[1]NASHVILLE (BP) – Evan Lenow, who began this week as Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) president, tells the story of a rural Mississippi church faced with ministering to a little boy who presented himself as a transgendered girl at Vacation Bible School (VBS).
The pastor was on a tractor when he called Lenow, seeking guidance.
“I had a conversation with him. The short version of that is that they’d had a situation in their VBS where they had a child who showed up at their VBS in their little, small, rural community who claimed to be the opposite gender. And so they’re trying to think through it,” Lenow said while telling the story on an ERLC podcast episode [2] hosted by RaShan Frost, ERLC director of research and senior fellow. “This is a situation that you wouldn’t have expected in that particular context. … They see it on the news, they read about it on social media, and then all of a sudden it is in their face.
“What do we do when we have a child who biologically is male, but wants to be viewed as female and wants to present as female?”
Helping churches decipher such situations and other dilemmas at the intersection of faith, ethics and culture is one of Lenow’s top priorities at the helm of the ERLC, he told Baptist Press his first week on the job.
“The cultural tides on matters of ethics are shifting faster than in times past, and churches are faced with questions of ever-increasing difficulty,” Lenow told Baptist Press. “These include questions about life, religious liberty, marriage and family, and human dignity. The answers the ERLC provides are practical help rooted in the timeless truths of Scripture.”
[3]Assisting churches leads naturally into the public policy arena, Lenow said.
“You have to understand there are plenty of opportunities and applications of applying the biblical principles to these moral issues that have public policy implications. And so this is not an abandoning of the advocacy for public policy,” Lenow said on the ERLC podcast. “Now, we’re certainly not a lobbying group. In fact, we can’t be. We’re prohibited from being a lobbying group by our affiliation under the Southern Baptist Convention.
“However, we do have times where we advocate on behalf of Southern Baptists related to public policy and related to legislation. And so when we do that, we’re doing that on behalf of the (many) Southern Baptist churches that are spread across the country.”
Lenow is ERLC trustees’ unanimous choice [4] to lead the commission in a year that three Southern Baptist entities are changing leadership, including Lifeway Christian Resources [5] and soon Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary [6].
“I am honored to step into the role of president of the ERLC,” he told Baptist Press. “My top priority is to serve and provide resources for the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention. We will work diligently to come alongside our churches, as well as advocate for the issues Southern Baptists care deeply about in the public square.”
He grew up at Bellevue Baptist Church in the Memphis area, he told Frost, and spent formative years of his early discipleship under the teachings of the late Adrian Rogers.
[7]“Although most of my career has been spent in academia, I really do have a love for the local church. I laugh that I’ve served in pretty much every capacity of a local church from a lay perspective, and I served as a deacon,” he told Frost. “I’ve served on all sorts of committees, search committees, and all different types of things in the local church. I’ve taught everything from children’s Sunday School all the way through adults. I’ve done pretty much everything in a local church setting.”
Lenow will be available to greet messengers at the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting Exhibit Hall in Orlando.
“I invite messengers to stop by our booth so we can get to know them and hear how we can help equip them to live faithfully for the Lord in their churches and communities,” said Lenow, who grew up in Southern Baptist life. His resume includes director of the Institute for Christian Leadership, director of Church and Minister Relations and chair of the Christian Studies Department for Mississippi College in Clinton, Miss.
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