BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Southern Baptist church leaders are blaming their difficulties staffing youth pastor positions not on any lack of appeal due to anachronistic dogma, racial divisions or sex abuse scandals, but on “the proliferation of pornography.”
Earlier this month, the Baptist Paper — a leading news and opinion source for members of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), one of the largest Christian denominations in the United States — published a piece online headlined, “Youth Pastor Shortage Leaves Churches Scrambling to Fill Key Role.”
According to its own statistics, the SBC is the largest Protestant group in the U.S. and the second-largest Christian denomination in membership, surpassed only by the Roman Catholic Church.
“Pastors in general are in short supply these days, and the data proves it,” wrote David Roach of the Alabama-based Baptist Paper. “But some youth ministry experts suspect the student pastor shortage is even more severe.”
Roach quotes Larry Hyche of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions as saying that he warns churches seeking student pastors “that it could be a year or two to find a good candidate for your church — especially if you’re looking for a full-time student pastor.”
Roach then speculates that “the proliferation of pornography” may be fueling the shortage of youth pastors.
Dubious Statistics from Covenant Eyes
To back his contention, Roach cites a statistic from “the ministry Covenant Eyes,” asserting that “57% of teenagers search out pornography at least monthly.”
As XBIZ reported — and Wired exposed last week — Covenant Eyes is less a ministry than a Michigan-based niche software company that installs surveillance software marketed as “porn filters” through a network of churches.
The Baptist Paper article then claims without attribution that “one in five youth pastors — and one in seven senior pastors — use porn on a regular basis,” and suggests that “those who recruit young adults to student ministry say porn addictions make many feel unworthy to answer the call to ministry.”
‘First Cast out the Beam Out of Thine Own Eye’ (Matthew, 7:5)
As XBIZ reported, in 2020 two important religious leaders advised Southern Baptists to spend more time “fighting pornography” rather than debating church doctrine, the SBC’s history of white supremacy or cases of sexual abuse by clergy.
Southern Baptist leaders have compared the current War on Porn — and particularly the Exodus Cry-driven attack on Pornhub — to the early church’s fight against “pagan culture.” SBC leaders have called for state censorship of all pornography, labeling the adult industry’s constitutionally-protected exercise of free speech “an individual private indulgence” that combines “sexual abuse and trafficking.”
