Due to coming down with a cold, I was able to watch parts of the Caring Well conference put on by the SBC's ERLC this past week. It was held in Dallas and attracted something over 1,000 participants on site and an unknown number online.
Having a conference has long been the means for promoting personalities and their ministries of those in the convention who are well connected and have campaigned and played politics to get to a position of influence and leadership, or to address something that some leader felt needed to be addressed from behind a podium since there's no real authority for the denomination to do anything. This took a different tone.
I don't think the slate of presenters was a very strong one considering the issue and the events that brought it to light. Those who have been critical of the lack of effort put forth by Southern Baptists with regard to abusive clergy and church leadership were kept at a distance. From what I've observed, several of those who did present didn't seem as if their presentation had limits put on it, though there are still some annoying deferences that keep popping up. I wasn't impressed by the fact that Boz Tchividjian, who seems to make the rounds of lots of "conferences", was in the line up so didn't watch his presentation. Reading a description of it later I am sorry I missed it. He pointed out that local church autonomy seems to be a convenient excuse behind which to hide when sexual abuse in the church comes up in the SBC but it wouldn't interfere with denominational efforts to punish churches for calling women, gays or lesbians to their pulpits.
Baptist News Global did an excellent job on the coverage.
https://baptistnews.com/article/caring- ... Zt3XedKjuQ