Monday, February 15, 2021 | Steve Jordahl (OneNewsNow.com)
Reprinted from One News Now by permission (OneNewsNow.com
The executive director of the Northwest Baptist Convention has been nominated to lead the entire Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). In this second profile of candidates for the presidency of the SBC, One News Now caught up with Randy Adams. Randy Adams (pictured) is father to two grown sons. He grew up in Montana and in his current position serves about 500 churches and church plants in Oregon, Washington, and northern Idaho. What is a Western boy doing vying to be president of the Southern Baptist Convention? “We actually have more churches than any other Protestant group, certainly, in the Northwest,” he replies. “We began in 1948 in the Northwest with 15 churches. Now we have about 500 – and almost about a third of our churches worship in a language other than English.” Adams graduated from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth. He shares that he has great concerns about where the SBC has been going the last decade. He describes the denomination as “in steep decline.” “I believe, personally, we need more transparency in our finances in our Southern Baptist entities, and more accountability in our finances as well – and not just in finances, but also performance,” he explains. One News Now asked Adams his thoughts on Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality as it pertains specifically to Resolution 9 passed by the denomination in 2019. “The Bible doesn’t define people according to their identity – [their] immutable characteristics, for example,” he responds. “So, any theory that would place a person in a group according to [their] immutable characteristics … I think is dangerous.” When asked about the controversy over Russell Moore and the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, he says church leaders shouldn’t endorse candidates. But his biggest beef with the ERLC is an amicus brief the Commission filed in a lawsuit involving the SBC. He says it wrongly argued that the SBC is a hierarchy- when, in fact, Southern Baptist churches are autonomous. “To me, that is the biggest and most egregious mistake the ERLC has made, maybe in its entire history – [and] certainly in the last year,” Adams concludes. The denomination meets in Nashville June 15 16, during which SBC messengers will elect its next president.
