(Note: The third paragraph in the Reflections section has been revised to more accurately communicate what took place at the Annual Meeting. I also made some other minor edits and added a fun picture.)
Earlier this week, the Southern Baptist Convention convened in Dallas for its Annual Meeting. The SBC Annual Meeting is many things at the same time. It is a family reunion as Southern Baptists from around the country connect with far-flung friends, network with one another, and attend various special interest events. It is also a time for public worship, including many prayers, times for singing, an official sermon, and a presidential address that is almost always homiletical in nature. And it is a missions conference, including missions reports, auxiliary missions-themed events, and a foreign missionary commissioning service. Most messengers would likely say the latter is the highlight of each Annual Meeting.
But officially, and in the most narrow and legal sense, the Annual Meeting is a denominational business meeting. Cooperating Southern Baptist churches can each certify as many as 12 messengers to attend the Annual Meeting. Those messengers comprise the voting body. Messengers aren’t delegates, because technically each messenger is a free agent and doesn’t formally represent his or her church. Instead, messengers might be thought of as individual Baptists who are especially invested in the life of the Convention and whose churches have blessed them to go and participate in the business of the SBC. Most messengers are pastors, church staff, and other ministry leaders such as seminary professor, missionaries, or denominational employees, but many are also laypeople. This year there were 10,599 messengers who participated in the Annual Meeting. Counting registered guests (non-messengers, like my four children) and exhibitors, around 18,000 people were in attendance in Dallas.

I have the privilege of serving the SBC as an elected officer. Since 2022, I have been the Recording Secretary of the Southern Baptist Convention. I was elected to a fourth term this week. The Recording Secretary has three main responsibilities. First, I edit the Book of Reports, which includes information submitted annually by all the Convention’s seminaries, mission boards, and other entities. Second, I record and compile the official proceedings of the Annual Meeting. That material is later combined with the Book of Reports and various denominational legal documents into the Annual of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is published each summer. (You can read the 2024 Annual online.) Finally, I serve as an ex officio member of the Southern Baptist Executive Committee, which represents the SBC ad interim between Annual Meetings. The Executive Committee exists year-round because the Southern Baptist Convention itself is technically and legally the Annual Meeting that lasts only two days each June.
Reflections
I want to offer some brief reflections about this year’s SBC Annual Meeting. I’m only speaking for myself, as an individual Southern Baptist. I do not claim my views are shared by anyone else, including other SBC officers, members of my local church, North Greenville University, etc. This is just one Baptist’s personal opinions.
This year’s slate of resolutions is excellent. All eight were passed overwhelmingly, with minimal debate, and with few amendments from the floor. Every year, the Resolution Committee tries their best to represent the consensus views of Southern Baptists and to avoid interdenominational controversy. This year’s Resolution Committee, chaired by Southern Seminary ethicist Andrew Walker, was exemplary in this regard. The final text of the resolutions are available on the SBC website and will be published in this year’s Annual.
Southern Baptists care deeply about transparency and accountability in their denominational entities, but there is some disagreement about the best way to ensure those priorities. Messengers approved a new Business and Financial Plan and seemed to resonate with a call from Jeff Iorg, President of the Executive Committee, to provide greater training for entity trustees. For the third year in a row, one or more messengers made motions calling for SBC entities to either complete an IRS Form 990, or to submit all the information found in that form. This year, messengers rejected an amendment to the SBC Business and Financial Plan calling for the inclusion of that information. I suspect this debate will continue.
Southern Baptists are also firmly committed to a complementarian view of gender and ministry leadership, but there is some disagreement about whether it is necessary to codify that view in the SBC’s Constitution. Our confession of faith, the Baptist Faith & Message 2000, is clear that “While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor/elder/overseer is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.” In recent years, messengers have declared churches with female pastors to not be in friendly cooperation with the SBC. Last year, an effort to amend the Constitution to further codify these views fell short of the 66.7 supermajority. The same thing happened this year, even though many Southern Baptists were disappointed in how our Credentials Committee handled the case of a prominent South Carolina megachurch earlier this year. I’ll admit I was surprised the amendment didn’t pass—I expected it to sail through with well over 80% approval. I suspect this debate will also continue.
The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) survived another attempt to eliminate the entity. There have been several attempts of this sort in recent years, though the strategy hasn’t always been the same. There are several reasons why some Southern Baptists are hesitant about ERLC. Some are “fiscal hawks” who want to take a DOGE-like approach to all denominational entities, and as the smallest, ERLC is the logical first step in this direction. Other Southern Baptists are concerned about specific positions ERLC has taken on various matters, especially under the leadership of Russell Moore (2013-2021), but in some cases also under the current presidency of Brent Leatherwood. Some in this group openly desire ERLC to be more closely aligned with Donald Trump and his allies. These latter folks tend to be the most visible/vocal ERLC critics because they are VERY online and sometimes funded by outside organizations that want to influence the direction of the SBC in a more openly MAGA-friendly direction.
Yet another group isn’t actually opposed to the ERLC in principle, but mistrust current ERLC leadership and believe a vote to defund would provide a much-needed wake-up call that would result in major changes, beginning with the presidency. A final group, which admittedly includes some of my close friends, just doesn’t like denominational drama and its implications for our unity and the Cooperative Program. Though often sympathetic to ERLC, they are weary of the annual calls to eliminate the entity and just want the SBC to cut our losses and move on.
The actual vote was about 57% against defunding and approximately 43% for defunding. Though ERLC clearly survived the vote, this is far from a vote of confidence in the entity. ERLC has always been a bit controversial because of its ministry assignment. One should expect 15-20% of messengers to have concerns because ERLC doesn’t always reflect their personal opinions. But there is no doubt that 43% is a major problem for ERLC, and much work needs to be done in the coming months to both rebuild trust among well-meaning Southern Baptists and counter misinformation being circulated online.
In the interest of full disclosure, I serve as Senior Fellow for Religious Liberty for ERLC, so I’m not an impartial observer. I strongly believe Southern Baptists need ERLC and am convinced we would regret defunding the entity. To be clear, I’m certain the organization could do some things better. But I also know how hard ERLC leadership has worked to connect with pastors over the past year. I’m wholly unpersuaded by arguments to defund ERLC, and I strongly disagree with some of ERLC’s most visible online critics.
Clint Pressley did a fine job moderating the Annual Meeting, and I was pleased to see him elected overwhelmingly to a second term. I was also pleased to see evangelist Daniel Ritchie and associational missions strategist Craig Carlisle elected to the roles of first vice president and second vice president, respectively. I know both of them, and they are fine men who will represent Southern Baptists with distinction. Of course, the closest thing to a rock star in the SBC is Don Currence, who was re-elected as Registration Secretary. Don is a delightful human being, and I love watching Southern Baptists cheer him on. Two highlights of the Annual Meeting were watching Don accept a bobblehead of his likeness and be introduced at the end of the event with walk-up music. The fact Don is utterly unpretentious, doesn’t care a lick about all the fanfare, and finds it all to be baffling, is just icing on the cake.
A consistent theme throughout the Annual Meeting is that Southern Baptists trust Jeff Iorg. Every time he spoke, a majority of messengers found him to be persuasive. As a member of the SBC Executive Committee, I’m impressed by his convictional leadership, personal integrity, and non-anxious presence, even when I occasionally disagree with his opinions. Southern Baptists are blessed that Dr. Iorg delayed his retirement and answered the call to serve as President of the Executive Committee for such a time as this. Please pray for him; his job is far harder than most Southern Baptists realize.
On a personal note, I was grieved at the recent death of Jennifer Lyell right before the Annual Meeting began. Jen was arguably the best-known sex abuse survivor among Southern Baptists, and her situation has been central to everything that has taken place in recent years related to both the controversy and ongoing efforts at sex abuse reform. I was thankful that a messenger asked Al Mohler to pray for Jen’s family and friends during the Southern Seminary report. I’ve known Jen since we were in seminary together at Southern over two decades ago. Jen was a friend, she suffered horrifically, and I’m thankful she is in the presence of her King and Savior. I’m deeply saddened by her death. For more information about Jen and her story, I’d point you to this obituary in the New York Times.
Recommendations
For more coverage related to the SBC Annual Meeting, I’d point you to the following articles.
“WRAP-UP: SBC25 in Dallas marked by celebration, debate,” Baptist Press
Diana Chandler, “2025 Dallas messenger registration of 10,599 tops 2018 SBC meeting here,” Baptist Press
Keila Diaz, “SBC president reflects on unity, mission focus during post-meeting press conference,” Baptist Press
Kate Shellnut, “SBC Proposals to Abolish ERLC, Amend Constitution Don’t Pass,” Christianity Today
Lauren Canterberry, “SBC urges Supreme Court overturn of gay marriage ruling,” WORLD
Leah MarieAnn Klett, “Clint Pressley celebrates Southern Baptist identity: ‘Thank God we still have a Gospel,’” Christian Post
Resource
At the beginning of the week, I wrote a column for WORLD Opinions titled “Confessional Fidelity and Denominational Faithfulness.” In the essay, I offer a brief history of Southern Baptist confessionalism over the past century, with some reflections on why confessions matter. Here are the two key paragraphs:
So, Southern Baptists took a crucial step toward maintaining denominational faithfulness by adopting the Baptist Faith and Message (1925), their first Convention-wide confessional statement. When Neo-Orthodox views of Scripture became more common in Baptist schools a generation later, the BF&M was revised in 1963 to address those challenges. The BF&M was amended in 1998 to clearly address a biblical view of gender and family. Two years later, following a two-decade controversy between theological conservatives and progressives, the Baptist Faith and Message (2000) was adopted. It remains the Convention’s confessional statement a quarter-century later.
The BF&M (2000) also plays a larger role in Southern Baptist life than it ever has before. The arc of SBC history over the past century has been one of increased commitment to confessional fidelity. Whenever theological drift has occurred, Southern Baptists have reasserted their commitment to biblical orthodoxy through both confessional updates and increased confessional accountability. The Convention as a whole is more committed to a confessional identity than it has ever been in its history. This heightened confessionalism is in direct response to the desire of Southern Baptist churches to contend more faithfully for biblical truth in an increasingly decadent society.
I want to encourage you to read the whole column.