Editor’s Note: Below is Dr. Barry Whitworth’s manuscript of the presentation he gave during the 2023 Accelerate Conference in Harrisburg, Pa., on October 3, 2023.
I want to thank you for attending this conference, I know you graciously sacrifice time and resources to be in attendance today. I want to thank my team for not only working diligently to help make this conference happen, but for all they do to help service and resource BRN churches and pastors.
I want to thank all our 30 Sponsors and Vendors who are here. Their commitment to participate helps resource Accelerate on the costs for this event. I want to thank our Executive Board, whom I love working with, for their support of the work we do here in the BRN. I want to thank my dear friend and our keynote speaker, Jeff Christopherson, for being willing to come and share with us today.
Relational capital is the greatest asset of any network, and that is no different for the BRN. Many of you here today are pastors, and we believe you and your church are what makes the BRN it is today. This is why we place a high value of connecting with our pastors and churches.
Every year we set goals to connect with pastors to help churches be resourced and serviced across the BRN. My earlier video in the business session showed how much we seek to accomplish in helping you take the next step in ministry in the place God has planted you. The BRN takes seriously the resources entrusted in our care to help service and resource our churches.
This year you affirmed a budget that increases our Cooperative Missions giving to 33%, or now 1/3 of our budget going beyond us to help change our world for Christ. Since 2017, when I became Executive Director, we have increased our Cooperative Program (CP) giving by 7%, this amounts to a 61% increase in dollars being sent over this period to further SBC missional causes. It is the heart of our Executive Board and leadership to give more to help take the gospel to the ends of the earth.
More CP giving helps send more people out to share and plant the gospel. On the home front, the other two-thirds of CP helps us to service and resource our churches as our churches seek to engage the 14 million lost people who live within PA/SJ. The BRN is the fourth largest populated, non-south, Southern Baptist state convention; it needs these funds to help resource and service churches in reaching this mass of lost people. For nearly 100 years, CP has been the resource that has been used to change millions of hearts toward Jesus Christ, and still is changing people’s lives for the glory of God today. Thank you for giving to the Cooperative Program!
This year, we created a new “Your BRN Family” guide (in your registration bag) to help churches, pastors, and partners understand who we are, our mission and strategy (pg. 29), how we function, and what we do to help service and resource churches. We’ve also included a very simple health quiz on pages 18-21 to quickly help pastors assess if they are “stuck” in ministry at this moment in time. Please use the “Your BRN Family” guide as a reference to help us know how we can serve you.
This year, we focused intently on two things, helping pastors take the next step in what they believe Jesus is wanting their church to take, and helping pastors and their families take steps in becoming healthier and stronger as they serve Christ and His church. Already this year, we saw 80 churches complete a next step, and a total of 110 churches take one or more steps to becoming more vibrant and healthier.
This year, we launched our Pastor Wellness Program. We’ve seen numerous pastors take advantage of Pastor Blessing events, respite, counseling and coaching that is currently provided through the Full-Strength Network, and Guidestone benefits for 83 pastors.
As I promised last year, in 2024 the Refresh Retreat will return to PA/SJ. NAMB is hosting a 3-day event in Philadelphia on April 22-24. The cost is $199 per couple if you register by midnight, October 11. However, the BRN is also offering an additional $100 discount to pastors and paid staff ministers and their wives if they register before October 11. That is $100 for an “everything paid for” three-day retreat. You can receive the discount code, if you are a BRN cooperating church, by contacting the Help Desk at 717-652-5856.
In many ways we’ve seen renewed health that we haven’t seen in years, but we know we’re not done, and we will continue to service and resource you to assist you in taking next steps in which Jesus is compelling you to take. At our banquet/dinner this evening we’re going to celebrate the movement we’ve seen in many of our churches this year.
Just a couple of weeks ago, many of our churches participated in the Send Relief Serve Tour in Philly. Thirty-five BRN churches were a part of serving in 38 service projects, which had 696 gospel conversations, which led to 74 people committing their lives to Jesus Christ. Serve Tour Philadelphia showed us the realization that if the church makes the effort to get out of the four walls of its building, the Holy Spirit honors that heart by changing hearts and lives within the community.
We want to build upon Serve Tour Philadelphia. We want to build greater compassion for people with the hope that thousands more can and will come to faith in Christ. We want to know people, so we can identify ways to love them, and then share with them the good news of Jesus Christ. We believe Serve Tour Philadelphia not only changed the hearts of people who embraced the gospel on those two days, but the hearts of all the volunteers who now understand the impact it makes getting out of the four walls of a building.
We want to build on this momentum. In August of 2024, we will be conducting a smaller scale version of this Serve Tour. We are going to NW PA to serve the city of Erie. Why Erie? According to Gannon Knight, Erie, Pa., has the poorest zip code (16501) in Pennsylvania and the United States. We want to conduct at least a 1/2 dozen projects that will do two things: reach people for Jesus and elevate compassion ministry of God’s people in that location. I would encourage you and your people to get involved with Serve Erie. In the future, we will create other Serve Tours in our cities across PA/SJ.
In 2024, our team will continue to build on our strategic goals we’ve established to achieve by the end of 2028. You can see these goals outlined the “Your BRN Family” guide on pp. 69-71. At the end of this timeline, we desire to see 75 of our churches reinvesting within the Kingdom of God . . . to reinvest means investing again, again, and again. We believe that reinvestment is seen in the reproduction and multiplication of new disciples, new leaders, new ministries, and the starting of new churches. Our desire is to help churches take “next steps” to get to this level of church health. If 75, or ¼, of BRN churches get to this place, we will begin to see an accelerated movement of God that we have never seen across our two-state region.
In 2024, we are going to challenge ourselves to grow together—growing in taking the next steps Jesus is asking us to take regarding getting stronger in discipling people and developing leaders like never before. This is a foundational strength for the health and vitality of a church. This is a necessity if we are going to be used as the change agent within our culture. To that aim today, we are providing you with our third #LovePASJ kit, “GROW.” In this kit are tools you and your church can use to challenge your people to grow as disciples and develop as leaders. We will also be providing discipleship and leadership training and cohorts in 2024.
I am asking you to deeply consider, “What is my next step?” as a pastor, church member, and church. How do we help people grow in being strong disciples and leaders in today’s world? I’m asking, “What do we need to grow out of and into, to be most useful for our Lord in the world in which He has placed us to live?” Asking, “What is my next step?” Asking, “What is God desiring next for me and my church?” This is a critical moment in time for us. Let’s grow by boldly taking the next step Jesus is wanting us to take.
Well . . . a lot is happening—good things are happening—but challenges threaten to undermine what God is doing. Briefly let me speak to some issues, but before I do, let me remind us that Jesus’ heart for His church is that it would be “one. . . as He and the Father are One” (Jn. 17:21). Would you agree that unity is NOT AN OPTION?
We’ve got challenges and discord always brewing around us. I believe disunity, many times, is more of a statement of our hearts and what we worship, instead of what Jesus is expecting and desiring of His people. Right now, the SBC is in a scuffle to determine the role of women as it relates to pastoring. This is a decision that will be decided at the next SBC meeting in 2024. What do we believe? As Baptists we don’t rule on any one person’s convictions or doctrinal beliefs. What we do agree on together is our confession of faith, the “Baptist Faith and Message.”
Historically Baptists, specifically Southern Baptists, are not a “creedal” people. We have always agreed on a confession statement, mostly because we believe in the priesthood of the believer and the local autonomy of the church. We’ve always decided that our greatest strength is agreeing together on a core of biblical beliefs and accomplishing the Great Commission through evangelism and missions.
We’ve also agreed to hold true to this confession to help align us in our effort to cooperate. This system of operating and functioning together has worked for a long, long, time. But today, we’re starting to shred ourselves a part over certain doctrinal issues. The newest one is a woman serving as pastor.
Barry, what do you believe? I believe that the Bible communicates that only men are to be Elders, specifically ordained/appointed, within the New Testament Church. We didn’t set up this up, God did. Why did you say Elder, and not pastor? The word or title for pastor(s), poimen, is referenced one time in the New Testament in Ephesians 4:11. The other 17 times the word poimen is rendered shepherd, or shepherds. Interesting enough, the word “pastor” wasn’t even used until the 14th century, and its roots are found in French.
The offices of a church outlined in Scripture are two: Elder/Bishop/Overseer and Deacon. The SBC “Baptist Faith and Message” of 1925 oddly enough points to this fact. I also believe that whatever an autonomous church decides it wants to give women as titles within their church should be up to the local church, as long as they are functioning under the leadership of Ordained Elders or Lead Elder (Senior Pastor).
Our BRN President, Dr. Brian King, and I will be conducting regional roundtables with pastors over the winter to listen to what you have to say concerning this matter. The BRN believes in the local autonomy of the church, but we also believe in order to cooperate together, we need and must be in agreement with key and primary issues of our faith.
Ladies, please hear me, the church cannot be what it needs to be, or do what it needs to do, without you. But the church can’t do what it thinks is best if it violates Scripture and what God’s Word tells us on how we should operate as the body of Christ. We didn’t make the rules, God did, but I am telling each woman in this room today that your contribution to the church is just as important as any contribution that men make in the church right now.
I want to close my address to say a word to how we most likely get into these messes. I believe we have a giant barrier to our own growth. I believe that barrier is idolatry. If there is one thing the church keeps accomplishing, that is no different than the people of God in the Old Testament, is that we set up idols (obsessions) that become barriers to our own connection with God. The barrier to our growth, the barrier to our ineffectiveness, is what the Israelite people battled for thousands of years and could not overcome, the obstacle of idolatry.
What is idolatry? Idolatry in the Bible is an important truth we shouldn’t ignore. Idolatry is “anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, and anything that you seek to give you what only God can give.” Reading through the Old Testament has shown me how much God hates idolatry. Actually, and oddly enough, it is the heart of the first two of the Ten Commandments of God in Exodus 20:3-4.
Please listen: if we have a chance in being used by God in the days and years ahead, if we have a chance in seeing people developing, growing, and becoming more like Jesus, then we need to tear down and destroy any idols that we worship. God hates idolatry and I don’t think the church has picked up on that fact today. 1 Cor. 6: 9-10 says; “Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”
Where did the people go when the pandemic hit? They found new idols to worship on Sunday morning! Why aren’t people in churches responding to what they are taught? Is it because they’ve found other idols? Who taught them to go after idols? Until we admit that we’re not going to be able to move further in Christ as His church until we get rid of idols within the body of Christ, and within our hearts, we’re not going to see a movement of God take place that others on the other side of the globe are seeing today.
Why aren’t we seeing what the Eastern Church is experiencing today? Maybe it’s because they have only One thing that they truly adore, more than anything else. . . Jesus Christ! They put nothing, no idols, before their relationship with Him. Do you think the Holy Spirit is able to work with that and is crazy about using them for God’s glory? YES!!!
Why would I care about the Kingdom of God if I care more about my own little kingdom? Why would I care about the big picture when my I’m OK with what I have developed and idolize in my own little framework of my Christian life? We’re probably not the Kingdom people we need to be because we’re not being the people that can be used within God’s Kingdom.
What happened in the Old Testament when God’s people worshipped idols? God cut them off, and He allowed them to be destroyed, and sometimes destroy themselves. I believe God is cutting off much of what the western church is doing today because it has placed its wants and desires before God’s design and heartbeat for the church. In the Bible, we know that being cut off from God is not pretty; it is painful. The people of God, back in their day, went through a lot of pain, and many never learned their lesson. They didn’t listen to the words of God’s command to not “worship any other idols before Him.” They didn’t get it right, and in many ways, we don’t have it right either.
What are idols of our hearts? What are the idols in our churches?
Idolatry is killing our souls right now. Yes, I battle it myself, and I sometimes have struggles in my own flesh not to place things before God. What has been eating at my soul for the last 6 1/2 years is watching the heart and soul of the church die (in America) because we’ve learned to idolize things within churches that really don’t have much to do with advancing the Kingdom of God. We idolize how we worship, we idolize how we function, we idolize our practices, we idolize performances, we idolize buildings, we idolize resources, we idolize positions and titles, we idolize politics, and yes, for some, we even idolize professional preaching and teaching. . .all these things before God!
In the context of idols in Psalm 115, verse 8 says, “Those who make them (idols) will be like them, and so will all who trust in them.” When you put something else in the place or front of God, you lose the capacity to spiritually hear and see the Lord’s heart. You lose the ability to walk in God’s ways and to taste and see that the Lord is good.
I am asking that all of us consider taking the next step of examining our hearts by asking the questions, “What do I idolize? What do I place before God?” I’m asking that we all grow and take a next step from whatever might be in our lives that we place before God. If something is there, then it is sin and causes separation (Isa. 59:2). If something is there, then we cannot grow into the Christ-followers and the churches He desires.
God does not change, and He will not be fooled. God walked away from His people when they deemed Him less important to what they wanted to idolize and worship. I believe that if we don’t achieve our goal in 2028 of seeing 75 of our churches becoming Reinvestors within Kingdom work, then mark my words today, it will be because we chose to idolize and worship things that are contrary to the heart of God. Jesus said in Matt. 11:15, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
My heart’s prayer and greatest desire is that we will be a network of churches who fully obeys God’s Word, loves each other well, cooperates fully, and spiritually grows together for the sole purpose of God being glorified throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey. If we surrender to what He desires, greater things are yet to come; greater things will still be done. Thank you for the privilege it is to serve as your Executive Director. God bless you all!
