The 2023 Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting is less than one month away and promises to be another interesting meeting for SBC-watchers. What people seem most interested in are the convention’s presidential election and whether the SBC will vote out a group of churches, including Saddleback.
Many also want to know if a constitutional amendment will be adopted. The amendment, proposed by Virginia pastor Mike Law, would exclude churches with women pastors.
This amendment was referred to the SBC Executive Committee during the 2022 SBC annual meeting. To date, the Executive Committee has not decided whether to send it back to the messengers, but messengers could vote to bring it to the floor regardless.
One factor not to be overlooked in this matter is the creation of a standing credentials committee in 2019. Messengers to that year’s annual meeting approved creation of the committee to provide a more efficient way to hold SBC churches accountable for instances of sexual abuse in those churches.
Current SBC president Bart Barber, who is seeking a second term, believes that efficiency measure created another need—intentional or not—related to women pastors. He spelled out that need in a video he tweeted May 10. Barber and Law agree theologically about women pastors, but not about what to do structurally with churches who employ them.
Barber would like to be the convention president who appoints a task force to address the structural issue by examining and recommending clarifications to the SBC’s constitution, bylaws and statement of faith. But will he or Mike Stone preside?
Barber or Stone?
The presidential election is a fairly straightforward question. There are two nominees: Bart Barber, the incumbent, and Mike Stone, who is making his second attempt after losing—barely—to Ed Litton in 2021.
Stone is the choice of the Conservative Baptist Network. With the election taking place in New Orleans, some believe CBN will make a strong showing. Not Dallas-in-1985 strong, but strong for the current SBC.
I’m not predicting who will win. Call that what you want.
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What about Saddleback?
The more involved and more interesting question is what the SBC will do about women pastors—senior or otherwise—and the churches who employ them, such as Saddleback.
Part of the question is whether messengers to the convention will agree with the SBC Executive Committee’s approval of the Credentials Committee’s determination that Saddleback is “not in friendly cooperation with the Convention, on the basis that the church has a faith and practice that does not closely identify with the Convention’s adopted statement of faith, as demonstrated by the church having a female teaching pastor functioning in the office of pastor.”
Will Saddleback messengers get to decide whether and how churches like them are excluded from the SBC? Stay tuned to find out.
Amending the constitution
The other part of the question about women pastors is whether any SBC governing documents will be amended to prohibit them outright.
Law’s proposal mentioned earlier would amend Article III of the SBC constitution—establishing the criteria for “friendly cooperation” between churches and the convention—to exclude churches that “affirm, appoint, or employ a woman as a pastor of any kind.”
Law made this motion during the 2022 SBC annual meeting, where it was referred to the SBC Executive Committee. Following the annual meeting, he posted a letter explaining the rationale for his motion. Later, Law assembled a list of supposed SBC churches with women pastors on staff.
His motion, letter and list have generated considerable discussion on social media and elsewhere about who the Bible says can and cannot be a pastor, and whether the titles “pastor” and “minister” are interchangeable. It’s also caused many churches to wonder what their relationship to the SBC will be following this year’s annual meeting.
As with the SBC presidency, I’m not ready to make a prediction about the messengers’ will on women pastors. Like December 2020, a month is long enough for anything to happen in SBC politics to shift messenger opinions. Enter Barber’s tweet.
Clarifying a vague phrase
In his video, Barber cited Article III of the SBC Constitution, which states the first requirement for a church to be in friendly cooperation with the convention. Such a church must have “a faith and practice which closely identifies with the Convention’s adopted statement of faith”—or Baptist Faith and Message.
“Nobody knows what ‘closely identified with’ means in terms of actually applying it to the case of individual churches,” Barber said, calling the phrase “vague on purpose” and written deliberately “to put phraseology in there that nobody can pin down, that nobody knows what it means.”
Barber noted that, historically, messengers defined “closely identified with,” but now having a standing Credentials Committee creates the need for messengers to “speak plainly” about what “closely identified with” means in relation to the Baptist Faith and Message. Does a church have to hold to every word of the statement to be included in the SBC?
In Barber’s estimation, messengers “adding in language about the office of pastor” ensures the Credentials Committee doesn’t “fill in the blanks” itself, thereby exercising more authority than messengers would want the committee to have.
Barber believes messengers should be allowed to vote on Law’s amendment, but he doesn’t believe the amendment will solve the problem. He also thinks an examination of the SBC’s constitution, bylaws and statement of faith is needed—a motion he expects to be made during the 2023 annual meeting.
Bottom line
The bottom line is the SBC does not believe women should be senior pastors. Many in the SBC are also anxious about women in any other ministerial position being given the title “pastor.” But can women be any other subcategory of pastor and their churches still be part of the SBC? We shall see.
Some in the SBC want doctrinal purity and mean to exclude woman as pastors in any form. Others desire structural clarity and seem willing to exclude women as pastors if the language is clearly stated to do so.
At the end of the day, the boundaries seem likely to become more rigid than clear. Which makes me wonder what outcome Jesus wants from all of this.
EDITOR’S NOTE (June 20, 2023): A link to Mike Law’s list was removed after the list was used to harass women and churches named in it.
Eric Black is the executive director, publisher and editor of the Baptist Standard. He can be reached at [email protected]. The views expressed are those solely of the author.
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