Dissent at one Southern Baptist Megachurch leads to Stalinist Purge.
Church discipline is typically a rare and somber occasion. For most of church history in general and Southern Baptist church history in particular, church discipline was avoided as much as possible. Every opportunity at reconciliation is tried. Only with regret does one begin the slow, judicial process of church discipline. And it is must never be carried out with retribution in mind, but always with the hope of restoration.
That’s not what happened at First Baptist Church of Naples, Florida.
Church discipline for dissenting members was greeted with wild applause.
In a video posted by the church the Executive Pastor John D. Edie and the chairman of the Pastoral Search Committee Neill Dorrill spoke about the church’s failure to ratify a selection for to replace the retired senior pastor. The search committee revealed it refuses to accept the vote, and just like Democrats following the election of Donald Trump, will seek to overturn the election. (Read more about the FBC Naples Crisis.)
Then, church discipline was announced.
Wild cheers. Disgusting.
This is about punishing disagreement.
This is about getting even with those who don’t agree with the church elites.
So This is How Liberty Dies on Disney Video
“So, this is how liberty dies—with thunderous applause,” said one senator a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
This is how the church dies. Petty power displays and the cheering one would expect from a political rally. The only things missing were chants of Lock Them Up or Quid Pro Quo!
The church should do better.
However, evangelicalism has done a pathetic job over the last few decades. Leaders abused their flock, sexually and spiritually too many times to count. Leaders have engaged in sinful actions far too often. Leaders have plundered churches and parachurch organizations getting themselves big salaries, expensive travel and lifestyles far above the flock they supposedly serve.
The election results in the 2019 off-year elections portend doom for the conservative party in some states. The once conservative bastion of Virginia looks ready to slide into socialism and punish Christians with new laws to persecute deeply held beliefs about marriage.
Persecution is coming in America.
It is only one state, but persecution is coming.
It is only one church, but persecution is coming.
With churches like First Baptist Church of Naples, Florida, we deserve it.
4 thoughts on “Woke Purges, Show Trials: What First Baptist Church Naples reveals about the future”
Comments are closed.
Your comments are sad but true.
We Southern Baptist have allowed the “woke church” to rise in our midst. The “wokeness” only deconstructs, it does nor forgive, tolerate or appreciate our biblically based faith, nor will it ever.
Southern Baptist leaders that support a pro-abortion paster, that conflate honorable disagreement with racism, and publicly indict 19% of their church without biblically based due process are not leaders in any sense of the word as I understand it.
I’be studied in great depth the Social Justice movement and its underlying ideologies, strategy and tactics. There is no history, in America or Europe, of traditional institutions like ours surviving the take over by the Social Justice Warriors. JD Greer and his woke brigade did not set out to strengthen the Convention, it set out to fundamentally change it and they have succeeded even if the average parishioner does not realize it yet.
Thankfully, God is in control. I can only hope He has strong Southern Baptist leaders envisioning a new Southern Baptist Convention…for a split is surely coming. I pray these leaders still believe that the unborn are created in the image of God and that His word is our law and sufficient for our needs.
I am praying for a new organization that spends more time evangelizing and working here in what is clearly a ” post Christian America.”
Experienced this same kind of dysfunction in two SBC Churches when the Minister of Youth was in charge of opening up the facilities for single adult functions 13 times in one year and I was verbally abused and left with no penalty placed on the offending minister who later became the senior pastor! Another time at another Church a lie was told that was easily refuted, but I was penalized before I was able to get an appointment to talk to the minister in charge. The minister raged as if I had done great harm. I was banned from two ministries I had been working with. The head pastor would not address the issue and just wanted to argue. None of the deacons would advocate for me, saying they were under the head pastor’s authority and could not challenge him! Then the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the deacons told me that I had been banned from all seven of the areas of leadership and involvement I had been in! I left both Churches because of this!
Sadly they will have no legal recourse. Courts are forbidden to hear a case involving solely ecclesiastical matters, of which church membership is such. They need to cut their losses and learn never to formally join another church again.
Bob Carter, I also have been through some horrible experiences where church members sat on their hands. I have been screamed at (literally) by our sound room “technician” in a setup done by the pastor. No one did a single thing. This man screamed at me hurling insults that were untruth and almost laughable because what he was accusing me of people had accused him of doing before and after the incident. Those I was accused of hurting all told me none of what he said was true. This man was a Deacon. Did anything happen to him or to the pastor who set me up? No.
I also worked with a youth pastor who conspired against the pastor in another church to try to oust him quite openly. He courted the “old guard” as we called them and kissed up to them from the pulpit. He tried to enlist the rest of us on stuff to stage a mutiny. I refused. Nothing happened to him.
The devil is prowling around devouring churches one by one as people sit silently by and then shake their heads years later saying they don’t know what happened.