The quest for absolute purity in opposing women carrying the title “pastor” is now dividing the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, the conservative breakaway group formed in 1998.
SBTC was formed as an alternative to the Baptist General Convention of Texas, which at the time was defying the rightward shift in the Southern Baptist Convention. SBTC declared it would more closely align with the “conservative resurgence” then sweeping the SBC — including firm opposition to women in ministry. Thousands of Texas Baptist churches moved to the new state convention.
Marc Minter
In the intervening three decades, the BGCT has swung back more conservative on many issues — except women in ministry — and the SBTC largely has toed the line of SBC conservatives. Except now its Credentials Committee has made an exception for a prominent church that employs seven women with the word “pastor” in their titles and whose male senior pastor is unapologetic about it.
All this gets aired in an article published Aug. 15 by the Center for Baptist Leadership, a far-right advocacy organization seeking to push the SBC even more rightward. The article — “Did the SBTC Credentials Committee Fail Texas Baptists with Fielder Church?” — was written by Marc Minter, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Diana, Texas.
Minter served on the SBTC Credentials Committee and witnessed the conversation that ensued when Fielder Church (formerly Fielder Road Baptist Church) in Arlington, Texas, was challenged for having females on staff with the word “pastor” in their job titles. None of these women as “senior” pastor but all work in areas such as children’s ministry or youth ministry.
The multi-campus church’s senior pastor, Jason Parades, is on record opposing actions of the SBC to disfellowship churches for giving women titles including the word “pastor.” He specifically objected to the SBC removing Saddleback Church in Southern California, then led by Rick Warren.
According to Minter, Parades offered a compromise to the Credentials Committee which they accepted: He would change the titles of all staff members to use the word “shepherd” instead of “pastor.” The committee bought that idea, Minter says.
And a visit to the church’s website today shows the result: Both men and women now are called “shepherd” rather than “pastor.”
To Minter, this is a distinction without a difference.
“I raised a point of contention, arguing that the words ‘pastor’ and ‘shepherd’ are merely two English words that come from the same Greek word “ποιμην” (or poimén). I insisted that, if such a rationale were adopted, then any church could skirt the SBTC parameters by using virtually any other language on the planet. For example, the Hungarian word for “pastor” is “lelkesz,” and in Arabic it is “alqasu,” he wrote.
“If we are playing a game of semantics, instead of defending sincerely held and enforced theological commitments, then there is absolutely no way to prevent the affiliation of any church that embraces female ‘pastors.’ They could simply adopt the same word in a different language or adopt some other synonym in the English language, which is exactly what Fielder Church proposed to do.”
“In my view, Fielder Church had made no meaningful change at all.”
Best he can recall, Minter says, he was the only member of the Credentials Committee voting against this compromise.
“In my view, Fielder Church had made no meaningful change at all. The title remained essentially the same as before the meeting; their stated convictions to affirm female ‘pastors’ were unchanged, and their intention to continue an inconsistent and contrary practice to the BF&M 2000 and the SBTC Constitution remained the same.”
The Baptist Faith and Message 2000 is the official doctrinal statement of the SBC and therefore of the SBTC.
In 2022, the SBTC adopted a motion that said, “The SBTC, for purposes of affiliation, interpret the language in the SBTC Constitution, article IV, section 1, to refer not only to the titles of senior pastor or lead pastor, but to any role designated by the noun, ‘pastor.’”
Now, that’s a worthless statement, Minter says.
“Fielder Church is a perfect test case of the SBTC’s ability to live up to its public statements, its confessional convictions and its constitutional documents. Fielder Church not only engages in a practice that is inconsistent and contrary to the BF&M 2000, but they have also encouraged others to do the same in the form of a public argument to affirm female ‘pastors.’
“The Credentials Committee has failed the test (in my opinion), but the (committee’s) standing decision does not have to be the final word from the SBTC.”
He concludes: “It may be that the SBTC cannot be detoured from its current path toward pragmatic egalitarianism. If so, then my church may not continue cooperating with such a convention. I hope that this is not the case.”
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