Jesus led a revolutionary life and called us to do the same. In our own time of revolution, we might prefer to take the edge off “revolutionary,” so Jesus’ life can’t be equated too closely with revolutionaries of our day.

Or we might make light of the radical nature of Jesus’ life and commands, so we don’t have to give so much of ourselves to them.

Or we might blend Jesus and the Bible with revolutionary rhetoric swirling today, so we can baptize our anger and lust for vengeance.

All three are a mistake—running counter to the life of Christ. We need to remember the nature of Jesus’ revolutionary life and how he commanded us to live. Holy Week is a good time to do this, when the culmination of Jesus’ revolution stares us in the face.

Jesus’ backward revolution

Jesus led a backward revolution.

From the world’s perspective, turning the other cheek, loving those who hate you—that’s backward stuff. Doing those kinds of things won’t get a person ahead in this world. It will get a person walked on. You know, the whole nice-guys-finish-last thing. This world isn’t about finishing last.

But Jesus said it is the last who will be first. By the world’s terms, this is a backward revolution, indeed. How often are we still trying to go forward—in the world’s terms?

Jesus’ backward revolution didn’t make sense to the Romans, but they didn’t mind as long as the people behaved. Our world still doesn’t mind, as long as we stay in our lane.

Jesus’ subversive revolution

Jesus also led a subversive revolution.

From the religious leaders’ perspective, healing people on the Sabbath, being a friend to sinners—that was subversive stuff. Rulebreakers do those kinds of things, and rulebreakers dishonor God. God is to be honored; religious rules are to be kept. End of story.

But Jesus said the Sabbath was made to satisfy us; we weren’t made to satisfy the Sabbath. Using the Bible’s words to unbind the rules, that’s the stuff of subversion.

Jesus’ subversive revolution could be tolerated by the religious leaders, as long as he kept the right rules. Our world still doesn’t mind our rule-keeping, as long as we follow the “right” rules.

Jesus’ steely-eyed revolution

Jesus led a steely-eyed revolution.

From the start, he was tempted to achieve his ends some other way or to give up his ends altogether. Jesus never flinched. The world knows the odds against the revolutionary, and the world—including Jesus’ own kith and kin—thought him a fool. “He’s out of his mind,” they said.

They tried to trick him, trip him up every chance they could. He saw through their games with steely-eyed commitment. When they stacked the deck against him, trapped him, they tried to get him to say something in his own defense, but he wouldn’t break concentration even then.

The world is still trying to get us to flinch, to blink, to drop our gaze and give up our determination to follow Jesus faithfully. It’s not a big deal, they tell us.

Jesus’ revolution misunderstood

Our mistake all too often is not flinching, blinking or dropping our gaze, but is falling for the head fake.

The head fake is to think Jesus’ mission is to bless us, to make straight the path before us, to squash all opposition to us—even if that opposition is God’s own Spirit. The head fake is to think we’ve fulfilled our obligation by calling him “Lord,” so then we can tell him “no” when he tells us to “go.”

Like the crowd cheering Jesus as he entered Jerusalem, we think Jesus is going to work a particular kind of revolution in our lives, our homes, our churches, our communities, our world. We think he’s come to do our will. This is the world juking, faking us out.

Jesus’ revolution was misunderstood then as now, because he didn’t come to Jerusalem to glorify Israel among and above their neighbors and oppressors. He came to Jerusalem to glorify his heavenly Father and do his Father’s will.

When Jesus persisted in disappointing the people and incensing the priests—what so many revolutionaries do—they abandoned and consigned him to the grave.

In Jesus’ death, the people’s hope died, and the rulers’ hope revived. None of them realized his death was the turning point in his revolution. They didn’t realize his aim was to undo the very fabric of our existence by overthrowing sin and death.

Jesus’ revolutionary call to us

Jesus calls us to a backward, subversive, steely-eyed revolution. But I bet we don’t think about that during Holy Week.

As our children wave palm fronds in the Palm Sunday service, do we appreciate Jesus’ call to resist the world? As we consume the Lord’s Supper on Maundy Thursday, are we fully aware of the revolutionary actions of taking Christ’s body and blood broken for us, poured out for us?

In our Easter Sunday pageantry and finery, do we understand just how radical a thing resurrection is in a world that would rather Jesus shut up and stay dead?

Jesus left us with these words: “Go and make followers of me from all people, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I taught you.”

He didn’t teach us to take up arms against one another. He taught us to do for others what we want done for us. He didn’t teach us to dominate others. He taught us to deny ourselves and follow him. He didn’t teach us to gain the world. He taught us to find our lives by losing our lives.

Obeying these teachings is backward and subversive in this world. It requires steely-eyed commitment.

Revolution is risky. It cost Jesus, and it will cost us. But there’s no avoiding revolution. We either will join the world and revolt against God, or we will join Christ and revolt against sin and death. One revolt has littered the world with graves. The other is already undoing the first. Which revolution will we join?

Eric Black is the executive director, publisher and editor of the Baptist Standard. He can be reached at eric.black@baptiststandard.com. The views expressed are those solely of the author.

RE: Voices: My position on Law’s list of SBC churches

Nathan Patzke’s article contains terribly basic Bible errors, most notably him saying the word diakonos —deacon/servant—is the noun form of didasko —to teach. These are totally distinct words. He also writes that the word “apostles” in Romans 16:7 is the word diakonos, which is incorrect and does not even appear in that verse.

Perhaps an editorial correction would have served the author and his seminary—Truett—well.

David Rhoades
Senior Pastor, Broadview Baptist Church
Lubbock, Texas

The original article published April 3, 2023, was revised by the author to provide additional references and clarifications. Additionally, Editor Eric Black transposed the Greek terms diakonon (referring to Phoebe) and apostolois (referring to Junia) in the original published article. That error has been corrected (April 13, 2023).

Each year, Christians celebrate Palm Sunday, Jesus’ so-called “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem. The gospels do depict crowds celebrating triumphantly, but what if Jesus was rebuking his own followers?

What if Jesus did not agree with their hopes for the Messiah? What do Jesus’ actions and words really say in Luke 19:28-44, if we have ears to hear?

Messianic hopes

Jesus excited his disciples’ imagination by taking the route of Joshua toward Jerusalem, crossing the Jordan into Jericho. Then he sent two disciples on a secret mission. Joshua sent the same number of spies  to prepare for the much earlier conquest of Canaan. Maybe they were scouting out Jerusalem’s defenses. Instead, they return with a donkey.

Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem fulfills Zechariah 9:9. Many Jews believed that prophecy part of a larger prophecy that Messiah would bring peace for the Jews through a war against the nations (Zechariah 9:13). Their response to Jesus riding a donkey fits this common Jewish hope.

People threw cloaks down before Jesus’ path, just like Jehu’s men when Elisha anointed him to become king of Israel—though there already was a king of Israel. Jehu became a messiah to assassinate King Joram.

People also waved palm branches and threw them down before Jesus, just as Jews did a century earlier during the Maccabean Revolt. Simon was greeted by cheering crowds and palm branches after his army liberated Jerusalem from Syrian occupation and cleansed the temple.

Finally, Matthew, Mark and John tell us the crowds shouted out: “Hosanna! Save us!” The people had nationalistic dreams Jesus would successfully lead a rebellion against the Romans.

Luke makes it clear this is how the Pharisees interpreted these events, since they tell Jesus to quiet his disciples. No doubt, they were eyeing the Roman soldiers standing watch on Jerusalem’s walls, fearing they might become agitated and move to put down this apparent protest movement calling for rebellion.

Instead of quieting his disciples, Jesus replied, “If they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

Perhaps Jesus’ disciples thought he was referencing Habakkuk 2:10, where the stones of the walls would cry out against the injustices they bore witness to within the city. After all, Luke emphasizes the crowd is descending into the Kidron Valley. Across the valley, they could see the massive stones of Jerusalem’s walls.

Then, Jesus wept as he looked across at Jerusalem. He mourned that the people did not grasp the true meaning of peace. He wept because his people’s desire to defeat the cultural intrusion of Rome through physical force would result in the loss of all the institutions they held dear.

He shed tears because his beloved people loved the power and glory of Jerusalem, the temple and the land of Israel. They hoped Jesus was the strong man they needed to make Israel great once again through a violent expulsion of the Romans.

Zechariah’s full meaning

Jesus had a very different vision for the kingdom and his role as Messiah. Riding a donkey was not a message of conquest. The “triumphal entry” surrounding him was just Satan’s latest temptation to lure Jesus to desire the very power structures he had rejected since the voice from heaven told him his role as Messiah was to be a suffering servant.

Jesus intentionally acted out Zechariah 9:9, rather than some other messianic prophecy, precisely because of his rejection of Messiah as conquering king.

Jesus riding a donkey was pointing us to reflect on the entire book of Zechariah. Zechariah 4 speaks of two trees pouring out oil into a single lampstand. They are called two Messiahs—king and priest.

Zechariah 6 orders a crown to be placed on the chief priest, who will rule from his throne and bring “harmony between the two.” Zechariah thus shifts the focus from the king to the priest.

Jesus proclaimed himself to be a priest-king. He would serve his people’s spiritual needs, rather than rule with might to enforce his people’s desire for power and prestige.

John understood Jesus to be priest-king. John has Jesus quote Zechariah 6:13  about rebuilding the temple as justification for cleansing the temple (John 2:19). He has Pilate quote Zechariah 6:12 —“Here is the man”—as he presents Jesus before the crowd in purple robe and crown of thorns (John 19:7).

The cry from the stones

Not only was the donkey Jesus’ rebuke of violent revolution, but his statement that the stones would cry out was not about the stones of Jerusalem’s walls. As noted before, Luke emphasizes the crowd was going down the Mount of Olives into the Kidron Valley.

This area, both then and now, was a vast Jewish graveyard. There were stones everywhere, in front of tombs as well as atop crypts.

The stones themselves would not be crying out: “Hosanna! Save us!” Rather, it would be the dead behind those stones shouting out for Jesus to remember them when he came into his kingdom.

In Zechariah, there is a promise from God attached to the one who rides the donkey: “Because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will free your prisoners from the waterless pit” (Zechariah 9:11).

Jesus’ decision to be a priest-king and to sacrifice his life would result in the salvation of those in the grave—the waterless pit—as well as those of us yet to die.

This Prophet like Moses would not liberate the people from slavery to an occupying force. His exodus would lead people out of the grave. This Messiah had not come to defeat the Romans. He would destroy the common enemy of all people—death itself.

Jesus wept because he knew many there that day rejoicing in his enactment of a messianic claim ultimately would reject his servant-priest-king conception of what it meant to be Messiah. Instead, they would follow after various revolutionaries who rose up before and after him, until the Romans eventually had enough and destroyed Jerusalem and the temple in A.D. 70.

As with the “triumphal entry,” Jesus’ whole life was a repudiation of power politics and cultural wars. Jesus foresaw the exaltation of religious nationalism as the destruction of his people … and he wept. When will American Christians put off the power dynamics of Cain and put on the servant righteousness of Jesus the Messiah?

Jay Givens is professor of theological studies and director of online Christian studies programs at Wayland Baptist University. This article is adapted from the original blog post and republished by permission. The views expressed are those of the author.

Mike Law Jr., senior pastor of Arlington Baptist Church in Virginia, with wide support among some members of the Southern Baptist Convention, recently posted a list of churches affiliated with the denomination who have women on staff with “pastor” in their titles.

This move by Law and others in the SBC is a continuous part of their movement to control—and alienate—women who feel the call to serve in Christ’s church. As a male member of a Baptist church with female ministers, I feel the need to respond.

The list against women in ministry

Law notes his list includes churches “listed on the churches.sbc.net website” and “the SBC Workspace database.” He also explains: “Local and State Associations often relate to the SBC on a national level, so there is an open question of whether they are considered to be in friendly cooperation with the Southern Baptist Convention for the purposes of seating messengers.”

Law admits he has “not examined all of the churches in the Southern Baptist Convention. These are either churches I personally discovered along the way of writing to the SBC Executive Committee, churches who disclosed their female pastors to me through correspondence, or churches who were brought to my attention through colleagues.”

In a previous letter, Law called for unity in the SBC on the issue of women as pastors. To that end, he made a motion at the 2022 SBC annual meeting to amend the SBC’s constitution to define a church in “friendly cooperation” as one that “does not affirm, appoint, or employ a woman as pastor of any kind.” More than 2,000 people have signed their support of this letter.

Law and those in the SBC who agree with him seem to want to relegate women out of pastoral roles. While I believe they base their positions in Scripture, there are many examples in the Bible of women leading God’s people and men affirming that leadership.

Paul on women in ministry

Paul’s first letter to Timothy is used as one argument against women leading in ministry—specifically teaching and having authority over men in the church. Reading Paul’s letter so as to exclude women in authoritative/teaching roles is inconsistent with the Pauline corpus in general.

The SBC has, for a majority of its history, had no quarrel with women teaching children and being missionaries. Law’s list—which contains many children and family pastors—only proves his issue is semantic, which does not constitute a faithful reading of Paul.

The word Paul uses in the 1 Timothy passage concerning women not being permitted to teach is didasko—“to teach” (1 Timothy 2:12 NRSV). The issue here for many who advocate for women in ministry is that Paul consistently refers to women who are in church leadership in his other letters.

Paul uses many words to describe women who were serving the churches he wrote to throughout his ministry. For examples, I’ll use his letter to the Romans.

Paul refers to the woman Phoebe with the title diakonon—“servant/deacon/minister”—during the concluding chapter of Romans (Romans 16:1). In the same chapter, Paul describes a woman named Junia as an apostle, using the phrase episemoi en tois apostolois—“notable/well-known among the apostles” (Romans 16:7).

In this usage of apostolois—“apostles”—Paul has ranked Junia as a prominent leader in the church, as seen in his first letter to the Corinthians. In 1 Corinthians 12:28, Paul ranks church leadership in such a manner: proton apostolous, deuteron prophetas, triton didaskalous—“first apostles, second prophets, third teachers.” Thus, Paul ranks this woman named Junia over the prophets and teachers of the church.

Paul also mentions in 1 Corinthians 11:5 that women are able to prophesy. The word propheteuousa—“to prophesy”—exists in the space of the church, not just for men, but for women, as well. This means Paul affirms women to the second line of church leadership, as well, using his ranking from 1 Corinthians 12.

Old and New Testament women

Throughout the Old Testament, women are viewed in leadership positions in ancient Israel. While there are occasions in which female leadership in the Old Testament is not portrayed positively, these examples should not be used to undermine the positive influence female leaders embody in the Old Testament.

Miriam (Exodus 15:20) and Huldah (2 Kings 22:14) are called neviah—“prophetess.” Deborah is the female judge who led Israel—she “was judging Israel” (Judges 4:4)—and is called neviah—“prophetess.”

Furthermore, one must consider the prophet Joel’s words from God: “I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy” (Joel 2:28 NRSV, emphasis mine).

Jesus allowed women to serve during his ministry. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James are said to have “followed him and kai diekonoun auto—“provided/served him” (Mark 15:40-41). They were among the followers at the death scene of Jesus (v. 40).

Women followed Jesus along with the Twelve who diekonoun autois—“provided/served”—“them from their resources/goods” (Luke 8:1-3).

Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:27-30, 39-42). Upon giving her townsfolk her martyrouses—“testimony/declaration/solemn appeal” (John 4:39)—people were saved by him.

The Bible mentions women in ministry of all types in many instances. Paul, whose texts have played a significant role in the argument against women in ministry, affirms women to church leadership. Ancient Israel had prominent women leaders. Jesus our Lord allowed women to be a part of his ministry.

Messengers to the 2023 SBC annual meeting in June will vote on whether to “oust” the churches on Law’s list. If Law and his supporters are successful, these churches will continue to be faithful to the message of Scripture.

Let the ministry of women be a light in the darkness, and let these women called by God be a city on a hill that cannot be shaken. May the Lord bless women in ministry and church leadership—in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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.

REVISED (April 13, 2023): The original article published April 3, 2023, was revised by the author to provide additional references and clarifications. Additionally, Editor Eric Black transposed the Greek terms diakonon (referring to Phoebe) and apostolois (referring to Junia) in the original published article. That error has been corrected.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The two documents linked in this article were downloaded, respectively, from a Google Docs file shared by Mike Law and the “What is a Pastor” website. Baptist Standard does not vouch for the accuracy of either document, both of which may be updated or taken down by their author at any time.

Nathan Patzke is a Master of Divinity student at Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary and a graduate assistant at Baylor’s Beauchamp Addiction Recovery Center. He assists with college worship, Bible studie, and Sunday morning worship at his church in Central Texas. The views expressed are those of the author.

Hold out your hands. In one, hold your redemption in and through Jesus Christ, and in the other, hold what you know of our world.

Bring your hands together, one holding the other. This is a picture of our call to be ambassadors of reconciliation in this world.

Look at your clasped hands. In the same way you can’t hold your own hand without both hands touching, Jesus came into this world, not distancing himself from the sin and brokenness in it, but getting very near it to break sin and repair our brokenness.

If we follow Jesus, we are called into the same work of reconciliation.

Our call to be reconcilers

Hold your hands apart again. In the hand holding your redemption, imagine these words from Paul:

“If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.” (2 Corinthians 5:17-20).

If these words don’t take your breath away, I wonder if you’re paying attention. These words are at once thrilling and daunting—the stuff of movies and epic novels, except this is supposed to be our lived experience now that we are reconciled to God in Christ.

If we are going to fulfill our duty as Christ’s ambassadors—being his messengers of reconciliation, communicating to the world God was “not counting people’s sins against them” but was restoring us to him through Jesus—then we must not shrink back from the news of this world’s sin and brokenness. We must engage the many points of sin and brokenness in this world.

Examples of brokenness

In the hand holding the news of this world, give attention to some examples of the brokenness we are enduring.

On March 25, an EF4 tornado left a path of death and destruction—which can be seen from space—through several communities in the Mississippi Delta.

On March 27, a woman entered The Covenant School in Nashville and, using an assault rifle, shot and killed three children and three adults.

Also on March 27, 38 migrants died in a fire inside a migrant detention center in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Authorities are investigating why they were not let out to escape the fire.

In yet more news on March 27, a Texas Tribune report revealed new information about when and how much was known of allegations that Paul Pressler sexually abused young men. Pressler was central to Southern Baptist Convention politics during the 1970s through 1990s.

In Ukraine, both sides are using for war what amounts to a hobbyist’s toy—Chinese-made drones that “people mostly used … to play around with … for experimental purposes,” NPR reported March 28.

Many in the tech world are sounding alarm bells that artificial intelligence technology is advancing too fast with too few controls. Their greatest concern is AI could endanger humanity.

The preceding examples may seem too big and too far away for us to do anything about them. But each one is local and personal to those directly involved. They are examples for us, because we are enduring our own local and personal brokenness, and sometimes it’s easier to see the way to reconciliation when the problem isn’t ours.

We may not like or want to hear about the problems of this world we find ourselves in and have helped to create, but we must not shrink back from the news. In fact, we must lean into it, looking for where God is calling us to enact our ministry of reconciliation.

Engaging a broken world

We are glad to report some of the ways Christians are fulfilling their call.

Christ’s followers are bringing material and spiritual reconciliation to the communities in Mississippi devastated by the tornado.

Woodmont Baptist Church rose to the occasion March 27, immediately becoming the reunification center for parents and their children in the aftermath of the shooting at The Covenant School.

Christians in Ukraine—such as those attending Baptist seminaries there—continue to spread the gospel in word and deed, even in the midst of ongoing Russian missile barrages.

Though there is much more reconciling to do, these efforts at reconciliation should not be overlooked. In both what those involved are and are not doing, we may see where God is calling us—whether it be near or far, big or small, in our families, among our friends or coworkers, in our neighborhoods, our churches or our communities.

Look again at your open hands, one holding the ministry of reconciliation and one holding the sin and brokenness of our world. Take a closer look at your hands. Realize reconciliation is in your hand, and brokenness is, too. It is God, who redeemed you and me and who restores all things, who brings reconciliation together with our brokenness.

Now, you and I are new creations, and we have work to do. How are we going to bring the message of God’s reconciliation to the many points of sin and brokenness in this our world? Individually, we can’t take it all on, but we can and are called to take on some. How has God crafted your hands to take his message of reconciliation to where he is calling you?

Imagine one more thing with me. Imagine reconciliation in our right hand and brokenness in our left, so that when we engage in the work of reconciliation together—hand-in-hand—we receive the ministry of reconciliation as much as we give it away. This is our true call, not to reconcile ourselves, but to receive Christ’s reconciliation and to proclaim his reconciliation to each other.

Eric Black is the executive director, publisher and editor of the Baptist Standard. He can be reached at eric.black@baptiststandard.com. The views expressed are those solely of the author.

Another day, another mass slaughter of little kids—and some adults—in their school, this time in Nashville. Next time, it might be in Ozark and my grandkids.

Hear the deafening silence? That’s the sound of right-wing religious figures not speaking out on this evil, which accounts for most of the deaths of children and young teens in America.

Remember last year when a killer armed with an assault rifle killed 19 little kids and some adults in Uvalde, Texas? Remember the shameful performance of the Uvalde police department? Remember the NRA meeting in Texas less than a week later, with Trump and Southern Baptist Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.)? Cruz likes to brag he was baptized by my former pastor, Rev. Gaylon Wiley.

NRA supporters like Larry Gatlin believe “the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

The best way to stop these killers is to have effective laws in place to deny them the ability to be a “bad guy with a gun.” Of course, a stand such as this would require someone to be “pro-life.” Also, it would require giving up the blood money from the NRA.

A few weeks ago, Rep. Barry Moore (R-Ala., District 2, where I live) introduced a bill in Congress to declare the AR-15 the “National Gun of America.” This a slap in the face of every parent who has lost a child to a gun—of any kind.

I don’t hate guns in general or the AR-15 in particular. I carried an AR-15 my first tour in Vietnam and an M-16—a slightly modified AR-15—my second tour. But weapons of mass destruction should be available only to police and the military.

Carl Hess
Ozark, Ala.

RE: Editorial: How are we going to save our churches?

Thank you for saying “out loud” what I too rarely have heard in Christian community as we monitor, report and assess ministry “success.”

You wrote: “Despite misuse of the idea, actual faithfulness to God still ought to be of more concern to us than more people, more baptisms and more money.”

When we as ministry leaders, board directors, pastors, elders, donors and congregants rely on numbers and growth metrics for primary affirmation of our ministry, we surely have forgotten the Old Testament prophets and the common response to Christ himself in New Testament times.

We look back and affirm Jesus’ ministry of doing what his heavenly Father directed, but do we accept his standard as our own prescription for ministry, or do we look to the latest business model?

There is so much pressure on pastors and ministry leaders to accomplish what is measurable and chartable. Perhaps we as leaders are at fault, having erred in our teaching and instruction, if faithfulness is not the most important, regular assessment of ministry effectiveness by supporters or congregations. Perhaps this is a correction we get to make.

Donna Lee Lamothe
Waco, Texas

How are we going to save our churches?

Pastors, deacons, finance committee chairs and other leaders in the church are asking this question—verbatim or in essence—with increasing frequency. They started asking before COVID.

Leaders of Christian institutions and parachurch ministries are asking this question, too.

We’re not asking how we’re going to get our churches or institutions into heaven. We’re asking how we’re going to keep from closing the doors and disbanding. We’re probably also asking how we’re going to keep our jobs.

The answer most likely every time is some version of “more”—more people, more baptisms, more money.

We need more visitors, more people attending worship services, more people joining the church. We need more people involved in Sunday school and Bible study groups. We need more people to give more money—which we spiritualize as “tithes” and “offerings.”

If “more” in this sense is the measure of our success, we will never succeed. Something else must be the measure of our success.

To that effect, I asked a group of pastors this week, “How much do we have to accomplish to know we’ve been effective in our ministry?”

Is there a certain number we need to reach in one or more categories to be able to say we did good? And is that number lower than we think is OK to say out loud? Either way, we’re measuring our ministry by the numbers.

Secularism challenging the church

This whole line of thinking was spurred by Andrew Root’s synopsis of Catholic Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor’s thinking on secularism.

Root, professor of youth and family ministry at Luther Seminary, was the keynote speaker during Truett Theological Seminary’s Pastors Conference, March 20–21. He sees implications for religious belief and ministry within Taylor’s thinking about secularism.

The focal question of the conference was, “Why are people leaving the church?”—a similar question to “How are we going to save our churches?”

In answer, Root offered Taylor’s description of increasing secularism. According to Taylor, secularism in the Western world—Europe and North America—has reached the point that “all belief [is] contested [and] fragilized.” No religious claims are taken for granted anymore; all are open to doubt.

One effect of belief becoming “fragilized” in this way is we aren’t certain about anything but what is right in front of us—what we can touch, see, hear, taste and smell.

One expression of this effect is seen in how churches have redirected funds away from intangible things like Cooperative Programs to more concrete, local and direct connections with people whose faces they’ve seen and voices they’ve heard.

Taylor’s description of our current state rings true, and it leaves us with more questions than answers. It also doesn’t alleviate the concern about how we’re going to save our churches.

The path forward for the church

Root wasn’t ringing the death knell for the church, nor was he advocating hospice care. Instead, he suggested we should lean into the expectation for more direct connection. He encouraged building one-on-one relationships; telling and listening to honest faith stories that include the highs and the lows of our faith journeys; and living in the way of Christ by walking alongside searching doubt.

This way is slow and out of our control. There’s no guarantee it will ever work. If it does work, it may be too little and too late to keep our institutions alive. We may be left wondering which it’s going to be—the institutions or the relationships that get our attention, and does one have to be prioritized over the other?

I asked Root if we’re supposed to give up our concern about saving our churches and instead give our time and energy to building relationships. He said we do have a responsibility to maintain our institutions. People sacrificed to build them, and places like church buildings are necessary sacred spaces. He said we also need to build relationships. For him, it’s not an either/or, but both/and.

I understand responsibility, but I don’t believe the responsibility to maintain institutions is primary to the responsibility to be faithful to God.

Asking the right question

More important than upholding our responsibility to a thing—albeit a thing made of people—is our faithfulness to God.

I don’t state this lightly. Holding up faithfulness to God as primary is a fearful thing that can be misappropriated and abused. In fact, the misuse of the concept has contributed to skepticism about religious claims.

Despite misuse of the idea, actual faithfulness to God still ought to be of more concern to us than more people, more baptisms and more money.

Consider, for example: If God calls one person to bring more people into a church and God calls another person to close a church, who’s the success and who’s the failure? The success is the one who was faithful and followed God’s call.

But in our words and behavior, too many of us don’t define ministry success that way. In our words and reactions, there is one clear success—the church that got bigger. Something was wrong with the church that closed; something was wrong with the pastor credited with closing it. And so, the last thing most pastors want is to be the one who presided over a church’s closing.

How are we going to save our churches? This isn’t the right question. Will we be faithful to God? That is the right question.

A last thought

At this point in writing, I received an email from a friend who is a pastor. He was writing to let me know his church recently voted to dissolve. I know the church, and I know some of their struggle, but I had no idea his email would arrive when it did.

I believe this church and its leadership wanted to be faithful to God—from their beginning to their dissolution. Faithfulness to God didn’t pack their pews. We’re not even sure at this point what their faithfulness to God resulted in or yet will bring to pass. All we know is they sought to be faithful to God.

So, I sit with this fresh news. I quietly hold their grief with them along with their hopeful wondering about the future. And I ask myself, “How will I be faithful to God—even if God calls me to look like a failure in the world’s eyes?”

Eric Black is the executive director, publisher and editor of the Baptist Standard. He can be reached at eric.black@baptiststandard.com. The views expressed are those solely of the author.

Read the companion article ‘Affirming unlimited roles for women in ministry’ here.

Should Southern Baptist churches have women on their pastoral staff? This matter can be addressed properly only if we first define what the word “pastor” means and then clarify how Southern Baptist’s often understand the concept of “pastoral staff.”

Biblical definition of ‘pastor’

Regarding the first matter, Southern Baptist’s historically have contended the terms “pastor” (one who shepherds), “elder” (a wise, experienced leader) and “bishop” (an overseer of a church’s affairs) are used interchangeably in the New Testament to describe one office of leadership in the church.

The basis for this argument is that these labels are applied to intersecting responsibilities. For example, the Book of Acts recounts Paul summoning the Ephesian elders to visit him at Miletus (Acts 20:17), where he tells them they are the church’s overseers who must shepherd God’s people (Acts 20:28).

Also, in two of Paul’s letters, he instructs Timothy to look for qualified male candidates who can serve as overseers (1 Timothy 3:1-2) and admonishes Titus to appoint elders (Titus 1:5) who can function as overseers (Titus 1:7).

Peter makes similar connections when he describes Christ as a shepherd and overseer (1 Peter 2:25) or commissions church elders to oversee and shepherd God’s flock (1 Peter 5:1-2). This consistent kind of overlap convinces Southern Baptists that if someone holds the office of pastor, then they necessarily take up the duties of an elder and bishop as well.

Baptist Faith and Message on ‘pastor’

This conviction is further solidified in Southern Baptist confessional history as documented in various editions of the Baptist Faith and Message. The original draft from 1925 states in Article VI: The Church that “its Scriptural officers are bishops, or elders, and deacons.”

Notably, the word pastor is omitted. Yet for all practical purposes, the term is still viewed as functionally equivalent, since the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message removes both elder and bishop in exchange for pastor.

Although a new statement was added—“the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture”—the 1963 language otherwise was retained in 2000 when the Baptist Faith and Message was revised again.

Southern Baptist pastoral staff

Many Southern Baptist churches do not view all their ministerial personnel as pastors in the full way the New Testament or Baptist Faith and Message prescribe. Doing so would require all pastoral staff members to be seen as elders and bishops.

However, Southern Baptist churches usually have a “senior” pastor viewed as the one pastor/elder/bishop who supervises the staff. Sometimes the senior pastor/elder/bishop will delegate certain staff members to exercise assigned authority over other staff.

To make matters more complicated, staff may have the term “pastor” in their individual titles because of designated duties—such as executive pastor, youth pastor, pastor to marrieds, pastor to seniors.

This means a kind of ecclesiastical pecking order exists where people who serve on a Southern Baptist church staff may participate in pastoral tasks while not having parity with the one senior pastor.

It is at this very crossroads where the question of women on pastoral staff needs to be addressed. On the one hand, Southern Baptists believe pastors also are elders and bishops. On the other hand, church staff are not normally viewed in this light. Thus, the difficulty in discerning a clear-cut answer to this issue.

Three points to consider

Southern Baptists should consider three points.

First, Southern Baptist churches should recognize that because ministerial staff normally have no functional parity with a senior pastor or other leading bodies—such as elders—these positions should not be equated with the pastoral office in the New Testament sense of the word.

This dilemma is one reason the trend among Southern Baptist churches to have a plurality of elders is growing. It’s easier to maintain a distinction between the pastors—or elders—and staff.

Second, I agree with the Baptist Faith and Message 2000’s clause restricting the office of pastor/elder/bishop to qualified men. The New Testament never provides a single example of women serving in this role.

Women are enabled and commissioned to share the gospel with the world, minister to the hurting, offer insight to those in need of personal guidance and actively be involved in many more areas of Christian praxis.

We also read of instances where women may prophesy, pray and participate in public gatherings of the church. Yet none of these functions ever are described in ways that contravene specified areas of responsibility given to qualified men who serve in the pastor/elder/bishop office.

Admittedly, however, this is a diminishing perspective because of the increasing cultural appeal of egalitarianism, ongoing exegetical debates about pertinent biblical texts—such as 1 Timothy 2:12 or Galatians 3:28—and pushback against exclusive male leadership because of tragic occasions where women have been victims of abuse by numerous pastors.

Third, the specific question of women serving on pastoral staff is complicated further by the fact many staff positions—whether bearing the title “pastor” or not—require involvement in pastoral duties the New Testament restricts to qualified men, such as teaching or preaching to a gathered church assembly.

In such cases, regardless of whether Southern Baptist churches restrict the title of “pastor” to pastor/elder/bishop or broadly expand it to staff roles, women should not participate in those designated functions.

This pastor/staff question is a large reason why the SBC is so heavily divided on the women-in-ministry issue today. The Baptist Faith and Message 2000 prohibits women from being pastors, but does this mean “senior pastors” only, or pastoral staff as well? If it includes the latter, which ones?

The jury is still out on this matter, and time will tell what Southern Baptists decide.

Everett Berry is professor of theology at Criswell College and editor of Criswell Theological Review.

Read the companion article ‘Affirming limited roles for women in ministry’ here.

The role of women in the church has been a point of contention among Christians for a long time. In this polarized cultural moment, we can show a better way. It starts by reframing the conversation.

Let’s begin by restating a well-known framework for maintaining unity in the body of Christ: “In all things core, unity; in all things non-core, freedom; and in all things, grace.”

As we maintain and nourish a Christ-centered, biblical faith, the core gets very tight, like the point of a spear. It comes down to believing the gospel, becoming like Jesus and joining him on mission. This focus has allowed the Great Commission to prevail throughout the world for millennia.

As a pastor, my reasons for advocating for women in ministry are three-fold: the gospel and its implications, the life and example of Jesus, and the advancement of his mission in the world.

It’s helpful to begin by realizing there is a vast spectrum across the complementarian-egalitarian continuum. Simply labeling oneself and others is reductionist and unproductive.

Most pastors I know agree women and men are created equally in the image of God, are gifted by God to serve him, and are called to employ their spiritual gifts to glorify him and spread the gospel.

Opinions differ when it comes to roles within the church, particularly as it relates to leadership, preaching and the role of the pastor.

Foundational questions

We first must answer some key foundational questions: How, if at all, did Jesus change the place and role of women? How does the gospel applied drive our understanding? What is leadership, and what did it look like in the first-century context compared to leadership today?

What did the first hearers of the New Testament understand the Gospel writers and Paul to be saying about women in the church? How does God dispense his gifts to his children? What is prophecy in the New Testament?

How do the roles of women and men reveal the glory of God and advance the gospel throughout the world? Finally, why does this matter today?

There is not space here to answer all of these questions.

A guiding principle

After years of thorough exegesis of key passages regarding women in ministry—1 Corinthians 11:2-16; 14:33-36, 1 Timothy 2:11-15, Ephesians 5, Romans 16 and more—I have come to advocate for and raise up women in ministry.

A guiding hermeneutical principle that helps me interpret the debated and implicit passages is to look at the explicit life of Jesus as our guide. Unique to Christian theology is our acknowledgement that Jesus is perfect theology personified.

The Bible will not contradict itself, and thus will never contradict Jesus. If it ever seems to, the clarity most often lies in the hard work of the historical and contextual nature of the text and its application today.

Jesus liberated women more than anyone in history, and Paul turned cultural norms and roles of women upside down throughout the Greco-Roman world.

What makes our conclusions challenging is we cannot map today’s understanding of leadership over the churches in the New Testament. There, we see a very different model of smaller gatherings, most often house churches, with very different roles and positions from what we see today.

Modern leadership in our churches too often mirrors more of an American corporate model than a biblical model of leadership. We are challenged by our presuppositions of leadership in our context up against a first-century model of ecclesiology.

What we do see in Jesus and in Paul is the ongoing theme of a radical reversal within the kingdom of God that applies to leadership.

Jesus’ and Paul’s empowerment of women

Jesus’ entire ministry challenged the honor-shame culture that consisted of power, hierarchy, titles and patriarchy, which was a significant part of the fabric of the Greco-Roman and Jewish world.

Jesus announced a complete reversal within the kingdom, where the weak are strong, the last are first, and the servant is the most powerful person in the room. He speaks to this contrasting vision in Matthew 20:25-28, noting how the Gentile leaders rule over others, “but it should not be among you.”

This is relevant especially as we talk about leadership in the church, because he turned secular leadership on its head. The leader as slave was a radical notion, as it is even in our day. It is one of the most revolutionary things Jesus ever said and then embodied—such as in washing the disciples’ feet (Matthew 26) while taking on the form of a servant (Philippians 2).

Following his Savior’s lead, Paul laid out a new vision of leadership in 1 Corinthians and applied those principles in the church, in marriage and in the household codes (Ephesians 5).

Using the language of culture, Paul redefined what it means to be “head” as a loving servant, while raising up women as equal yet different from men in a beautiful picture of equality and mutual submission under the headship of Christ.

Paul summarized this new vision of life in God’s kingdom by challenging the cultural ideas of hierarchy, race, sex and equality, saying, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).

Gifts greater than roles

It’s more profitable to talk about gifting than roles. Jesus did not genderize the Great Commission, nor does God dispense spiritual gifts to his children according to sex. We must release every girl and boy, woman and man into their God-given calling, not putting parameters around anyone based on sex, ethnicity or status.

Relegating women to specific roles—often preschool, children, youth, worship or women’s ministries—is to narrow the work of a gift-filled congregation and thus stifle the advancement of the gospel.

Such parameters have not always been imposed on the mission field in other parts of the world. Let’s release our girls and women—called by God—to lead, proclaim, teach and preach the glorious message of the gospel to the whole wide world.

Jeff Warren is the senior pastor of Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas.