In what has been a heated division in the Southern Baptist Convention in 2021, two of the conservative favorites have been nominated to lead the Southern Baptist Convention. After a year of battling current president, Ed Litton’s plagiarism scandal, Southern Baptist leaders grew frustrated with him and began calling for his resignation.
Amid the turmoil, Reformation Charlotte has independently verified that a number of pastors and leaders privately encouraged Litton not to seek another term. Litton then announced he would move on.
Shortly after Litton’s announcement, pastor of Calvary Church in Clearwater, FL announced his nomination to the Southern Baptist Convention presidency. Rice, who has already been run through the gauntlet by many, does have some baggage to answer for. Reformation Charlotte posted a list of questions for Rice which, to our knowledge, he has not responded to.
Rice, a moderate, has not been a favorite of the conservative wing of the Southern Baptist Convention. Rice has been involved in the “Me Too” Evangelical feminist movement and has been a staunch defender of Beth Moore. In 2018, Rice published a “Me Too” story on the church’s website; that story has now been removed from the website yet the following post remains on Twitter at the time of this publication.
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The story linked in the post is a dead link and also cannot be found on Wayback Machine’s archive pages. We can only speculate as to why, but we will not at this time.
It is this kind of baggage carried by Rice that has led some conservatives to believe they should seek a more transparent and more conservative leadership for the denomination. This is why the Conservative Baptist Network and its allies have rallied to nominate Founders Ministry leader, Tom Ascol as the Southern Baptist Convention president and Voddie Baucham, an anti-woke black pastor who makes woke liberals angry and a leader of the Conservative Baptist Network, to lead the Southern Baptist Convention’s Pastors’ Conference.
According to an exclusive report by Meg Basham at The Daily Wire, Voddie Baucham “agreed to be nominated for president of the SBC Pastors’ Conference because sound preaching has fallen out of favor in his denomination” and he “believes the Pastors’ Conference leader sets the spiritual tone for the annual meeting and offers a chance to highlight great preachers and make a statement about what preaching ought to be.”
Baucham said he would “love to see a revival of great biblical preaching in the SBC,” a rare commodity these days, for sure.
Ascol has been supported by many, including the other leaders of the Conservative Baptist Network.
Texas pastor, Tom Buck, drew both the curiosity of some and the ire of others when he posted on Twitter a week ago an image implying that Voddie Baucham might be nominated for the Southern Baptist presidency.
There has been some question as to Voddie Baucham’s eligibility to serve in a leadership role in the Southern Baptist Convention due to his status as an overseas missionary. Baucham’s church required him to join a local church as he served as Dean of Theology at African Christian University in Lusaka, Zambia. However, his remaining membership to his sending church, a Southern Baptist Church that he planted and supports him, removes the doubt of that ineligibility.
Baucham has expressed much interest in serving the Southern Baptist Convention, stating that he believes the Southern Baptist Convention is “worth saving.”
