A recent president of the Southern Baptist Convention published a 3,500-word explanation of why he believes the so-called “Law Amendment” is unwise, even though he personally agrees with the theology behind it.
That amendment, proposed by Virginia pastor Mike Law, would declare any church with a woman serving in any role with the title “pastor” or allowing women to preach out of “friendly cooperation” with the SBC and therefore expelled. A first reading of the amendment passed at this year’s annual meeting in June. To be adopted, the amendment must pass a second vote next summer.
J.D. Greear, pastor of The Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., published his thoughts on the amendment on his personal website July 12. He was elected SBC president in 2018 and served three years — one more than traditional — due to the pandemic. The convention did not meet in 2020.
He compared adoption of the Law Amendment to the U.S. Congress passing the legislation creating Obamacare in 2010 before the ink was dry on the 828-page bill. Both were done before people had time to read and digest the proposals and give due consideration to the ripple effects created, he said.
“While supportive of the desire to affirm complementarianism, I want to suggest that this amendment is not the way to do that.”
“Many Southern Baptists voted for the Law Amendment because they rightfully believe the office of pastor is limited to men and wanted an opportunity to affirm that, especially after hearing disheartening examples of a few prominent evangelical voices who regard complementarianism to be backward, archaic and misogynistic,” Greear wrote. “While supportive of the desire to affirm complementarianism, I want to suggest that this amendment is not the way to do that, and that it will have deleterious effects far beyond what most Southern Baptists intend, as evidenced by this open letter by our National African American Fellowship, who are pleading with us to slow down and consider the implications of what we’re doing.”
He opposes the amendment for “constitutional reasons,” not theological reasons, he asserted.
Greear described himself as a complementarian — a theological framework that teaches God created men and women with equal value but with different leadership responsibilities in church and in home.
“I believe that there are only two offices in the church, (1) pastors (also called “elders” or “overseers”) and (2) deacons. I believe that God has reserved the role of pastor/elder/overseer for men, an application of the principle of male headship he wove into creation. “
Further, Greear called complementarianism “essential to Baptist faith and practice” and “a defining feature of our convention.”
While the theological impetus of the amendment may be correct, the way the amendment is worded will cause — and already is causing — much confusion, he asserted.
“It binds the hands of the Credentials Committee from differentiating between those churches who have committed (to use Al Mohler’s words) a ‘grievous error’ (in this case, rejecting complementarianism) and those who I believe simply have a nomenclature problem. Since the conservative resurgence, we have sought to be united on primary things (e.g. salvation by faith alone, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, the inerrancy of the Bible, etc.) and secondary things also (e.g. complementarianism, believer’s baptism, regenerate church membership, etc.). This amendment, however, makes conformity on a tertiary thing (right nomenclature of an office) a standard for fellowship.”
Exactly how important the issue of forbidding female pastors is has been a hallmark of debate on the amendment from the moment it was proposed.
Exactly how important the issue of forbidding female pastors is has been a hallmark of debate on the amendment from the moment it was proposed. While Law and his allies see a ban on women serving as pastor as of primary importance, others in the SBC do not.
Greear digs down into Baptist congregational leadership practices to argue the Bible forbids women from serving as pastors and elders but not as deacons. Here, he addresses a separate but related trend in some SBC churches.
For more than a century, typical Southern Baptist churches were organized with deacons as the primary lay leaders. Due a resurgent form of Calvinism sweeping parts of the SBC in the last 30 years, some churches have abandoned or reassigned deacons in favor of creating small elder boards to run the church.
Baptist churches in America led by elders almost always allow only men to serve in that role. This is true even at Saddleback Church, where founding pastor Rick Warren has led the charge to allow women to serve as pastors and to preach. At Saddleback, they do so under the authority of the male elders.
“When deacons served like elders, it made sense that they not be women,” Greear said. “Many conservative Baptists, however, have come to the conclusion that women can and should be deacons — provided that they are truly servants of the church and not de facto elders. Some of our Southern Baptist churches still function with deacons as de facto elders, and so continue to disallow women from serving in that role.”
Greear calls this a “confusion of offices” but not one that should result in automatic expulsion from the SBC.
“Complementarian churches with inaccurate titling for some of their women in ministry are put into the same category as those harboring known sex abusers or marrying gay couples,” he warned. “Southern Baptists may well end up pushing away some churches that are actually with us theologically but choose to use a term that most of us believe is not biblically accurate for a particular ministry role — just as if they were either unrepentant racists or had embraced gay marriage.”
This does not mean Greear believes Saddleback Church in California and Fern Creek Church in Kentucky should have been allowed to stay within the SBC, he said. Both churches were expelled by vote of the SBC Executive Committee last February, appealed that decision to the convention, and their expulsion was upheld by messengers to the June annual meeting.
“The reality is that we already have all that we need to settle secondary disagreements by removing churches that embrace egalitarianism — the Saddleback and Fern Creek cases demonstrate that,” Greear said.
Meanwhile, “many of our sisters are deeply discouraged in this conversation,” he said. “Some of our most engaged women in the SBC, who are all firmly complementarian and not seeking to be pastors, listen in to this conversation and struggle to understand why we seem to be so concerned that they are trying to take over our pulpits. They are not. And they don’t understand why we have turned them into a battleground.”
He advised: “We should make sure we actually spend time talking to women who serve in our churches and entities to learn why it is that many of them do. … A church where the women are not thriving will soon be a place where the men aren’t, either.”
Related articles:
Anti-egalitarian forces make clean sweep at SBC annual meeting | Analysis by Mark Wingfield
Saddleback and Fern Creek churches face off against Al Mohler at SBC meeting
Female pastors: Appointed or apostate? Southern Baptists decide | Opinion by Melody Maxwell
An open letter to all Southern Baptists | Opinion by Rick Warren
A primer on why Southern Baptists are fighting over women in ministry once again | Analysis by Mark Wingfield