DALLAS (RNS) — About halfway through leading his first annual Southern Baptist Convention business session as SBC president, North Carolina pastor Clint Pressley seemed to wonder what he had gotten himself into.
“Holy moly,” Pressley, pastor of Hickory Grove Baptist Church in Charlotte, said in response to a particularly long-winded motion from a local church delegate.
About 10,500 delegates, known as messengers, packed a meeting hall at the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center in downtown Dallas on Tuesday (June 10) for a day filled with singing, preaching, reports and a host of parliamentary procedures.
Among those procedures: setting aside the convention’s standing rules to make way for a vote on an amendment to the 12.7-million-member denomination’s constitution to bar churches that have women in any pastoral role. Such amendments usually require a one year-waiting period before the convention can vote on them.
Slideshow: SBC annual meeting in Dallas
But after a similar amendment to bar women pastors failed last year, supporters now believe they have the votes to pass it. If approved during a vote on Wednesday, the amendment would need to be affirmed a second time next year to take effect.
Juan Sanchez, pastor of High Pointe Baptist Church in Austin, Texas, who proposed the amendment, said it is needed to make the denomination’s teachings clear. He told a lunchtime gathering of SBC pastors that Southern Baptists agree on the belief that only men can be pastors but haven’t figured out the right way to enforce that belief.
Pastor Juan Sanchez participates on a lunchtime panel during the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Dallas, June 10, 2025. (RNS Photo/Tim Heitman)
“I think Southern Baptists are united. I don’t think some Baptists are liberal, and I don’t think they’re liberal drift,” he said at a panel hosted by Baptist 21, a group that appeals to younger Baptist pastors. “I think everyone wants to do this right and do this well.”
Albert “Al” Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, was more forceful in his comments, saying the SBC adopted the official teaching that only men can be pastors in 2020.
“Why are we still talking about this?” he said.
During that same meeting, Mohler and Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC’s Executive Committee, also addressed another contentious issue among Southern Baptists — a call for more financial transparency in SBC institutions, including the salaries of leaders. Supporters of such transparency say other charities supply such information, so why not SBC entities?
Mohler said that integrity — not transparency — ought to be the goal and that board members of SBC entities, known as trustees, should have access to financial information such as salaries but not the general public. If the messengers voted to require such information, he warned, trustee boards might refuse to comply, setting up conflict in the denomination. Iorg made a similar warning, saying that calls for transparency were “financial voyeurism” and warning of possible legal conflicts.
The Rev. Al Mohler, center, speaks on a lunchtime panel during the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Dallas, June 10, 2025. (RNS Photo/Tim Heitman)
Iorg also said he will advise against changing the SBC’s constitution to bar churches with women pastors, saying it could lead to lawsuits — and pointing out that the SBC is already facing high legal bills.
“If the amendment passes, it may be helpful to Southern Baptists but I know it will be expensive,” he said.
Much of Tuesday’s business sessions was taken up with promoting the denomination’s ministries — including celebrating 100 years of the Cooperative Program, the SBC’s approach of pooling local church donations to fund overseas missionaries and national ministries. That program has raised over $20 billion since 1925 and has been a model of cooperation, said SBC leaders.
The SBC’s International Missions Board also commissioned 58 new missionaries, with some standing behind screens to hide their faces — as they were heading to countries where missionaries can be in danger, said IMB President Paul Chitwood.
During the Tuesday afternoon business session, Iorg gave an update on the SBC’s abuse reforms, noting that a national director on reforms had been hired and that training materials for churches have been improved. He also said more training initiatives are planned in the coming year.
SBC Executive Committee President and CEO Jeff Iorg addresses the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas, June 10, 2025. (RNS Photo/Tim Heitman)
Earlier this year, Iorg reported that the SBC abuse hotline — which was viewed with suspicion by abuse survivors and advocates — had received 674 claims of abuse since 2022, and that of those, about 450 were from Southern Baptist churches. That data has led Iorg and other leaders to conclude that abuse is rarely reported in SBC churches.
“Our hotline now provides verifiable data about the problem of sexual abuse in Southern Baptist churches,” Iorg told messengers.
“We are now making a proportional, substantive response based on the facts at hand, not anecdotal narratives or speculative reports. We are implementing reasonable and purposeful solutions to help churches, SBC entities and denominational partners address this important issue.”
Iorg told RNS before the meeting that there are no plans to do further research into the prevalence of abuse in the denomination or into how many churches do background checks on volunteers who work with children.
During his speech on Tuesday afternoon, Iorg made no mention of a database of abusive pastors. That database was approved by messengers first in 2022 but has stalled since. Iorg told RNS earlier this year that the database is no longer a priority but made no explanation to messengers on why the database remains in limbo.
“Progress without a working database is not progress,” Oklahoma pastor Mike Keahbone, a former member of an abuse reform task force, said on X in response to the lack of progress.
Messengers attend the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas, June 10, 2025. (RNS Photo/Tim Heitman)
There was at least one surprise at Tuesday’s meeting.
David Morrill, a relatively unknown Southern Baptist church member from Colorado, was nominated to challenge Clint Pressley in a presidential election. Such surprise nominations are rare in the SBC — usually nominations for the denomination’s president are announced ahead of time. Morrill runs Protestia.com, a “polemical news site” that is critical of Southern Baptist and other evangelical leaders.
Pressley won reelection in a landslide, with more than 92% of the vote.
The affable megachurch pastor kept the meeting rolling along, with occasional humor to lighten the mood, and a charitable but firm tone as moderator, often apologizing when he had to rule a messenger out of order and cheering the denomination’s ministries.
“It is really good to be a Southern Baptist,” he told messengers repeatedly.
The SBC annual meeting resumed Wednesday morning.