The Southern Baptist Convention has ousted Saddleback Church, its second-largest congregation for ordaining women and recently appointing a female teaching pastor. The Saddleback Church was pastored by author Rick Warren, who retired last year and continues to be involved in Saddleback.
The Lake Forest, California congregation ordained three women from the stage in May 2021, a move that rattled the SBC who follow the biblical teaching that the role of pastor or elder is reserved for men. Then last year, Saddleback selected Andy Wood as Rick Warren’s successor and the church’s lead pastor, and his wife Stacie Wood came on as a teaching pastor.
Saddleback was among five churches with female pastors who were deemed “no longer in friendly cooperation” with the denomination at a meeting of the SBC (Southern Baptist Convention) Executive Committee in Nashville on Tuesday.
In 2000, the Southern Baptist Convention banned female pastors in its Faith and Message doctrine.
“While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”
Saddleback was ousted along with four other churches around the country — New Faith Mission Ministry in Georgia, St. Timothy’s Christian Baptist in Maryland, Calvary Baptist Church in Mississippi, and Fern Creek Baptist Church in Kentucky — for having a woman as pastor.
It also ousted a sixth church, Freedom Church in Vero, Fla., for failure to resolve concerns regarding a sexual abuse allegation.
The Southern Baptist Convention has in the past cut ties with churches that ordain female pastors, as well as those that have been supportive of the LGBTQ community.
Observations
Standing for biblical principles may make you unpopular in the eyes of the world, but it is always the right thing to do (1 Corinthians 15:58; 1 Peter 5:9; Ephesians 6:13).
Standing for biblical principle will bring the wrath of Satan upon you, for it is he who opposes God’s Word (1 Peter 5:6-9).
Standing for biblical principles will protect your church members from dangerous error and win the respect of honest seekers of truth.
Standing for biblical principle builds Christian maturity in your life and sets the tone for a final generation who will see Jesus return.
Standing for principle means that you don’t allow the love of money to influence your decision. The SBC may experience some financial fallout over this decision, but that didn’t keep them from doing the right thing.
Seventh-day Adventists have decided three times that a woman can not be ordained as a pastor. In spite of that three fold decision, there have been 50-60 unlawful (and unbiblical) ordinations of women as pastors. Nothing meaningful has happened to these rebellious church entities.
Last week, we mentioned that Fulcrum7 had sent a letter to the General Conference President, a letter containing two questions. Here is the first of those two questions:
1) “According to Compliance Document 113-18G, church entities that have been warned for being non-compliant with General Conference Session decisions are subsequently reprimanded if they have not resolved [WO] rebellion in their ranks, and then placed on removal for cause when non-compliance continues after public reprimand. Is this compliance process being implemented and when is the next step?”
From the Compliance document:
3. “Placed on Removal for Cause and Subject to Policy Application—When non-compliance continues after public reprimand, the relevant General Conference Compliance Review Committee, by virtue of prior General Conference Executive Committee actions and General Conference Session actions, shall have authority to consider and recommend to the General Conference Administrative Committee, division officers, and General Conference Executive Committee, applying the existing General Conference working policies and guidelines, such as removal of the individual member “for cause.”—Bylaws Article XIII Sec. 1. c. and GC B 95.
The GC declined to answer the question.
We look forward to the Seventh-day Adventist Church Executive Committee doing the right thing, as outlined in the above voted action.
****
Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you. Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world” (1 Peter 5:6-9).