I left the Southern Baptist Convention’s 2026 Annual Meeting grateful for my fellow messengers’ commitment to the Scriptures.
The Truth and Unity Amendment: What it Means
A touch under 75% of my fellow messengers voted to adopt Dr. Albert Mohler’s Truth and Unity Amendment to the SBC constitution. The vote reaffirms the SBC’s commitment to the historical Baptist and (more importantly) biblical truth that only qualified men can serve as pastors/elders/overseers of a local SBC church.
Though some national media outlets and quite a few social media personalities have portrayed the Truth and Unity Amendment as an assault upon the dignity of womanhood and/or a violation of local church autonomy, the amendment neither restricts women from serving their local churches nor requires churches to fire their women pastors. Mohler’s amendment speaks only to how women interact with the office of pastor/elder/overseer. It does not address, much less condemn, the woman teaching a ladies’ Bible study, the woman organizing meals for the new mom, or the woman sharing the gospel with her neighbor like the women of old did that first Easter Sunday. As the companion resolution to the Mohler amendment on the office and function of a pastor/elder/overseer makes clear, Southern Baptists continue to “express gratitude for the indispensable service, discipleship, evangelism, missions work, and ministry contributions of women throughout Southern Baptist life and encourage churches to continue affirming and deploying women in biblically faithful ways.”
In declaring “that the office of pastor/elder/overseer is limited to men as qualified by Scripture,” the messengers also have not limited who a local church can hire. Rather, in passing the Truth and Unity Amendment, the messengers have sought to limit who can cooperate or partner with the SBC. Even if the amendment passes again and is enshrined in the SBC constitution at the 2027 Annual Meeting, Baptist churches can still have women pastors/elders/overseers in their pulpits on Sunday if they so choose. The messengers are powerless to remove said women pastors. The Mohler Amendment cannot proscribe whom the church hires. But the amendment will prohibit those churches that employ women pastors/elders/overseers from cooperating with or being part of the SBC. Just like our political parties and countless civic institutions, the SBC reserves the right to set its boundaries of cooperation. And it has historically attempted to build those boundaries around the clear teaching of Scripture as recounted in the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.
I believe that the Truth and Unity Amendment helps to strengthen these biblical boundaries of cooperation. The amendment reaffirms the teaching of the apostle Paul, who proclaimed that only qualified men (“the husband of one wife” – Ti 1:6; 1 Tim. 3:2) could serve as pastors/elders/overseers and who also proclaimed that he did “not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet” (1 Tim. 2:12). I am thankful that the majority of the messengers at the 2026 Annual Meeting stood with the apostle Paul….stood with the teaching of Scripture.
Come to Indy
But the battle is not yet won. For Mohler’s amendment to be incorporated into the SBC constitution, a supermajority (67%) of the messengers must pass it a second time at the 2027 Annual Meeting. I encourage all like-minded Southern Baptists to be at the 2027 Annual Meeting in Indianapolis. Let’s pass the Truth and Unity Amendment one more time and thereby put an end to this generation’s debate over women pastors in the SBC.
Resolutions Worth Reading
The messengers also voted to adopt a slate of resolutions that addressed everything from political violence and antisemitism to bivocational pastors and the use of technology in the local church from a biblical perspective. The adopted resolutions reaffirmed messengers’ “continued opposition to euthanasia and assisted suicide in all its forms, including practices now described as ‘“medical aid in dying”’ and ‘“death with dignity;”’; their condemnation of “political violence in all its forms, including assassinations, attempted assassinations, terrorism, rioting, mob intimidation, vandalism, threats, and coercion as morally evil, contrary to the sanctity of human life, destructive of ordered liberty, eroding equal protection and the rule of law, and incompatible with the way of Christ”; and reaffirmed their belief that “a local church is the embodied assembly of baptized believers, gathered for his glory and gifted for service, for the good of one another, and for the advance of the gospel, and is not merely a virtual or technological experience,” nor can any digital form, by itself, constitute a New Testament church (Romans 12:3–13; 1 Corinthians 12). Though these resolutions prove non-binding, they do not prove inconsequential. The resolutions convey the opinions of the messengers and thereby can influence the practices of the SBC’s entities (IMB, NAMB, etc.) and shape the broader SBC culture. I encourage you to give them a read.
An Unending Work
Though I took great joy in most of my fellow messengers’ actions, I still recognize that the SBC remains an imperfect people (after all, I am one of them). A few messengers explored a rabbit trail about future convention sites with far too much zeal, others attempted (thankfully without success) to inject some conspiracy-theory language into the resolution on antisemitism, and still others took to the microphone for political causes incidental to the convention’s missional and educational purposes. But in each instance, the broader body of messengers graciously restrained these and other less-than-optimal impulses that arose. The body of Christ did its work.
The same could be said of the messengers’ choice of officers. Though all the men put forward would have been faithful leaders, the messengers chose the better of their good options. For example, I think Dr. Willy Rice will make an excellent SBC president and look forward to seeing him bring his principles of renewal and reformation to bear on our convention.
Final Thoughts
As Dr. Mohler often says, “Southern Baptists eventually get things right.” This year, Dr. Mohler’s maxim came true. The messengers got things right.
My hope and prayer is that the spirit of Christian charity and biblical fidelity that defined the 2026 Annual Meeting will once again dominate the 2027 Annual Meeting.
Are you saved? Do you pray? We often do not draw a line between faith and prayer. But, the Scriptures bind the two concepts together with the force of an unbreakable chain. Those who have been saved pray regularly. And those who regularly pray have been saved.
Church discipline. These two words seem to be an oxyomoron. Church and discipline belong together just as much as hot goes ice or happy with grief. Christians should love sinners, extend grace, and shower out love. Discipline, rebuke, and excommunication appear to be terms reserved for the religous dark ages when knights lived in candle-lit castles and bathed twice a year. As early as 1900, evangelicals had began to distance themselves from this ungracious practice. 
