The outcomes of the 2026 Annual Meeting deserve to be celebrated and enjoyed by all reform and renewal-minded conservatives in the Southern Baptist Convention. Willy Rice is our new president. Mohler’s Truth & Unity Amendment, which would ban churches from the SBC that have women pastors in either title or function, passed the first of two votes it needs to be adopted.

For the first time in many years, conservatives were able to leave the annual meeting enjoying wins and rejoicing at positive signs of change, by God’s grace, instead of licking our wounds and hoping that next year will finally be “our year.”

Nothing I am about to say next is meant to take away from any of the positives. And yet, it needs to be said. In fact, I would argue that if we can change the underlying, problematic “operational framework” of the SBC I critique here, we will be able to achieve even more positive changes in the SBC in the years ahead.

Local Church Pastor Problem Solvers Not Welcome

The SBC has a perverse incentive structure and has a strange way of treating faithful pastors. What do I mean?

It punishes reform when reform comes from the churches, and it praises reform when reform is managed by the institutional class. The faithful but unknown pastor has very little to gain from pursuing reform, other than a clear conscience and the blessing of God. 

The institutional class, on the other hand, often seems to have everything to lose when reform threatens relationships, budgets, or reputations.

Mike Law is the obvious example.

Pastor Law, a pastor in Northern Virginia, did what Southern Baptists claim messengers have every right to do. He brought a constitutional amendment in 2023 to clarify that churches in friendly cooperation with the SBC should affirm, appoint, or employ only qualified men as pastors of any kind.

That was not radical. It was, in fact, in response to the Credentials Committee’s request for greater constitutional clarity from the convention. It was a simple effort to make our constitutional standards match our confessional standards.

For this, he was treated by many as a nuisance. Some acted as though he had done something wrong. He was accused of hurting cooperation. He was said to be threatening local church autonomy. He was blamed for distracting from the mission. He was caricatured as divisive. The tone from many was not, “Thank you, brother, for using Baptist polity to seek clarity.” It was “How dare you point out this obvious issue?” Even among friends, it was closer to, “Who do you think you are?”

But what Pastor Law did is exactly how Baptist convention polity is supposed to work.

A pastor from a cooperating church should be able to bring a motion or amendment to the Convention without being treated as an insurgent. A messenger asking the SBC to honor its own confession is not attacking the Convention, but is trying to preserve its integrity. He does not have a denominational office to protect or a platform to advance. He has, at most, the blessing of God and a clean conscience to gain.

Then, after Pastor Law took the hits, others with greater institutional standing began occupying similar ground. Suddenly, the position was not so dangerous or divisive. The same basic concern that made a local pastor controversial made denominational leaders look like statesmen.

To be clear, my point in drawing attention to the broken and perverse incentive structure in SBC, which penalizes courageous local church pastors and seems to only reward institutional favorites, is not a slight against Dr. Albert Mohler. Dr. Mohler is a Baptist statesman who has stood clearly on the issue of the pastorate. I thank God for that kind of institutional leadership. 

The criticism is not directed at men who use their offices to stand with faithful pastors. We need more such men. 

The criticism is aimed at a culture that often refuses to listen until someone with institutional cachet says the thing ordinary pastors have been saying all along.

The Billy Baptists in the pew recognized the righteousness of Mike Law’s cause before many of the company men did. Now that greater institutional powers are at play, the real test will be whether those same company men will stand athwart the effort on the second vote, or whether they will fall in line now that it has become, in effect, the company line.

Rhett Burns provides another example.

Pastor Burns has argued for greater financial transparency in the SBC. He has asked for the kind of reporting that would help ordinary Southern Baptists understand how Cooperative Program dollars are being used. The effort is a basic matter of stewardship and yet is received by some as an attack on our entities and trustee system.

Churches give the money. Churches send the messengers. Churches own the Convention. The entities serve the churches, not the other way around. So why is it treated as dangerous when a pastor asks for more transparency?

Pastor Burns is not, as was erroneously implied at the 2026 meeting, asking for entities to file Form 990 with the IRS. He is asking for information to be made available to Southern Baptist churches, information that many nonprofit organizations already provide as a matter of public accountability. Pastors stand in pulpits and urge their people to support missions through the Cooperative Program.

Those same pastors should not be scolded or gaslit when they ask denominational institutions to show, in meaningful detail, how those funds are being spent.

Putting Intitutional Loyalty Over Institutional Accountability is a Fast Track to Decline

Again, the incentive structure is upside down.

If an entity leader announces a new transparency initiative, it is celebrated as an act of leadership. If a pastor asks for transparency before the entity class is ready to provide it, he is treated as a nuisance.

Why?

Because the SBC too often rewards institutional loyalty more than institutional accountability. The incentive is high for institutional loyalists to maintain the status quo rather than do the hard work of institutional reform. Powerful friendships are at stake. Financial arrangements are at stake. Access is at stake. Influence is at stake.

We, as a Convention, have learned to baptize delay as prudence. We call ambiguity cooperation. We call pastor-led reform divisive. We call ordinary questions “attacks.” We tell people to trust the process, even when the process seems designed to exhaust the very people asking the questions.

The SBC is not governed by bishops. It is not a top-down denomination. It is a convention of cooperating churches. The churches are not merely the funding mechanism for denominational entities. The churches and their messengers are the Convention.

That means the messengers are not guests at a denominational shareholder meeting, there by permission of the platform. They are there because the churches sent them to do the business of the Convention. When messengers speak, make motions, propose amendments, ask questions, and demand accountability, they are exercising Baptist polity.

If reform comes from a pastor without institutional protection, his motives are questioned. But if reform comes from the entity class, noble motives are assumed.

If a local pastor names a problem early, he is alarmist, but if a denominational leader names it later, he is courageous.

If a messenger asks for doctrinal consistency, he is hurting the mission. But if an entity head asks for the same fruit after the soil has been tilled, he is regarded as a wise farmer.

This is how institutions protect themselves. It is also how institutional loyalists maintain favor with friends who control finances, platforms, appointments, and access. They force pastors and churches to absorb the reputational damage of raising an issue before it is fashionable. Then, when the issue becomes unavoidable, the institutional class gets the credit for solving the problem it resisted addressing in the first place.

It’s also a one way ticket to mediocrity, compromise, and decline.

If our leaders make early reform efforts costly and delayed reform respectable, the men in the SBC who have the discernment to see problems that should be solved, or docrtinal and management holes in the SBC ship that should be plugged, will simply stop speaking up. You can only be punished for your good deeds for so long before you quit trying to help those who don’t want your help.

Southern Baptists need to be honest about the trust problem in the SBC. We have a trust problem because we have an accountability problem. We have an accountability problem because our institutions have too often been allowed to act as though accountability is optional. Accountability is optional because incentives are skewed. And we have allowed that to happen, in part, because we have treated pastors who ask hard questions as though they are the problem.

They are not the problem.

The problem is a culture that says the Convention belongs to the churches, but then acts offended when the churches behave like owners. The problem is a culture that praises transparency in theory but resists it in practice. The problem is a culture that affirms confessional fidelity in speeches, but treats attempts to practice it as disruptive. The problem is a culture that tells pastors to lead courageously in their churches but then tells them to sit down and be quiet when they bring that same courage to the Annual Meeting.

This must change for the sake of the Convention. 

Regaining Trust by Rewarding the Grassroots Reformers

If the SBC wants to regain trust, it should stop punishing the men who are trying to restore trust. Pastors like Mike Law and Rhett Burns should not have to be proven right by later institutional adoption before Southern Baptists recognize their service to the Convention. They should be thanked for doing what Baptist pastors are supposed to do: speak plainly and seek faithfulness in doctrine and stewardship according to Baptist polity.

Mike Law and Rhett Burns should be among the most applauded men in the Southern Baptist Convention.

We need more pastors willing to say our confession should govern our cooperation. We need more pastors willing to say transparency builds trust. We need more pastors willing to stand at a microphone and ask questions the platform would rather avoid. We need more churches that understand their role in the Convention and refuse to outsource their responsibility to professional denominational managers.

And we need denominational leaders humble enough to receive correction from pastors and messengers without treating it as a personal attack.

Again, I am thankful for men like Dr. Albert Mohler, who stands steadfastly with godly Baptist pastors on the issue of the pastorate. I am thankful for men like President Willy Rice, who has the courage to admit when he is wrong and the conviction to lead in a more faithful direction. We need more institutional leaders who will do the same. But we also need to stop waiting for institutional leaders before we honor the pastors who were right first.

The SBC does not belong to the Executive Committee. It does not belong to the seminaries. It does not belong to the mission boards. It does not belong to the platform, the parliamentarians, the committees, the consultants, or the communications teams.

It belongs to Southern Baptist churches.

And if it belongs to the churches, then pastors and messengers must be free to pursue reform without being maligned for doing so – or opposed by the denominational mafia. 

Conclusion: Change the Inventives, Change the Outcomes, Build a Better SBC

The SBC’s incentive structures need to change. One way to change incentive structures is to report on the number of messengers at a Convention who are also denominational employees. But, ultimately, incentives change only when ordinary pastors are treated as heroes for doing ordinary Baptist work. As President Rice said in a convention sermon a few years ago, what matters is what happens “out there” in the churches of the Convention. 

Men like Mike Law and Rhett Burns are heroes of the Convention because they are ordinary, faithful pastors doing the extraordinary work of local church ministry.

We need to cultivate pastors and institutional leaders who understand that faithfulness may cause conflict, but that faithful conflict is not the enemy of cooperation. The enemy of cooperation is a perverse Convention culture that punishes pastors for pursuing a more faithful Southern Baptist Convention.