Posted on 05/08/2024 1:58:15 PM PDT by Morgana
Richmond’s First Baptist Church is ready to pull the plug on its membership in the Southern Baptist Convention, a move they’ve been plotting ever since the SBC approved the Law Amendment. Senior Pastor Jim Somerville offered a public rebuke to their actions on account that their church has multiple pastrixes, writing that they’ve taken steps to disaffiliate over this issue:
“This is an emotional decision for many in the church, some because the Southern Baptist Convention has been their denominational “home” all their lives and they can’t imagine leaving, but others because the SBC is disrespecting our female clergy, telling them they can’t be pastors when we know that they can.
…I know this is going to be painful for them. I wish it didn’t have to be that way. At the same time I love our female pastors and have been supportive of women in ministry from the very beginning. My last SBC meeting was in New Orleans in 1990, where my five-year-old niece wore a button that said, “If you won’t ordain me, don’t baptize me.”
…And let’s be truthful: we haven’t been “An SBC church” in a long time. We haven’t sent messengers to the annual convention in more than thirty years.”
Southern Baptists should view their departure as a purification to be rejoiced over and celebrated rather than a tragedy to mourn. While repentance and the termination of their pastrixes would be the ideal resolution, the next best action for them is to cut ties with the denomination. This is especially crucial, given the various other ways the church has drifted.
As revealed by The Dissenter, Sommerville recently confirmed on his blog that the church has finally approved a new welcome statement which reads “We affirm the biblical truth that all people are created in God’s image and therefore seek to welcome every person in the Spirit of Christ” but that it took a “little while to get there” over considerations for LGBTQ people.
“One of our deacons wondered what we were really trying to say with such a message and I made it clear that I wanted to have something I could point to when members of the LGBTQ community asked me if they would be welcome at our church. At our November meeting I had taken an informal survey, asking the deacons how the church relates to that community currently. I asked, “Do we exclude, tolerate, welcome, or affirm?” There were nearly fifty deacons in attendance: a good representation of our congregation. This is what they said.”
Sommerville asked the deacons how they should relate to the LGBTQ community and the results were significantly different, leading him to suggest there is a leadership gap that needs to be closed. He concludes: “I suggested that we could read books, have conversations, listen to the stories of actual members of the LGBTQ community, but yes, we could also put a welcome statement on the website. That might be a start.”
The Dissenter further reveals “we were able to find other pro-LGBTQ resources on the website, including a recommended book about leading a church to “publicly affirm its LGBTQ community members” and another blog post that calls on people to “to declare the value of black lives, to loudly defend LGBTQ people, to stand alongside your Muslim brothers and sisters, to denounce the degradation of the planet.”
Bye.
face it friends...the only bible many now follow is the holey bible...you know, the one where all the parts someone doesn’t want to follow get cut out with scissors leaving it HOLEY.
Baptists don’t have female preachers.
All these churches are going to hell. Part of the big scheme of things especially when you have a Pope as f’d up as this one is.
Nothing wrong with worshipping with friends and families in a small local church but the large denominations have obviously lost their way.
‘If you won’t ordain me, don’t baptize me.’
If you don’t like the rules, don’t get baptized.
I wanted to have something I could point to when members of the BRMRRDDF community asked me if they would be welcome at our church.
(That’s the Bank Robber Murderer Rapist Robber Drug Dealer Fraudster community.)
“Baptists don’t have female preachers.”
There in likes a problem. They do now and have had them for a few years. Now it’s just being addressed?
Are women mentally capable to do this? Yes...There are some very smart women in the world and who know their Bible.But this fallen church exhibits the pattern I've seen when women are in the pastorship......the acceptance of homosexuality is just around the corner. And this fallen church has turned that corner.
*****
https://fbcrichmond.org/
There in likes a problem. They do now and have had them for a few years. Now it’s just being addressed?
Actually there was a split over this issue in the late 80s/early 90s. The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship was formed.
The falling away Paul wrote about has been happening for a while but now appears to be picking up steam.
And if I started arguing that carjacking is a form of robbery, we’d be closely paralleling the insane chaos that reigns supreme in the LuGBuT crowd.
There is a huge difference between welcoming everyone and preaching that homosexual conduct is approved.
They have free will to decide
Well, already the bank robbers want to be distinguished from the other robbers. Embezzlers are tolerate, but looked down upon. They have the “closeted” attitude.
“Actually there was a split over this issue in the late 80s/early 90s. The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship was formed.”
I had no idea it was going on that long. I noticed the last ten years there was a serge in female baptist pastors but that may be just the Christian news services reporting on it, I’m not sure.
these leftists are so sick. Their slogan just proves they not Christian. They are just leftists trying to take over the Christian church to defile it.
The 5 year old girl has no idea what the button said or even what it meant. She has a simple idea what baptism means and even less on ordination. Some adult gave her the button to wear.
It's not just the large denominations. It's now common in many independent protestant churches that the pastor's wife automatically becomes a co-pastor by virtue of her marriage. I view all this nonsense as the fruit of feminism & a rejection of Romans 1. Paul would rebuke churches that have so-called women pastors. Bottom line: men were not designed to be pastored by women or queers.
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