I saw it for the first time in 2004, in a meeting I called and led.

No. Actually: I realized then what I had been seeing for a long time.

It broke my heart.

I told the story in an e-column in 2007. I told it again in 2018, in the original version of this post. Both times, I described what happened in that meeting. But I did not include any backstory.

I didn’t say that the meeting took place six-and-a-half years into the seven years I served as a state women’s leader within the SBC structure. I didn’t mention the betrayal and abuse that led up to that day.

Now it’s time to write the whole story. It’s crucial to our seeing what God wants us to see.

Bring honor to your name, holy Lord.

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For 100 years, Woman’s Missionary Union was the women’s organization in Southern Baptist churches. Then women’s ministries came on the scene – and were on the rise. What’s more, SBC structure kept women’s missions and women’s ministries profoundly separated.

In the midst of all that, the men at the helm of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma were looking for a state women’s leader who could relate to, and work with, the women in both organizations. They approached me, knowing I had been a WMU leader, and a women’s Bible study teacher, for 20 years.

I told them I believed both emphases were important. I believed God would help us find a way to follow him together. They hired me to do that. For seven years, I worked toward that end.

During those years, I met regularly with a group called the State WMU Council. Each member was an “associational” women’s leader. As such, she represented the women’s organizations in the SBC churches in one or more counties.

When I’d first arrived, all the women on the council were indeed WMU leaders. But over time, the associations had begun to respond to the changes in the churches.

Six years in, some council members still led out solely in all things WMU, some worked with women’s ministries and a few worked with both.

That’s when my immediate boss told me, “You need to change the council’s name to reflect its true makeup.”

“That won’t go over well,” I replied.

Shrugging, he ordered me to do it.

And that was the spark that lit the fuse that started the abuse I describe in another post, titled, Behind the façade in the SBC.

Six months later, as time for the council meeting drew near, I prayed – a lot, on my face, on the floor. I asked God what to do. I asked for grace to do it.

Most of the women who would attend that meeting had no idea what had been going on behind the scenes. But the ringleaders of the abuse would be there. And my bosses had bailed on me.

Still, the Lord made clear that I was to hold the meeting, and to go, and not to defend myself. Rather, I was to speak to the women about him.

I was to ask them, individually and collectively, his question to us all:

Will you follow me?

Spending and being spent

Thirty women sat at round tables, waiting for me to speak. Removing my shoes, I walked over to each table in turn, looked into the eyes of each woman and said, “I will gladly spend and be spent for your souls.”¹

I meant it. By the grace of God, I was living it.

In front of the group once again, I began my brief talk. As if on cue, five key WMU leaders began distracting and disrupting. One interrupted me twice, contemptuously contradicting what I said. All openly passed notes and talked aloud to each other. Each deliberately turned her chair so her back was toward me.

The moment I finished, the five lashed out at me, viciously accusing and denouncing. The one WMU leader who could have stopped the onslaught sat silent.

Other women sat stunned. Later, one woman told me, “I don’t know how you were still standing after that.”

What had provoked such outrage?

A proposed name for the council that didn’t include the letters WMU.

And a call to live out what every one of those women would have told you they believed.

Bringing glory to God

This is what I said that day that caused such a furor. It’s still my testimony, Lord.

Your purpose is glorious

The God who revealed himself in Jesus Christ loves people. He paid the ultimate price to redeem people. But for what end? What is his primary, overarching goal?

All the nations you have made will come and worship before you, Lord; they will bring glory to your name. (Ps. 86:9)

That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil. 2:10-11)

Great and marvelous are your deeds, Lord God Almighty. Just and true are your ways, King of the nations. Who will not fear you, Lord, and bring glory to your name? (Rev. 15:3-4)

Henry Blackaby and Avery Willis have written, “Each time we see God in the Bible, He is acting in accordance with His purpose: to reveal Himself in order that His name would be glorified, that His Kingdom would be established and that some from every people would be reconciled to Himself.”²

Is our goal God’s glory, or our own?

Your ways are just and true

Are we seeking God’s glory in his ways?

Moses prayed: “Teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you.” (Ex. 33:13)

David asked: “Show me your ways, Lord.” (Ps. 25:3)

We cannot know God’s ways unless he himself teaches us by his Spirit and his Word. What’s more, if we do not walk in his ways, we cannot do his will.

Blackaby and Willis wrote, “Learning to follow God’s ways may be more important than making sincere attempts to do His will. God is eager to reveal His ways to us because they are the only way to accomplish His purposes.”³

Your name and renown are the desire of our hearts

How can we pursue God’s glory in his ways? (This is not an exhaustive list.)

1 Worship him alone. Let Him expose and destroy any idols in our lives. Cry for grace to love, fear and serve him only.

Among the gods there is none like you, Lord; no deeds can compare with yours. All the nations you have made will come and worship before you, Lord; they will bring glory to your name. For you are great and do marvelous deeds; you alone are God. (Ps. 86:8-10)

2 Live lives that reflect his holiness. Fervently and continually pray, “May my life honor you.” When it does not, admit that and return to him.

Teach me your way, Lord, so that I can walk in your truth. Make my heart focused only on honoring your name. (Ps. 86:11 CEB)

“O Israel,” says the Lord, “if you wanted to return to me, you could. You could throw away your detestable idols and stray away no more. Then when you swear by my name, saying, ‘As surely as the Lord lives,’ you could do so with truth, justice, and righteousness. Then you would be a blessing to the nations of the world, and all people would come and praise my name.” (Jer. 4:1-2 NLT)⁴

3 Be one in Christ. Refuse any longer an “us vs. them” attitude that preaches Christ and him fragmented. Refuse the forced uniformity that counterfeits unity. Love one another as Christ has loved us. “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3).

“I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one – as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us, so that the world will believe you sent me. I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one. I am in them and you are in me. May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me.” (John 17:21-23 NLT)

4 Pray kingdom prayers. Begin by asking what we may think we already know:

“Lord, teach us to pray.”

“When you pray, say: ‘Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come.’” (Luke 11:1, 2)

5 Be sent ones. Know where he has sent us – and be there, doing what he has assigned, in the power of his Spirit for the honor of his name.

Jesus to the Father: “As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.” (John 17:18)

Jesus to his disciples: “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” (John 20:21)

6 Tell his deeds among the nations. Make his name known. This is different from announcing what we have done. It’s different from seeking to make a name for ourselves.

Give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name; make known among the nations what he has done. Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples. (1 Chron. 16:8, 24)

Yes, Lord, walking in the way of your laws, we wait for you; your name and renown are the desire of our hearts. (Isa. 26:8)

7 Make disciples of all nations. Work humbly, in tandem with the whole Body of Christ. Do what God has assigned each us of to do, in his authority and power. Cultivate true disciples who obey, not the dictates of a certain church culture, but the commands of Christ.

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matt. 28:18-20)

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. (Acts 1:8)

8 Understand that God himself is primarily responsible for accomplishing his purpose – and it will be done.

Cease striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth. (Ps. 46:10 NAS)

Who will not fear you, Lord, and bring glory to your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your righteous acts have been revealed. (Rev.15:4)

Facing the awful truth

Stone-faced, church leaders turned their backs on the cry to seek God’s glory in his ways. Furious, they flayed me alive for asking that we walk by faith in Christ, instead of being driven by loyalty to organizations and denominations.

I still remember the moment during that onslaught when I saw:

Lord, they are rejecting you! They are leading others to do that too!

That was in 2004, dear one. And that was the year God first strongly affirmed to me:

What I’m exposing is not just happening in the hearts of a few leaders, of one gender, in one organization of one denomination.

That was when I began to feel God’s heartbreak for his church. And now, I can finally feel his anger too.

For what he’s exposing is heresy disguised as orthodoxy. It’s the belief that we can bow before the Lord – and before the structures that promise us belonging, status, funding and power. It’s the implicit or explicit teaching that serving a church structure equals worshiping the Lord.

Walking this earth, Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters.” He reserved his strongest rebukes for those who led his people to try to do just that.

Jesus was speaking to such leaders when he cried:  

You nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition.
You hypocrites!
Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:

These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
Their teachings are merely human rules.
(Matt. 15:6-9, 14)

Then Jesus warned his disciples: Such leaders lead people into a pit!

Our Lord urges us, too, to face the awful truth when church leaders are rejecting the God they say they serve.

You might think such leaders would be few and far between, and easy to spot. You might think that no one you know would be among them. But God knows how easy it is for evil to hide in plain sight in the places we do not want or expect to see it.

He is willing and able to open our eyes. If we are willing, he will show us when tell-tale toxic fruits – like this one, for example – are staring us in the face:

When leaders who identify as Christian,
are not treating God as God,
they will treat people badly too,
and will influence their followers
to do the same.

For whoever does not love their brother and sister,
whom they have seen,
cannot love God,
whom they have not seen. (1 John 4:20)

If such leaders will not own their sin and confess it and turn back to God with their whole heart, our Lord says:

Leave them; they are blind guides.

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The original version of this post was published October 31, 2018.

Seeing what God is exposing

• The world in church clothing
• Behind the façade in the SBC
• Checklists, idols and loving God
• Spiritual schizophrenia and the two-headed snake

Overcoming what God wants to overcome us

• Journey to a divided heart
• I choose light
• Heartcry of one who overcomes
• Recovering and treasuring the forgotten prayer
• I will fear no evil: Resting in God’s ever present help
• The Lord is with you, mighty warrior

Footnotes

1. 2 Corinthians 12:15 NKJV. ↩︎
2. Henry T. Blackaby and Avery T. Willis, Jr, “On Mission with God,” Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: A Reader, Third Edition (Pasadena: William Carey Library, 1999) 55. ↩︎
3. Blackaby and Willis, 57. ↩︎
4. See also Philippians 2:5-13. ↩︎