SBC Pres. Willy Rice's church to host abuse prevention training as convention expands initiative
Southern Baptist Convention President Willy Rice has announced that his church in Florida will host a special abuse prevention training event next year.
Calvary Church of Clearwater will be the location for “Safeguarding the Next Generation” event on Jan. 19, 2027, hosted by Calvary, the Tampa Bay Baptist Association, the Suncoast Baptist Association, and the SBC Executive Committee’s Sexual Abuse Prevention & Response team.
In a statement emailed to The Christian Post on Friday, Rice said “sexual abuse was, is and will remain a grievous wickedness and a threat that requires constant vigilance.”
“The greatest tragedy is the broken lives and wounded souls of the people who have been betrayed,” Rice stated. “Until our King comes and vanquishes all evil, there will be wolves who need stopping and people who need protecting.”
Rice added that the SBC has “taken extraordinary steps to address this issue,” including over 5,200 SBC churches training staff, volunteers and parents on abuse prevention and response since 2021 and the SBC Executive Committee voting in 2024 to create an office of sexual abuse prevention and response.
“I hope our event in January will serve as an example of how we can and should be working together to address this issue,” he added. “I call upon all Southern Baptist churches to practice ongoing training, install proper protocols and, when faced with accusations of abuse in their ministries, to take those seriously, to report to law enforcement immediately and to cooperate with all legal investigations fully.”
The January event will be part of the Fortify Initiative, designed by the SBC EC abuse response team, which focuses on training congregations to improve youth protection and direct churches to local resources better tailored to their specific ministries.
Jeff Dalrymple, director of the SBC EC Abuse Prevention & Response team and a scheduled speaker at the January event in Clearwater, told CP that Fortify training was “designed for associations.”
In the SBC structure, an association is the level above the local church, but below the level of a state convention. Such bodies have no organizational authority, normally meet weekly instead of annually, and are considered the grassroots network of congregations.
The training was “developed this past spring in collaboration with several Baptist associations,” as well as the Southern Baptist Conference of Associational Leaders, “with a pilot completed in April with the Nashville Baptist Association.”
“The Fortify Initiative launched in June at the SBC's Annual Conference in Orlando, and since then we have hosted approximately five trainings completed so far and several others scheduled for this fall,” Dalrymple explained.
“The majority of these trainings will take place next year, with nearly two dozen in the planning stages across the country. We are processing additional requests each week in collaboration with our Baptist partners.”
In 2022, a detailed investigation from Guidepost Solutions concluded that SBC leaders had mishandled sexual abuse allegations, engaged in a pattern of intimidating victims and resisted efforts to make congregations safer, mostly to avoid legal liability.
Since the Guidepost report was released, the SBC has overseen multiple efforts to improve its responses to credible allegations of abuse among affiliated congregations.
In February 2025, SBC EC President Jeff Iorg reported that seven member churches were disfellowshipped as a result of allegations reported via a hotline that had been set up in 2022.
Last year, the SBC EC relaunched the Abuse Prevention & Response website, adding enhanced resources on reporting and preventing abuse, and later including information on Fortify.
