Pure Hearts

5 min read

1 Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.

— Psalm 73:1

It’s good to be back. Thx to Pastor Nathan for writing the weekday blog while I was attending the SBC Annual Meeting in Dallas. As always, I’m a little tired from the meeting and the traveling, but it is always good to engage with the larger body of our SBC family and to connect with old and new friends.

It’s difficult to explain or even show the scale of the SBC Annual Meeting. Over 10,000 messengers (church representatives) registered. Over 12,000 people attended. That picture above is probably about 1/20th (or maybe less) of all the people sitting in that auditorium.

Based on our giving to the SBC, GCC is eligible for twelve messengers. I’d love to attend the SBC one day with a full cohort of messengers, just so that you all can experience the sense of God’s goodness and God’s hand upon the SBC churches.

Of course, with that many people and that many churches, there is no such thing as unity or uniformity when it comes to opinions. Someone said that if you have two Baptists in a room, you will have three opinions on any given topic.

And yet, there we were—about 10,000 of us—passionately but peacefully debating issues as one body in Christ, joined together by our common confession in Christ, expressed in our Baptist Faith and Message.

Surely God is good to the Southern Baptist Convention because we are “pure in heart.” Of course, we are only pure in heart because of our faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who lived a perfect life, suffered God’s wrath in our place for our sins on the cross, and was resurrected to eternal life and now sits at God’s right hand in glory as Lord of the universe.

Let me just report three key outcomes from this year’s meeting.

1. There was a motion to get rid of the Ethics and Religious Liberties Commission, the political advocacy entity of the SBC. The motion failed. The ERLC were pivotal in the repeal of Roe v. Wade. They were also pivotal in getting imaging machines to many pregnancy care facilities so that women considering abortion could see their baby. The reason that some want to get rid of the ERLC is because they want to the SBC to be more radical and advocating the criminality of abortion.

2. There was a motion to change the constitution of the SBC to use language that explicitly forbids any SBC church or entity to hire females with the title “pastor.” The motion barely failed. Changing the constitution requires a 2/3 majority. The motion failed with a 60% majority.

3. There was a motion to require all SBC entities, in particular the Executive Committee (the governing entity) to make public their detailed financial records and business proceedings, in particular the salaries of the top level executives. The motion barely failed.

Father, You are good, and Your faithfulness endure forever. When we seek after You, You hold us in Your arms, even when imperfect and sinful people act outside of Your sovereign will. Our hearts are pure only because Your Spirit is in us. And for that we give You all praise, honor, and glory. You are worthy. In Jesus’s name. Amen.