Significant voice about SBC matters to retire...

...without much notice, I'm afraid. If an influential SBC leader retired from public life you will usually find Baptist Press, the state papers, and many bloggers noting the fact.

Not so with the lady pictured here, Christa Brown, who says in her latest blog, "Goodbye for now" "...for now, I'm going to take a break."

Blogging for about five years, she has been quite influential in the SBC, although in an odd sort of way.

Her website
Stop Baptist Predators is, best I can tell, the main if not the only blog focusing on clergy sex abuse in the SBC. Her sad story of being abused by an SBC minister is on that site as are a number of similar stories.

Christa Brown is responsible more than any other single individual for putting a spotlight on cases of clergy sex abuse in SBC churches. Her persistent voice has increased the attention given to such things by the SBC Executive Committee, at SBC annual meetings, in state conventions, in churches, and by SBC pastors.

While the specific changes she has sought in the SBC have been resisted, things like an Executive Committee-level independent review board to receive and evaluate cases of abuse in SBC churches, I don't think it is arguable that churches and pastors are far more aware, much better prepared, and have implemented much more in the way of child protection policies as a result of Brown's advocacy.

I blogged about her last year under the title, "This lady could save your ministry", a piece worth reading then and now.

She has endured the ire of not a few Southern Baptist leaders. She has been a lonely voice at times, an irritating voice at others, but a persistent voice always.

We have never met, nor spoken, and I am sorry she is leaving her blog for now.