In March of 2022, Supreme Court Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson was asked, “What is a woman?” She could not answer the question. Three months after Justice Jackson’s testimony, the Credentials Committee—which is tasked with determining what churches are in friendly cooperation with the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC)—asked that a Study Committee be formed because they could not answer the question, “What is a pastor?” Since then, this committee has shown both a reluctance and refusal to identify egalitarian SBC churches as not in friendly cooparation with the SBC.
I want the SBC to be faithful to Scripture. This is why I proposed what is now being called the “Law Amendment” at the 2022 SBC Annual Meeting after making little progress with the Credentials Committee. God has written in his word that only qualified men can serve as pastors, and this Amendment merely takes what is already in God’s Word and the Baptist Faith & Message and puts it into the SBC constitution to define which churches compose the Convention.[1] The Amendment passed overwhelmingly in 2023, but it needs to pass one more time in order to be ratified.
1. If adopted, the SBC constitution would read in Article 3, Paragraph 1, “. . . a church [is] in friendly cooperation with the Convention . . . which . . . ‘6. Affirms, appoints, or employs only men as any kind of pastor or elder as qualified by Scripture.’ ”
After all the arguments have been made, the bottom-line is this: We will either have women pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention, or we will not. We will either coddle sin, or we will be faithful to what our wise God has revealed in the Scriptures and what we have summarized in the Baptist Faith & Message.
This is my last appeal to SBC messengers before I see you, Lord willing, at the Indiana Convention Center. And with these final words, I want to encourage you to vote in favor of this Amendment—for the sake of fidelity to Scripture, clarity in our Convention, and unity in our mission.
1. Adopt the Amendment for the Sake of Fidelity to Scripture
A Pastor is a Pastor
Fidelity is simply faithfulness to our commitments. A vote to adopt the Amendment is a vote in favor of our Convention’s faithfulness and commitment to Scripture, because the Amendment simply mirrors Scripture’s teaching on the pastoral office.
There are some people who want to allow for women to be SBC pastors as long as they are not elders, or as long as they are not over men, or as long as they are not a senior pastor. The problem is that the Bible doesn’t make these kind of overly-technical distinctions; In the Bible, every pastor is an elder, and every pastor/elder exercizes oversight over the whole congregation.
In the apostle Paul’s farewell speech of Acts 20:17–31 we see multiple words used for the pastoral office: Paul calls the male leaders of the church elders (Acts 20:17) and overseers (Acts 20:28), and he uses shepherding language when he exhorts them to care for the church of God. (That’s where we get our word for “pastor” from—it’s the noun form of the verb to “care/shepherd.”) We see the same concept in 1 Peter 5:1–5, where the language of pastoring, eldering, and overseeing are all used in the same passage to refer to the same group of individuals (see diagram below).
These titles and terms are all addressing the same men, their office, and their work. For this reason, it will not work to claim that women can be pastors who just don’t oversee or who don’t serve as elders. An elder is an overseer who shepherds (or pastors) their local flock of God. Pastor is perhaps the best word, the strongest word, the one word that wraps up all that elder and overseer mean into one package.
Historically this has been the understanding of Southern Baptists—that pastor/elder/overseer are all terms which speak of the same office. Through their writings, SBC greats like James Pendleton (1867), E. C. Dargan (1897), J.J. Taylor (1899), O.C.S. Wallace (1913), H.W. Tribble (1929), and Herschel Hobbs (1964) all affirm what Dr. Malcom Yarnell nicely summarized in 2007, that “The three major Greek New Testament terms describing a pastor are episcopos, ‘overseer’ or ‘bishop’; presbyteros, ‘elder’; and poimān, ‘shepherd’ or ‘pastor’” (see Appendix A for these historical writers in context).[2] In fact, we never see the language of pastoring/shepherding applied to women in the entire New Testament. It’s an office that God has uniquely called qualified men to bear, and for good reasons.
2. See Malcom B. Yarnell III, “Article VI: The Church,” in The Baptist Faith and Message 2000: Critical Issues in America’s Largest Protestant Denomination, ed. Douglas K. Blount and Joseph D. Wooddell (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007), 62. See also Charles S. Kelley, Richard D. Land, and R. Albert Mohler’s official commentary and Bible Study on the Baptist Faith and Message (2000) in “Chapter 9: The Church,” in The Baptist Faith & Message (Nashville, TN: LifeWay Press, 2007), 90: “The New Testament words that Baptists identify with the pastoral office include terms translated as bishop, elder, and pastor . . . Each term adds to our understanding of the pastoral office and the pastor’s responsibility. Bishop means overseer—someone who oversees the work of others. Jews used the word elder to designate someone who possessed dignity and wisdom. In the Christian church elder was used for someone who presided over assemblies and served as a counselor. The term pastor describes a shepherd who loves and cares for the believers who make up the congregation (see Acts 20:28). . . . We also affirm that the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture. This assertion has become controversial only in recent years. Until recently, all Christians affirmed that the pastoral office is limited to men recognized as fully qualified by biblical definitions. The Bible clearly reveals a complementary relationship between men and women. Both are equally created in the image of God (see Gen. 1:27; Gal. 3:28). Both are gifted for service in the church. But the New Testament defines a pastor as a man who is ‘the husband of one wife’ (1 Tim. 3:2) and a man who is gifted by God to fulfill the pastoral role. God’s instruction is for men to assume and fulfill the preaching ministry. Many other ministries and responsibilities are available in the church for both men and women.”
The Larger Picture
Acts 20:29–30 teaches us that pastors protect the flock from fierce wolves who would draw disciples away from Christ. Although it’s a metaphor, would the Apostle Paul send wives and daughters and sisters in Christ to confront these fierce wolves? There is a strong basis for why Paul uses masculine language in the elder qualifications in 1 Timothy 3:1–7—Paul is drawing from a larger theology from creation that rightly upholds qualified men as protectors, just as Adam was supposed to be (Gen. 2:15; see also Titus 1:9, 13).
Its this very order of creation that Paul appeals to when he does not allow for a woman “to teach or exercise authority over a man” in 1 Timothy 2:12. In our androgynous and transgender age, some may recoil at that command as exclusionary or old-fashioned. But the very One who breathed-out this prohibition was God himself (2 Tim. 3:16). The God who created everything with powerful words, the God who humbled Job with seventy-seven questions, the God who holds in himself all of the secrets of wisdom and knowledge—this all-wise God wrote this text for the good and instruction and flourishing of his beloved people. Is it not somewhat presumptuous to think that we know better than the God who made us?
This is the plain teaching of our good God: pastors/elders/overseers must be godly, qualified men. And now is the right time for every messenger at our Convention to follow in “the old paths” on the line of Scripture. Why vote for the Amendment? Because it shows faithfulness to the clear teaching of Scripture.
2. Adopt the Amendment for the Sake of Clarity in Our Convention
How Many Female Pastors?
The Bible and the Baptist Faith and Message are clear that only men as qualified by scripture ought to be pastors. But in the past few decades, there has been a lack of clarity regarding the number and permissibility of women pastors in the SBC. The number of women pastors has been generally growing over the last four decades. Susan Shaw, a professor at Oregon State University, noted that in 1987 there were eighteen women serving as pastors in the SBC. Just ten years later in 1997, Sarah Frances Anders concluded that there were at least 85 women serving as pastors in Southern Baptist churches. In 2000, when the most recent Baptist Faith and Message passed, the leaders of the study committee pointed “to a survey conducted by the Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary that found there were between 50 and 75 female pastors of Southern Baptist churches.”
So how is it going today? Some have claimed that that the number of female pastors in the SBC was a shrinking problem, but the exact opposite is true. In June of 2023, a team of over 40 SBC laypeople published a massive study that concluded “there are approximately 1,844 female pastors” in the SBC. Around the same time, on June 8, 2023, Rick Warren gave corroboration when he wrote that “at least 1,928 SBC churches have women pastors quietly serving on staff.”
From eighteen female SBC pastors in 1987 to over eighteen hundred today! Some would call this progress, but the Bible teaches that this is a problem, and unaddressed problems tend to grow.
Will We Permit What God Does not Allow?
Sadly, this increase of female pastors has tested the clarity of the SBC’s commitment to the Baptist Faith & Message. Multiple state conventions in California, Texas, and Virgina—encompassing over 8,000 SBC churches—have progressed from confused hesitancy to complete abdication of the male-only pastorate.
In 2023, the California Southern Baptist Convention failed to adopt a non-binding resolution on the “Legacy and Responsibility of Women Fulfilling the Great Commission” because it affirmed that “the office of pastor/elder/overseer is limited to men as qualified by Scripture”—language that is pulled verbatim from article six of the SBC’s own Baptist Faith & Message! In the same year, the Baptist General Convention of Texas had female pastors arguing for full blown egalitarianism, since the state convention has already functionally permitted female pastors for over two decades. Also in 2023, the Baptist General Association of Virginia passed a resolution calling for “a seven-member task force to explore programs, resources, policies, initiatives and relationships which further support and advocate for women in pastoral, ministerial and leadership roles among Virginia Baptists.” Not a single messenger spoke against this motion!
Southern Baptists appreciate the Baptist Faith & Message because we believe that it is an accurate summary of the Bible’s teachings. Thus, when state conventions openly defy the Baptist Faith & Message, they are defying our God’s Word. The authority and sufficiency of the Bible are functionally abandoned when the faithful are absent or fail to speak up. This creates a lack of clarity for the SBC as a whole: do we prohibit female pastors in our confession but permit them in our practice? This is uneasy circumstance cannot last.
A vote to adopt this Amendment brings clarity to SBC churches, to the Credentials Committee, and to the Convention as a whole. The Amendment would clarify that we in fact functionally practice what we profess to affirm: that “While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor/elder/overseer is limited to men as qualified by Scripture” (Baptist Faith & Message, Article Six). Clarity fosters unity, and unity is necessary to closely partner in the Great Commission together.
3. Adopt the Amendment for the Sake of Unity in our Mission
Distinctively Baptist
The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is of first importance (1 Cor 15:1–4). But our Baptist identity is also important, because together we evangelize, disciple, baptize, and train believers in Baptist churches (see Matt. 28:18–20). Our Baptist doctrine of the church helps both protect and promote the faithful propagation of the gospel, and a non-negotiable part of that faith and practice is the Bible’s teaching on the pastoral office. Our unity in doctrine aids our trust and cooperation.
Let me illustrate: If the International Mission Board (IMB) is planting international house churches with female pastors in contradiction to the Baptist Faith and Message, would this increase or decrease the average SBC church’s motivation to give generously to the IMB Lottie Moon Christmas offering?[3] Or if one of the SBC seminaries or colleges invites a female pastor to preach in chapel, would this inspire or demotivate rank-and-file SBC churches to send their sons and daughters there? Again, our shared doctrine fosters our missional partnership.
3. By God’s grace the International Mission Board is abundantly clear in their training materials, “We believe both men and women have vital roles in the ministry of the church. However, the role of pastor/elder/overseer is exclusively assigned to men in the church and not to women (1 Timothy 2:11–12). This is not a Western cultural practice but a biblical command, and we are not at liberty to change it. Nor can we step around this requirement by calling women by a different title but then assigning them the leadership and teaching functions of a pastor/elder/overseer” (IMB Training Materials, “Foundations,” 116).
Southern Baptists face a decisive moment. Strengthening our Convention’s unity by re-affirming only qualified men as pastors cultivates a healthy soil of trust in which our seminarians, church planters, and missionaries grow. Conversely, muddying the waters creates suspicion and harms Great Commission partnership, as other denominations have demonstrated.
The Slippery Slope
The issue of female pastors has been a canary in the coalmine for many denominations—it’s the first domino to fall. History has shown that the same interpretive framework that allows for female pastors is also the same framework that allows for LGBTQ+ pastors. Sometimes the slope really is slippery. For those who would label this as alarmist, they need look no further than the United Methodist Church, which just lost over a million members in a single day due to LGBTQ+ acceptance. The issue ended there, but it began with forsaking a male-only pastoral office—a choice that has shattered their unity. The same story has occurred previously in the American Baptist Convention, the Evangelical Luthern Church in America, the Episcopalian Church, the Anglican Church. There is not a single American denomination that has advocated for homosexual pastors that has not first advocated for female pastors, and both choices have divided these denominations—and it’s the conservatives who leave.
This Amendment gladly affirms with the Baptist Faith & Message that “The office of pastor/elder/overseer is limited to men as qualified by Scripture,” and it therefore guards our unity. Wisdom looks at the past and learns from it. If we forsake our Baptist confession and if we follow the other denominations into female pastors, then we will also follow the other denominations into disunity and de-emphasis on the Great Commission. But if we pass this Amendment, we guard our unity in this cruical area for decades to come.
Conclusion
Doctrine unites us; it drives our devotion to Christ and fuels our declaration of Christ. We yearn to see Christ made great among the nations because he is worthy of all possible honor, confidence, love, and worship. But we have to be united in our message if we’re going to be united in our mission.
In our culture, there has been an attempt to erase the glorious and God-created distinctions between men and women—we saw that from a Supreme Court nominee, and we’re seeing it now in the church. As believers in Jesus Christ, we must hold fast to our Savior’s teaching that “He who created them in the beginning made them male and female” (Matt. 19:4). This Amendment gladly upholds those good and biblical distinctions. If we fail to uphold God’s Word, we will fail to reach God’s world (Rom. 10:17). And if we conform to our culture, we will corrode God’s commission.
At the end of the day, my claim is that the Amendment reflects fidelity to Scripture, it affirms that pastors are biblically qualified men, and it clarifies for the Credentials Committee what marks SBC churches. The Amendment announces our unity in God’s message and in the mission to reach the lost and build churches as God has designed. It puts us all on the same page about what and who a pastor is. This gives us confidence to support our church planting, missions-sending, and pastor-training entities. My prayer is that we will be a Convention who joyfully takes Christ to the nations in God’s way and according to God’s Word. That’s why I plan to raise my ballot high in favor of this Amendment. Will you join me and do the same?
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Appendix A: A Brief Historical Survey of Baptist Writers on the Threefold Description of the One Pastoral Office
1867 –James M. Pendleton: “Apostles, prophets, and evangelists filled extraordinary and temporary offices. There are no such offices now. Pastors and teachers, the same men, are the ordinary and permanent spiritual officers of the churches . . . Thus does it appear that pastor, bishop, and elder are the three terms designating the same office.”[4]
4. J. M. Pendleton, Baptist Church Manual (Nashville, TN: B&H, 1867), 23–25.
1900 – J. J. Taylor: “Bishop, elder and pastor are different terms applied to the same persons in the New Testament. This is the view not only of Baptists, but of the predominant scholarship of the world, Disciple, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, and non-religious.”[5]
5. J.J. Taylor, “Why Baptist and Not Episcopalian,” in Baptist: Why and Why Not, ed. J.M. Frost (Nashville, TN: Sunday School Board Southern Baptist Convention, 1900), 93.
1905 – E. C. Dargan: “In regard to the apostles it is to be observed that they were not called to office by the churches, but by direct divine appointment . . . Much the same thing may be said in regard to the prophets, and others . . . The regular and permanent officers of a New Testament church were elders and deacons. The elders are also called bishops (overseers) and pastors.”[6]
6. E. C. Dargan, The Doctrines Of Our Faith: A Convenient Handbook For Use In Normal Classes, Sacred Literature Courses And Individual Study (Nashville, TN: Sunday School Board Southern Baptist Convention, 1905), 162.
1934 – O. C. S. Wallace: “Pastors may be called bishops, the difference in name being due to the different aspects of their work which may be under consideration. When the pastor is thought of not so much as a shepherd of the flock as an overseer of the affairs and interests of the flock, he may be called a bishop or overseer. But whatever the name, the duties are the same. A bishop is not a pastor of a particular kind or rank: every pastor is a bishop, as every bishop is a pastor.”[7]
7. O. C. S. Wallace, What Baptists Believe: The New Hampshire Confession, An Exposition (Nashville, TN: Sunday School Board Southern Baptist Convention, 1934), 146–47.
1936 – H. W. Tribble: “The New Testament uses three terms to designate the pastors of churches. They are ‘bishop,’ ‘elder,’ and ‘pastor.’…These three terms seem to be used almost interchangeably to refer to the officer that Baptists call pastor . . . [in contrast to Deacons] the pastors, or bishops, or elders are ministering leaders and preachers”[8]
8. H.W. Tribble, Our Doctrines (Nashville, TN: Sunday School Board Southern Baptist Convention, 1936), 112–13.
1964, etc. – Herschel Hobbs (architect of the BFM 1963): “Pastor – This is one of the three titles referring to the same office. The other two are ‘bishop’ and ‘elder.’ The qualifications for this office are set forth in 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 1:5-9 . . . So the three words—elder, bishop, and pastor—refer to the same office but to different functions within that office: elder (counsel, guidance); bishop (overseer or administrator); pastor (shepherd to feed, guard, and tend).”[9]
9. Herschel H. Hobbs, What Baptists Believe (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1964), 85–86.
1971, etc. – Herschel Hobbs (SBC President, architect of BFM 1963), The Baptist Faith and Message, official commentary on BFM 1963, Sunday School Board, pgs. 80-81: “The officers in a local New Testament church are pastors, and deacons (Phil. 1:1). The same office is variously called bishop, elder, or pastor. The qualifications for pastors and deacons are set forth in 1 Timothy 3 . . . That these three words refer to the same office is seen in Acts 20:28.”[10]