What should we make of the Evangelical Baptist Network in the UK?

Question 9110.

The Evangelical Baptist Network is a relatively recent body, and it exists because of a specific crisis inside Baptists Together, the Baptist Union of Great Britain. It grew out of what was initially called Baptist Ministers for Orthodox Marriage, formed as the Union worked through the question of whether accredited ministers could be in same-sex marriages, and it later rebranded under its present name with a broader remit.

I write as an evangelical Baptist minister outside the Union, and I want to be fair. There is real courage in what this network has done, and there are real questions about the strategy it has chosen. Both things can be said at once, and anyone assessing it deserves to hear both.

Why the network exists: the Baptist Union context

The Baptist Union of Great Britain has been moving in a theologically liberal direction for a long time. It endorsed the ordained ministry of women over a century ago, in 1922, which makes it settled egalitarian territory, although individual congregations within it hold complementarian convictions. Since 2014 individual churches have been permitted to conduct same-sex blessings, with the Union declining to intervene on grounds of local church autonomy.

In 2020 a group of accredited ministers and church members petitioned the Union’s Ministerial Recognition Committee to change the rules so that ministers in same-sex marriages would no longer be guilty of gross misconduct. That request triggered a long process of national consultation running through 2022 and 2023, and it forced every evangelical Baptist within the Union to decide what they were going to do about it.

The outcome came in March 2024, when the Baptist Union Council voted by 49 votes to 27 to leave the ministerial rules unchanged. An accredited minister cannot be in a same-sex marriage. Individual churches retain the liberty to conduct same-sex blessings, so the position is not uniform, but at the level of accredited ministry the historic understanding of marriage held.

That vote was a genuine victory for orthodox conviction, and the network played a significant part in mobilising it. More than two hundred orthodox evangelical Baptists gathered in person in January 2023 to co-ordinate their response. Their engagement mattered, and it should be acknowledged plainly before any criticism is offered.

What the Evangelical Baptist Network says about itself

The network’s own material sets out its aim clearly. It wishes to act as a resource for evangelical renewal within the Baptist family, calling churches back to their roots as radical believers, and it is explicit that it does not wish to be separatist. The governing conviction is that authentic Baptist identity is evangelical identity, and that the denomination has drifted from that foundation rather than outgrown it.

That is a reasonable instinct and a historically grounded one. The appeal is to Baptist confessionalism rather than to novelty. The published material covers church planting and growth, theological exploration, prayer, and leadership resources, and the tone is warm and collaborative rather than combative. Anyone expecting a campaigning organisation will find something rather different.

The oversight team named on the network’s website has included Yinka Oyekan, Nigel Coles, Dr Louise Hearn, Gareth Owens, Alex Afriyie and Vicky Thompson. That the leadership includes women in oversight roles is itself significant, and it reflects the wider Baptist Union culture in which the network operates rather than any departure from it.

The complementarian question

This is the first structural issue, and it is unavoidable. The Evangelical Baptist Network is egalitarian in its own leadership structure, as the Union is, though individuals within it may hold complementarian convictions. For those of us who hold that the eldership and the primary regular teaching ministry of the gathered church are reserved for qualified men, that is not a small matter.

I want to be careful here. Egalitarianism is not heresy, and I fellowship with believers who hold it. But a network describing itself as a vehicle for evangelical renewal, which has not addressed a question that the pastoral epistles treat as a matter of church order, has left something significant unexamined. Renewal that does not reach the ordering of the church is renewal of a limited kind.

It also creates an odd position. The network is contending for the historic understanding of marriage on the basis that the apostolic instruction stands regardless of cultural pressure. That is exactly the argument a complementarian makes about eldership from the same letters, and it is not obvious how one can be pressed without the other being at least seriously considered.

The charismatic and NAR question

The second structural issue concerns theological environment. The leadership profile of the network includes figures with connections to charismatic streams, and some of those streams touch the New Apostolic Reformation, a movement I regard as a serious departure rather than an excess of enthusiasm. Its claim of restored apostles holding governmental authority over churches has no basis in the New Testament and undermines the sufficiency of Scripture in practice.

I want to state this carefully, because the concern is not with the sincerity of any individual. It is with cumulative environment. Network material has included content on healing and deliverance, which is not in itself problematic; I am a continuationist and I believe the gifts of the Spirit remain operative. The question is whether such categories are being handled within the order Paul lays down in 1 Corinthians 14, where everything is weighed and everything is intelligible.

Nigel Coles, to take one example, has been a consistent and principled voice for biblical marriage within the Union, and his regional leadership work appears genuinely motivated by the renewal the network claims to seek. Naming a structural concern is not an accusation against such men. It is an observation that the theological environment surrounding a network shapes what it eventually becomes.

The Declaration of Principle problem

Here is what I regard as the deepest issue, and it has nothing to do with any individual. The Baptist Union’s Declaration of Principle is the only doctrinal basis on which its member churches gather. It describes Jesus as the sole and absolute authority in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as revealed in the Holy Scriptures, and it affirms believer’s baptism and the duty of evangelism.

What it does not mention is the gospel, the atonement, the resurrection, the person of the Holy Spirit, or the necessity of personal faith for salvation. It is a statement about authority and practice rather than about the content of the faith, and it is broad enough to contain a very wide range of conviction. That is not an accident of drafting; it is how the Union has held together a diverse membership for generations.

For an evangelical Baptist this creates an obvious difficulty. Titus tells us an overseer must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it (Titus 1:9). Rebuking contradiction requires an agreed standard against which contradiction can be measured, and a Declaration of Principle with no doctrinal content cannot supply one.

Renewal or managed coexistence?

So the question the Evangelical Baptist Network raises is not really about any position it holds. It is about the strategy it has chosen. The network has positioned itself deliberately as a renewal movement within the Union rather than as an alternative to it, and that is a defensible choice with historical precedent. Faithful minorities have maintained a witness inside drifting denominations before.

The question is whether the conditions for that strategy to be fruitful actually exist here. Amos asks whether two can walk together unless they have agreed (Amos 3:3). The 2024 vote was won 49 to 27, which is a comfortable majority rather than a settled consensus, and the twenty-seven remain within the structures, some of them in positions of influence. The direction of travel over thirty years has been consistent.

There is a difference between a strategy for renewal and a strategy for managed coexistence, and the difference shows up over decades rather than years. Renewal changes the denomination. Coexistence preserves a space within it for those who dissent, which is a real service to those ministers but is not the same thing at all.

Alternatives exist. The Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches, the Association of Grace Baptist Churches and other networks offer fellowship to congregations that have concluded the conditions for meaningful renewal inside Baptists Together no longer obtain. Naming those alternatives is not a charge against anyone’s motives; it is an honest account of the options an evangelical Baptist minister actually has.

What I would say to a minister weighing this

If you are inside the Union and wondering whether to align with the network, I would ask three questions. What is the doctrinal basis of the fellowship you are joining, and does it say anything the Declaration of Principle does not? Who holds the leadership accountable, and to what standard? And what would have to happen before you concluded that renewal was not going to come?

That third question is the one people avoid, and it is the one that matters most. A strategy without a point of review is not a strategy; it is a habit. Every generation of evangelicals inside a drifting denomination has believed that departure was premature, and some were right and some were not, and the difference was usually whether they had thought about it in advance.

The basis for genuine fellowship is the gospel, a right view of God, and a high view of Scripture. Where those three hold, I can work with believers who differ from me on secondary matters, and I do. Where they are not agreed, the fellowship rests on something other than the faith itself, whatever the letterhead says.

A fair summary

The Evangelical Baptist Network is doing something necessary. It has held the line on biblical marriage within a denomination that was being pressed hard, and it provides fellowship and resource for evangelical ministers who are increasingly a minority in their own structures. The courage that takes in the current British church climate is real, and it should not be dismissed by those of us watching from outside.

The concerns are structural rather than personal: the absence of a complementarian commitment, the charismatic and NAR-adjacent connections in the wider network, and the underlying question of whether renewal within a denomination without a confessional basis can produce the evangelical Baptist Christianity it seeks to recover. Those are questions the network’s own leaders would benefit from engaging more directly than they presently appear to.

What renewal has looked like historically

It is worth asking what successful renewal inside a denomination has actually required, because the history is instructive. Where evangelical minorities have turned a denomination, they have generally held three things: control of ministerial training, an agreed confession that could be appealed to, and the willingness to discipline those who departed from it.

Where those conditions were absent, the pattern has usually been different. The evangelical group survived as a recognised constituency, its people were treated courteously, and the denomination continued in the direction it was already travelling. That is not failure exactly, but it is not renewal either, and an evangelical Baptist weighing the options should know which of the two is realistically on offer.

The Baptist Union does not have a confession in the sense required. It has a Declaration of Principle about authority and practice. Whether a network of evangelical Baptist churches can supply what the denomination structurally lacks is the open question, and I do not think anyone yet knows the answer.

How to assess any network fairly

The tests I would apply here are the ones I would apply to any body asking for a church’s association. What is the doctrinal basis and does it name the gospel? Who is accountable to whom? What company does the leadership keep, and what does it decline to endorse? Would the network say publicly that a particular teaching is wrong, and has it ever done so?

That last question is the sharpest. A body that has never said no to anything has not yet demonstrated that it has boundaries. The Evangelical Baptist Network did say no on the marriage question, clearly and at cost, which is more than many organisations have managed and should count in its favour.

What it has not yet done, so far as I can see, is set out where it stands on the ordering of the church, on the claims of the New Apostolic Reformation, or on what would constitute a departure serious enough to break fellowship. An evangelical Baptist congregation considering association would be right to ask, and right to expect an answer.

A note on how we speak about other believers

One thing I want to avoid is the tone that often accompanies this kind of assessment. It is very easy, from outside a structure, to write about those inside it as though their choices were obvious failures of nerve. They are not. Ministers within the Union have congregations, histories, and relationships that shape what is possible for them.

Paul tells us to speak the truth in love, and to let our speech be gracious (Colossians 4:6). That applies to how evangelical Baptist believers speak about one another across these lines. Criticism of a strategy is legitimate; contempt for the people pursuing it is not.

So take what I have written as an argument to be tested rather than a verdict to be repeated. If you are an evangelical Baptist inside the Union and you think I have misjudged the situation, I would genuinely rather hear the case than be agreed with.

So, now what?

If you are a member of a Baptist Union church, find out what your own congregation actually believes and what its association actually requires, because most members have never been told. If you are a minister, do the work on that third question before circumstances force it on you.

And if you are watching all this from a distance, resist the temptation to score points. Evangelical Baptist life in this country is under real pressure, and the people holding a line inside a difficult structure are not the enemy. Pray for them, ask them hard questions, and be honest about the fact that none of us knows yet how this will end. Related reading: what ecumenism is, the marks of a true church, and when it is right to leave a church.

Do two walk together, unless they have agreed to meet?

Amos 3:3, ESV

For Further Study

On the nature of the church as a body distinct from Israel, and therefore on what a denomination can and cannot be, Lewis Sperry Chafer and John Walvoord remain worth reading, with Charles Ryrie’s Basic Theology giving the clearest short account of the dispensational framework I work within. J. Dwight Pentecost is useful on how the church’s calling differs from Israel’s, and Millard Erickson’s Christian Theology surveys the ecclesiological options fairly for anyone wanting to see the alternatives set out. Arnold Fruchtenbaum is helpful on the relationship between apostolic instruction and the older covenants. For the documentary record on the Baptist Union decisions described here, the Union’s own council statements from March 2024 and the contemporaneous reporting in the evangelical press are the primary sources, and I would encourage anyone forming a view to read them directly rather than relying on summaries, including mine.