Once again, the SBC Executive Committee has decided that a church who called a woman as their senior pastor should be disfellowshipped. This time, the church is Immanuel Baptist Church in Paducah, Ky., where Katie McKown was called to become senior minister Feb. 26, 2023.
I had the honor of visiting with Immanuel Baptist’s search committee as they prayerfully discerned the Spirit’s leadership toward calling McKown. Then, several months later, I had the privilege of celebrating with them at her installation service. I saw the love this congregation has for their pastor, and she for them.
Meredith Stone
With thoughtful prayers, words of encouragement and promise, beautiful music from the youth choir, and a stirring installation sermon from a fellow pastor and seminary roommate, the congregation and all of us present blessed this union of pastor and church.
When the SBC Executive Committee’s decision was announced, Immanuel Baptist Church released this statement: “Today we learned that the Southern Baptist Convention removed Immanuel Baptist Church from membership because we called Rev. Katie McKown in February 2023 to serve as Immanuel’s senior minister. The life of Immanuel is informed by the Baptist tenets of the autonomy of the church and the priesthood of all believers. We share our affirmation and support of the decision to call Rev. Katie McKown to serve with and among us. We pray the SBC may be blessed with wisdom and discernment as it moves forward.”
The warmth I felt between pastor and congregation on installation Sunday is at the heart of this statement as the congregation once again affirmed their decision to follow the Spirit’s leadership in calling their pastor.
Far too often, people in power dictate how others can hear and sense God moving in their midst. It is my inclination, however, to trust the Spirit guided this committee, as well as many other committees, to call women to serve as their pastors.
This summer, messengers to the SBC annual meeting will once again vote on the Law Amendment. This constitutional amendment specifies that SBC churches in friendly cooperation with the SBC may only employ men in any role with the title of “pastor.”
Passing the amendment will further solidify what the SBC already has stated it believes and has put into practice — that God should be limited.
“Continuing to support an entity that limits God and states that women are not fully worthy of God’s gifting and call tells women their church’s support of them also is limited.”
Barring women from serving in pastoral ministry and leadership limits the church from fulfilling its mission. It limits the ways the Spirit can lead individuals and churches. It puts God in a human-made box and tells God what God cannot do.
But despite human attempts to prove otherwise, we worship an infinite and limitless God.
It is my prayer that churches that support women in ministry but still partner with the SBC will demonstrate their commitment by preemptively separating themselves from an entity that would choose to limit God and God’s people.
Certainly, this is a complicated issue. Decades of connection, identity, partnership and ministry are tied up between individual congregations and the SBC.
For many of us, our Southern Baptist churches taught us who God is, how to follow Jesus and how to listen to the Holy Spirit. They were the places we, men and women, first felt God’s call to ministry. They were the places we were dedicated, baptized, married and memorialized our family members.
But continuing to support an entity that limits God and states that women are not fully worthy of God’s gifting and call tells women their church’s support of them also is limited.
Women are worthy of knowing they have equal value to God and Christ’s church and that their church unconditionally states so in both word and deed.
It is time to embrace a limitless God and a limitless church, by demonstrating unlimited support for women in ministry.
Meredith Stone serves as executive director of Baptist Women in Ministry.