My wife's church (not mine) left the SBC a few years ago, not because it disagreed with them about abortion or homosexuality, but over the role of women in the church. Her church has had female deacons for decades and as I understand it the SBC frowns on that (although I have no idea whether they "outlaw" it). My wife is a deacon right now.
Nothin' wrong with that. "deacon" means "servant."
Some churches try to play a shell game by calling women who serve or work on staff "directors" or some such nonsense.
They are deacons.
Let's be honest and just call 'em by the biblical name.
Well, there is nothing on the SBC website that says anything about women being Deacons, though they do say the pastor role should be for men only. It is a dicey issues for sure, but one that is really blown out of proportion. Our church has had a few women Deacons and has one serving right now. I was told once that because of this our church was essentially "blacklisted" from any leadership role in our association. Well, the new Brotherhood Director for our association is the man I trained under for Disaster Relief and whose church had a woman serving as Deacon at the time he was appointed, so I think it is just people who expect there to be trouble saying something before they know the facts.
Frankly, I don't know what to think on the women serving in leadership roles issue. I don't have a problem with women serving as Deacons because there seems to be more than enough evidence that women in the early church served in that capacity. As for pastors, I haven't seen evidence where there was a woman serving as pastor and Paul even talked about them not serving.
I don't know what God wants there. Frankly, the bigger issue is to me is why so many men refuse to serve in leadership roles when asked. If they were more willing to serve, I don't this would even be an issue. For some reason, men in the church have largely seen their role relegated to bench warmer and curmudgeon at business meetings. It is no wonder churches have become more female-centric. Men don't want to do anything. We have a very hard time finding men to serve each year as Deacons. It is really sad. I view my roles as one of God's choosing, not mine. If He places it on our membership's hearts to elect me to serve as a Deacon, I have no right to refuse. Unfortunately, many in my own church don't see it that way.