Conservative churches continue to leave the Southern Baptist Convention in droves since J.D. Greear became president of the denomination a few years ago. But since Ed Litton was elected to the presidency last year, the mass exodus of faithful churches and pastors has drastically increased.

Last year, prominent anti-social justice pastor, Josh Buice, led his church out of the denomination over the failed leadership and the lack of accountability for our current president who has been embroiled in a plagiarism scandal of epic proportions spanning multiple years. But Ed Litton isn’t actually the problem; he’s only a symptom of the problem.

The problem with conservative churches leaving the denomination is the failed leadership; the refusal to address the underlying problems within the denomination that have brought us to this place, to begin with. The problem is that postmodernism has infected every institution in the Southern Baptist Convention in such a way that any public confrontation among leadership is largely seen as taboo. Therefore, we see little to no public accountability for the unrepentant sins of leadership by other leadership.

This is draining and taxing on those who desperately want to see real leadership. Now, we can add another conservative church to the list of churches departing the denomination over its mission drift.

Allen Nelson, the pastor of Perryville Second Baptist Church in Arkansas, just announced on Twitter that his church voted to withdraw support from the Southern Baptist Convention’s cooperative program.

“Last night our church voted to stop giving to SBC’s Cooperative Program,” Nelson said, noting that his small church’s giving is insignificant and won’t be missed by Southern Baptists. However, the move isn’t pragmatic, it’s theological.

“We reached a point where we felt we could not entrust the Lord’s money with the leadership of the SBC. Entity leaders, trustee heads, presidents, institution leaders, etc have sought to move our convention toward egalitarianism, wokism, worldliness, etc,” Nelson continued.

“The fear of God is not prized. The Scriptures are not treated as authoritative and sufficient. Questions are mocked, avoided, and not answered. SBC does not care about holiness in the pulpit. We do not care about our theological roots or faithfulness to our Baptist identity.”

Nelson said his church is not technically leaving the Southern Baptist Convention altogether and still plans to send messengers to the annual meeting next June in New Orleans. However, he said, he could not “invest the time and energy that I have in the SBC over the last 3 years or so” and wanted to focus less on the denomination and more on his local church that he has been called to pastor.