Three churches appealed to the convention to appeal the EC action that found them not in friendly cooperation with the SBC.
1. Fern Creek church has a woman pastor. She had 3 minutes to speak and was delightful. She is conservative, a gospel-preaching, right-wing pastor. She believes what we believe except for the idea that women should not be pastors.
You couldn’t help but like her.
The EC assigned Al Mohler to respond and he brought nuclear weapons theologically. It wasn’t much of a battle.
She was funny, sweet, a truly nice woman, but I am guessing her appeal fails 85 to 15 percent or so. It was a mismatch.
2. Freedom Church (is that the right name?) from Florida appealed their dismissal based on having an inadequate response to sexual abuse. Their spokesman gave a pretty well reasoned appeal.
Then Dean Inserra got up and explained the process. He told the messengers exactly what happened. He seemed to have the receipts. Dean laid out a devastating case.
I believe this appeal will also fail, but not as decisively as the first. There’s a lot of anti-ARITF and Caring Well feeling and some might ignore the facts and vote against the EC just out of anger.
It may go 60-40 or so.
3. The last one was the most anticipated. Two giants square off – Rick Warren vs. Al Mohler. Rick Warren appealed to the Baptist tradition of agreeing to disagree and Mohler basically repeated his speech from his first response.
Warren made some tactical errors. He described his view as egalitarian. Deal-breaker. He should have argued, as Andy Wood did, that they are looser complementarian.
I think the EC might win this one 70-30.
I think the EC will be upheld in all of these appeals. The EC has a home field advantage that is hard to overcome.
