Latest / CrossPolitic Show / What Happened at the SBC — Chase Davis and William Wolfe
Transcript
- I'm going to be a little bit more about the game. Hey, oh, welcome to Cross Ball to one I won with the water boy. It's good to be with you. Knox and Toby. Have let me have give me wings to fly. It's a I love doing my one and one shows because I actually I just interview people I want to interview. I don't. I hope you like it. I hope you come into this room and enjoy the interviews and everything. Make sure you guys take a<|en|> break like it. Thanks for your time. We've been very Vice President And of course, we kick off with Baron Psalms on Thursday and we'll have our pre business conference on Thursday afternoon. All those details should be at FightLabFace.com. Go sign up now. With this show, I have William Wolf coming on and Chase Davis coming on. Chase Davis is the author of Offensive Christianity. And William Wolf is one of those Baptist guys that has an organization called something for Baptist Baptist baptism, something like that. And you can go and bring them in, Bri. Now that I've insulted William. And so guys, hey, welcome to the show. Appreciate you guys coming up. Good to be here. I thought it was going to be going to be here, but now we'll see how it goes, Gabe. Now you're nervous. I thought you guys are going to come in with your own introduction, your own FightLabFace introduction. And you let me down. But you guys were both Chase. You too. So, surprise was that the Southern Baptist Convention, SBC this past week. And I'm going to start with you, Chase, because William, I know you're a little more seasoned here. Chase, this is your second SBC convention as I understand it. Is that correct? Yes, sir. I grew up Southern Baptist at Pastor Jack Graham's Church, Prestoal Baptist Church. So I was born into the Southern Baptist Church. And our church recently joined a few years ago. It was our second annual meeting that we were able to attend. The last year had a great time in Dallas connecting with a bunch of wonderful Baptist and observing, trying to participate where I could. And this year, when again, brought Pastor Matt Patrick from the World Church. We just had a great time. Wonderful time, fellowship of business meetings, of hanging out with people, all that kind of good stuff. So, yeah, second time. And the next year will be an Indianapolis. So we're going to be back again, bigger and stronger than ever, all Baptist in America. You know, raise this signal. We've got to get to Indianapolis and finish what we started here and there down in Orlando. Now, now, so this year, second one, what was the difference between this one and the first one you went to? What? Yeah, I mean, the first one is whenever you go to your first one, it's, you know, gosh, they had 11,000 people registered. I don't know how many people were actually in the room. It was less than that. But it's a massive meeting. And it's pretty overwhelming. Hopefully, guys like William were wonderful at welcoming people in, showing them the ropes, connecting them, all that kind of stuff. You know, the difference this year and William can speak to this more is a lot of the stuff that we set out to accomplish, got accomplished. We want a lot of things this year. And in Dallas, we had a great showing still. It wasn't, but it was, we didn't finalize a lot of things like Michael Law's amendment and other things that we wanted to get done. So great time in Orlando, obviously Orlando, I think some Baptist might have been distracted by Disney, the bright lights of Disney nearby. And so they weren't present at the meeting when they should have been. But besides that, very similar to Dallas and kind of the two days, a two day sprint of business meetings up at 8 a.m. Finish at 5 p.m. So it's a good time. Yeah, they were in the mouse house when they should have been in the house of the Lord. They've been better. Is convention really the house of the Lord? I mean, no, not really actually. Not just a business meeting. Now William, so I grew up actually in Dallas. I knew Prestonwood. I went to my first time to see Tony Evans preach. Was that Prestonwood in Chase? Well, maybe we even overlap. I don't know. You were probably in the nursery or something. They were in the lab probably. So I'm basically, you know, Texas is very Southern Baptist in their church presence and everything. So my friends, most of my, a lot of my friends, not all of them were Southern Baptist. I kind of think, but I didn't really start paying attention to Southern Baptist. I started really cross-politic when I started realizing how like church denomination meetings are actually way more important than what I used to think. And especially Southern Baptist convention meetings. Every time SBC meets, there's going to be some sort of front cover on New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, something like that. And I think in some sense, I do think God kind of intended it that way. Like when churches meet, when the unity of the church meets or when the church is meet at a, you know, as a convention or as a council or a press secretary, I really believe that this is one way that God works. And so that's why I also think why there's such a big attention on because, you know, Wall Street Journal knows that what SBC decides matters. You know, New York Times knows what, you know, it's funny that some of the SBC churches don't show up because they don't think it really matters that much. But Wall Street Journal knows and New York Times, all that stuff. I say that because I started really paying attention, somewhat paying attention in 2016. And then we became friends with Tom Askell and the founders guys and then knocks did the documentary by what standard with Tom Askell and knocks at the convention then. So we started kind of getting into more to the inside scoop of what was going on all that jazz. And when we started, when Tom Askell kind of started re-engaging with the SBC, it was in a bad, it was in bad shape. In fact, churches like G3, Josh Bies, when he was there, churches, conservative churches were leaving because they're like, this is a sinking ship without even fighting. But you stayed, you know, Tom Askell stayed. A lot of our friends stayed and put up a good fight and he actually made progress. So once you just kind of maybe give me the 30,000 foot overview of what happened this last week and everything. Yeah, sure. So first of all, I absolutely agree. I do think that God intends for the world to notice what Baptists are doing indeed. Amen. So I agree with you on that. But you know, first of all, at the center for Baptist leadership, you know, we stand on the shoulders of giants. Really, there's a lot of men who put in a lot of work and a lot of fight that led us, you know, they advanced the ball down the field and we've picked it up and we've kept running with it for the last two years, right? So we're just a little over two years old. You know, what happened was if I were to just sort of like try to give a neutral analysis of what happened without trying to disparage anybody who was a part of it was a bunch of good Southern Baptists realized things were going south in particular after Resolution 9, right? 2019, JD Rears presidency, COVID's an off year, you know, Trump to Black Lives Matter, COVID, all this crazy stuff. And so they rally conservative Baptist network guys, they rally this group to fight in national in 2021 to elect Mike Stone to be president to address these issues that have been bubbling up for four or five years now and fight the liberal. It really was an intentional liberal takeover, we talked about the conservative resurgence of the Southern Baptist Convention in the late 20 teens, really through most of the 20 teens, we saw liberal resurgence. They lost barely in national in 21 and I do think a lot of them quit then. Like so it's not that they didn't fight at all. They fought for one year and they put a lot of heart and soul into it. Okay, just the conservative activists and Southern Baptist Convention, you know, a lot of guys, but you know, and so they didn't get it across the finish line in 2021. Tom Askel runs in 2022, doesn't get elected unfortunately, right? And so then that was rough too. So Mike Stone loses, Tom Askel loses. We have Barbarber for two years. She just sort of advanced the moderation and liberalization of the SPC. The Mike Law amendment wins one and loses one. You know, so people are checking out, but you know, really what I've been saying for a long time is it's like a five to ten year fight and the clock really doesn't start until you get that conservative president elected, right? So I will say heading into Orlando, you know, I never really said this publicly, but personally I thought I did feel like Orlando or bust. Like if we can elect Willie Rice in particular, this guy, if he has the medicine that the Southern Baptist Convention needs to take, he's conservative, he's not mean, he's serious and honest, but he's not a bomb thrower. If this is too much for many of the effeminized sort of discourse brothers and the Southern Baptist Convention, if they can't take this medicine, they're never going to be a better person. We're going to take it. Well, in God's grace, we took it 57% and Willie Rice won and now we're in the game. Now we're in the game and he's got a year to start turning things around. So he's so every president elected for one year and then they can be extended for one year right two years. That's right. That's right. Well, two years consecutive max. Yeah. And then they got to take a call. They can come back later, but they usually don't. Yeah. Willie Rice wins and Chase, you know, you guys just join the SPC as your church did last last year as I understand it. Why are you joining the SPC in the middle of all these problems? Oh, it's an awesome opportunity. I mean, we're Baptist. We're very excited for anyone who is listened to your show, you know, that our church was removed from act 29, a lot of the scoundrels that removed us from act 29 had fled to the Southern Baptist. So we weren't done fighting them. We wanted to chase them down and find them where they had made a home and they became entrenched in institutions and Southern Baptist life and different entities. And I say that tongue in cheek, but it was a good opportunity for us to find fellowship as well. And so, yeah, I mean, this is an organization where you have a voice. You have a vote. You can organize all the things that I hated about act 29 where people are basically ruled like it's communist China with a dictator where you cannot question the dear leader of act 29. And Southern Baptist life, there's so many different voices. You can form coalitions, you can pan together, you can argue, you can put forward motions. I mean, what a wonderful experience when you're used to the kind of cold frontier, the cold communist life. So, yeah, we're really excited. And so the other thing is it's not just opportunistic at all other than mission. I mean, we really do care about the mission of the Southern Baptist Convention. We've partnered with our local association, found great fellowship there, found other great churches in Colorado to join forces with, to fight abortion, to get involved politically, to take care of social needs. I mean, just the resources that Southern Baptist have are incredible with our seminaries and institutions. So, the opportunities are just astronomical. Of course, the influence that the Southern Baptist Convention has, like you mentioned, always gets kind of put on the New York Times or Washington Post. But besides the influence, we wanted to band together with Faithful Brothers in Christ to advance the cause of Christ in this nation and throughout the world. And the Southern Baptist Convention is a wonderful place to do that. Yeah. It seems to me that with the last, I mean, you know, it seems, William, when would you say like the liberalization really took effect, like 2013? Like, I mean, how far back does that shift start to happen? Well, so there was something called the Great Commission Resurgence that was launched. So, Great Commission Resurgence, right? So there's conservative resurgence. Then in 2010, they do the Great Commission Resurgence. And a lot of the stuff in the Great Commission Resurgence had sort of the seeds of woke stuff on how we're going to reach the next generation in America. We're going to be less diverse. So how do we bring in the diversity? Now, you could maybe have a fair conversation or approach that in a faithful Christian way, but that's not really what happened, right? It was like the way we reached the diversity in America that we're going to need to bring into the SPC is watering down our political commitments, conservative political commitments, starting to adopt things like critical race theory, starting to, you know, have DEI scholarships that are Southern Baptist Convention entities. So that was sort of percolating all the way through like the early 20 teens. Then it was, you know, when JD Greer got elected, that's when things really started to take off. And then the abuse crisis, the so-called abuse crisis, your guys' documentary didn't have a job exposing that. So the sort of groundwork was laid. Some of the philosophical sort of softening of our conservative commitments, theologically, politically, sort of a downplaying of our Baptist distinctives, you know, sort of, you know, renaming ourselves to sort of the great commission convention or things like that. That just all really accelerated under JD Greer. We have a great article at the CBL. If anyone wants to try to understand this, six years of a liberal shift in the SPC, not drift shift, because it was intentional, chronically, in JD Greer's three years, because it got the extra COVID year, Ed Littins and Bart Barber. So those six years, and to be clear, we're still living in it because the president impact sort of is a little bit staggered, but we had two years of a much better president in Clint Presley. Like that really was. That was a reprieve. Clint Presley was a reprieve, and I think Willie Rice is going to be a real reformer, not just trying to stop the bleeding, but to actively do a lot better stuff. Give me the website for the center of Baptist leadership. So people can... Center for BaptistLeadership.org. Not org, okay. Thank you. Yeah. Right. That history is very helpful. So now let's kind of zero down on a couple of resolutions here. It's there. You know, I wasn't there. So I actually don't know all the details, but I did see the resolution that Al Moulin put forward already, he even called resolution. I don't know if he'd call it resolution yet or whatever, about women pastors. Do you call that a resolution? In a men's constitutional amendment. Okay. So that was a constitutional amendment, not a resolution. So Al Moulin proposes constitutional amendment on getting, dealing with women pastors on the rise in the SPC. Maybe kind of what was some of the like politicking leading up to that? Maybe kind of walk us into what actually happened on the floor. Was that for me and for Chase? I think... Go ahead, go ahead and either of you. Well, you should have... Okay. So about five years ago, Mike Law, Baptist pastor in Arlington, Virginia, realized that there were a lot of churches and so they were a Baptist convention with female pastors. And it was an issue. And he started asking questions about it. Just he was just asking questions. He was just noticing things and asking questions about women pastors in the SPC. And he did not like the answers he got from our governing bodies, the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, which governs the SPC when we're not meeting every year for those two days. The credentials committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is the one that says your church is in friendly cooperation with us or not, you're in or you're out. They were stonewalling, spinning, weren't answering it. And then we had the saddleback referral. Rick Warren is out there with female pastors at saddleback. So it's like the elephant in the room, you can't ignore it. It could ignore Mike Law asking questions. You could ignore Rick Warren proudly having the female pastors. And so we had an Anaheim in 2022. There was questions about it. And our credentials committee was asked about it like, what's the deal with Rick Warren and women pastors? And the credentials committee said, well, we don't really actually know if we know what Southern Baptist think they mean by pastor. And so when Mike Law heard that in 2022, he said, we need a constitutional amendment to clarify what exactly we mean and who can be in friendly cooperation. So he offered it and he advocated for it. The grassroots advocacy, he got a vote in 2023. It passed in two years. The machine was like Star Wars, a new hope. He won Empire Strikes Back to Next Year because they don't want it. The machinery doesn't want it. They don't want to draw these hard lines. They don't want to kick out the churches with female pastors. They fought back. It fell just short the next year. They should kept coming up, not going away. The credentials committee would get referrals of churches with women pastors. And then the churches who referred them would get the adjudication back. And when the credentials committee was saying, yeah, we're not kicking them out. These people would go public. They'd be like, hey, I submitted this church. They have five female pastors. The credentials committee told me they're fine. It just keeps coming up. Keeps coming up. Keeps coming up. So somebody in Dallas tried to offer it again. And it fell just short. It keeps coming up. It keeps coming up. And I think Dr. Moller finally said enough is enough. I'm going to step in and lead this, try to bring my gravitas, my wealth of experience and respect that I have in the SPC, pick up where Mike Law left off and get it done. So he essentially offered a very similar version of the same thing. We've been debating now for three plus years, offered it again, and it got 74% of the vote. So it cleared that two thirds threshold. We need to vote on it one more time. But I will say just to sort of tie all this up. An institutional reform fight, this is what you need. You need an elite who champions the cause of the grassroots. Mike Law was the grassroots pastor. He wasn't an elite. And unfortunately, I wish he could have gotten it done. And maybe he could have. But if you want to win, you need the elite who's going to champion the grassroots conservative cause. And that's what we saw happen this year with Moller passing this truth in unity amendment. Why didn't Moller back the law in a public way? Why, while the sudden now, and not that? He did. Moller put out a video for it. Moller's talked about it a lot. He didn't go down to the floor on either one of the debates about it. He did go to the floor to kick out Rick Warren. I mean, look, I haven't had this conversation with him. But if I were just wager a guess in the Southern Baptist Convention, there's a variety of different entities. Six seminaries. You'll know these names. A lot of the top guys. And so all these guys, the entity heads, they're all in like, I think it's called the Great Commission Council or something. It's like Elrond's Council, right? Like they're all in the same group chat. And most of them didn't want it. I think Moller was trying to see if it could get done without him having to sort of step out from the rest of his peers and the SPC and lead on it. And I think he finally realized like, you know what? Even if my other entity heads aren't going to be out in public on this, I'm going to do it. Some others did. I don't want to be a QSR. I'm going on so long here. I don't want to be accused of bad faith. Jason Allen from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary supported in public. Danny Aiken has supported it publicly. But Paul Chitwood at the IMB, Kevin Azale at NAM, ERLC, other seminaries haven't backed it publicly. So Moller really was like stepping out from his peers and the SPC to say, all right, you guys aren't going to do this. I'm going to get it done. So Chase, like, I think it's, I'm now diving into Baptist language and homoclature here. So correct me where I'm going wrong. But like, didn't the Baptist faith and message outside in what 2000? How Moller pushed that? That clarified the women pastor thing back in 2000. What has gone on? Why were churches first not being barred or whatever censored or whatever happens in the SPC who have women pastors and why was this making traction in the SPC, even though supposedly 2000 was supposed to build that problem? Yeah, I mean, this has been a trend in every denomination. First of all, second, the governing principle of these people that are pushing the idea that women can be pastors of churches are very much driven by cultural winds. And so they're just tagging along with all the kind of legal jargon and cultural trends that are happening not just the United States, but in corporations all across the world as it tracks with feminism. So you have to celebrate, promote, and put into places, put women in places of power. It's in it tracks right along with wokeness. I mean, Helen Andrews has written extensively on this how wokeness is just kind of a manifestation of feminism at large. And so as these entity heads or other people saw these winds kind of tracking for corporations and that's where a lot of these entity heads really modeled their leadership after corporate leaders, they're going to try to promote this. I mean, we saw this in our backyard in Boulder County with NAMM, plant in a church that had a female pastor, a husband and wife. And I think we're promised never happened, happened again. It happened. And I wasn't even SPC, but I knew this was wrong. And so I called the eye contact to the local like NAMM rep and he was basically like, there is no problem. You all just need to figure it out. And I was like, this is nonsense. And we saw the same thing happening. You see it in every denomination. You whether it's Tim Keller, kind of soft peddling, egalitarianism or anything, act 29 doing the same thing, trying to promote women. And it's all done. That's what's so funny. And people today are just so attuned to feminism. They just, you know, they hear words that sound harsh and they read it as sin, right? Or strong or clear and they read it as sin. We saw this, and not to, this is just a good example. So like, there's a push right now to have the Southern Baptist annual meeting in Anaheim. And it's probably going to happen, but there was some protest from the floor because this would disenfranchise technically the heart of Southern Baptist life, the Southeast, because it's a long way to travel to California. And it was a good faith argument that was put forward of why we shouldn't go to Anaheim. You know, some like me would say it's a, we shouldn't be investing our money. A Southern Baptist in places that hate God. And I would say that if they try to come to Colorado, do you not put your money here? You know, so I'm not, I'm not a, yeah, anyways. But what the rebuttal to that was all framed under no, that's mean. We see you, California Baptist. We love you. We're so proud of the work. You're a logical argument interpreted as harsh, right? You interpret it as mean. And that's how all these entity heads think. And so you see EGL tyranny is a very popular in American non-denominational life, many non-denominational churches of this way. So they're all they think through is how can we be popular and successful. And then basically that's how their doctrine falls. And that's why they keep doing it. So like what's frustrating to me in this argument about women pastors and everything, every time I hear a defense of it, I'm like, that is so gay. It really is. Like the defense of it and the references, the Bible references that they're using and the logic that you're using, I'm just, you know, it's like you get the logic that, well, you know, the first people to see Jesus were women, you know, kind of, I think Rick Warren specifically referenced that as part of the argument on the floor. Then the other reference is like, well, what about Phoebe? What about, you know, and they reference all these women. And it's nothing like, you know, it's, it's very just kind of taking certain references, not even like Bible verses. And then running like this squishy kind of, I guess, to your point, Chase, like modern logic, not even biblical logic. And then applying it to like, and then kind of emotion response, like, like what now we're trying to limit women's voices in the SPC. Like what does this have to do with anything about limiting women's voices in the SPC? Don't we care about being biblical? And then from there, we can talk about what it means to, you know, not be oppressive to other groups in the church. You know, you know, you know, you know, you understand what I'm saying? Like it's like, it's like just like a really a feminine gay argument that's not grounded in real scripture and how they come to this conclusion. How? Yeah, maybe, maybe you answered my question, Chase, but like, how is that like running so rampant? I think there was like 2000 people who voted to keep women pastors in the SPC out of I think what, 9,000 votes, 10,000 votes? Yeah, I mean, this is a huge problem everywhere and these people, some of them are voting it out of technical voting against out of technicality. They're going to frame themselves as good faith. I just think they're not very intelligent on this matter. You know, we needed to support it. And the truth and truth and unity amendment, there was some debate over like different phrases, different words. They're missing the force for the trees here. I mean, this is, this is the start of a reform process. And the fun thing is I got to go to Denver Seminary, which is openly egalitarian. And so I've heard all their arguments. I know how they think I was, I was born in the dark and seminary. So I know exactly what they're going to bring to the table and none of it holds water. You know, they're trying to go back to scripture. They have no idea even how to read scripture. They're more in 2000 years of church history, which has never allowed this. It's an embarrassment and they should be embarrassed for themselves. And so this is, it's a joke and they need to be educated. William, go ahead. Yeah, no. Look, egalitarianism is spiritual transgenderism in many ways. Right. It's saying that men and women are interchangeable when it comes to the life of the local church, when it comes to the mission of church, it's spiritual transgenderism. egalitarianism is also the fear that some woman somewhere is happy and submissive as a homemaker and does not aspire to leadership in the local church. They are so terrified that women could be happy to flourish in the primary roles that God has given them by His good and gendered design for this world. And another thing, two gave is it really is, it's, you know, so so much of feminism was this idea that like women are oppressed and unfulfilled by being homemakers, by being wives and mothers. The only way that you can be a fulfilled and happy woman in America is if you're a corporate wage slave, you know, to your bosses or receptionists instead of filling a home with fruitful joy. They bring the same logic into the life of the local church that for some way and some reason the only way a woman in the Southern Baptist Convention could truly be fulfilled and valued as if we're making her some sort of like pseudo-deacon in a Southern Baptist Church. It is just so laughable, but that's how these people they view it. They like they it's like somehow you're just counting the woman's ministry. No, the woman's ministry is in the home. The woman's ministry is for children. The woman's ministry is other women in the church and God has reserved by His infinite wisdom the role of leadership in the church and authority in the church to men and not just any men, but only qualified men. It really is this idea that they know better and can be nicer than God and we all know how that story ends and it doesn't end well. Yeah, yeah, no, that's that's really good. William, I got a couple ads I need to get to real quick, but then I want to talk about the immigration. I guess resolution again, you guys know the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the nomenclature for that. And then I want to talk about your Charlie Kirk, um, I guess resolution. I don't know. I don't know. Whatever you proposed. So in age where lies dominate my, my, my telepropters just not, not working today. So in an age where lies dominate the public square, the need for virtue has never been greater in a culture captivated by destruction and death. The world longs for builders and fighters. Those anchored in truth devoted to liberty and committed to fruitfulness. New San Andreas College rises to meet the need preparing leaders who will faithfully shape culture under the Lord, but Jesus Christ, amen. 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So, Southern Baptist loves to talk about immigration and for many years that's been driven fundamentally by George Soros, open borders, immigration policy, laundered through the evangelical immigration table into the ERLC, into the life of Southern Baptist. We've done so much wishy-washy stuff on it in the past, talking about pathways to citizenship and things like that. I think that this immigration resolution was probably prompted again this year by Trump's mass deportation agenda, I wish we would have had one supporting that, but we didn't. So we had one on immigration, human dignity and the rule of law. I have a lot of issues with it. It was still probably one of the best ones we've ever done on immigration. It did not hold out explicitly the idea of Southern Baptist endorsing a pathway to citizenship. And it does explicitly reject amnesty, although if I could have amended this, I would have strengthened the definition of amnesty. It says, amnesty, it says, resolved that we reject amnesty, understood as forgiveness of legal violations without accountability. Okay, that's a problem because almost every single political amnesty that we're familiar with, Reagan, the one that failed the gang of ape bill, the current Dignidad Act, Digniac, it has accountability baked into it. So some good, some bad, better than most years, quite frankly, on the immigration issue. And so basically it was a signal in the right direction. Is that more how you take it? It was Southern Baptist, a certain crew in the Southern Baptist life expressing our bleeding heart for immigrants again. And making sure that people know we don't hate immigrants, even though Trump is deporting them all, but at the end of the day, we have to stand up and defend the rule of law and reject amnesty. So, you know, some good, some bad. Look, I don't hate immigrants, but you know what? I love my American citizens first and foremost over immigrants. You know, where's the resolution condemning the loss of American life, property, jobs, and opportunity because of the flood of mass illegal immigration to America? That's the one I want to see. We're not quite there yet. Yeah. Why did you propose that? Because I was doing other things on bully one man. Why do you have, Chase, have you proposed anything yet at the convention yet? Yeah, I did a motion last year. It was like rolled out on the technicality. This year, I was going to put forward a motion to hold a NAMM, kind of responsible or instruct NAMM to have some reconciliation attempts with a church they did dirty, a particular man, Wilming Grady. What is fun about these conventions gave is you have to go up to a mic, hit buttons, there's lines, you know, and you don't know why some mics get called on. There's 10 mics and I was waiting there for my motion. And finally, you know, you only have a certain amount of time for business. They got to fill it with all this worship and other stuff, you know, at not a church. And so I hit urgent requests. You can hit that button and they finally called on me and I say, can we extend business by five minutes? And then they put it to a vote game in my motion for five more minutes passed by over two thirds. Everybody wanted more business time. And then I hit request a motion and I'd never got called on. So my motion did pass for five more meetings, so it's a good sign. But yeah, no, I did not get to put forward a motion. I think whoever's in leadership should play games no matter what when Chase gets up to the mic. I don't care if it's a friendly leadership or not. I think we should just mess with Chase. It's just coming up. Just like the wears wall though, let's play with Chase. Have a good time. Kind of thing. Extend five more minutes of business and then not give him the follow up. So is that like, is that like, I mean, I don't know, it was that intentional. Like for them to not give you the follow up, I mean, is that how it goes? You know, I don't think that I go. Yeah, yeah, it's just you asked for five more minutes of business and then they go to the next mic. Yeah, that's why it's important for conservatives to show up and go to the mic. That's what's, you know, what's funny is you can just go and do things. You can just go up to the mic and press the button and ask to talk. And you may be ruled out of order. You may say it weird, but ever. And it's super intimidating, by the way, Gabe, you should try it. You should become bad to try it because it's 11,000 people. He had voting privileges when you're that's awesome. The mic, the speakers are so loud. You hear your voice about two seconds after you say words into a microphone. And so you really have to like dial in what you want to say. That's why you see people reading what they're going to say. Just your almolar and your seasoned and he just gets up there and owns the room, which is great. I aspire to such levels of competence like almolar, but yeah, it's pretty fun time. Interesting. Yeah, maybe someday if you guys give me a, a melon vote, I'll come. Great. All right. So last question here. Will you proposed in a game, correct me on the, on the language here, but like some a form of Charlie Kirk Memorial morning, and I's a Christian brother who was murdered because of his faith here in America. Talk to me about that. Why, why propose that? I mean, I never got a memorial for getting arrested in the SBC, you know, for singing songs. I mean, why are we arguing for like individuals to get, get recognized here? Yeah, sure. I mean, some things are different than other things. You know, right? They really, so that's kind of a joke, but it's actually, it's very serious, right? So Charlie Kirk was the highest profile political assassination of an American public figure since the assassination of MLK junior, who also is somebody we have named by name before in a Southern Baptist convention resolution. And Charlie Kirk was not only a, you know, a Christian evangelist and a political activist who's a huge impact on the next generation. But at his memorial service, the gospel was taken to millions. You know, I really think we're kind of living in broad evangelicalism in this, in this sort of, this tension between the Charlie Kirk or Tim Keller way of sort of reaching the next generation. I would argue Charlie Kirk's was more effective and more faithful quite frankly. But we had a resolution. The thing is what probably, I don't know if I would have done this, but it wasn't for the fact that there was a proposed resolution on political violence and speech. And it was okay in some ways. It was squishy in other ways. But it was talking about condemning assassinations and condemning, you know, assassination attempts. You know, and so I thought we should name Charlie Kirk here. We should honor Charlie Kirk here. And it's kind of odd that we're not. I thought it was odd that we're not doing it. And so I tried to amend the resolution to include a specific reference to Charlie Kirk. Unfortunately, I was not received as a friendly amendment from the Resolutions Committee who did not want to put anyone's name in it. So I got to present my amendment. I got to speak to it. The Resolutions Committee disagreed with doing it from the platform. And then this was a funny thing. I had people like Chase and others lined up to speak in favor of it. And all those speakers just kind of got wiped out and they didn't get a chance to go. But I will say this game, I'm glad I did it because here's why. If I hadn't done it, the Southern Baptist Convention, America's largest Protestant denomination would not have said Charlie Kirk's name publicly at our first meeting since his assassination. And if I hadn't stood up there and talked about him and prompted that discussion, it would have gone unremarked. And I think that would have been deeply lamentable. So I'm glad I did it and I'm glad we had the conversation. Was it a, did it get overwhelmingly voted down? What happened? Yeah. Yeah. So it was Wednesday afternoon, there weren't a lot of people in the room to begin with. The people who sort of presented against it from the stage, I think really kind of made a compelling case about not naming people. Yeah, I think it lost pretty big, quite. I don't think it was very close. Yeah. So I'm pretty disappointed in that. Although I wonder if the people who had, we're at the mics willing to speak in favor of it, that weren't me who didn't get the opportunity they should have gotten to do so. If that would have helped move the room more my way. But still, you know, at the end of the day, I'm glad we did it. I think the conversation itself honored Charlie and put him in the record at the Southern Baptist Convention. I want to in here and Chase, I'll start with you, but I love both your thoughts on this. You talk about the room, persuading the room, getting the votes, that kind of thing. It's a little odd to me that the SBC Convention for let's say, I don't know, three years, four years in a row, wouldn't pass the law amendment, wouldn't pass the law amendment is getting voted down. I don't know, 60, 40, 55, 45, whatever it was. And then all of a sudden, Al Moller steps up, maybe get 75% of the room to vote for it. And that's a big theological issue. How does the Southern Baptist world, I wouldn't call it fickle or whatever, but it seems to me that there's a little bit of a problem in kind of the actions that people take based off the speakers there. And you know, like the woman pastor thing to me is like so simply biblical. It's like, why are you guys even debating that? You passed it actually in 2000, why are we redebating it now kind of thing. But then you also have things like the Charlie Kirk amendment that you brought to it, like it doesn't pass, but then women pastor thing passed by 75%. You know, it's like, what's that dynamic? Yeah, that's going on. Go ahead, Chase. Yeah, I mean, like by the end of day, business day, day two of the convention, a lot of the messengers are tired. You'll see them like, I think it had less to do with the lack of popular support for the Charlie Kirk addition to this resolution than it had to do with like a lot of Baptist are tired of the business. And that's not to the credit necessarily that that's a negative. They should persevere and you know, get a red bull or something. I don't know what they need, but persevere, pay attention and get involved. But they're just like, can we move on with business faster? Yes, vote. You know, that's that's some of the attitude. But with any kind of organization, any human institution, there's going to be people with voices that people are going to listen to more than other some times. So like in the series, for example, Doug Wilson is going to pipe up on something. People are going to pay a bit more attention to that than if some no name minister from nowhere, will, you know, they're not going to listen as much. Now, whether you like that or not, that's that's the topic you're asking. That's it's just the nature of human institutions. And so what we need is a lot of people in the Southern Baptist Convention that are aligned that have biblical convictions to use their voice, use their vote, get involved, go forward, sign up and join forces with the Center for Baptist Leadership and other other organizations so that their institutional knowledge, their their influence can be dispensed for for righteous cause. And so in any institution, you're going to have this even in our own churches. We know, you know, some guys are going to carry themselves around and they have authority. And if they pipe up during one of our church business meetings, people are going to pay a bit more attention than the college student who just joined last year. That's not to discredit the college student and the truth he stands for. That's just kind of how things go sometimes. William. Last last. Yeah. Yeah. So just to defend Baptist here a little bit in this audience. So the first time the law then it came to a vote, it did pass with over two thirds. The second time on ratification, it got like 62% in favor. It fell 4% short. So it was like, it was still majority like 62% voted for it, but it did not hit 66. Then the year was offered fresh again on that first vote again, like 62 63%. This is actually why Mueller did it because he's like it got over two thirds. It got 62. It got 63. There's a large majority that wants to do this. And there is a sizable minority that keeps blocking it. I'm going to throw my weight behind it and help try to get this across the finish line. So we have been clear. And one of the reasons why there, some people wouldn't want it is because it is in our statement of faith. And they think we just need bureaucratic fixes. I disagree. So it's not that Baptist just want women pastors, but egalitarianism is an issue. But finally, I would just say one of the, here's what's going on fundamentally gave. And I'll close with this. Only about one out of every 10, Southern Baptist Church in America sends messenger to our annual meeting. One out of 10. We are a denomination without representation. And the ones that do send, they only send like two when they could send six or eight. If we want more conservative grassroots Baptist steering our convention, we need more people to show up. And then these votes, they won't even be close. They will be overwhelming and they will lead us to conservative fidelity for the rest of this century in our generation. That's really sweet. Hopefully William. Hey guys, Chase, thank you for coming on. Make sure you guys pick up this newly released book offensive Christianity. And William, thank you for coming on. Make sure you guys support center of Baptist for Baptist leadership and everything. Go to center for Baptist leadership org. Thank you, brothers for coming on. Absolutely. Thank you. Make sure you guys share the show, especially with your Baptist leaders. And then we will see you guys next week on cross-politics 101 with a water boy. Thank you.