Three days after Willy Rice was elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention, he sat down for a conversation with Baptist and Reflector managing editor David Dawson just outside of Tampa, Florida. The following is a transcript of the conversation with Rice, senior pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Clearwater.
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Why should (Southern Baptists from states other than Florida, where Willy Rice is a pastor) care that he is the new president of the Southern Baptist Convention?
Rice: Well, first of all, I think it’s important to understand that I love Southern Baptists.
I’m a child of Southern Baptist parents and grandparents and a couple of generations. So, whether you’re a Tennessee Baptist or Florida Baptist or Texas Baptist, we cooperate together to get certain things done no single church can do alone. It doesn’t matter how great your church is. The reality is you need infrastructure to do international missions and national missions.
To do it consistently with our theology, with our values and with the things that matter to our people, we need cooperative efforts. Those things that were true 100 years ago are still true today.
Also, I want to see our people more united and more confident in their institutions. I think it’s important that all those institutions are responsive to the people in the local churches. I’m a local church guy.
The great thing about the presidency is you work for the people. You don’t work for the system. You don’t work for the institutions. You’re not against those. It’s not hostility. But you’re for the people.
We’re all in this together. We’re trying to do the same things together, and we want to see a great, healthy movement.
What are two major goals you hope to accomplish during your term as SBC president?
Rice: I really want Baptists to begin to think about the 2000th anniversary of the Great Commission.
… Somewhere on or around the spring of 2033, we will pass or have passed, or be very closely passing, the 2000th anniversary of the death, burial and resurrection. Many Christians around the world are already planning to mark that and celebrate it.
I really feel like the time is right for a generational effort to focus on a Great Commission advance and not just incremental progress.
What would it look like if you could have a broad movement of churches and the resources that we have to advance the Great Commission in a way that is generational, historic? Why wouldn’t you want to shoot for the moon?
What would it look like to preach the gospel so that every single person in North America would hear the gospel in a meaningful way and be challenged to respond?
… What would it take to make sure every single person in North America heard the gospel?
… What would it look like if every one of those unengaged people groups we hear about around the world, there was some gospel?
What would it look like to have a Great Commission 2000 advance?
My goal is that a year from now, two years from now, every Southern Baptist is talking about this. This is the thing everybody’s talking about.
On the other side of that, we do have to work on some of the things that have caused tension and frustration.
I do want to see the Truth and Unity Amendment passed the second time. I do want us to be able to say, ‘This is who Baptists are now. Let’s move on.’
In your opinion, why was the initial passage of Albert Mohler’s amendment significant to Southern Baptists at this time?
Rice: I think we all wanted clarity.
This is not an issue in 90% of our churches. Maybe 95% of our churches. But it has become an issue.
There are people who want to change our theology. We just need to understand that there are some people that want to push women pastors.
The biggest culprit, I think, is sloppy ecclesiology. We’ve allowed our ecclesiology to become informed by pragmatism rather than solid Scriptural exposition.
You can be sloppy and innocent. You don’t have bad motives, but at the same time you drift and somebody needs to go, ‘Hey, don’t use that word in that way. That word doesn’t mean that.’
To me it’s the clarity amendment. Let’s get clarity.
The word pastor means something. We don’t get to define it. It means something historically to Baptists, and then you can go into the New Testament and say it means something.
We’re asking everyone to work in good faith and use that word in a way that is consistent with the way Baptists have always used it as the pastor-elder here in the church.
How would you describe the current state of the Southern Baptist Convention?
Rice: The reality is, in a situation as complex and as big as ours, that’s never a simple answer because the glass is never full to overflowing nor is it empty.
If someone is just cheerleading and saying, ‘Everything is great,’ you’re not addressing some of the problems. If somebody is cynical and saying, ‘Everything is wrong,’ there’s also something wrong with that.
We have a lot of great things to celebrate.
I think we rolled out of Orlando (with) a lot of people more encouraged than they’ve been in a long time.
In the last 10 years there were some rip tides, some undertones that pulled us off mission and created some disruption and distraction.
I think there were really good people worried about some drifting and some wrong directions, but I think we’ve corrected some of that. We’ve addressed some of that.
Southern Baptists are not drifting.
I don’t think we’re evolving, I don’t think we’re equivocating and I don’t think we’re altering. I think we’re enduring.
We came out of Orlando and said, ‘This is who we are. We’re going to be Baptists. We believe the Bible is true.’
There has been a loss of some institutional trust because of a couple of layers of things that happened over the last decade.
I’m not interested in pointing fingers and blaming anybody. I’m interested in fixing it.
I want people to feel great about being Baptist and about being Southern Baptist, and I want them to feel like their institutions are listening to them.
Institutional trust is very, very important if we’re going to succeed as a movement.
How can Southern Baptists pray for you during the next year?
Rice: The first thing is just to pray — period.
If you’ve ever been in a situation where you need prayer and people say, ‘We’re praying for your family,’ it means a great deal.
You wake up every day and you realize it’s too big for you. Who am I? Who am I really?
If people are asking how they can pray for me, I would want them to pray for wisdom to know what to do.
I would pray for discernment in situations, when to speak and when not to speak, and just perseverance as you go through this.
I want to enjoy it. I love Southern Baptists. I’m honored to be able to serve. We’ve got some things to do, but I’m excited about it.
I would say also to pray for perseverance, wisdom and that God will favor all of us as Southern Baptists.
His Kingdom is a lot bigger than Southern Baptists. But I love our movement, and we’ve got an awful lot of churches, an awful lot of potential, and we could see God do great, great things in our midst.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by David Dawson and originally published by the Baptist and Reflector.
