Can G3 Recover From The Josh Buice Scandal?

Josh Buice founded G3 Ministries, which truly became bigger than himself. G3 Ministries was an up-and-coming alternative to The Gospel Coalition, Desiring God, and 9 Marks. But this week, Josh Buice, its founder, was ousted over the use of burner accounts that attacked his coelders and G3 speakers. In short, not only did Josh Buice use burner accounts to slander his enemies, but also his allies.

G3 followed up to announce that they were scrubbing Josh Buice from their site and provided clarification about why they canceled their 2025 slate of conferences and workshops.

With a deep desire for transparency and integrity, and upon further investigation of Dr. Josh Buice’s admitted sin (as we continue to fully understand the depth and seriousness of it), we are providing an update for the sake of clarity on our statement that was released on Monday, May 12. 

Concerning Josh Buice’s Content:

Due to the public and egregious nature of the sin, we believe Josh Buice has stained the mission and character of G3 Ministries (G3). After further consideration and godly counsel, we have made the decision to remove all of Josh Buice’s content from every platform. This will take some time to accomplish. From our founding, G3’s purpose has been to educate, encourage, and equip local churches with sound biblical theology. With sadness, yet in light of these recent events, we do not believe Josh’s content will help fulfill that purpose any longer. 

Concerning the Conference:

We want to clarify the reason for canceling the conference. While the conference and ministry could continue without Josh’s leadership, we chose to cancel this year’s event primarily because several of the scheduled speakers had been sinfully targeted by him through anonymous accounts. Even though he will not be leading the conference moving forward, we did not want to put these brothers in the difficult position of deciding whether to participate in an event so closely tied to someone who had maligned them. We understand this is disappointing to many who have faithfully supported the conference over the years, but we believe this was the necessary and right course of action in light of such grievous sin.   

These are difficult matters and may take some time to fully unfold. Please be patient as we seek to be transparent and biblical and treat the sinner and victims in a godly manner. Please continue to pray for the church, the elders, the victims, Josh, and his family as they walk through this difficult process.

The cancellation of the conferences is about more than replacing Buice, who would have functioned as the MC of the events.

G3 has undergone a lot of reputational damage as a result of their actions in 2023 and 2024, where they attacked Christian Nationalists, committing much slander and undoing the credibility they built by opposing wokeness. They ultimately lost a memewar and quietly backed off from the issue. They were not without casualties, as Michael O’Fallon was removed from their board of directors. O’Fallon’s grandiose movement is, in part, what Buice was acting within via his burner accounts.

Buice’s actions have damaged what remained of G3’s credibility. Before, G3 was jockeying for market share against perceived threats to becoming the successors to John MacArthur’s following. Their spat with Christian Nationalists was counterproductive to this end, as it tainted their brand with people who would have otherwise been receptive. However, Buice’s actions as part of the 2023 memewar damaged the value proposition of G3.

G3 Ministries was Big Eva, but Josh Buice was not. Josh Buice has been what we call Mid Eva. The success of G3 was their ability to organize conferences that brought together the best of Big Eva pastors. Josh Buice engaging in a shadow campaign against G3 speakers hurts the relationship between G3 and big names like Voddie Baucham, Tom Ascol, and John MacArthur (though he’s probably not doing conferences at the moment). The G3 statement admits this much. Without the ability to retain the highest quality speakers, G3 cannot throw expensive conferences.

Cancelling the conferences for the rest of 2025 may have been a necessity because of the lack of time to fill vacant speaker slots created or exacerbated by this scandal. It’s also worth mentioning, they might not have the personnel to carry out the events or the donor favorability to do so. But this necessity could spell the end of G3.

G3 specialized in conferences, but with a tainted brand and a harmed ability to recruit and retain speakers, they inevitably fall behind in the conference circuit. Since their brand is dead right now, waiting until 2026 to throw the next conference could be too long to generate interest.

Throwing conferences takes a lot of planning and costs a lot of money. G3’s next conference, if they decide the roll the dice, could be a disaster that loses money. Moreover, G3 might be too afraid to take a risk because of the damaged brand. This may also be why current conferences were canceled. Since they likely hadn’t recouped their cost, they likely cut the cord to not lose more money.

This is a sad state for a once-promising ministry to be in. Big Eva is a personality-driven world, and Buice’s reproach will bring down the ministry he created. It’s difficult to see the way out of this for G3 because they operate in a higher-risk, higher-reward conference circuit. It’s unlikely that there is a path forward for G3 to continue.