The Gospel of John introduces us to a Samaritan woman who meets Jesus at a well. Jesus will say to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who speaks to you… you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” And do you know what her response is? “Where’s your bucket?” She’s looking for something from Jesus that He isn’t offering; and what He is offering, she’s not looking for. And I want to submit to you this morning that this isn’t just her problem. On display in this woman’s response to Jesus is the human condition—which means it’s all of…
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Drafting Women into Combat?
Last week, the GOP majority in the House of Representatives passed the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). According to an executive summary released by the Senate Armed Services Committee, the bill would “require the registration of women for Selective Service.” If this were to become law and if the draft were ever to be reinstituted, women could be drafted into a U. S. military that no longer has barriers to women serving in combat. When news of this broke last week, I saw no major news outlets reporting on it. I wrote a column about it for WORLD magazine, but I hardly saw any major news outlets discussing it.…
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What does the failure of the Law Amendment mean?
Last month, pastor Willie Rice said something about the Law Amendment that was prescient. He predicted that after the SBC annual meeting, we are going to find one of two headlines. Either “Southern Baptists oppose women pastors” or “Southern Baptists keep the door open on women pastors.” He said that messengers would decide through their vote which headline we would be written. After the Law Amendment failed to meet the necessary supermajority earlier today, Rice’s prediction proved pretty accurate. Here are some of the headlines that began to appear almost immediately after the vote: “Southern Baptists reject ban on women pastors in historic vote.” –USA Today “Southern Baptists Reject Tighter…
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Will the Law Amendment pass next week?
As the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention has drawn near, I’ve had a lot of people asking me what the chances are that the Law Amendment will pass. The short answer is that I don’t know, but I am hopeful. On the one hand, it passed overwhelmingly last year with at least about 80% voting in favor. On the other hand, opponents only have to shave off about 10-15 percentage points from last year’s total to kill it. And they have done a pretty good job over the last year scaring people away from it with bad arguments. They have argued: There are hardly any female pastors in…
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Was the woman at the well married to any of the five men?
I’ve been preaching through the Gospel of John and have recently begun chapter 4. There is one detail in Jesus’ interaction with the woman at the well that caught my attention this time because I think it may be rendered incorrectly in most English translations. The Greek word often rendered as “husband” in John 4:16-18 is the Greek term aner. While “husband” is a possible interpretation and appears in most English translations, the underlying Greek expression isn’t clearly about husbands at all. The reason for the disconnect consists in the difference between the way Greek and English convey the concepts of “man” and “husband.” English distinguishes “man” from “husband” by…
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The SBC Credentials Committee Yet To Recommend Removal of Church that Affirms Female Senior Pastors
The Baptist Press confirms that the Credentials Committee has yet to recommend removal of a church that employs women as pastors and that affirms women serving as senior pastors. This is full-fledged egalitarianism, and now the Baptist Press is reporting that our own Credentials Committee received a referral two years ago and still has made no recommendation for their removal (see update below). The church is FBC Alexandria, VA, and according to Baptist Press the Credentials Committee sent an inquiry to the church in April in the form of a questionnaire. The questionnaire asked the church a variety of questions about their faith and practice concerning the office of pastor.…
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Should we add the Nicene Creed to our confession? Yes, but not like this.
There is a proposal on the table to amend the Baptist Faith & Message from the floor of the convention in Indianapolis next month. The measure specifically calls for adding the Nicene Creed to the end of the Baptist Faith & Message. While I fully affirm the Nicene Creed, I have concerns about this specific proposal and likely won’t vote in favor of it. Here’s why: 1. I think it is imprudent to amend the BF&M from the floor of the convention. It happened at last year’s convention, and I expressed my alarm about it at the time, even though I agreed with the amendment. Our SBC seminaries and mission…
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Another Argument against the Law Amendment and in Favor of Female Pastors
Executive Committee member Russ Barksdale published an article this morning explaining why he intends to vote against the Law Amendment next month at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). He argues that the New Testament allows women to serve as pastors in local churches. He contends that female pastors rightly function as shepherds over the men in the church and even over male leaders in the church. He writes: Does a woman who is leading a children’s ministry “pastor” (verb poimaino) the children? Absolutely! Does she shepherd (verb poimaino) the parents, including the fathers? Absolutely! Does she pastor/shepherd (verb poimaino) the leaders, including the adult males, for…
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SBC Messengers Should Retain Their Right To End Debate
The President of the Southern Baptist Convention, Bart Barber, has just announced that the platform will be recommending a new rule for the annual meeting this summer in Indianapolis (see below). They are recommending that messengers relinquish their right to end debate before at least 12 minutes of debate have taken place. If messengers were to approve such a rule, every single matter of business that comes up for a vote would require at least 12 minutes of deliberation. I could be wrong, but I suspect that the platform would not be offering such a rule were the Law Amendment not on the agenda. [UPDATE 5/23/24: It turns out that…
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My Thoughts on the Recommendations from the SBC Coop Group
Last year, James Merritt moved that the President of the SBC appoint a task force to study Article 3 of the SBC Constitution and how the Baptist Faith & Message (BF&M) figures into our cooperative efforts. President Barber appointed the task force last year, and they became known as the “Cooperation Group.” They have been working since last year and released their recommendations earlier today. I am grateful for the hard work of the committee and for their service to the convention. I’m also grateful that they were able to come up with a set of proposals that they unanimously approved. That is really impressive given current divisions within the…
