EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is drawn from an interview with Willy Rice. You can watch the full interview here or listen to it here.
ORLANDO (BP) – Willy Rice says there are good things happening in the Southern Baptist Convention, things to celebrate.
But he also contends that recent issues of debate in the SBC have siphoned the trust needed for healthy participation among churches and support of the Cooperative Program. That factored heavily in his decision to accept an announced nomination to serve as SBC president at the upcoming Annual Meeting in Orlando.
Rice, pastor for the last 22 years of Calvary Baptist Church in Clearwater, Fla., put forward his thoughts on what’s needed in the SBC at BaptistRenewal.org, a site launched shortly after his candidacy was announced last fall. There, he lists seven “pillars” for renewal.
He peppered his comments in a recent interview with Baptist Press with the first pillar – convictional clarity.
“We’re living in an age where I just think that is so important,” he said. “I’m looking for people who really have that kind of convictional grounding … people who are willing to lean in and engage. We need people who are willing to speak up, ask tough questions and are excited about … the opportunity to serve … [to] see it as an opportunity to be engaged in the process.”
Task force to address the office of pastor
In the interview, Rice addressed attempts at the last three annual meetings to clarify the role of pastor as being solely for men. Rice supported the efforts to amend the SBC Constitution, and though a majority of messengers agreed, the number did not reach the two-thirds threshold required.
“It’s obviously an issue [and] it’s not going away,” he said. “… We’re at an impasse.
“People say it’s not a problem, [but] then we see that every year. There seem to be at least some churches for which it is an issue.”
Rather than address it through another procedural vote, Rice has proposed that the issue be studied through a task force appointed by the next SBC president.
[The] task force can write a report; it can make a statement,” he said. “I’ve talked to a lot of people … who didn’t vote for the Law Amendment. And … I usually ask them why.”
Their responses usually begin by stating their belief in complementarianism and the Baptist Faith and Message, he said. Their reasons for voting against the amendment, Rice added, are that it “would be enforced in a draconian fashion and that there was an agenda behind it, [that] it was going to be unnecessarily and harshly enforced to punish all women who are serving in some aspect of ministry.
“That’s certainly not my position,” he added. “… I haven’t really heard anybody saying that, and I’m certainly not saying that.”
A task force report, Rice continued, provides the opportunity to expound on the issue to a level that rewording a document cannot.
“I’m for appropriate amendments when they’re necessary, but you are still going to argue over words if you don’t have convictional consensus,” he said. “I really believe the overwhelming majority of Baptist people would be united [through] a clearly written report that says, this is what Baptist people think, this is what we believe, this is what the New Testament says, and these are appropriate recommendations coming out of that.”
He compared the proposed task force’s potential impact to that of the Peace Committee during the mid-1980s.
“It was passed overwhelmingly, and it really was very instrumental in helping Southern Baptist people move through the conflict and beyond the conflict of that time,” Rice said. “I think this is one [that] Baptist people would rally around. I think it would get us through this impasse so that we’re not arguing about this year after year after year.”
He further blamed “sloppy ecclesiology” for when the title “pastor” is applied in different ways, saying some are “using the same vocabulary in a different dictionary.”
That also applies to churches that have a man holding the title of pastor who is scripturally unfit to do so. Rice compared it to the way inflation affects currency.
“We started using that word (pastor) everywhere. I noticed it,” he said “[Churches] would hire a young male staff member and [say] ‘That’s a pastor.’ He’s not a pastor. He could be one day, but he’s not a pastor yet. He hasn’t met the qualifications for pastor-elder-overseer.
“That [title is] not shorthand for ‘staff member.’ That’s not shorthand for ‘I have a job at the church.’”
Denominational accountability
That’s not the only task force Rice proposes. A slew of meet-ups he’s attended at churches this year to discuss issues within the SBC have settled on a few topics of particular interest. One of those is transparency, which has led to his proposal for a Denominational Accountability Task Force.
He pointed to the 2007-2008 fiscal year, when churches sent $548 million through CP to their state conventions. That figure dropped to $446 million by FY 2023-2024.
Despite that, churches are giving in record numbers to designated offerings, he said.
“It’s not that we’re poor; it’s not that people are running away from cooperative missions, but we’ve got to have some serious questions about why Southern Baptist people and Southern Baptist churches are getting a little more reticent about just releasing their funds into the Cooperative Program,” he said.
It circles back to a fundamental matter of trust, he said. Items he thinks need more clarity include SBC entities’ use of outside funding sources, and trustee awareness of an entity leader’s salary.
At the 2025 SBC Annual Meeting, messengers approved a new Business and Financial Plan for the Convention. A motion to amend the plan to require each entity to publish information as detailed as what’s required on the IRS Form 990 failed.
“I don’t know that a 990 is the answer,” Rice said in the interview. “I don’t know what the exact answer is, but I want us to have the question.”
He said he hears about transparency “everywhere I go.”
“We need to quit shutting them down … quit dismissing them,” Rice said. “We need to quit saying that’s a non-starter and say, ‘Brother, how can I get you the information you want?’
“I think a lot of leaders have been dismissing those questions, and I think we need to take ’em seriously.”
Presidential responsibilities
If elected, Rice says he would choose people to serve on the Committee on Committees who “who understand the moment, who understand the need of convictional clarity in this age.” He also wants committee members who value “meaningful cooperation” which leads them to be “very focused on our mission.”
Another presidential responsibility is choosing the Resolutions Committee. “You want resolutions that state something prophetically to the culture,” he said.
He says committee members should be able to speak to those issues in ways that are “biblically grounded” and “in a way that informs and draws Southern Baptists together.”
“Everyone remembers Resolution 9 from 2019, the infamous resolution on critical race theory,” he said, “I think a lot of people were voting on things they didn’t understand.”
A significant responsibility of every president is to lead the annual meeting.
Rice says he appreciates times of singing and inspiration in the meeting, but “I think there’s sometimes a frustration of messengers. … You get to important matters of debate, and you seem to run out of time.”
He says he would want messengers to say, “he bent over backwards to give us plenty of time to speak to those issues and to help people, even if they were struggling with what to say or how to say it.”
Another role the president often fills is that of spokesman for the convention. Rice says he would look to avoid “unnecessary division” and “unnecessary consternation”.
“I think the SBC president understands, and I think Baptist people understand the SBC president doesn’t get to speak for all Baptist people,” he said. “Our polity is such that we believe in local churches. We believe in the autonomy of the local church.
“I would want to ask, ‘Does this represent the vast majority of Southern Baptist people?’ Does this represent our clearly held and clearly expressed convictions?’ Am I going out in front of them or around them, or have we, through resolutions or other mechanisms clearly spoken about these issues so that I could speak with confidence?’”
The vote to elect the next SBC president is scheduled for June 9 at 3:30 pm during the 2026 SBC Annual Meeting in Orlando.
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