MBC PAPERS | What role did Lon Solomon play in affiliating with the SBC?

Lon Solomon formally left MBC in September 2017. The church promptly did everything they could to erase him. They took down his sermons from the website and took his books and CDs out of the bookstore. The CDs had been translated into over a dozen foreign languages including some African dialects. He was never invited back to preach and they rarely if ever mentioned his name from the stage or quoted him from the pulpit.  

But when the facts of the SBC affiliation began to surface, they couldn’t mention his name enough.  The SBC relationship “began over four years ago when Lon Solomon was serving as our senior pastor.”  “MBC began officially partnering with ministries of the SBC when Lon Solomon made a specific motion.”  “While Lon Solomon was still pastoring MBC in 2016.”  Everywhere you looked in emails, on the website, in correspondence with members, the church went out of its way to remind anybody who would listen that LON DID THIS.   

Starting in 2015 Lon did begin to express support for church planting but email exchanges between Dale Sutherland, Clint Clifton and Bill Steele in 2015-2016 reveal that Lon had to be won over for the affiliation to progress, and he was conspicuously kept out of the loop on emails in planning the future relationship with the SBC.     One email from Dale Sutherland to David Platt said “He (Lon) doesn’t understand the IMB or SBC, so he doesn’t know the impact of the decision (MBC_001508).”  When the famous partnership agreement was put together in 2016 numerous emails between Bill, Dale, Clint, and several other staffers were sent around looking for edits and input.   Lon was not copied, and his name was not mentioned.   When the agreement to join the SBC was executed, Lon’s name was not on the application (MBC_000632). 

Later Lon showed concern with the SBC mission creep that was setting in when the church joined up with the SBC’s controversial Gospel Coalition.   He said “the more we can avoid such entanglements, the better for us…”   In an email that was sent to Mike Kelsey and others that of course excluded Lon, Clinton Clifton advised that affiliating with the Gospel Coalition was “not a hill to die on with Lon,” and MBC should “just quietly have the church removed from the directory (MBC_002557).”  Quietly indeed.