While the center of the plot to harm Tom Buck is at SEBTS, there are a few items elsewhere that must be highlighted including Willy Rice.
SBC politics goes dirty. SBC Elites used his wife’s story to retaliate against Tom Buck. Here is how it backfired and an SBC Elite pastor got caught in multiple lies.
No good deed goes unpunished, so the saying goes and Tom Buck’s interaction with Willy Rice is the latest proof. Tom Buck knew that one of Willy Rice’s deacons had a history. Instead of running to the press, Buck contacted Rachel Denhollander and approached Willy Rice privately about the matter.
We know more about this entire situation thanks to a detailed timeline and statement released by the elders of FBC Lindale. According to the elders, “We believe Tom initiated these conversations in the spirit of Matthew 18, keeping the group of those ‘in the know’ as small as possible. He consistently communicated a desire to keep this matter private and never make it public unless there was evidence of a cover-up or if the spirit of these conversations were misrepresented. Willy himself acknowledged this desire.”
So far, so good.
What happened next will amaze you. Willy Rice praised Tom Buck.
“These are hard conversations, but you did a stand-up thing by coming directly to us to address this,” Rice said in a released email. “I respect that.”
However, Willy Rice said the opposite in public.
FBCLindale elders noted, “All of this took a very different turn just a few days later when Willy began to claim publicly that the motives of those who came to him with the information about the deacon were less than pure and seeking ‘to score points.’ From there, the details of Willy’s account began to change as he shared more information with the public.”
That is a very careful way to point out that Willy Rice said one thing in private and another in public. Willy Rice blamed political rivals for causing trouble and attacking him because he was running for President of the Southern Baptist Convention at the time.
Rice said, “Some people outside our church identified one of our brothers who’s serving in a role in our church and trying to you know score some points with that.”
Note the difference in tone of the private email from the public rhetoric.
What a change! One wonders what caused this change? Who, if anyone, advised Willy Rice to say the exact opposite of what he said in emails to Tom Buck?
And the contradictions between Rice’s statements in private and public also focus on matters of fact highly relevant to the case under consideration—namely, was Willy Rice’s deacon at the center of Deacongate saved before or after the sexual sin that Willy Rice described as potentially “abusive.”
Willy Rice said in a public statement that a man who was a deacon at Calvary Baptist Church of Tampa, Florida, was not saved at the time the man was a teacher who admitted to having sex with an 18-year-old student. However, Tom Buck and his fellow elders directly contradicted this.
According to the statement from FBC Lindale something entirely different happened on the Zoom call between Willy Rice and Tom Buck. According to the FBC Lindale statement, “In addition, Willy gave clear indication that he believed the deacon was a believer before committing the act of sexual abuse. All these things heightened the concern of Tom and our elders who made the call.”
This is a huge difference.
Why would Willy Rice say one thing in private and another in public?
Willy Rice is an SBC pastor and Willy Rice just got caught in two huge lies. This was the man the SBC Elites wanted as SBC President. Why? Well, there is a reason that Al Mohler’s trustee chairman nominated Kevin Ezell’s trustee vice-chairman.
The SBC Swamp wants men like itself to be SBC President. That is why Ed Litton won last year and it is why the SBC Elites now have Bart Barber as their man.
There is a Leftward Drift in the SBC; however, even more than a Leftward Drift there are wicked men behaving worse than Washington, DC politicians in a crass bid for power. These SBC Elites believe they can behave however they wish and destroy whomever they wish.
Only you can change this. Send them a message and #ChangeTheDirection in Anaheim.