SBC 2021 (Part 1): Gender Again

The annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is taking place this week in Nashville, and it looks to be a very active business meeting.  COVID prevented last year’s meeting, so we have two years’ worth of concerns, much of which has been unproductively battered around on social media, to try to settle in one way or another.  And the stakes may be high, as the votes may send one group or another out from under the SBC tent.

So what are the issues that loom darkly over the SBC?  There are several, and I’ll try to give some thoughts on the big ones.

Back in the late 1970’s, the SBC went through something called the Conservative Resurgence.  Recognizing that some leaders were moving the convention in a more liberal theological direction, an effort was begun and eventually accomplished to move things back to the right.  One of the liberal positions pushed back by the Conservative Resurgence was the idea of ordination of women.  In 2000, the SBC adopted a revision to its statement of beliefs known as the Baptist Faith & Message (BF&M), and one of the changes to that document was the statement that “the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”  This statement is based on multiple passages, such as I Timothy 3:2 and I Timothy 2:12.  While the BF&M doesn’t specifically mention it, the latter text would also disqualify women from preaching or teaching to an audience that included men, such as a Sunday morning service.

Since the last annual meeting, it has been observed that there are multiple church plants that were invested in by the North American Mission Board (NAMB) that have women listed on their websites with a title of “pastor” or “co-pastor.”  Is NAMB not paying attention to the churches they are helping to start, or do they know and not care, or worse, desire to see this despite its contradiction to the BF&M?

One of the most prominent women teachers in Southern Baptist life has been Beth Moore.  Her beginnings are noble - a woman digging into Scripture to teach God’s truth to other women.  Along the way, some significant issues came up, and one of those was that she began to allow her audiences to include both male and female.  There were even times when she was asked to speak for the Sunday morning worship time.  While not technically violating the BF&M, it violated the underlying Scripture.  Just a few months ago, she had heard enough of people telling her she shouldn’t do that and took herself out of the SBC.

A little over a month ago, a megachurch within the SBC had what they called an “historic night” by ordaining three women as pastors.  The chuch is Saddleback Church in California, and its lead pastor is Rick Warren.

How the convention will respond to this issue is crucial - it will either be stopped or it will expand markedly.  There is no chance that it will stay at only what we see today.  This is a battle that we have already fought.  It seems strange to need to be fighting it again.