The Southern Baptist Convention’s Resolutions Committee has released its slate of resolutions for the 2026 annual meeting, putting a set of churchwide questions on the table that range from the office of the pastor to disability ministry, immigration, political violence and artificial intelligence.
The release matters now because it sets the agenda for what Southern Baptists may debate next year, and it comes from a committee appointed by SBC President Clint Pressley. Hunter Baker, who serves as provost and dean of faculty at North Greenville University, said the group listened to the people who submitted resolutions and worked only with those submissions rather than drafting anything new. “Southern Baptists can be proud of the people and the process for working through resolutions,” he said, adding that he was encouraged by the “moral and spiritual seriousness” and the “constructive nature” of the committee’s work.
Baker said the committee tried to build consensus among Southern Baptists, a task that can matter as much as the language in the resolutions themselves. He said he particularly enjoyed working on a resolution tied to the nation’s 250th birthday, along with one encouraging pastors to persevere in ministry. He also said the committee was focused on helping express where Baptists already are on the issue of the pastor’s role.
That issue appears in a resolution that says confusion has arisen in some Southern Baptist churches over the relationship between the title, office and function of pastor. The text says the New Testament presents the pastoral office and the function of pastoral oversight as inseparably connected, and it calls on churches to maintain clarity and integrity in their ministerial titles and practices. Baker said the issue is one that, for most Southern Baptists, has long been settled by Scripture rather than by church authorities.
The slate also includes a resolution that gives thanks for the service, discipleship, evangelism, missions work and ministry contributions of women throughout Southern Baptist life, while encouraging churches to continue affirming and deploying women in biblically faithful ways. Baker said the resolutions were reviewed after being submitted, not rewritten by the committee, and the full set is available at sbc.net.
The resolution package will now move to the 2026 Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting, where delegates will decide which items become the convention’s formal voice. What remains open is how much support each proposal will draw once pastors and messengers begin weighing the language line by line.
