Heath Lambert, the senior pastor of the historic First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, FL, has notified Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary that the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors — an organization Lambert concurrently serves as Executive Director — will not host their annual meeting on the seminary’s campus despite earlier plans.
The reason, according to Lambert:
Like so many others, I was watching with great interest as the Southwestern trustees met to determine the path forward for their president. I was disappointed by the decision of the trustees that sent a confused message to all those who have been hurt by the abuse of another. Since that decision, we have been working very hard on an alternative location for our conference this October 1-3. I have communicated with the leadership of Southwestern Seminary, and let them know that ACBC will no longer be convening our annual meeting at their campus. Instead, our conference, Light in the Darkness: Biblical Counseling and Abuse will now take place at Countryside Bible Church, which is also in the Fort Worth area.
Click here to read more.
The trustee decision to continue enabling and supporting Paige Patterson is now costing the seminary the opportunity to host conferences on campus that deal with the critical issues of ministry to victims of abuse.
A time for choosing indeed.
We are curious if Patterson will be getting any more invites to preach at the annual pastor’s conference in Jacksonville. #boycottswbts
The Baptist Blogger 
Dale Johnson was recently elected the new Executive Director of the ACBC. You may know him better as a professor at SWBTS. I wonder to what extent he agrees with this move. And I wonder to what extent this will hurt Johnson’s future at SWBTS. Best I can tell, he has been very quiet about all of this.