EDITOR’S NOTE — The Baptist Paper reached out to each of the six individuals who have announced intentions to be nominated for president of the Southern Baptist Convention at the 2024 SBC Annual Meeting in Indianapolis, June 11–12. To read the responses of the other five other candidates, click here.
Bruce Frank
Current position and title: Lead pastor at Biltmore Church, Arden, North Carolina.
What led you to allow your name to be placed in nomination for SBC president?
I allowed my name to be placed in nomination after months of prayer, counsel and encouragement from people around the SBC.
If elected, what are your goals as president?
My primary goals if elected president can be seen in some detail at brucefrank.org. One of those is a focus on the Great Commission.
What are some things that can be done to strengthen the SBC’s current relationship with our churches?
(The Great Commission) is the primary reason we exist as a convention. This is the “main thing.” This is what will matter 100 years from now. Heaven and hell are real, eternity is long, the harvest is plentiful, and Jesus saves (Matthew 28:18–20; Acts 1:8; Luke 19:10). Seeing God bring people to repentance and faith is the most joyful and unifying thing for a people to experience. Can you imagine the joy of the 22,000 SBC churches that haven’t seen that kind of gospel life change in a while, get to see that in the year ahead (Luke 15:7)? I believe with some encouragement and equipping that could happen.
What do you perceive as the strengths of the SBC?
The SBC has many strengths.
- The foreign mission force under Dr. Chitwood and IMB are very strong. The 3,500 field personnel do a wonderful job taking the gospel to the nations.
- NAMB under the direction of Dr. Ezell is having a tremendous impact in all aspects of their ministry from church planting to send relief to evangelism resources.
- The fact that all six six SBC seminaries are theologically conservative. The students they are training are our future leaders.
- The primary strength of the SBC is in the men and women who are members of the almost 48,000 churches. Equipping them for ministry (Ephesians 4:12–13) unleashes the largest missionary force the world has seen.
- Historically, a great strength of the SBC has been to unite biblical fidelity with missional clarity. Holding to the Bible while ignoring the mission is classic fundamentalism. Focusing on the mission while ignoring the Bible is classic liberalism. Holding to the Bible and focusing on the mission is the SBC at its best.
What do you perceive as the weaknesses of the SBC?
Any cooperative effort is built on trust and communication. Just as uniting around biblical fidelity and missional clarity has been a strength of the SBC, getting away from this can be a danger.
What is your take on the Law Amendment issue and what Southern Baptists should consider going into this next meeting?
A more detailed discussion about the Law Amendment can be seen (here) and (here). If we are going to revise what Adrian Rogers and his committee gave us with the Baptist Faith & Message 2000, we can do better than the Law Amendment in expressing our complementarian convictions.
The Law Amendment raises more questions than it answers and opens the door for extrabiblical actions. The phrase “of any kind” could be used to accuse a woman without the title of pastor of “pastoring” because they believe she exercises wrong (“their view”) authority over men in their church (example: female children’s director, female on personnel committee, even females serving on SBC committees as mentioned by a recent SBC presidential candidate). Questions I have yet to see a clear answer on are:
– Is it about title or function?
– If it’s about both title and function, what are the functions that are exclusively pastoral? Where are those spelled out in Baptist documents? (Note: IMB includes in their documents the specifics, “leadership and teaching functions.”)
Any other thoughts or comments?
Recently, at Biltmore Church, we asked every member to identify one person they could pray for and seek to lead to Christ over the year. We then asked them to write the name of their “one” on the wall of the worship centers as a constant reminder to pray and share the gospel with their “one.” Even just in the first quarter of the year, we’ve had the joy of seeing dozens and dozens of those people surrender to the Lordship of Christ and get baptized. Our IMB missionaries are doing a remarkable job around the world and seeing God do amazing things.
Every SBC church can see themselves as missionaries here and see the same because the harvest is plentiful (Matthew 9:37)!
