I take no pleasure in writing this. Since I was pulled into the controversy through no action of my own, I am compelled to tell what I know in hope that my testimony will shed more light on what has actually happened.
On July 27, 2026, I received a large brown envelope delivered by the US Postal Service to my home. The return address was First Baptist Church (FBC) of Lindale, Texas, where Tom Buck pastors. The $2.56 postage was postmarked from Dallas, Texas. The envelope’s contents included a 3-page cover letter and a 27-page “Documentation of Sermon Plagiarism.”
I read the cover letter, which was addressed to “Brothers and fellow shepherds.” The last 3 paragraphs are a justification for sending this material anonymously. I read them aloud to my wife, and we enjoyed a good, derisive laugh. I told her that the letter was “the most cowardly, effeminate, malakoi thing” I had read in a long time. I assumed it was from a group of disgruntled women (it begins “We write” and uses the first-person plural throughout) who had become disaffected with FBC Lindale. I wondered if they addressed “fellow shepherds” as a ploy to throw me off or if the authors were genuinely egalitarian women “pastors.”
I normally file anonymous letters in the garbage, but before doing so, I glanced over a couple of pages of the enclosed “documentation.” Immediately I realized that what the letter told me I should see did not match what I actually saw. If the information was accurate (and since the informers were too cowardly to sign their names, I was doubtful), what it suggested to me was that Tom Buck had been sloppy and maybe lazy in some of his sermons. It was clear that much of their “evidence” was simply contrived.
After a couple of hours, I decided to call Tom and ask him directly if he had been preaching other men’s sermons. He did not know what I was talking about when I mentioned the packet. After I described it, he told me that he, his elders, and deacons had received something similar many months ago. He described the process that they followed: getting outside counsel, making a formal statement to the church, and putting guardrails up to keep him from being careless in attributing quotes in future sermons.
I was satisfied. This is a local church issue. The authorities Christ has placed in that church (elders and members) had dealt with it months before I got the packet, and to my mind, I did not need to know any more. I did think, however, that those who sent me the letter and packet must be concerned about more than FBC Lindale and Tom Buck. They wanted to publicly damage Tom’s reputation, or worse.
Some time the next week, Tom told me a former deacon from Pray’s Mill Baptist Church (PMBC), where Josh Buice formerly served and G3 Ministries is housed, had informed him that the elders of PMBC had sent the letter and packet. I was incredulous.
The elders of PMBC had reached out to my fellow elders and me for counsel in February of this year. We met with them to try to help them think through how to deal with some of the fallout from Josh’s anonymous online attacks from the last few years. We were impressed with their humility and expressed concerns to shepherd their church well. I did not want to believe that they were behind this attack on Tom Buck.
When the Protestia article was published two days ago, I found it to be consistent with all that I had learned and been told up to that point. I reached out to one of the elders of PMBC out of concern for them and their church, and to ask if they were behind the letter. What I learned was heartbreaking. He admitted it, and told me that they acted anonymously because that was the “consensus” of several pastors whose counsel they sought back in February. He said that their intent was to keep matters private, but that Tom Buck had made it all public and had enlisted Protestia to attack him and G3. I expressed my deep concerns and judgments that what they had done was immoral.
I called one of the pastors whose counsel the PMBC elders had sought. He explicitly denied encouraging them to send an anonymous packet out to anyone. What he did counsel them to do, he said, was to go to Tom privately and not turn this into a public fiasco. Another pastor called me the next day and told me he also was part of the group that gave counsel to the PMBC elders. He likewise insisted that they did not counsel them to act anonymously.
Over the last week, I have tried, honestly and carefully, to evaluate what I know and what I have been told. No matter how I look at it, the only conclusion I can make is that the elders of PMBC sinned grievously in what they did. They have libeled Tom, disrupted the unity of FBC Lindale, and violated Scripture in the cowardly way that they have done it. As I told the elder to whom I spoke, Tom Buck did not make this a public issue. They did. You cannot send dozens of letters to private mailboxes and seriously believe that you have kept the matter private.
I have no prescriptions for the course forward except to encourage everyone who participated in this effort to repent, make restitution, and recognize that they have forfeited any credibility and integrity that is required for spiritual leadership. My greatest concern is for the two churches involved. Pray for FBC Lindale and their elders to weather this storm with grace and humility. Pray for PMBC—that God will give them humble, courageous men who will stand up and, in ways that honor our Lord, help the work through the trouble created by their elders.
