A Message to Dr. Jeff Iorg
If you read this, Dr. Jeff Iorg, I’d like to say, I do not envy you at all. It is a challenging job. And as a brother, I am praying for you. I found your comments this week to be both tone-deaf and misplaced. It has caused great concern across at least some, if not many, of our SBC churches. You hold a position of extreme influence. Your words carry significant weight. But know that I am praying for you, and I hope the remainder of this letter will encourage you as you serve a multitude of autonomous churches.
Why I Love The Southern Baptist Convention
Let me be clear upfront. I love being a Southern Baptist! I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and had the pleasure of sitting under the guidance of both Dr. Adrian Rogers and Dr. Steve Gaines at Bellevue Baptist Church. It was through my spiritual growth at Bellevue that I fell in love with studying God’s Word. Developed a passion for missions and felt the Lord’s leading hand into full-time vocational ministry.
In many ways, Bellevue has been a staple of Conservative Christianity, at least in my life. A staple for faithfulness to Scripture and giving God glory through Loving God, Loving People, Sharing Jesus, and Making Disciples. Yet, the one thing that never stuck from growing up there was the significance of the Cooperative Program. I’m not sure, as a member, if it was ever really discussed. I am not saying that it wasn’t, simply that I don’t remember it. I recall talking about the special missions giving, but that’s about it.
For readers who are unaware of what the Cooperative Program (CP) giving is, essentially, it is an umbrella term for giving to the Executive Committee, the Six Southern Baptist Seminaries, the International Mission Board, the North American Mission Board, and the ERLC. You provide a lump sum to the CP, and then those funds are allocated out to the various ministry arms of the SBC. Those gifts help fund the salaries of all employees across the multiple ministry arms and support the organization’s missional efforts. One of the reasons churches give is that we are better together. We can reach the world with the Gospel because of those funds, helping to empower our reach further than we could as individual churches.
Yet, it is not missions alone that make me love our Convention of churches. It is our statement of Faith. I love the Baptist Faith and Message 2000. It helps communicate what our churches agree upon for the purpose of partnering together. It is a mighty tool that provides clarity to theological conviction while allowing for some disagreement on tertiary issues, while agreeing on primary and secondary issues. As a Christian and someone born in the last year of the 1980s, this is the SBC I’ve always known. There was a season when Liberalism had taken root in the SBC. Some men were willing to stand up and disagree, aiming to win back the SBC to faithful doctrine. This is known as the Conservative Resurgence. It helped establish the CP as a missional force and is an excellent tool for Southern Baptists. However, this week, comments made by the President of our Executive Committee, Dr. Jeff Iorg, have caused concern among many pastors.
I want to devote the remainder of this letter to addressing this issue.
Heartfelt Concern
Leading in any role within the SBC is incredibly challenging. Due to our structure, which involves autonomous churches partnering together for mission work, we have long had disagreements and discussions among our churches. Putting together over 40,000 churches with various backgrounds, contexts, and ideas is a recipe for dispute. If you don’t see how that could be a recipe for disagreements, think about all the different opinions on the color of carpet, pews, or chairs, music taste, and the list goes on within one church; now compound that by 40,000. It is a diverse pool of opinions. Dr. Iorg and the rest of the presidents and leaders serving are expected to serve well that diverse pool of opinions and, to some extent, convictions. This is why we have the Baptist Faith and Message 2000; it is why we vote on various motions every year; it is why we elect officers to help bridge the gap. It all serves to help inform the leaders on how to lead the SBC well. For the leaders, it is often a thankless job.
This week, Dr. Iorg had some stern words towards churches that have been giving to the CP and withholding funds from specific organizations within the SBC CP dollar allocation. His frustration and irritation with the practice are apparent. Yet, I cannot help but wonder if Dr. Iorg has overlooked the responsibility of individual churches to manage the gifts their members bring to the Lord’s church.
In discussing Cooperative Program giving, Dr. Iorg expresses frustration over the allocation of CP dollars. This refers to the practice of withholding funds from specific entities. The practice seems to have gained traction in recent years, with leadership and partnership issues at the ERLC under both Russell Moore and Brent Leatherwood, for example.
I understand the frustration Dr. Iorg expresses; it is a time-consuming process. Yet, it seems that Dr. Iorg hasn’t taken the time to stop and understand that the churches that have been reallocating funds away from those entities have a theological and convictional problem supporting the efforts of those entities. From his statement this week, it appears that he has determined that these churches have bowed to expressive individualism as the reason they are giving to the CP with dedicated funds to certain entities and not others.
Dr. Iorg explains that expressive individualism is seen prevalently in our society and is observed in “obsessive sharing on social media to convincing children that they can choose their own gender.”
You can listen to his statement here: https://x.com/Protestia/status/1970331906139918368.
Later in the video, he states that expressive individualism is “troubling because it’s theologically and philosophically antithetical to cooperation, which is the theological and philosophical foundation of our combined efforts.” In other words, his message appears to be that if you disagree with what is happening in an SBC entity, your theological conviction doesn’t matter. Your spiritual convictions must bend to the greater good of cooperating, and once you give, you are no longer allowed to be concerned about what those funds are used for.
Dr. Iorg also states that, “Cooperating means working willingly with people who do not agree with you on everything.” He is absolutely correct. 40,000+ churches will not agree on everything. People within the church, even those in a church of 50 people, don’t always agree on everything. Families don’t agree on everything. This is not some new revolutionary thought. Churches don’t expect other churches to agree on everything, but they do expect them to agree on core doctrinal truths and core convictions.
Dr. Iorg, whether meaning to or not, further alienates those who have chosen not to give to specific organizations, suggesting that those who have done so are attempting to “leverage” their gifts to get their own preferences. Doubling down, he states that Cooperations means to “surrender your control to fellow Baptists, who you elect.” Dr. Iorg then states that Southern Baptists need to recommit to the “messiness of cooperation. Particularly, as we become more geographically, racially, economically, and politically diverse.” It seems to me that Dr. Iorg is advocating for an even broader umbrella of theological diversity, which could pave the way for a more moderate theological foundation within the SBC in the future. In the world we live in, I’d argue that there is a need for more clarity of doctrinal faithfulness for cooperation, not less.
Our partnership in the SBC hinges on agreement on primary and secondary doctrinal convictions, which the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 speaks to. Suppose we lose our doctrinal compass and become a compass of purely cooperation. In that case, there would be no basis for the global mission effort of the Southern Baptist Convention, and this grand experiment of the SBC would come to an end. Of course, the Gospel will prevail with or without us. That is the beauty of the work of the Cross!
I also wonder if Dr. Iorg has forgotten who we are as Southern Baptists? After all, we are Protestants. In other words, we dissent with anything that goes against the Scriptural convictions we hold dear. Those who are withholding funds are protesting, dissenting with the organization’s actions. It is their Martin Luther nail and paper on a door.
There is also the reality that churches are autonomous. Because we are autonomous, churches reserve the right to steward the gifts God has given them. I don’t believe it is expressive individualism driving these churches to withhold funding; instead, I think it is a matter of practicing faithful stewardship of the gifts God has given them to steward.
Look, let me be clear here, as of this writing, our church does not allocate funds to certain entities through our CP giving. We allocate 10% of our overall budget to the CP, to be distributed as deemed necessary. We also give an additional 3.5% to our local association. I share this to say. We are not one of those churches.
I still found Dr. Iorg’s comments to be disparaging of other churches that have chosen to steward their funds as they believe they are led to do for God’s glory. It is unacceptable, prideful, and screams of arrogance. This is not the way. Ultimately, it appears that our SBC has lost sight of the importance of diligently protecting faithfulness, and as a result, has lost the trust of some of its members.
Final Thoughts
Nothing that Dr. Iorg said will help convince those churches that are already withholding their CP giving or reallocating funds away from specific organizations within the CP to change the way they are giving. But what it does do is invite other SBC churches to do the same. It might even prompt more churches to leave the SBC.
As for me, I still believe the SBC is one of the most effective ways to reach the world with the Gospel. However, we have some serious issues within our SBC that require God working in our individual lives and corporately. We all need God’s grace, especially me. Let’s pray for each other, for the leaders in our SBC, and for our sister churches. Let’s pray for God to bring a heart of repentance and an awakening to us first, so that we can go and be the church on mission that God has commanded us to be.
In Christ,
Ben Hill—Lead Pastor, First Baptist Church Georgetown
