Southern Baptists will not excommunicate as many churches with women pastors as you might think. They won’t even get the chance.
In fact, if Las Vegas oddsmakers set an over/under bet on how many churches the Southern Baptist Convention will eliminate because a female staff member has “pastor” in her title and the number is 17 — only 10% of the congregations on an infamous list of such offenders — take the under.
Before we get into the reason why, here’s a recap:
- At the convention’s annual meeting last week, messengers overwhelmingly affirmed the SBC Executive Committee’s decision to expel Saddleback Church in Southern California and Fern Creek Baptist Church in Kentucky for hiring women to serve as pastors.
- Messengers also voted to approve the first reading of a constitutional amendment that explicitly limits membership in the convention to churches that do not “affirm, appoint or employ a woman as a pastor of any kind.” To take effect, messengers to the 2024 annual meeting must approve a second reading. But for now, the proposed amendment affirms the Executive Committee’s definition of churches in “friendly cooperation” with the convention.
- Those votes echo the latest edition of the SBC Baptist Faith and Message doctrinal statement, adopted in 2000. It says, “While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.” At this year’s meeting, messengers also approved a resolution that sets the titles “bishop” and “elder” alongside and equal to “pastor.”
The SBC’s recent move to clarify the term “pastor” and to restrict convention membership to churches that employ only men for positions described by that word extends its never-ceasing quest for purity.
In 2000, the committee that revised the Baptist Faith and Message capped conservatives’ two-decade quest for control of the convention by declaring only men could be pastors. Women in ministry had been a major battleground in the schism that rent the SBC in the late 20th century. So, with their side firmly in control of the national institutions and all but three of the affiliated state conventions, conservatives firmly planted their flag: “No women pastors allowed.”
“If you think back far enough, you may remember common use of the title ‘director,’ such as choir director, youth director and the like.”
Back then, most churches restricted the title of “pastor” to the most-senior minister on staff. If you’re of a certain age, you may recall when each church, no matter the size, had only one pastor. If you think back far enough, you may remember common use of the title “director,” such as choir director, youth director and the like.
Later, churches began to substitute “minister” for “director,” and congregations employed people to such positions as minister of education and children’s minister. Some observers point to a wholly secular development — IRS implementation of the ministerial housing allowance, which allows clergy to deduct at least a portion of their housing costs from taxable income — as the impetus for ordaining church staff and granting them the “minister” title.
Then, in the early 2000s, more and more churches began using the title “pastor” for church staff in addition to the person who preaches most of the sermons and performs most of the weddings and funerals. Who knows why. But a significant number of churches began calling their ministerial staff “pastor.” For example, a church could have a senior pastor, executive pastor, worship pastor, youth pastor and children’s pastor.
Think of this as title inflation — changing what an employee is called to a more important-sounding title. It’s not exclusively an ecclesiastical phenomenon. You may not know any secretaries and janitors anymore, but you probably have friends who are executive assistants and maintenance engineers.
“Words in their dictionary mean what they say, with no room for nuance.”
In the SBC, however, this has been problematic. Literalism is a pillar value for people who have decided to stay in the convention. They fought over biblical literalism and won. They support judges who claim to be literalists. Words in their dictionary mean what they say, with no room for nuance.
So, if the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message says women can’t be pastors, and churches hire women to be any kind of pastor, then those churches have got to go.
But they probably won’t.
That’s because churches that have stuck with the SBC the past 30 years want to be there. They may have followed a title trend and started calling women on their staff “pastor of such-and-such.” But they don’t mean it — at least not enough to get kicked out of their beloved SBC over a staff member’s title.
Rick Warren, recently retired pastor of Saddleback Church, formerly the SBC’s largest congregation, is the outlier. Warren led Saddleback to ordain women and give them the “pastor” title because he reread Scripture and became convinced he’d been wrong to exclude women from leadership. He came to believe the Great Commission’s mandate to spread the gospel to the whole world overrides biblical interpretations that put women on the evangelistic sidelines.
“Warren is an exceptional pastor who still got whipped.”
But Warren is an exceptional pastor who still got whipped. He built a mammoth congregation in uber-secular California and stood loyally with the SBC more than 40 years. He asked the SBC to reconsider. And he got shut down.
A few SBC senior pastors who happen to have women called “pastor” on their staffs may possess Warren’s courage to stand up against the SBC leadership. None, however, has his platform. And those who do not have his conviction and/or courage can look at what happened to him and his church and decide to take an easier path.
That’s why most women in the SBC called “pastor of ________” today will be called “minister of _________” this time next year. By then, the SBC won’t have all that many churches to kick out because they won’t be able to find them.
Maybe they’ll turn their attention back to removing churches that harbor sexual abusers.
Marv Knox
Marv Knox founded Fellowship Southwest after editing the Baptist Standard almost 20 years. Now retired, he lives with his wife, Joanna, in Durham, N.C., where he tries to do something useful almost every day. Sometimes, that’s writing for BNG.
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Female pastors: Appointed or apostate? Southern Baptists decide | Opinion by Melody Maxwell
An open letter to all Southern Baptists | Opinion by Rick Warren