By Wade Burleson
During the November 11, 2009, business session of the Georgia Baptist Convention, messengers to the Southern Baptist-affiliated state body dismissed the First Baptist Church of Decatur, Ga., from fellowship for the church’s calling of Julie Pennington-Russell as senior pastor in 2007. The SBC will not establish a database to track ministerial child abusers out of fear of “violating local church autonomy,” but when it comes to a church calling a woman to preach the gospel, church autonomy is slain at the feet of conventional conformity.
The notion that a woman cannot preach the gospel, or teach a man, or perform “pastoral” duties, is not biblical — not even close. As time passes, more and more Bible-believing, conservative, Christ-honoring evangelicals are beginning to see that any prohibition against a woman ministering in the same manner as a man is a man-made restriction. God, in the New Covenant, signed and sealed by his Son’s blood, has set his women free to function in the Kingdom in the same manner he has his men.
As far back as the 1980s, conservative, Bible-believing men and women began voicing their beliefs that the inerrant, inspired Word of God declared full equality of men and women in creation and redemption. The Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, filled with Southern Baptist leadership , was formed to combat what they called “evangelical feminism.” As I pointed out last week, Southern Baptists who wish to suppress women will even alter the sacred text to accomplish this goal. SBC seminary professor David Jones’ article, posted by CBMW, alleges “scribal error” when Paul made reference to a female apostle in Romans 16:7. I wrote that it is sad when inerrantists resort to pointing out error in the text to sustain a theological position.
The issue of women in ministry should NOT divide conservative evangelicals from cooperating in world-wide mission efforts, particularly when one side of the debate is having to alter the sacred text in order to sustain its position. When messengers from the Georgia Baptist Convention “disfellowship” and “sever relationship” with autonomous local churches who are following what they believe the Bible to teach, then they have placed others of us who wish to identify with the Southern Baptist Convention in a very, very precarious position.
As I wrote two years ago:
If a Southern Baptist cannot point out where he/she believes the BFM [Baptist Faith & Message] 2000 is in contradiction with Scripture we are in trouble. In fact, if a Southern Baptist voices a disagreement with some of the interpretations of tertiary doctrines found within the BFM 2000, and we then begin to ‘question’ that Southern Baptist’s conservative credentials, we have prostituted our heritage as Baptists. Why? We will have placed ourselves in the very bizarre place of having people in the SBC being called ‘liberal’ when they champion their belief of the authority of the Bible over a man-made confession. Think about it — in 2007 it is possible for Southern Baptists to call ‘a liberal’ someone within the convention whose conscience is bound to the Word of God, and not the BFM 2000!
The Georgia Baptist Convention last week sent money back to First Baptist Church, Decatur — money that the congregation had given them through Cooperative Program mission efforts the preceding year. The GBC said to FBC, Decatur, “Keep your money. We don’t want it, nor do we wish you to be identified with us.”
Well, I’ve got news for the SBC. If we have come to the time when a conservative, Bible-believing Southern Baptist church cannot follow what she believes the Bible teaches, and is forced to either conform to convention mandates or else be removed from fellowship, then the SBC has stopped being a legitimate, historical Baptist convention of cooperating believers and churches and has become a cult.
I, and the church to which I belong, want no part of a cult. A hundred years from now — if the Lord tarries, and another generation of Southern Baptists are allowed to arise — it is my prayer that they will see there were some Southern Baptists in 2009 who refused to stick their head in the sand when the Bible stopped being the standard of faith for Southern Baptists.