Messengers at the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting overwhelmingly moved to disfellowship Saddleback Church, the congregation founded by Rick Warren, after the entity ordained several women as pastors in recent months.
More than 88% of annual meeting attendees concurred with an earlier move from the denomination’s Executive Committee to deem Saddleback as no longer in “friendly cooperation” with the nation’s largest association of Protestant churches. Messengers also voted to affirm a similar decision to disfellowship Fern Creek Baptist Church, which has been led by a woman operating as a pastor for more than three decades, with nearly 92% supporting the move.
Attendees likewise approved an amendment clarifying that Southern Baptist churches must appoint "only men as any kind of pastor or elder as qualified by Scripture" in order to remain in “friendly cooperation” with the denomination. Messengers at next year’s annual meeting must affirm the amendment in order to include the measure in the denomination’s constitution.
The annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention occurs after the denomination’s churches saw the largest year-over-year membership decline in more than a century, a phenomenon attributed to broader decreases in church attendance but possibly linked to a perceived theologically liberal drift in the denomination. Many pastors remarked to The Sentinel that the votes were a positive development and a reflection of the denomination’s historic stance that women are equal with men in value but have different roles as enumerated in Scripture.
“Though there are overwhelming obstacles, the fact that the amendment passed gives me hope that soon the convention will belong to the churches and not the other way around,” Drew Byers, the lead pastor of Creekside Fellowship in Castalian Springs, Tennessee, said in comments to The Sentinel. “This will take years or maybe decades.”
On the final day of the annual meeting, however, messengers approved a motion introduced by several former presidents of the Southern Baptist Convention, including James Merritt and Ed Litton, to create a “task force” which will “study” the process of deeming churches outside of “friendly cooperation” and present their findings at next year’s meeting. Some ministers worried that the move would cede ground to future efforts intended to approve female pastors.
Jeff Wright, a pastor at Midway Baptist Church in Cookeville, Tennessee, said in comments to The Sentinel that the motion from the former presidents comes after messengers “twice attempted to close the door on egalitarianism.” He characterized the motion as “a waste of time” that contradicts “the previous clear actions of the convention.”
One Southern Baptist minister previously told The Sentinel last week that his church’s decision to remain in the denomination would rest on events at the annual meeting. He said at the conclusion of the meeting that he has “lost confidence” in the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the denomination’s ethics arm, and the North American Mission Board, the denomination’s domestic agency. The head of the former entity faced criticism for dodging a question on equal protection for preborn babies on Wednesday, while the latter entity provoked backlash for shirking efforts to increase transparency over the group’s finances.
“At this time, I have a lot to pray about and work through before drawing conclusions. I will say, if we do remain in the convention we will designate our giving to the International Mission Board and a couple of seminaries,” the pastor told The Sentinel. “There are a number of churches that have women in pastor leadership that need to be addressed, and I’m hopeful that the amendment will be affirmed next year and a plan put into place to hold churches more accountable as it pertains to women serving in any pastoral role.”
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