Sunday, August 23, 2026
A Texas appeals court held this week that an independent, elder-governed church is entitled to the same constitutional protection from judicial review as a diocese with a code of canon law. Read alongside the death of a 20-year-old in a Southern Baptist missionary boot camp, the week poses one question twice: if the courts will not examine how elders investigate and govern, who will?
Annual meeting, entities, ERLC, resolutions, denominational politics.
A student died in Spurgeon College’s mission training program. Ben Speidel, 20, an incoming Spurgeon College student, died Saturday, Aug. 15, during a field training exercise for the college’s Fusion program at Wyandotte County Lake in Kansas. Deputies and paramedics responded to a 7:40 p.m. call; he was pronounced dead at the hospital. Spurgeon — housed within Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary — confirmed the death Wednesday, with president Jason K. Allen calling it “a tragic, traumatic event for all of us.” Sheriff’s detectives say they do not suspect foul play; cause of death remains undetermined. Fusion, a two-semester program combining boot camp, field exercises, and simulated security crises before three-month IMB deployments, has drawn criticism from some former participants who describe the training as physically and spiritually harmful. Those allegations are contested and unproven, and the investigation is not finished. But two things are true at once: a family is grieving, and a program that markets hardness now has to answer for it. The Roys Report
A searchable database of accused Protestant leaders went live. ProtestantAccountability.org launched Wednesday with roughly 2,700 entries drawn from criminal indictments, lawsuits, and news reports — 1,578 lead and solo pastors, 694 youth pastors and leaders, 172 associate pastors, 93 worship leaders. Most entries include a photo, job titles, and every congregation where the person worked. Accusation is not conviction, and any elder using such a list needs to keep that distinction firmly in hand. What has changed is practical: the “he moved to another state and nobody knew” era is closing. The Roys Report
Christa Brown, twenty years on. Brown’s Aug. 19 opinion piece revisits the letters she sent SBC leaders in August 2006 warning them about clergy abuse, and argues the convention still is not listening. It is an advocate’s piece and reads like one. Read it anyway — the value is in the specificity of what she asked for two decades ago and what was done with it. The Roys Report
Nevada Baptists name Adam Mallette. The Executive Board of the Nevada Baptist Convention voted unanimously Aug. 11 to approve Mallette, lead teaching pastor of King’s Church in Las Vegas, as its next executive director/treasurer. Another state-convention leadership change on the heels of Alabama’s earlier this month. These transitions determine which churches get planted and which pastors get supported for the next decade, and they almost never make national news. Baptist Press
Reformed Baptist, Presbyterian (PCA/OPC), confessional churches and networks.
Did Missouri Presbytery examine its candidate properly? The Heidelblog took up on Aug. 18 the complaint filed after Missouri Presbytery (PCA) approved the ordination of a same-sex-attracted man on April 22, 2025 — a Ruling Elder present at the meeting argued the presbytery’s action violated the PCA’s own standards. Thirteen comments and counting, which is the tell. Baptists have no presbytery to appeal to, which cuts both ways: no external review of a bad ordination, and no external interference in a good one. Worth reading for how an examination is supposed to work. Heidelblog
The schism series reached Parts 3 and 4. Everett Henes continued his examination of Richard Ackerman — the “Redeemed Zoomer” — with an Aug. 18 installment on whether heresy justifies separation and an Aug. 19 installment on the Old Testament prophets and institutional faithfulness. Henes quotes Ackerman’s July 20 post stating the position in the strongest possible terms, and works through the debate with Douglas Wilson that made it a live question. Third week running for this series; if young men in your congregation are being catechized by online debate, this is the argument they are inside of. Part 3 Part 4
Founders reaches adoption in the 1689. Tom Ascol and Graham Gunden’s walk through the confession arrived at the chapter on adoption this week, following recent episodes on justification and on why a church needs a confession at all. Three consecutive weeks of usable officer-training material for churches that hold the 1689 nominally and teach it rarely. Founders Ministries
“Rome, Constantinople, or Geneva” hits Part 10 today. Clark’s series on why discontented evangelicals are leaving for Rome and Constantinople reached its fourth consecutive episode on the sacramental system, released this morning. The premise is unchanged and still right: the hunger for history, transcendence, reverent worship, and a higher view of the Supper is not a wrong hunger. It is one Geneva already answered, and most American Protestants were never told. Heidelblog
Grimké announces its 2027 men’s conference. With this summer’s “Churchman” conference behind it, Grimké Seminary has posted “Why Men Lead,” set for July 26–28, 2027, in Richmond — billed as an examination of the God-ordained role of men in church, family, and society. An announcement rather than a story, noted here because the lead time matters if you send men. Grimké Seminary
Major debates, books, controversies, council and committee statements.
Clark on tradition, sola Scriptura, and semper reformanda. An Aug. 21 essay tracing how the boomer generation’s revolt against traditionalism produced both Woodstock and the guitar mass — and what the evangelical version of that revolt cost. The pastoral use is straightforward: semper reformanda has become the slogan of choice for people who mean the opposite of what the phrase meant, and a congregation that cannot define it will be governed by whoever uses it most confidently. Heidelblog
Chad Vegas and Chris Gordon on Israel, antisemitism, and Zionism. An Aug. 21 Abounding Grace Radio episode taking up how Gentile Christians should view Israel and the Jews — currently one of the most contested questions in American Christianity, and one that has migrated from the seminary into the pew via social media. Four comments within hours. If you have not thought carefully about what you would say if asked from the pulpit, you will be asked. Heidelblog
“The National Gospel.” Jim Cassidy’s Aug. 17 piece responds to a Presbycast episode on a 1925 Machen letter, and to how quickly that conversation turned toward Christian nationalism. Ten comments, which for this blog signals a nerve. Note the pattern across the last three issues: Machen keeps reappearing as the reference point for arguments about the church’s relation to the nation and to its own institutions. That is not nostalgia; it is because he answered these questions in public and lost things for it. Heidelblog
Does the Westminster Confession teach baptismal regeneration? A Heidelminicast series beginning Aug. 18 works through a question that comes up whenever a Baptist and a Presbyterian read WCF 28 together. Useful for elders in confessionally mixed communities who would rather understand the Presbyterian position than caricature it. Heidelblog
Religious liberty, ethics, politics affecting the church, cultural engagement.
An elder-governed church gets the same constitutional protection as a diocese. The Fifth Court of Appeals in Dallas ruled Wednesday that the church-autonomy doctrine bars civil courts from hearing most of Cindy and Jerry Clemishire’s claims against Gateway Church, three of its elders, and Robert and Deborah Morris — because adjudicating them would require a court to probe how church leaders investigated allegations and what they concluded. Justice Mike Lee, writing for a panel with Justices Emily Miskel and Nancy Kennedy, leaned on the Texas Supreme Court’s 2021 In re Diocese of Lubbock and wrote the line elders should sit with: “A church governed by a Board of Elders is entitled to the same constitutional protection as is a church governed by a robust code of canon law.” Claims against the Robert Morris Evangelistic Association survive, as do claims arising from a May 30, 2025 affidavit the court found outside the church’s investigation. Morris pleaded guilty last October to abusing Clemishire beginning when she was 12 and served six months. This is the most consequential church-state development of the month for congregational polity: the protection Rome has long enjoyed now plainly extends to independent elder-led churches — and so does the responsibility that comes with being unreviewable. The Roys Report
ERLC honors the daughter of a pastor imprisoned in China. ERLC trustees named Grace Jin Drexel the recipient of the John Leland Religious Liberty Award while her father, Pastor Ezra Jin, was still imprisoned in China for his faith. He has since been freed. Baptist Press reported the presentation Aug. 20. The Leland award is worth knowing about by name — Leland was the Baptist who traded Madison a vote for the First Amendment. Baptist Press
ChinaAid asks the White House to bring John Cao home. Cao was imprisoned seven years by the Chinese Communist Party for his Christian work; advocates say his passport was then confiscated, preventing his return to his American wife and children in North Carolina. ChinaAid petitioned for intervention this week, citing his declining health. A concrete, nameable prayer item for a congregation that has been praying generally for the persecuted church. Baptist Press
Americans are rethinking legalized marijuana. An Aug. 20 Heidelblog item notes 24 states have legalized recreational use since 2012, seven more have decriminalized to varying degrees, and the administration moved state-licensed medical marijuana off Schedule I in April — even as public opinion turns. A pastoral rather than political matter in most congregations: the members affected are already in the room. Heidelblog
Stuart Robinson on disestablishment. An Aug. 22 excerpt from the nineteenth-century Southern Presbyterian who argued that the first principles governing the relation of temporal and spiritual power had simply dropped out of Christendom’s consciousness. Paired with an Aug. 19 post on Samuel Davies fighting for dissenters’ rights under Virginia’s established church, the Heidelblog spent this week making a quiet argument about the church-state question that keeps resurfacing in American Reformed circles. Robinson Davies
Notable controversy and media shake-ups — reported with discernment, not appetite.
Tom Buck is accused of plagiarizing sermons. The Texas pastor and prominent conservative Baptist voice — who has himself publicly condemned sermon plagiarism — faces allegations of “habitual and systemic” borrowing, reported Aug. 20. Notably, allies have rallied to his defense by arguing that the real scandal is who surfaced the accusation. That move is worth watching independently of whether the underlying charge holds up: when the response to evidence is a question about the motives of the person presenting it, the argument has already changed subjects. The Roys Report
ACNA court finds a bishop guilty of misconduct. An Anglican Church in North America ecclesiastical court found the bishop who led a chaplains’ group out of the denomination guilty of causing the breakaway, in a ruling reported Aug. 21. A rare thing to observe from outside: a denomination actually running its discipline process to a verdict on a man who had already left. The Roys Report
Life sentence for an itinerant minister; wife convicted of facilitating. A Tennessee jury found the minister guilty of child rape on Aug. 17; he was sentenced to life without parole, and his wife was convicted of facilitating the abuse. The second conviction is the one to notice. Abuse of this duration is rarely a solo act — it is sustained by adults who chose not to see. The Roys Report
$335,000 allegedly rerouted from an Arizona church. A former administrative assistant faces multiple felony charges after detectives alleged she moved more than $335,000 into personal accounts. Filed under the recurring lesson: the person who reconciles the bank statement should not be the person who writes the checks, and an elder board that cannot say who does each should fix that this month. The Roys Report
A pastoral takeaway for your leadership team this week.
The Dallas court gave elder-led churches something significant this week, and it is worth being honest about what it is. It is not a finding that Gateway acted well. The court explicitly declined to decide whether Gateway’s statements were defamatory. What it decided is that no civil court may look — that when a board of elders investigates one of its own and then tells the congregation what it found, the process is ecclesiastical and the courthouse door is closed. Rome has had that protection for a long time. Now, in Texas at least, so do we. Set that beside the second story of the week: a twenty-year-old dead after a training exercise in a program whose critics were dismissed, whose defenders are already saying these things just happen, and whose culture teaches young men to recite that suffering is expected. Both stories run on the same fuel — an institution’s confidence that its own internal judgment is sufficient. The court has now told us it will not check our work. That is not a gift; it is the removal of a backstop. Which means the question for your board is not are we protected but what would we have caught. So: when your elders last investigated a complaint against one of your own — not a hypothetical, the actual last time — who ran it, who saw the evidence, what was written down, and would any of it survive a stranger reading it cold? If no one on the board can answer without checking with someone else, the answer is that your process is a memory rather than a practice. Paul required that a charge against an elder be heard on two or three witnesses and that those who persist in sin be rebuked in the presence of all (1 Tim. 5:19–20). He gave the church a procedure precisely because he assumed no one else would supply one.
State of the Church Today · Compiled August 23, 2026. Reply with corrections or tips. Forward to a fellow elder.