A constitutional amendment barring churches that employ female pastors from the Southern Baptist Convention failed to receive the necessary two-thirds approval at the SBC annual meeting.
Messengers voted 5,099 to 3,185—61.45 percent to 38.38 percent—in favor of an amendment limiting “friendly cooperation” with the SBC to a church that “affirms, appoints, or employs only men as any kind of pastor or elder as qualified by Scripture.”
However, amendments to the SBC constitution require two-thirds approval at two consecutive annual meetings. So, the measure failed.
Mike Law, pastor of Arlington Baptist Church in Arlington, Va., introduced the amendment at the 2023 SBC annual meeting in New Orleans, where messengers voted in favor of it.
Speaking in favor of the amendment at the 2024 annual meeting, Law called on messengers to “side with Scripture,” asserting a vote in favor of the amendment was “a vote for biblical faithfulness.”
The vote on the Law Amendment came one day after messengers overwhelmingly voted to declare First Baptist Church in Alexandria, Va., outside the bounds of friendly cooperation with the SBC.
It followed one year after messengers to the SBC annual meeting in New Orleans similarly voted to consider Fern Creek Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky., and Saddleback Church in Southern California no longer in “friendly cooperation” with the convention.
Questioning the amendment’s necessity
Speaking against the Law Amendment, Spence Shelton, lead pastor of Mercy Church in Charlotte, N.C., offered those actions as evidence the amendment was unnecessary.
“The question before us today is not whether we are complementarian. That’s clear,” Shelton said, pointing to the belief expressed in the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message that the pastoral office is limited to men.
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“We showed last year that we have an effective mechanism. It allows us to act with conviction and unity when it comes to this issue,” Shelton said. “Last year, we removed two different churches—one really big, like a mega-megachurch and one normative size. This year, we removed an institutional legacy church.
“We have shown that the mechanisms we have are sufficient to deal with this question.”
Prior to the annual meeting, Jeff Iorg, president and CEO of the SBC Executive Committee made a similar argument.
In a published opinion article, Iorg wrote: “While some may believe the amendment is necessary to guard against the cultural slide related to gender and sexuality, keep in mind the actions of messengers in 2023—using the confessional statement to declare two churches were not in friendly cooperation because of their stance on women serving in pastoral roles. This happened based on our doctrinal convictions without the aid of the amendment.”
Concerns noted
Iorg—who made clear his agreement with the belief that pastoral leadership is limited to men—also expressed concern about whether the issue focused on the “title” pastor or whether it concerned whether a woman could “function” as pastor.
He also raised concerns about autonomy, legal concerns and “multi-cultural and multi-racial dimensions” of the issue, such as how various cultures and languages refer to women in ministerial roles.
Pastor Gregory Perkins of The View Church in Minfee, Calif., and president of the National African American Fellowship said last July any move to exclude churches with women pastors could disenfranchise Black Southern Baptist churches.
California Southern Baptist Convention Executive Director Pete Ramirez also urged the SBC needed to consider unintended consequences for Spanish-language churches if the Law Amendment passed, given the way the terms “pastor” and the feminine “pastora” are used in those congregations.
Women ‘diminished, demeaned and denigrated’
Meredith Stone, executive director of Baptist Women in Ministry, expressed appreciation to SBC messengers who voted against the Law Amendment but grief that the measure still received majority approval, which she saw as a demonstration “that women in ministry are still devalued.”
“Decades ago, the SBC codified its ideological position of disregarding God’s call on women in the Baptist Faith and Message 2000. Therefore, the amendment considered today was not constructed on its own merit since the basis for it was already decided,” Stone wrote.
“Instead, women in ministry were used as props for the display of extreme conservativism in order to advance the power of a faction within the SBC.”
Baptist Women in Ministry expressed its “solidarity with all women who have been faithfully following God’s call in Southern Baptist churches as pastors of all kinds and who were placed at the center of a debate for power.”
“We know that even though the amendment failed, women who pastor in Southern Baptist churches will continue to be diminished, demeaned and denigrated,” Stone stated.
“Southern Baptists will continue to silence women. Southern Baptists will continue to not listen to women and not believe women when they say they have been harassed, traumatized, abused, and also when they say God has called them to serve in pastoral ministry.”
Stone urged churches that support women in ministry to make that support known publicly.
“Women and churches need to see that there are Christ-followers who believe women, who equally value women in the work of the church, and who honor the image of God in all people,” she stated.
Local church autonomy affirmed
In his “Texas Baptists Weekly” email on June 12, Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Director Julio Guarneri underscored the BGCT’s commitment to local church autonomy.
“We have congregations that are fully complementarian, others who are fully egalitarian and mostly churches who are somewhere between these two positions,” Guarneri wrote.
“Some of our churches believe women should not be pastors at any level. Some of our churches believe that a woman can serve as a lead pastor. Many of our churches have women serving in staff pastoral roles where the lead pastor is a male.”
Differing views about the role of women in ministry are “not a test of fellowship for Texas Baptists,” Guarneri noted.
“Local church autonomy implies that the convention serves each church or group of churches according to their conviction on this matter,” he wrote.
“We do not believe the topic of women in ministry is a matter of scriptural authority. We believe it is an issue of scriptural interpretation.
“When churches arrive at their position after prayerful consideration, careful study of the Scriptures and submission to the leadership of the Holy Spirit and are willing to cooperate with other churches who might arrive at a different conviction, we show respect for local church autonomy.”
Guarneri rejected the assertion by some proponents of the Law Amendment that women serving in pastoral roles is a “sin issue” and that adherence to the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message is necessary for cooperation.
“We disagree on both counts,” Guarneri wrote. “Women serving in pastoral roles is not a ‘sin issue.’ It is instead a matter of scriptural interpretation and cultural context.
“In traditional Baptist polity and history, statements of faith have served to express the doctrines that Baptists hold in general for cooperation and witness purposes. They are not to be used as instruments of imposed uniformity. We adhere to this traditional view.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: The last 10 paragraphs were added late Tuesday afternoon, June 12, after Julio Guarneri sent his weekly email to Texas Baptists.
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