Turning Point USA apparently has canceled First Baptist Church of Orlando as a stop on its “Make Heaven Crowded” tour.
BNG reported Tuesday morning that a campus pastor had been placed on administrative leave after questioning the church hosting the political rally dressed up as a revival and another staff member resigned in protest.
Screencap of Chris Ogden in video apologizing to congregation for questioning the leadership of the senior pastors of First Baptist Orlando.
The Orlando event was slated for next week but now has been removed from both the TPUSA website and from the church’s social media posts. David Uth, one of three senior pastors at the megachurch, announced the event to the congregation last Sunday — the first notice many in the congregation had about it. The week before, Chris Ogden, pastor of the church’s Horizon West campus, reportedly used the forum of a staff meeting to question the wisdom of hosting the political rally at the church. As discipline, he was forced to produce a video apology and say he regretted challenging the authority of the three senior pastors.
A source inside the church told BNG it appears TPUSA canceled on First Baptist Orlando due to a “misalignment of values.” On Sunday, Uth had promised the congregation church leaders had complete veto power over speakers to appear at the Orlando event, which he said would be all about Jesus and not about politics.
But all the previous stops on the tour have mixed evangelical revivalism with conservative evangelical politics — a hallmark of TPUSA and its founder, Charlie Kirk.
Who cancelled on whom is not clear, but the event is gone from both websites.
Also, significant dissent has been reported within the congregation and particularly within the Horizon West campus community about Ogden being removed from leadership. Some members reportedly are threatening to leave the church, and some high-dollar donors are expressing concern as well.
Ogden is a hugely popular pastor on the campus, which was a 2018 church start funded in partnership with the SBC North American Mission Board.
The three senior pastors at the main campus have said nothing publicly about the matter, and BNG’s request for comment has gone unanswered for more than 24 hours.
Senior Pastor David Uth explaining last Sunday how the TPUSA event will be only about Jesus. (scerencap)
Meanwhile, the most conservative segments of the Southern Baptist Convention piled on with criticism of First Baptist Orlando being too liberal and too woke. Although from an outside perspective few people would consider the church liberal, this has been a frequent criticism of Uth’s leadership. This most often harkens back to comments he previously made about welcoming diversity in the congregation.
Uth has served the church 20 years and until last year was the lone senior pastor. He previously was a trustee of the SBC International Mission Board and was chair of the search committee that in 2014 called David Platt as IMB president. Platt’s IMB tenure, as well as his current role as pastor at McLean Bible Church in Virginia, also were fraught with concerns that he is not conservative enough.
Now, perhaps ironically, the SBC annual meeting is planned for Orlando this June and the very day Ogden challenged the TPUSA decision in staff meeting, the SBC Executive Committee released a video interview with Uth in its “Road to Orlando” series.
In that video, Uth speaks of the church offering services in English, Spanish and Portuguese and commends the “diversity” of the congregation.
“I think the church has grown tremendously in diversity just because we’ve been open to it, embraced it, and we’re very welcoming,” he said. “No matter who you are, where you’ve come from, what you look like, what language you speak — we believe that Jesus loves you, and so do we.”
The far-right segment of the SBC does not share Uth’s belief that Jesus loves and welcomes everyone equally into the church.
“Uth’s church has knowingly baptized openly practicing and unrepentant homosexuals. Uth supports women pastors,” warned Texas pastor Tom Buck. His concerns were amplified in two conservative online outlets, Protestia and The Dissenter.
Criticism of Uth also is the topic of a Feb. 9 article on the Church Leaders website.
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