BOONVILLE, N.C. (ABP) — The recent conservative shift in the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina has prompted one member of its governing board to resign, saying the state convention is “becoming a subsidiary of the Southern Baptist Convention.”
Ken Boaz, pastor of Boonville Baptist Church in Boonville, resigned from the state Board of Directors in a Jan. 26 letter to the board's president. Boaz said the current prevailing view in the Southern Baptist Convention is counter to his beliefs in numerous ways, such as the exclusion of women from pastoral leadership.
“My resignation has everything to do with the evident direction of the convention,” Boaz wrote. “More and more, it is quite clear that our state convention is becoming a subsidiary of the Southern Baptist Convention. That is a path I choose not to take.”
Two November changes in the North Carolina convention drew objection from Boaz. Convention messengers agreed that money churches send to the moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship should not count as state Cooperative Program gifts, which the convention uses to determine participation in the convention. And messengers approved a motion directing the Board of Directors to approve a policy that “a church which knowingly affirms, approves or endorses homosexual behavior is a church not in friendly cooperation with the convention.”
The Cooperative Program decision “relegated us to 'second class citizenship,'” Boaz wrote. The policy about homosexuality is “censoring churches for ministry to one group of 'sinners' perceived as particularly heinous. Next? The tent pegs are being drawn in and I feel that I no longer fit beneath it.”
Boonville Baptist Church has embraced the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Boaz said. “I had opted out of the SBC some time back, but really felt like the state convention was one place that [that] wouldn't matter,” he said in an interview.
Don Warren, Board of Directors president, described Boaz as a great pastor and leader who will be missed. “He has the right to voice that opinion and take whatever action he deems appropriate based on his deep convictions,” Warren said. “Obviously, he has some feelings that he has accumulated over some period of time that led him to take this action.”
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