An Open Letter to Our Missions Partner: The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention

Dear Dr. Nathan Lorick and SBTC Executive Board members,

Inasmuch as it is the responsibility of the church—not a denominational entity or parachurch ministry—to set the boundaries of its relationships and stewardship of Kingdom resources, the Elders of Broadview Baptist Church in Lubbock, Texas, provide this update regarding our partnership with you for 2026.

A few years ago, as good stewards of all the Lord has given us, Broadview Baptist Church established ten biblical values we expect our missions partners to embrace and practice (click HERE for a fuller description of each value):

• Scripture as God’s Word

• Christian doctrine

• Biblical distinctives

• Sanctity of human life

• Sacredness of sexuality

• Multi-ethnic brotherhood in Christ

• Regenerate church membership

• Godly, male pastors

• Priority of disciple-making

• Financial transparency

We also established a Missions Council which, among other responsibilities, brings annual recommendations to the church regarding support for our missions partners.

We are grateful for the leadership of Dr. Nathan Lorick and others who have served the Lord and our state convention well. We believe that great things are on the horizon for the SBTC.

We are especially grateful for the work of church planting that is done in Texas. However, it has not escaped our notice that according to NAMB’s church planting map, the closest church plant to our hometown of Lubbock (where the latest SBTC annual meeting was held) is 120 miles away in Odessa, and the 2nd-closest church plant is in Pampa. Given that by the year 2050, it is projected that the Lubbock Metropolitan Statistical Area will have close to an additional 150,000 people—bringing the population up to half a million—we feel a deep responsibility to provide an extra measure of missions dollars to this end. We pray that the Lord will also help us raise up church planters in addition to funding them.

Regarding our final value for missions partners—financial transparency—it is our belief that financial transparency for collective Kingdom efforts in Scripture means direct accountability to the supporting churches—not merely to a select few Executive Board members who withhold financial details from those churches. A biblical model of financial transparency appears in Acts 20:4, 1 Corinthians 16:3–4, and 2 Corinthians 8:18–21 with respect to the Jerusalem offering: the partnering churches sent trusted men to oversee the collection and delivery, and those men returned home to report directly to the supporting congregations that the funds were used properly.

We believe churches today have both the right and responsibility to ensure their Kingdom offerings are used wisely and appropriately, and that our missions partners bear the biblical duty to be financially transparent to us and all churches that would support their work.

We respectfully urge you, Dr. Lorick, along with the SBTC Executive Board, to voluntarily publish financial information equivalent to an IRS Form 990 for the convention (similar to what many nonprofits already disclose to the public).

We are confident that greater transparency would not reduce giving to the convention or to the Cooperative Program. On the contrary, it would likely increase support by building trust. For example, Wycliffe Bible Translators openly publishes its Form 990 each year and has experienced no negative financial impact as a result.

Concerning our eighth value—godly, male pastors—we have learned that the Credentials Committee recently implemented an interpretation of the SBTC Constitution and Bylaws that contradicts both the expressed will of messengers at recent annual meetings and one of the core theological reasons for the convention's founding in 1998. We hope the recommendations from the newly formed policy and procedures committee will rebuild our confidence that the SBTC upholds the same biblical values we do.

The clear teachings of Scripture unify Baptists. The instructions about male leaders given in First Timothy 2:12-3:7 are not unclear, nor are they simply interpretations. (They become “interpretations” only by those who invent out of thin air reasons why Paul didn’t mean what he wrote.) With regard to church leadership, the Bible presents pastors, elders, and overseers as synonymous terms for the same church leadership role, used interchangeably as nouns (or formal titles) in the New Testament. Consequently, anyone holding these titles—or their equivalents—must meet the biblical qualifications for that office. We hope that the executive board, committees, and senior staff of the SBTC agree so that we can have full faith and trust in our partnership moving forward.

To these ends, our Missions Council recommended to our church a modified continuation of our support for the SBTC, and our church unanimously agreed for the year 2026. We look forward to being able to continue and increase our support of the SBTC in the future.

God bless you in your endeavors.

In Christ,
The Elders of Broadview Baptist Church, Lubbock, Texas