This is the second of a three-part series of the first chapter of Michael G. Coleman’s insightful book on the women’s ordination issue in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. This impelling first chapter is reprinted here with permission of the author and publisher. The book can be purchased here.
The core of the San Antonio compromise
As I was preparing my open letter in the days following the 60th General Conference Session, I became more and more convinced that this document should not only be addressed to the North American Division but also to the leadership of the General Conference.
My reason for this was that top administrators of our denomination had an opportunity to lead our world church to deal with the whole question of whether or not the Bible permits the ordination of women as primary spiritual overseers in the offices of pastor, elder, and deacon. However, after facilitating more than two years of a process that entailed a biblical study and deliberation on the theology of ordination, our administrators chose not to put forth the women’s ordination question as a biblical issue in the San Antonio General Conference Session. They merely construed the question in a way that emphasized political and cultural expedience.
The task of leading our world church is certainly not easy. Our leaders often face harsh criticisms. Sometimes the politicization of our democratic process tends to prevent a biblical matter from being settled on the basis of Scriptural principles. The leaders of the General Conference should be commended for facilitating a fair and biblically grounded process (TOSC) for the study and deliberation of women’s ordination in the years leading up to the 60th session. However, considering the fact that both delegates and non-delegates gathered in San Antonio to deal with a theological/biblical question, for which the denomination had spent more than two years pre- paring to address, it has baffled me why our administrators permitted a proposal to be put forth at the 60th session that had only a tangential relation to a theological/biblical question. This seems to represent an insidious failure in leadership, especially when one considers that the question of whether or not divisions should be permitted to ordain women in their territories had already been settled at the General Conference Session in Utrecht in 1995.
The Question Posed
Let us examine the proposition that was presented to the delegates at the 60th General Conference Session. Here it is:
Is it acceptable for division executive committees, as they may deem it appropriate in their territories, to make provision for the ordination of women to the gospel ministry? Yes or No.
The above proposition was preceded by another clause which suggested that the delegates should base their decision on a prayerful study of the Bible and the writings of Ellen G. White. However, the wording of the above proposition itself focuses on the appropriateness of the divisions of the world church to provide for women’s ordination, rather than on whether or not on the basis of Scripture women can be ordained as pastors, elders, and deacons. Again, the proposition itself ironically deals with a political question, while the process that was used to facilitate the study of women’s ordination attempted to address the issue from a biblical standpoint. There is only a tangential connection between the proposition and the process used to address the issue.
Let us assume, based on the information gathered by the Theology of Ordination Study Committee, that both proponents and the opponents of women’s ordination on TOSC agreed that there is no substantive biblical distinction between the office of pastor and elder. If this be the case, it is reasonable to contend that the leadership of the 60th session should have brought this issue to the floor. In our denomination, a pastor is essentially a supervising elder. Both the pastor and the local elder are ordained to fulfill virtually the same job description. The main difference between the two is in authority and scope—namely, pastors are not elected by the local church, as is the case of elders, and pastors have greater authority and a wider field of governance than local elders. Given the theological equivalence of pastors and elders, why did our world church administrators neglect to deal with the question of whether or not, on the basis of Scripture, women may be ordained as elders? This question is inextricably connected to the main question concerning ordaining women.
It bears mentioning that the decision to ordain women as elders was not approved by a vote at a quinquennium General Conference session. Rather, it was sanctioned by a vote at the Spring Council in 1975 and then reaffirmed at the Annual Council in 1984. This watershed decision was made “under the radar” of the watchful eyes of the larger body of believers who usually attend the quinquennium sessions of the General Conference. Such an important and momentous change in ministerial and ecclesiastical practice should have been reserved for a General Conference session, not an Annual Council meeting.
Missed Opportunity
At San Antonio, our administrators, by depriving us of a discussion of the offices of elders and deacons in the women’s ordination proposal, missed an opportunity to allow God to stretch the mind, faith, and courage of His people. Our leaders seem to have settled for a smoother path, yet one that brings us back to the same place as we were in 1995 at Utrecht. We as a church made no meaningful progress, for, although many members sincerely approached the women’s ordination question with earnest prayer and study, the denomination barely stretched beyond where it was in 1995 because of its neglect to comprehensively deal with the women’s ordination question, especially as it relates to the overseer roles of elders and deacons.
One of the things that could have come from a comprehensive discussion of ordination as it relates to pastors, elders, and deacons is a new appreciation for, and an emphasis on, the administrative role of a deacon. As I will argue later, in the New Testament, the deacon is an administrator in charge of caring for people’s physical, material, and spiritual needs. Deacons shared in the administrative work of the apostles and elders in the early New Testament church. However, in many of our churches today, deacons are viewed merely as caretakers of the physical plant and as a team of workers to assist in communion, baptism, and visitation. They are rarely placed in administrative roles such as leaders of community outreach, finance, and music in the church.
Another important part of such a discussion might have been the way in which women church leaders can collaborate with men who are serving in the spiritual overseer roles of pastors, elders, and deacons. Such a discussion would have naturally led to the following question: How did prophetesses work with the primary spiritual leaders of the church in biblical times?
The General Conference administration’s failure to lead the church in addressing women’s ordination in a comprehensive way leaves the door ajar for this issue to repeatedly come back. When the early New Testament church called a general council in Jerusalem to deal with the question of whether or not Gentile converts were required to be circumcised, the leaders dealt with the issue on the basis of the harmony between Scripture and the leading of the Holy Spirit. The matter was handled in a comprehensive way. The question was settled, and the church moved on. By contrast, at the 60th General Conference Session, our leaders chose a compromised proposition that only tangentially addressed the theological and biblical question. Can anyone doubt that this matter will return to the world church again? Should we not have dealt with the issue as thoroughly as possible, no matter how long it took, patiently waiting upon God for guidance? This would have been better than what now exists: namely, a compromised status quo that only forestalls the women’s ordination issue and robbed the denomination of a golden opportunity to depend wholly upon God for direction.
Repeat of 1995
Let us remember that essentially the same kind of proposal that was voted on at the 60th session had been presented to the delegates in 1995 at Utrecht. As mentioned, at Utrecht, the debate on women’s ordination came as a result of a request by the North American Division that each division be given the latitude to ordain without regard to gender. This proposal was voted down. Twenty years later, virtually the same proposal was presented to the delegates in San Antonio and once again it was voted down. What is going to keep this issue from coming back?
Interestingly, the statement of the president of the General Conference concerning the meaning of the San Antonio vote is tantamount to a virtual concession to the fact that we, as a world church, have not made any progress on the women’s ordination issue. The General Conference president represented the 60th session’s decision as a mere return to our dubious policy in which we do not ordain women as pastors, but we do ordain them as local elders. Hence, after at least four years of preparation and deliberation on the women’s ordination issue, we came back to the same unenlightened, impractical, and compromised position that we settled for at Utrecht in 1995.
It is clear to me, from my personal observation of the debate and the vote on women’s ordination on July 8, 2015, that the will of the majority of the delegates was to not approve women’s ordination. However, due to what appears to be a mismanagement by our top administrators, the only proposition that was permitted to be voted on was whether or not we should allow divisions to have the authority to decide the question of women’s ordination in their respective territories. The will of the majority was muffled. Consequently, we are currently in such a compromised position that some of us will see in the 60th General Conference decision the expressed will of the denomination against women’s ordination while others will see in it a mere return to our dubious policy of permitting women to serve as pastors but not allowing them to be ordained. This is the epitome of confusion. It is leading to fragmentation and unilateral actions in various corners of our world church.
Schisms Resulting from San Antonio
As an example of some of the schisms emanating from the 2015 General Conference Session, an article dated August 17, 2015, in Spectrum magazine reported an incident under the caption, “Florida Conference Calls Doug Batchelor a ‘Polarizing Influence,’ Discourages Speaking Appointment.” The article describes how Pastor Mike Cauley, the then president of the Florida Conference, discouraged the Spring Meadow Church in Sanford, Florida, from following through with inviting Pastor Doug Batchelor, Speaker/Director of Amazing Facts Ministries, to come for a scheduled week-long series of meetings in October 2–10, 2015. The reason given for such a call to disinvite a well-respected pastor and evangelist, was that, according to Cauley and the Florida Conference Administration, “Pastor Batchelor” is “a polarizing influence in the Seventh-day Adventist Church” because he has taught against ordaining women as pastors and local elders for several years.1 Cauley and the Florida Conference Administration claimed that Bachelor’s position “is not in harmony with the policy of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists,” which encourages “women to use the gifts God has given them for ministry, both as local elders and in pastoral leadership and ministry.” 2
While there may be valid reasons on both sides for disagreement in the above controversy, the fact that a bonafide Adventist pastor can be disinvited from doing a series of evangelistic meetings because of his convictions about women’s ordination is a travesty. But what further compounds this conflict is that a conference president in the North American Division justified this egregious action by appealing to the policies of the General Conference. This incident has the makings of ideological bias and strategic use of the inconsistent practices and policies of the world church to further one’s narrow agenda. After a series of actions in the NAD prior to the 2015 General Conference Session—such as the unilateral decisions of the Columbia Union Conference and the Pacific Union Conference to ordain women pastors even while the world church was in the process of studying the issue, the improper election of the president of the Southeastern California Conference, and the stated intention of the president of the North American Division to encourage as many women as possible to become pastors—no one should be surprised by incidents such as what occurred between the Florida Conference administration and Pastor Batchelor. We might as well expect that such incidents will increase unless the leaders of our denomination act decisively.
The numerous public incidents of independent and sometimes rebellious actions by leaders of divisions, unions, local conferences, and local churches that have taken place in the wake of the San Antonio General Conference Session reinforce a conclusion that I arrived at in the closing days of the 60th General Conference Session: namely, that in San Antonio our leaders made a compromise that is as consequential for the Seventh- day Adventist Church as the Missouri Compromise was for the Civil War in the United States. As has been mentioned, the Missouri Compromise was an immoral and impractical solution for the issue of slavery. In the Missouri Compromise, slavery would remain the status quo in most of the southern states, it would be excluded in most of the northern states, and it would be tolerated in some mid-western states. Such an unscrupulous and shortsighted remedy to the issue of slavery spawned dissimulations, clandestine operations, and outright civil war. Likewise, the San Antonio Compromise on women’s ordination has already generated schisms and skirmishes that might also explode into permanent fragmentation of the denomination.
Michael G. Coleman’s book, Women’s Ordination, the San Antonio Compromise, and the Adventist Slide into the LGBTQ Morass, may be ordered HERE.
Guided by the principles of biblical interpretation that helped to found the Seventh-day Adventist Church, veteran New York pastor, Dr. Michael G. Coleman, finds in Scripture the basis for resolving the standoff that exists within Seventh-day Adventism over women’s ordination. He proposes a biblical solution to avoid the trend that has overtaken other Protestant churches. His response is a thoughtful, biblically faithful, and user-friendly resource. He encourages administrators, pastors, and laypersons to consider the evidence prayerfully and thoughtfully.
1 Mike Cauley quoted in, “Florida Conference Calls Doug Batchelor a ‘Polarizing Influence,’ Discourages Speaking Appointment,” Spectrum Magazine, Aug. 17, 2015.
2 Cauley, Spectrum Magazine, Aug. 17, 2015.