[1]Editor’s note: Mike Proud is the executive director of the Colorado Baptist Convention.
I often wonder what comes to the mind of Southern Baptists when they think of their state convention. In Colorado, our state convention structure has shifted radically over the past 20 years. At one time our state convention office teamed with more than 20 staff; now there are only three. Our office today operates on a shoestring budget. This is not because Cooperative Program dollars are down; it is because we want to send as much of our CP dollars to the field to support the churches of our convention. This intentional strategy of limited office staff has been a blessing and a challenge. The blessing is a more robust strategy for the field. The challenge comes in the limited time we are able to invest administratively.
A few months ago, the Colorado House of Representatives proposed a House Bill known as HB25-1312, the Kelly Loving Act. Named for a transgender person killed in a night club in 2022, it sought to make it illegal to use a person’s birth gender or given name against his/her wishes. It sought to require schools to cater to the wishes of transgender students and to further take rights away from parents. This legislation needed to be opposed, and our churches needed to know how to respond, but we simply did not have the connections or the bandwidth to engage this effort from our office.
A number of Colorado pastors organized and went to the Colorado capital to speak against this bill and amassed a social media charge, but I was convinced that our office needed to engage as well. So, I reached out to Brent Leatherwood and the ERLC for help. Brent told me the ERLC was aware of this legislation. His team immediately got to work on drafting a letter to state senators as well as crafting material which we could send to our churches with specific steps church members could take to let Colorado legislators know how they felt about the bill.
Within three days (because this took place over the weekend) the ERLC had drafted a letter which was co-signed by Brent Leatherwood and myself and sent to senate members who were considering arguments prior to voting on the bill. Within that same three days we had bulletin inserts, web links and other materials which were passed along to our churches for action.
[2]In the coming weeks we learned this bill, though radically altered, had been passed by the Colorado Senate and had moved to the desk of Gov. Jared Polis, awaiting his signature to make it law. Brent Leatherwood reached out to me and said he and his team would draft another letter, this time to Gov. Polis, requesting he respect the values of families in Colorado and not sign the bill. Again, I was given an opportunity to attach my signature to this letter and within a few days it was sent to the governor’s office.
The sad reality for Colorado is that Gov. Polis signed this bill into law and now we await the legal challenges to this law which have already begun. But I wanted to share how grateful I am for the hard work and timely response we received from Brent Leatherwood and his team at the ERLC. Not only were they able to craft communication that helped our churches respond, but they were also able to communicate with legislators, speaking a language that most of us do not speak or understand. The testimony I desire to share is that the ERLC served us in an area which was unfamiliar to us and one in which we did not have the capacity or competence to address.
I have been a Southern Baptist since 1984 when a small congregation in my hometown of Lafayette, Colo., loved me into the Kingdom. I have pastored Southern Baptist churches in three states, I have been an associational leader and now I serve as a state executive director. I have served on national committees and was a trustee of one of our seminaries. I have experienced Southern Baptist life during seasons of celebration and seasons of embarrassment. But what makes me proud to be a Southern Baptist is the cooperative spirit which has defined us! And the help provided to the Colorado Baptist General Convention by the ERLC in this situation has been just one more expression of what is best about our Southern Baptist community. We really are better together!
Related posts:
Leatherwood to remain ERLC president 
SBC DIGEST: Israel statement well received; SBTS panel on events in Holy Land 
Moore: Christ crucified better than civil religion 
Trump signs executive order protecting women’s sports 
4 entity heads address messenger questions 
ERLC letter to Trump transition team encourages policy changes 
Moore’s ‘Storm-Tossed Family’ honored by ECPA 
FIRST-PERSON: How your church can serve pregnancy resource centers