The New Woke President from Hipsterville, NC

I’ve been following the recent events in the SBC since Paige Patterson’s ouster (for his efforts to be faithful to Scripture’s instruction). Yesterday ended the SBC’s annual convention. There they elected a new President, JD Greear from a church group in North Carolina called “The Summit”. If you’ve heard of that church before, it may be because they’re a super-hip church in super-hip Raleigh-Durham.

Or it may be because you read this post and looked at this spreadsheet and noticed that 80 of the 331 (24%) NC signatures were from one of Greear’s churches.

Name	Church	City	State
Julie Rougeux	Summit Church	Apex	NC
Caroline Barnhill	The Summit Church	Apex	NC
Stephanie Creasman	The Summit Church	Apex	NC
Elizabeth Carter	Summit Church	Cary	NC
Glynis Moinet	Sumitt	Durham	NC
Michelle Key	Summit	Durham	NC
Yolanda Reed	Summit	Durham	NC
Elizabeth Ashford	Summit Church	Durham	NC
Bryce Batts	Summit Church	Durham	NC
Kellan Dickens	Summit Church	Durham	NC
Lauren Ellis	Summit Church	Durham	NC
Jennifer Falco	Summit church	Durham	NC
Eva Leung	Summit church	Durham	NC
Samantha Linton	Summit church	Durham	NC
Melissa Mosby	Summit Church	Durham	NC
Jessica Thommarson	Summit Church	Durham	NC
Stephanie Oyler	The Summit	Durham	NC
Amber Pearson	The Summit	Durham	NC
Lori AdamsBrown	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Nan Beaty	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Sharon Beavers	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Katie Berger	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Jillian Boland	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Daniel Bonar	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Emily Bonar	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Ashley Dickens	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Jonathan Dickerson	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Allison Dolbeer	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Ginger Gooch	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Rebecca Hankins	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Audra Hodges	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Scott Hodges	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Jordan Kohman	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Parker McGoldrick	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Reema Nasrallah	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Matt Oettinger	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Tiffany Oettinger	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Landon Pauley	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Kat Robertson	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Rebecca Shrader	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Alexis Sponaugle	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Haley Warren	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Kate Williams	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Amanda Winter	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Justin Winter	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Aaron Coalson	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Stefanie Golden	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Christina Kelly	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Cindy Peterson	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Sarah Weddle	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Taylor Weddle	The Summit Church	Durham	NC
Danielle Wilson	Summit	Raleigh	NC
Jason Adams-Brown	Summit Church	Raleigh	NC
Amanda Brown	Summit Church	Raleigh	NC
Laura Brown	Summit Church	Raleigh	NC
Debbie Derbyshire	Summit Church	Raleigh	NC
Yolanda Finney	Summit Church	Raleigh	NC
Kate Hughes	Summit Church	Raleigh	NC
Sarah Davidson	The Summit	Raleigh	NC
Patti Taylor	The Summit	Raleigh	NC
Becca DeLucia	The Summit Church	Raleigh	NC
Kelsey Hamilton	The Summit Church	Raleigh	NC
Caitlin Hooks	The Summit Church	Raleigh	NC
Morgan Jeffreys	The Summit Church	Raleigh	NC
Sarah Krivsky	The Summit Church	Raleigh	NC
Alex Lewis	The Summit Church	Raleigh	NC
Jessica Locklear	The Summit Church	Raleigh	NC
Zack Locklear	The Summit Church	Raleigh	NC
Scott McWhirter	The Summit Church	Raleigh	NC
Mackenzie Morris	The Summit Church	RALEIGH	NC
Doug Porter	The Summit Church	Raleigh	NC
Kristen Porter	The Summit Church	Raleigh	NC
Makayla Riggs	The Summit Church	Raleigh	NC
Nicole Shields	The Summit Church	Raleigh	NC
Amanda Springer	The Summit Church	Raleigh	NC
Katelyn Watkins	The Summit Church	Raleigh	NC
Jeremy Robertson	The Summit Church	Raleigh Durham	NC
Gardner Pippin	The Summit Church	RDU	NC
Hillary Pippin	The Summit Church	RDU	NC
Ray Gardestig	The Summit		NC

The next largest batch of signatures from one church organization in NC is from Imago Dei, with 30.[1] Between these groups, that’s almost exactly 1/3rd (110/331) of all the NC signatures.

Why did JD Greear stand for nomination? He writes:

1. Keep the gospel above all as the foundation of our unity and the focus of our mission
2. Continue growing in cultural and racial diversity
3. Turn up the temperature in our churches with more intentional, personal evangelism
4. Plant and revitalize hundreds of churches
5. Mobilize college students and recent graduates into the mission, and
6. Engage the next generation in cooperative mission.

The correct way to read this list is to recognize that the first point is The Given. It’s the thing you must say to unite or avoid alienating your constituents right off the bat, as he says. These are Southern Baptists Protestants so he leads with “the gospel above all”.[2] If you were in consideration for janitor at Second Baptist Church Nowhere, your application should start with, “The foundation of clean toilets is The Gospel above all.”

It’s the second point which reveals a candidates actual priority and passion, and which will be forwarded under the cover of The Given: “Continue growing in cultural and racial diversity”. This is where Paige Patterson posed a problem as president; not because he had been racist, but because his anti-racism had got tangled up with sexual predation when–way back in the benighted late 80s and early 90s–he defended Darrell Gilyard, a black pastor who had committed several acts of adultery and later was convicted of molesting teenage girls from one of his several churches.

For the moment I count on the reader’s Google-Fu to combat his possible ignorance on that debacle, but from what I have read it seems that Patterson initially took the radical stance that “no charge should be admitted against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses”; not even charges admitted by a woman! The scoundrel!

I have more to say about Patterson and Gilyard in a future post, but for now I’ll just close by passing on the understanding that Patterson’s early defense of his former student Gilyard is some seriously convoluted history from which to virtue signal about the gospel of multiculturalism, and that’s what the new SBC leadership desperately wants to do.

[1] Hilarious and illuminating text from Imago Dei’s bulletin: “Please note that our Lord’s Supper elements are all gluten-free.”

[2] I note that he does not capitalize Gospel. Which gospel does Greear have in mind? I think he wants us to assume that he means The Gospel of Jesus Christ, and it fits the Southern Baptist tradition so we’ll go with that for now.