Should a church be disfellowshipped if they have a woman as a pastor?
Ask the Pastor with J.D. Greear
J.D. Greear
4.9 • 624 Ratings
🗓️ 4 July 2022
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Show Notes:
The SBC is convictionally complementarian — I would say unwaveringly so. So, if you are saying your church does not believe in gender roles, or our lead pastoral team is women, then yes, you are clearly not in line with our statement of faith.
But there’s another principle at work: the principle of cooperation vs confessionalism.
From Adam Greenway's article: "Many Southern Baptists would be surprised to learn that a local church is not required to affirm explicitly the BF&M statement to be deemed a cooperating church. Article III of the SBC Constitution, which defines what it means to be a cooperating church, simply states that the church must have “a faith and practice which closely identifies with the Convention’s adopted statement of faith.” The linchpin of cooperation in the SBC may well be three words: ‘closely identifies with.’”
One of the challenges is how quickly our use of terms and words shifts.
So, does a church which has a woman with "pastor" in her title need to be disfellowshipped?
* Is it a disfellowship-able error?
* The BF&M states that baptism is a prerequisite for the Lord's supper — yet many Baptist churches would serve communion to a Presbyterian if they happened to show up at church that day.
* Technically, that's a violation of the BF&M. Should a church like that be disfellowshipped?
* Honestly, it depends — if a church has an otherwise complementarian structure but they seem to misuse labels and titles, no, I don't believe they should. If they clearly do not hold a complementarian point of view, that would be a different matter.
* Disfellowshipping a church is a grievous thing. I don't think the BF&M ever intended to get into these types of issues.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, everybody. |
| 0:18.0 | Hey, everybody. Welcome to Ask Me Anything. I'm Matt Love. I'm here with Pastor J.D. Greer. |
| 0:23.8 | And as we're recording this, the 2022 SBC annual meeting is just wrapped up. |
| 0:29.2 | Anaheim, California. |
| 0:30.2 | We were both there. |
| 0:31.0 | It was a lot of fun. |
| 0:31.7 | And as often happens at the annual meeting, there are some topics that we just end up spending a lot of time talking about, |
| 0:38.0 | thinking through. And one of the topics this year that came up in the meeting was, |
| 0:41.9 | should a church be disfellowship from the SBC if they have a woman serving as a pastor? |
| 0:47.8 | So, J.D., what do you think? |
| 0:48.9 | You know, we probably should have seen this on the horizon just based on the conversation leading up to the convention, but I think we were also focused on what we needed to do about sexual abuse. That's really, I think, all, most of us, |
| 1:00.3 | certainly what I was thinking about. If that was what we were talking about going into the |
| 1:05.0 | convention, having made some good decisions that we need to build off of related to sexual abuse. |
| 1:11.8 | One of the things that you could tell was, it's almost like when the movie ends and, |
| 1:17.6 | you know, the Marvel editors want to introduce a new, they kind of bring in the last scene. |
| 1:22.4 | You're like, oh, that's going to be something. |
| 1:24.0 | I think this question of specifically, it was Saddleback Church because of their choice |
| 1:29.1 | to ordain a woman. Plus, they've just hired their new lead pastor. He and his wife often |
| 1:35.6 | present themselves like a pastoral team. I don't know if they use the term co-pastors, but it's |
| 1:40.0 | certainly beyond what most Southern Maddivis are. So that was a question of, is that something |
| 1:44.4 | that makes a church eligible for disfellowship? It is not in line with the Baptist faith and |
| 1:52.1 | message. And this is probably a good place to start, is that the Southern Baptist Convention |
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