again. (Adrian Rogers served three terms during the SBC Conservative Resurgence, but not successively, leaving office in 1980 before being elected again in 1987 and 1988.) Yet the constitution also stipulates that SBC officers “shall hold office until their successors are elected and qualified.” The cancelation of 2020 elections leaves Greear in office until his successor is elected in 2021.

Some observers wonder whether he can sustain the fast pace that has characterized his presidency thus far.

Former SBC President Jimmy Draper told the TEXAN Greear “has represented [the SBC] well and has connected with the younger generation.” Yet serving as convention president takes more time and energy than Southern Baptists may realize, he said, and remaining in office a third year will be a challenge.

“I flew 300,000 miles in the two years while I was president of the convention,” Draper said, noting he often was absent Monday through Friday from his then-pastorate at First Baptist Church in Euless, Texas. “I couldn’t have done that a third year.”

Whatever pace Greear opts to set this year, combatting sexual abuse in churches and SBC entities is sure to be a continued emphasis of his presidency.

Among his first acts in office was launching a Sexual Abuse Advisory Study in conjunction with the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. After a year of work on the study, the SBC strengthened its stance against abuse by approving amendments to the convention’s constitution and bylaws. (The constitutional amendment requires one additional authorization by the convention, expected at next year’s annual meeting in Nashville, Tennessee).

Greear included discussion of abuse in every session of last year’s SBC annual meeting in Birmingham, Alabama, and invited to speak on the stage at least one victim advocate, Mary DeMuth, who protested outside the annual meeting the previous year. Earlier this year, the SBC disfellowshipped a church over its mishandling of sexual abuse for the first time.

Yet Greear’s manner of addressing abuse has prompted challenges on occasion. In February 2019, he publicly named 10 churches that he claimed may have mishandled abuse. A work group of the Executive Committee said only three of those churches warranted further inquiry, and some of the churches pushed back against their inclusion on the list. Additionally, victim advocates within and outside the SBC have expressed concern that that the convention has not gone far enough in combatting abuse.

“In this third year,” Greear said, “I pray that God would continue to change the culture within our churches, associations, state conventions and entities where each body would continue to change systems and structures that better protect the vulnerable while caring for the abused.”

In an online SBC presidential address delivered June 9—the day Greear’s successor was scheduled to be elected—he pledged to work with LifeWay Christian Resources to add questions the convention’s Annual Church Profile (ACP) about “each church’s policies” regarding sexual abuse. He also said he will work with the SBC Executive Committee to ensure each SBC entity trustee “has a comprehensive background check to help promote a culture of accountability and awareness.”

Fostering ethnic diversity looks to be another third-year emphasis for Greear. During his first year in office, 48 percent of his committee appointments were people of color. His first SBC annual meeting in office featured culturally diverse worship music that drew praise from messengers.

But as with his confrontation of sexual abuse, Greear’s approach to diversity has been subject to critique. That was apparent last year after the SBC Resolutions Committee appointed by Greear proposed, and the convention adopted, a resolution on critical race theory and intersectionality (CRT/I)—theories related to institutional racism and disempowerment of minority groups. While the resolution claimed CRT/I should “be employed as analytical tools subordinate to Scripture,” opponents said the resolution undermined the sufficiency of Scripture by drawing too heavily from secular ideologies. A high-profile articulation of that critique came in the documentary By What Standard? released in December by the Calvinistic group Founders Ministries.

Greear knows that continuing to foster racial reconciliation could be especially challenging amid America’s current racial tension, which ignited protests from coast to coast following the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, in custody of Minneapolis police.

“With COVID, increased racial division and what most likely will be a heated political season,” Greear said, “we as Southern Baptists can demonstrate the gospel by loving our neighbors as ourselves and standing for truth no matter how unpopular.”

He confronted the issue of racism head-on in his presidential address, repeating the phrase “black lives matter” several times.

“Southern Baptists, we need to say it clearly as a gospel issue: black lives matter,” Greear said in the address, adding he does not align himself with the “Black Lives Matter organization” or support calls to defund police departments. The Black Lives Matter movement “has been hijacked by some political operatives whose worldview and policy prescriptions would be deeply at odds with my own. But that doesn’t mean that the sentiment behind it is untrue.” 

Evangelism will be another emphasis of his third year in office—including continuation of the “Who’s Your One?” campaign encouraging Southern Baptists to focus their personal witnessing efforts on one specific friend or neighbor.

Greear’s evangelism push coincides with the release of data from the SBC’s 2019 ACP indicating a 13th consecutive year of declining church membership and a decrease of more than 10,000 baptisms between 2018 and 2019. Among Greear’s recommendations for countering the decline: “better reporting,” “continuing to emphasize the gospel above all” and “moving our goal posts from attendance and membership to how many of our people are disciple-making disciples.”

As Greear pursues those aims, he is encouraged by “the unbelievable unity” he has experienced among Southern Baptists. At the same time, he is “surprised by how vocal some of the negative elements are in our convention,” who seem to “thrive on controversy”—a reality even his children have noticed.

But in the end, he said, leading the SBC is “an incredible privilege. I get up every day energized by it.” He’s especially thankful for the opportunity to ensure that Southern Baptist missionaries around the globe “are taken care of and supported in the best way possible.”

“Pray for me to really make the gospel above all and to further catalyze our evangelism, church planting and missions efforts,” he said, “and that I’ll be able to lead in a crucial moment of unity and racial reconciliation in our country.”

GRAPEVINE—If history is any indication, the Southern Baptist Convention’s trustee system will continue without a snag despite the cancellation of this year’s SBC annual meeting due to COVID-19. The last annual meeting cancellations, during World War II, were followed by a boom of evangelism and discipleship resourced by the convention’s entities.

Still, the unique circumstances this year create some potential challenges for a convention reliant on annual trustee elections.

Across the 12 SBC entities (including the Executive Committee), the terms of 129 trustees are scheduled to expire in 2020, according to last year’s SBC Annual. Typically, the convention would elect Southern Baptists to fill those slots based on nominations from the SBC Committee on Nominations. This year, that isn’t possible. Until the convention can convene, how to handle the open trustee slots is defined by a combination of SBC governing documents, entity charters and state laws where each entity is headquartered.

“We have a rotating system” of entity trustees, SBC Recording Secretary John Yeats said. “As a result, missing a year of being able to elect brand new trustees as a convention shouldn’t hinder us.”

The TEXAN queried the trustee chairs of all SBC entities to see how each board is handling its vacancies created by members rotating off this year.

Based on applicable state laws and entity charter provisions, current trustees of 10 entities remain in office until their successors are elected—even if their terms have expired. Some of those trustees are extending their first terms and likely will be elected to second terms at the 2021 SBC annual meeting in Nashville, Tennessee. Others already have completed two terms and will be replaced next year.

The other two entities—GuideStone Financial Resources and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary—have charters that require trustees to rotate off the board when their terms end, even if no successor has been elected. Both entities’ board chairs said trustees plan to make interim appointments to fill vacant slots until the 2021 SBC annual meeting.

The charters of all but three entities—the Executive Committee, the International Mission Board and the North American Mission Board—permit interim trustee appointments by the board when a position is vacant. Those interim appointees serve until the next SBC annual meeting. New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary is the only entity to exercise that option so far, appointing Phil Hanberry of Mississippi in April to fill the unexpired term of a trustee who resigned.

One intriguing possibility for a missed annual meeting involves the Executive Committee. SBC policy analysts debate whether the convention’s bylaws permit the EC to elect entity trustees on the convention’s behalf. SBC attorney Jim Guenther said “it is clear the Executive Committee could not elect trustees of some of the entities of the convention because of the wording of their charters.” But even for entities where it might be permissible, EC chairman Mike Stone gave no indication the committee will seek to elect trustees.

In general, the anticipated result of this year’s trustee board actions, Stone said, is that “current trustees remain in place until June 2021.”

Despite well-defined policies for missed annual meetings, some challenges remain.

Smaller states and defined territories will lose representation on some boards temporarily if their lone representative is forced to rotate off without an immediate replacement. At GuideStone, for instance, the sole representatives from California, Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana and Maryland/Delaware/the District of Columbia all are slated to rotate off the board this month. Southern Seminary’s lone trustee from Ohio likewise rotates off the board this month.

Another potential concern is that SBC messengers won’t have an opportunity this year to amend the list of nominees to trustee boards. Messengers exercised that prerogative in 2018, when they granted Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission trustee Dan Anderson a second term despite the Committee on Nominations’ recommendation to fill his slot with someone else.

In the absence of an annual meeting, it is especially important that trustees recall their accountability to the convention and that the convention recalls its dependence on the trustee system, said Jimmy Draper, president emeritus of LifeWay Christian Resources and a former SBC president.

Southern Baptists must not “become distanced from the trustees,” Draper said. Trustees must not “become isolated on their own, working with the entities, and lose their sense of responsibility to the convention.”

Yet Southern Baptists need not worry about a year of missed trustee elections, Draper said, “because we are proceeding based on what we are allowed to do.”

History suggests Southern Baptists are up to the challenge. Since the SBC began meeting annually in 1866, it had previously only missed two scheduled meetings (due to World War II reductions of available food and lodging, among other factors). In each instance, the SBC Annual records that trustees extended their service for an additional year, with vacancies filled temporarily by the various boards.

Yeats recalled that those missed annual meetings were followed by a boom of “new post-war, born-again disciples for Christ and a passion for the church to permeate culture with a biblical worldview.” Between 1945 and 1962, membership in Southern Baptist churches increased 74 percent to 10.2 million and annual gifts through the Cooperative Program increased 411 percent to $53.5 million, according to Albert McClellan’s history of the Executive Committee.

Such historical realities remind Southern Baptists, Yeats said, that the trustee system can be a powerful tool for facilitating gospel witness, even when annual elections prove impossible.

“In some ways,” Yeats said, “the [coronavirus] pandemic has set Southern Baptists free to make the gospel above all in every context.”

The April 2020 board meeting of the Criswell College Board of Trustees opened with President Barry Creamer welcoming new members Joshua Crutchfield, Jim Henry, David Sherzer, Derek Stumfall and Jared Wellman.

This year’s board of trustees meeting was held via Zoom video conferencing to maintain health and safety in response to the spread of COVID-19.

“It was very encouraging to see trustees so actively engaged despite meeting remotely,” Creamer said. “Their questions and input were relevant and helpful, which is very important considering the paradigm-shifting commitments we have made this year.”

“Colleges everywhere had to move quickly so students could finish courses for spring 2020 off campus,” he said. “We have been blessed to protect not only our students’ need to finish courses, but also to maintain academic quality by giving the faculty freedom to determine how students would finish their work, and to continue providing jobs for every single employee on campus, including students. The board’s priorities are reflected in our commitment to keep student welfare, the college’s mission, and our relationship with the community in sight at all times.”

Creamer continued the meeting with a discussion on what current and incoming students can expect during the summer and fall semester as it relates to the campus response to COVID-19. Creamer also addressed the board regarding the latest enrollment numbers and presented a sampling of digital ads that are currently running on Facebook and Google. 

Board members were shown a live video walkthrough of the residence hall dorm construction led by Criswell Police Chief Brad Corder and Director of Communications Kendall Lyons. 

“The board had taken dramatic steps to move the college forward long before we had any thoughts of a pandemic—not the least of which is constructing the college’s first residence hall. Although we would have loved walking them through the several floors already walled in, they responded enthusiastically to the virtual tour. They were able to see that construction—including the prospects associated with it—brings a lot of energy to campus,” Creamer said. 

During the meeting, Creamer unveiled the proposed 2020-2025 Strategic Plan, which includes three goals the faculty and staff will work to accomplish. The three goals in the strategic plan include providing a more engaging and supportive experience for students, growing enrollment while providing support and resources for sustainability, and developing and strengthening the college’s network of relationships. The first goal includes five initiatives, goal two includes four initiatives, and goal three includes three initiatives. These initiatives cross all divisions and will allow the college, administrators and departments to focus more intentionally on meeting the goals of the strategic plan. The proposed strategic plan was approved unanimously. 

“After over a year of work reviewing our mission statement, vision, core values and key goals with representatives of every constituency of the college, it was rewarding to receive insightful feedback and affirmation from trustees on those critical tools for orienting the college’s next five years,” Creamer added. 

Also during the board meeting, trustees approved the 2021 budget as well as pay scale changes for faculty, and program changes that were necessary for alignment with the Common Student Experience. Known as Criswell 360, the college’s newly developed student experience spans four years and incorporates high-impact learning practices and personal guidance along the journey. This will translate into meaningful benefits and outcomes for traditional-age, college-bound students and their parents.

Board members approved the 2020 graduation candidates and heard an inspirational testimony from a May graduate.