How Much Longer Will SBC Entity Heads Look the Other Way While One of Their Own Publicly Undermines Our Baptist Doctrine?
Yet again, there is another opportunity for SBC leaders to strengthen trust in our cooperation if they will seize it. Unfortunately, that opportunity is a result of yet another incident that raises questions about our leadership’s commitment to doctrinal integrity.
In a recently circulated video, Lifeway President Ben Mandrell advocates a form of functional egalitarianism. Here are just a few quotes from Mandrell on the “Lifeway women” podcast:
“High-capacity women need to be in the room where it happens. They need to be helping making the decisions.”
“Churches that are doing this really well are getting creative. They’re saying let’s put an advisory council together, like men and women that just meet regularly to talk about the vision and strategy of the church. Let’s get away from nomenclature.”
Doug Ponder has already dissected Mandrell’s approach in a thorough thread on X and in an article for the Center for Baptist Leadership, so I won’t rehash his arguments.
Suffice it to say that Mandrell’s proposal effectively sidesteps complementarian principles long held by the SBC. It’s a subversive attempt to repackage egalitarianism under alternate labels.
This development comes at a time when many in the SBC are having conversations about trust, transparency, and cooperation. For cooperation to work, we need our leaders to uphold the convictions we share. When Mandrell, an SBC entity head, suggests circumventing our doctrinal commitments in practice—even as he claims to honor them in theory—it undermines that trust.
We’ve seen similar patterns elsewhere. Consider the controversy surrounding ERLC President Brent Leatherwood, who was nearly removed last year. Leatherwood continually violates the trust of the people of the SBC, and yet other leaders remain silent. There was obviously a reason for his near removal, and yet the issue seems to be swept under the rug and not dealt with.
This is yet another opportunity for SBC leadership to speak up against this subversion of our doctrine. To break the “Eleventh Commandment.” Or they can remain silent. The choice is theirs. Will they choose rightly?
Why This Matters
Many wish that we wouldn’t have these public disputes and confrontations. But we’re not going to have unity and “peace” until we broadly agree on the boundaries of our cooperation.
We need to answer this question collectively: Is what Mandrell argues for in this video in or out?
In an organization, when someone breaks trust or misrepresents the agreed-upon values, there has to be some form of reckoning. There must be real dialogue, honest feedback, and, in some cases, consequences that reflect the seriousness of the issue.
The accountability structures in the SBC can appear complicated. After all, each local church is autonomous. Still, our entities—the ERLC, Lifeway, our seminaries, NAMB, and the IMB—are tied together through the cooperative funding that thousands of churches faithfully provide. If these entities drift from the convictions of those local congregations, there needs to be a corrective mechanism. Otherwise, the entire premise of cooperation and shared mission falls apart.
Right now, we have an entity head publicly suggesting that churches can simply circumvent our doctrinal boundaries by changing job titles and forming “advisory councils.”
If that doesn’t draw a clear response from top SBC leadership, then we might as well remove all those statements about complementarianism from our governing documents.
That might sound harsh, but it’s the truth. We can’t just look away and pretend everything’s fine. If SBC leaders don’t respond, it sends the message that our confessional stance can be molded at will, depending on personal preference or cultural trends.
A Necessary Response
What should happen now? SBC leadership must decisively address Mandrell’s statements.
Simply restating our commitment to complementarianism isn’t enough. Those commitments need to be backed up by a willingness to confront those who violate them, especially when they hold positions of influence in our entities.
If there is no accountability, we’re effectively endorsing the erosion of a doctrine we claim to support.
It’s not about manufacturing a crisis; it’s about consistency and conviction. If we truly believe what we say we believe, we should act accordingly. We face a choice: Either protect our doctrinal commitments by holding leaders responsible or accept the slow creep of doctrinal drift that will inevitably undermine unity and trust.
I must admit that I often wonder if SBC leaders read and use a Bible with a few missing passages. For example, do none of our SBC entity heads have Galatians 2:11-14 in their copy of the Holy Scriptures?
Because in it, we find that the Apostle Paul had no problem with publicly confronting another church leader for his doctrinal and practical errors:
“But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, ‘If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?'”
Southern Baptist pastors and entity heads need to grow a spine and publicly confront their peers when they’re leading the flock astray, just like Paul did with Peter here.
If you’re too scared to call out hypocrisy and false teachings in your own ranks, then you’re part of the problem, not the solution.
Peter was out of line for bending to peer pressure and pulling away from the Gentiles, and Paul didn’t sit back and write a polite letter; he confronted him face-to-face, publicly, because the integrity of the Gospel was on the line. If modern SBC leaders can’t stand up and confront those who distort the truth for popularity or comfort, they’re betraying the very message they’re supposed to uphold. It’s time to stop this cowardly, backroom whispering and start calling out the wolves among the sheep.
And if you won’t, as they say, your silence speaks volumes.
The SBC continually has opportunities to correct course and make it clear that we will not tolerate drift from our shared doctrinal commitments, which are the fundamental basis of our cooperation.
Will our leaders finally seize one of these opportunities and speak up?
Will we act on our stated convictions, or will we permit subversive practices to slide by unchallenged?
Whether it’s Ben Mandrell’s functional egalitarianism or Brent Leatherwood’s repeated oversteps in his liberal lobbying, the principle is the same: We must hold our leaders to the standards they pledged to uphold.
If we fail, we compromise both our unity and our witness in the world.
