Messengers at the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting heard debate on Tuesday over the issue of female pastors in the nation’s largest association of Protestant churches.
The Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee determined earlier this year that Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, and Fern Creek Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, are no longer in “friendly cooperation” with the denomination because of their decisions to install female pastors. Rick Warren, the former senior pastor of Saddleback, and Linda Popham, who operates as pastor of Fern Creek, each contended before the denomination that votes to uphold the Executive Committee’s moves are unnecessarily divisive.
“No one is asking any Southern Baptist to change their theology. I’m not asking you to agree with my church,” Warren said in a floor speech before the messengers. “I am asking you to act like a Southern Baptist, who have historically agreed to disagree on dozens of doctrines in order to share a common mission.”
The Baptist Faith and Message, the doctrinal statement to which Southern Baptist churches adhere, confesses that “while both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.” The Southern Baptist Convention, unlike formal denominations, is composed of independently governed churches which pool their resources for efforts such as education and missions.
Warren further claimed that the hundreds of Southern Baptist churches with female ministers “have not sinned.” Albert Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, remarked in one of two rebuttal speeches delivered on behalf of the Executive Committee that the issue is “a matter of biblical commitment.” He contended that the “unity and harmony” of the Southern Baptist Convention is “at stake” over the matter for the second time in modern history.
Popham acknowledged in another floor speech that she has served more than three decades as the pastor of Fern Creek but insisted that the congregation was both “conservative” and “evangelical.” She claimed that the issue of female ministers is “non-salvific.”
Some 1,200 of the 48,000 churches in the Southern Baptist Convention have at least one woman working in a pastoral position, according to an estimate from American Reformer. Warren repeatedly claimed ahead of the annual meeting that Saddleback was improperly disfellowshipped earlier this year after the megachurch installed several women into pastoral roles, as detailed in a previous report from The Sentinel.
Beyond the issue of women pastors, over which debate will continue on Wednesday as an amendment to deem any church with a female pastor outside of “friendly cooperation” receives a floor vote, messengers voted to grant Bart Barber, the pastor of First Baptist Church in Farmersville, Texas, a second term as president of the denomination. The minister defeated Mike Stone, the pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Blackshear, Georgia.
“I’m disappointed that Mike Stone was not elected as president. It was a difficult task to be nominated against an incumbent,” Tom Ascol, the pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, Florida, and the president of Founders Ministries, said in comments to The Sentinel. “Pastor Stone was courageous to let his name be submitted as a candidate. He understands the existential threats that the Southern Baptist Convention is facing. I will now pray that Pastor Barber, who was elected to a second term, will come to understand those matters, as well.”
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