By Gregg Boll, Associate Director of Missions
The 2023 Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting Highlights (Part 2)
I encourage you to read part 1 in last month’s newsletter about the value of Cooperation in the SBC, if you haven’t already. In this article I want to zero in on the action of the messengers that brought us the most attention, both within our churches and in the media’s coverage of this year’s convention; that of voting to affirm our conviction that the position of ordained pastor/elder as the spiritual leader of the church is reserved for men. In next month’s newsletter, I’ll write about the decisions that were made about the sexual abuse task force.
This year’s annual meeting was held in New Orleans, LA. It was one of the larger gatherings we’ve had for a few years with 12,737 messengers and 18,901 total attendees. In fact, maybe one of the biggest non-news items in S.B.C. world is the trend of increasing attendance at the annual convention since 2018. I thought you might find interesting some past attendance numbers for the annual meeting through the years with brief comments as to what was going on. (If this trivia doesn’t interest you, then skip on to the section titled “Highlights of the 2023 SBC Annual Meeting”.)
1985 in Dallas: 45,519 messengers – This was our historic high attendance because of a presidential election that was pivotal to the success of the conservative resurgence. Conventiongoers created a traffic jam in downtown Dallas that is remembered by locals to this day. Coincidently, this was the year I was ordained to the gospel ministry and began my ministry.
1986 in Atlanta: 40,987 messengers – Attendance fluctuated through the remainder of the 1980’s yet remained above historic norms for the next six years.
1990 in New Orleans: 38,403 messengers – This was the last effort of SBC moderates trying to fend off the conservative resurgence. The disaffected churches from this convention met later that summer and formed the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.
After 1990, annual meeting attendance dropped well below 20,000 most years, reaching a modern-era low of 4,852 in 2011 in Phoenix.
Average attendance began to climb again in 2018 in Dallas with 9,600 messengers and 16,000 in attendance. After missing the 2020 annual meeting due to Covid, attendance roared back to 15,726 messengers and 21,474 attendees in Nashville in 2021. Last year’s annual meeting in Anaheim, CA had 8,133 messengers and 12,543 total in attendance, most likely down in number because of the distance and cost of travel and lodging for most messengers. This year’s (2023) Annual Meeting was originally meant to be held in Charlotte, NC but that facility could only accommodate 8000 people. When registration numbers surged early in the year, New Orleans was hastily secured as a meeting sight and saw 12,737 messengers and almost 19,000 attendees.
Also of interest, and perhaps concern, is who was in attendance this year. The largest age group were those over the age of 60, or 31.7 percent of those in attendance. Attendees 50-59 were 22.4 percent, while those 40-49 were 21.7 percent, those 30-39 were 16.2 percent and those under 30 were 7.9 percent. If this is representative of the average age of our Southern Baptist pastors and members, we are an aging denomination. Tom Rainer recently shared on one of his podcasts that the average age of the U.S. citizen is 38 years old, but the average age of S.B.C. pastors is 60. As Bob Uecker used to say, “Hey, I resemble that remark!!” All of us would like to see more young people in our ranks. The analytical part of you may be wondering if that number is a bit skewed if you can count every U.S. citizen of every age including children, but pastors only can be counted among the adult population. Even so, the low numbers of young people at the convention may illustrate two dangerous trends. First, the dire shortage of young men surrendering their life to vocational ministry across the SBC. Secondly, the lack of interest and engagement of younger believers and young pastors with the S.B.C. But, that is an article for another day. The numbers should inspire a passionate agenda of planting churches, supporting Collegiate Ministry and challenging our young people to consider whether the Lord is calling them to vocational ministry.
Highlights of the 2023 SBC Annual Meeting
The Messengers said no to women pastors: Because Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church and four other churches had ordained women to the pastoral/elder ministry, the Executive Committee (EC) of the SBC ruled in February that Saddleback and the four other churches were not “in friendly cooperation” with the Convention. Saddleback Church appealed the decision prior to the meeting, giving pastor Warren an opportunity to defend Saddleback’s decision on the floor of the Convention. He made his case before the messengers but the vote was nearly unanimous to affirm the Executive Committee’s decision to consider them “not in friendly cooperation.”
I had to chuckle at an NPR article that characterized our decision as being all about male domination and power over women. They went further to predict a mass exodus of churches and members from the S.B.C. towards non-denominational churches which ordain women pastors. This is grossly inaccurate at best and a blatant lie at worst. For one, the room was half full of women messengers who unanimously voted to limit the role of elder/pastor to men. Secondly, Southern Baptists are consistently people of the Book. Our motivation was biblical obedience, not misogyny. The biblical qualifications in I Timothy 3, Titus 1:5-9 and I Peter 5:1-4 describe the elder/pastor/overseer as being men. Some today may want to see the language of the New Testament supporting male-only pastors as merely a historical/cultural description of male-dominated first century society and thus not biblically authoritative for us today who live in more liberated, enlightened times: Southern Baptists do not. We believe this biblical instruction is perennially true for the Church until Jesus returns. Why? Because we recognize that God has ordained and assigned different roles for men and women both within the family and within the Church. We affirm the equal spiritual worth, equality and soul competency of men and women before the Lord. We employ and commission women in a host of positions of Kingdom service. Many churches utilize women in various ministry staff positions within the church. We simply believe that within the local church the role of pastor/elder/overseer, the person who is ordained and set aside by the laying on of hands to lead a New Testament Church, is reserved for men.
Another pertinent question is, “how many ordained women pastor/elders are in the S.B.C.?” It depends on who you ask and what you mean by pastor/elder. Adrian Rogers said there were 50-70 churches within the S.B.C. who had women lead pastors/elders in 2000. J.D. Greear said the number of women pastors is shrinking, not growing. Rick Warren claims there are 1,928 SBC churches who have women pastors. Mike Law, Jr. who brought the SBC Constitutional amendment to disallow women pastors found 170 women pastors. Kevin McClure in the American Reformer did a thorough study of the SBC and based on a sampling of 3,847 churches to achieve a 99% confidence level and a 2% margin of error. They took their findings and extrapolated them out to the 47,614 churches of the SBC and concluded there are approximately 1,844 female pastors serving in 1,225 SBC churches. Are all these women ordained elder/pastors leading churches? No. But the number is higher than most of us would have guessed. What about women who are given the title pastor but are not ordained? Here is the breakdown of the American Reformer study across the Convention. When they extrapolated their data through the different categories of pastors they concluded that female pastors in the SBC fall into the following categories:
- Youth/ Children/ Family Pastor: 433 (23%)
- Assoc./Assis. Pastor: 359 (19%)
- Miscellaneous Pastor: 359 (19%)
- Worship Pastor: 161 (9%)
- Co-pastor with Husband (Lead Pastor): 124 (7%)
- Senior Pastor: 111 (6%)
- Elder: 111 (6%)
- Executive Pastor: 99 (5%)
- Co-pastor with Husband (Not Lead Pastor): 87 (5%)
My best guess would be that very few of the women pastors in the first four categories are ordained elder/pastors but are seen as called to serve and vital to the church’s ministry. But, ordained or not, the next five categories, with the exception of Executive Pastor, depending on how that role is defined, are serving in a biblical role within the local church reserved for men. The total of these last five categories is 532 women pastor/elders, or, 433 if you exclude Executive Pastor. This means that just under 1% of our S.B.C. churches have an ordained woman serving them.
Someone might ask, “What’s the big deal? Why deal with an issue within the SBC that seems so small and unessential?” The issue of women pastor/elders by itself isn’t an essential doctrine (by essential we mean something that is a foundational doctrine pertaining to the Character and Nature of God and/or what constitutes salvation of the individual). This is a significant theological and practical issue because the biblical hermeneutic one uses to affirm ordaining women as pastors matters supremely. Contrary to popular belief, Southern Baptist’s insistence on dealing with this issue has nothing to do with being anti-feminist, chauvinist, or bent on male domination of women. It is even secondarily about gender roles within the church. First and foremost, the issue of women pastors is a theological, hermeneutical issue. Here’s why. If you can dismiss the biblical teaching of male-only pastoral leadership on the grounds of historical or cultural bias (this only applied to that first century audience), then we can potentially dismiss as historical and cultural what the Scriptures have to say about a number of issues including, but not limited to, belief in a literal hell, homosexuality, and God-designed, God-ordained gender. After all the New Testament was written in the first century. Genesis 1:27 declares, “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female.” With the theological approach some use to justify women pastors, one can dismiss any biblical truth as a relic of a bygone era which isn’t palatable or convenient for them.
To be fair, it must be conceded that there are believers who cherish the inerrancy of the Scriptures, yet who genuinely believe the Bible allows for women pastors. Their justification for women pastors is based on their understanding of Christ’s redemption of this fallen world. He came to redeem us and this fallen world, to bring about the reversal of the curse, the transformation of life and relationships back to their pre-fall state including the curse which impacted the relationship between men and women. For the egalitarian, redemption means that women in and through Christ are placed back on an even par with men in every realm. They point to Galatians 3:28 as further evidence that the new dispensation of grace which Christ ushered in does away with all spiritual distinctions between men and women within the Kingdom and thus, the church:
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Yet, another group of believers allow for woman pastors based on a non-cessationist interpretation of the Scriptures. They find such justification for women pastors in their interpretation of the coming of the Holy Spirt at Pentecost and Peter’s declaration in Acts 2:
16 but this is what has been spoken through the prophet Joel:
17 ‘And it shall be in the last days,’ God says,
‘That I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind;
And your sons and your daughters will prophesy,
And your young men will see visions,
And your old men will have dreams;
18 And even on My male and female servants
I will pour out My Spirit in those days,
And they will prophesy.
Most, but not all Baptists are Cessationists to a greater degree. I don’t know one Southern Baptist who doesn’t believe that God can heal any person or do any mighty work He wills. We just don’t believe he uses individual healers and miracle workers now; He simply acts directly and powerfully as He wills sovereignly and in answer to the fervent, effectual prayers of His people whom He has made righteous. Cessationists believe that the signs, wonders and miracles witnessed after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost were transitional in nature and necessary only until the New Testament Scriptures were completed and the church well established. These miracles, signs and wonders fulfilled Old Testament prophecy concerning the coming of the Messiah and the advent of the Church age; they were intended as a sign to the Jews that Jesus was truly the Messiah and to communicate that the old wine skins of Judaism could not hold the new wine of the gospel. The Church, not Judaism was now the Israel of God (Gal. 6:16). The signs and wonders demonstrated that the power and blessing of God rested upon Christ and the Church which He founded. The true Jew, from this point forward would not be the one who was a Jew outwardly, by the circumcision of the flesh, but those who were one inwardly through the circumcision of the heart by the Holy Spirit. (Rom. 2:28-29)
Obviously, Non-Cessationists believe that these signs and wonders never ceased and will continue until the second coming of Jesus, the Christ. This explains why Charismatic groups still place a heavy emphasis on manifestations of the Holy Spirit in their faith and practice such as healing, prophesying and speaking in tongues as evidence of having received the Holy Spirit and thus truly being saved.
This article doesn’t allow me time or room to address the Non-Cessationist’s view of signs and miracles, so I will limit my comments to their acceptance of women pastors. Even if you are Non-Cessationist regarding your belief in women prophesying, that is wholly different than affirming that they should also be ordained leaders of the local church. At best we could say that women still are called and gifted by the Holy Spirit to prophesy or tell forth truth (not foretell the future). I personally believe that women are gifted to proclaim truth and there are countless opportunities and places where women can and do speak forth the truth of the gospel. However, the Scriptural office of pastor/elder is a distinct, separate calling from the Lord. We find not one single Scriptural reference to women pastors/elders in the New Testament; zero. We find multiple accounts of men being ordained and appointed as pastor/elders of the local church. We do find Scriptural support for women proclaiming the truth of the gospel as in Phillip’s four daughters and in Anna, the prophetess who recognized the Messianic identity of the baby Jesus when His parents brought Him to the temple. Paul, in I Corinthians 11:1-5 instructs women to have their head covered when they pray or prophesy. This section is all about how the Corinthian believers are to conduct themselves when gathered for public worship; “all things are to be done properly and in an orderly way for God is not a God of confusion but of peace.”
While it is true that we are constantly interpreting Scripture and attempting to rightly divide the Word of Truth, and differentiating between what is perennial truth and culturally conditioned practice, anyone who has been around long knows that the usual direction of doctrine is towards less certainty, taking more liberties with the text, and opting for less restraints on our behavior, rather than more. The tendency of our fallen heart is to halt between two opinions, to build the golden calf. We’re prone to wander, prone to leave the God we love. It seems as if the second law of thermodynamics is mirrored by a spiritual law of entropy in the human heart, as well. We are plagued by a tendency to make the Bible subject to our whims and preferences. We set in judgement of the Scriptures rather than setting under the scrutiny and authority of the Scriptures. The history of several mainline denominations illustrates this tendency towards spiritual drift. Consider the following:
The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America made the decision to ordain women in 1970. By 2009, less than 40 years later, they had moved to ordaining people in same sex marriages to the gospel ministry.
The Episcopal Church began ordaining women to the priesthood in 1977 and by 2012 were allowing their priests to perform same-sex marriages.
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) began ordaining women in 1956 as full teaching elders and in 2014 changed their governing documents to allow the pastor/elder of their church to decide based on their convictions whether, or not they would perform a same sex marriage.
In 1948 the United Church of Christ began ordaining women to be elders/pastors. They began performing same sex marriages in 1957.
My own childhood denomination, the United Methodists, have a little more complicated history. The Methodist Episcopal Church licensed and ordained women as local preachers in the early 1920s but then reversed that decision in 1939 when they merged with the Episcopal Church South and the Methodist Protestant Church. The United Methodist Church came into existence in 1968 in Dallas, Texas, when the Methodist Church merged with the Evangelical United Brethren Church. United Methodists consider Anna Howard Shaw the first Methodist woman ordained to the gospel ministry in 1880. In 1956 full clergy rights were granted to women in The Methodist Church.
Today, the denomination is in the process of dividing and forming a more progressive denomination which embraces homosexual clergy, same-sex marriage and openly gay membership and another which holds that the church “does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.” (The official position of the church since 1972.) Since 2019, 6,182, or 20% of U.S. U.M.C.’s more conservative churches have received permission to disaffiliate from the Denomination and most are joining The Global Methodist Church. The Global Methodist Church is a conservative Methodist body which formed last year (2022) in response to many progressive churches and pastors openly defying the Church’s ban on ordaining openly practicing homosexual clergy.
So, to summarize, Southern Baptists are not intent on keeping women in their place, we simply believe that the faith once delivered to the saints is unequivocally clear about who is to lead the local church. As a Director of Missions, I value the partnership and gospel work of every BR-KC Church. We need each other. While I agree whole-heartedly with the decision we made at the SBC annual meeting, I am saddened that God’s people in good churches with women pastors now feel alienated from the SBC family. They have hard decisions to make. Hopefully, such churches will understand that there is no malice or joy in the S.B.C. needing to clarify our position with regard to women pastors. It is purely convictional.
Al Mohler eloquently stated our position during the discussion on the Convention floor. Paraphrasing he said, “We’re not saying that the good people of Saddleback are not believers. We’re not saying they aren’t engaged in meaningful Kingdom work. We’re not saying that churches can’t employ women to serve in various ministry roles within the church. We’re just saying that based on the teaching of Scripture and our historic confessions of faith that churches who ordain women to the office of pastor/elder are not in friendly cooperation with the S.B.C.”
