Posted on 06/14/2023 3:06:52 PM PDT by JSM_Liberty
The Southern Baptist Convention voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to uphold earlier decisions to expel two churches because they have women pastors.
The decision came during the group's annual meeting in New Orleans. The SBC heard appeals by California megachurch Saddleback and a smaller church, Fern Creek Baptist in Louisville, Ky.
Saddleback Church ordained a woman as a campus pastor, and the Kentucky congregation has had a woman pastor, Rev. Linda Popham, for more than three decades.
The SBC's 2000 statement of faith, called Baptist Faith and Message, asserts that only qualified men can serve as pastors, and the nearly 13,000 voters, who are called "messengers," voted to uphold the churches' removals.
During the floor debate in New Orleans, Popham argued that women should be allowed to serve as pastors and that she had been faithfully serving in churches since she was a teenager.
She said that her congregation adhered to an earlier version of the Baptist Faith and Message, adopted in 1963. That version of the theological document does not exclude women from holding the office of pastor.
"We have a faith and practice," Popham said of her congregation, "that identifies more closely with the Baptist Faith and Message than many other Southern Baptist churches, and I am personally more conservative than the most Southern Baptist pastors I know."
Popham also said it's not a problem for congregations to disagree with one another on the specifics of who's eligible for ministry and that she would never suggest any congregation had to have a woman as its pastor.
Defending the churches' expulsions was prominent SBC theologian and seminary president Albert Mohler.
He argued that the Bible restricts the role of pastor to men only.
"The issue of women serving in the pastorate," he said, "is an issue of fundamental Biblical authority that does violate both the doctrine and the order of the Southern Baptist Convention."
As Mohler spoke, voters interrupted him multiple times with applause in support of his position. The women at Fern Creek and Saddleback will continue to serve as pastors there, but their congregations are no longer part of the Southern Baptist Convention.
After upholding the expulsions, messengers in New Orleans voted by a two-thirds majority to amend their constitution to state that the Southern Baptist Convention "Affirms, appoints, or employs only men as any kind of pastor or elder."
The SBC's executive committee had urged messengers to not amend the constitution because it said the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message was already clear on the restriction against women holding the title pastor. That document includes the sentence "The office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture."
In order to go into effect, the amendment will need to be voted on a second time and pass by a two-thirds majority at the Southern Baptist meeting next year.
Early women pastors: Dorcas, Chloe, Lydia, Nympha, Prisca, or Priscilla, Electa, all had church meetings in their home. There’s more to the story but these should suffice.
Good. Nice to see Side Saddles booted too!
It varies, but the best sermons I’ve ever heard were by men and the worst were by women. Just my experience.
Early women pastors: Dorcas, Chloe, Lydia, Nympha, Prisca, or Priscilla, Electa, all had church meetings in their home. There’s more to the story but these should suffice.
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The Bible doesn’t call them the Greek word for “pastor”. They were just early Christian women who had meetings in their homes or served as deaconesses.
—> Early women pastors
Not pastors
IF they were pastors then Paul completely contradicted himself in his writings.
But I do not allow a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. 13 For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. 14 And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a wrongdoer. 15 But women will be preserved through childbirth—if they continue in faith, love, and sanctity, with moderation.
Obviously, the childbirth to which Paul is referring has nothing to do with actual childbirth by individual women, but the same childbirth foretold in Genesis -— that is the birth of Christ, else childless women could not be saved. If that part of this passage is a bit ambiguous, the whole argument could be open to interpretation. There is no injunction, for instance, against Deborah being a judge over all Israel. And we must always take the whole word of God, not just one segment. It’s a thorny issue, for sure. I am part of a Church of God congregation, an extremely conservative denomination, which has allowed women pastors since its beginnings, but each region has an overseer, who must be male, and the women pastors are under HIS authority, in effect, the male overseer giving the women pastors the permission to preach and pastor.
Now if the Baptists would disallow dancing at Baylor again, things would be returning to normal.
LOL!!! those women were NOT Pastors....they opened their homes to have MEETING of fellow Christians!!
One can have meetings in their home but not be a pastor.
“It varies, but the best sermons I’ve ever heard were by men and the worst were by women. Just my experience.”
“Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.” ― Samuel Johnson
There’s nothing in scripture to suggest any of those were preachers or pastors. The just let the congregations use their facilities.
Good news...
Not pastors.
My aunt and uncle were church planters (home missions). When starting a church in a new location they had to start small, meeting in homes. If Mabel offered her home for the meeting, that didn’t make Mabel a pastor; she was a host.
That doesn't mean they were pastors.
One can open up their home for church services without being the one overseeing it.
They ran the services in their homes; they read Paul’s letters, sang hymns. They had no male overseers.
I was raised in a group with woman and men preachers. Always judgemental of you and you could never feel comfortable around them. In services no one ever smiled and many actually shed tears as in fear of judgement. Once the services were over everyone lightened up.
Thankfully those chains of legalism were broken fifty years ago and I now live a great happy life going to a small Southern Baptist church.
Not worth arguing about.
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