Yesterday, Colin Smothers and I released a podcast previewing some of the items that will be coming before the SBC next week. Because it is the CBMW podcast, we focused entirely on issues related to gender and sexuality, and we spent the bulk of our time talking about Saddleback, Rick Warren, and female pastors. We spoke a little bit about the various proposals for structural change that have been circulating, and I reiterated my support for the Law amendment. But by far, I do believe that the most important matter before messengers on the question of female pastors is how the convention deals with Saddleback. It’s very important that the…
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Warren at War with the BF&M
Liberalism and pragmatism aren’t the same thing, but they often lead to the same destination. Liberalism guts the authority of Scripture by assaulting the Bible’s integrity. Pragmatism guts the authority of scripture by pitting “what works” against “what’s true.” The latter approach is on full display in a recent mass email that Rick Warren has sent to as many Southern Baptist pastors as he could find. If you haven’t read it yet, you can do so here. There are a number of howlers in this thing, but the gist of Warren’s message is that Southern Baptists have to make a choice between following a confession or doing the Great Commission.…
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A Resolution on Opposing Gender Transitions
One of the most astonishing developments of late modernity has been the mainstreaming of transgenderism. In retrospect, the path to our current moment is clear enough (see Carl Trueman’s Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self). Nevertheless, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to seeing grown men in earnest behaving like a cartoonish caricature of an adolescent girl. And yet examples of this kind of thing are proliferating, and anyone refusing to go along with this risks all manner of social and perhaps even professional ostracism and recriminations. It is like Americans have gotten a really bad fever with no indication in sight that the fever will ever break.…
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Responding to the Baptist21 Proposal
Southern Baptists have been having an intramural debate about how to ensure that our complementarian convictions remain a firm part of our cooperative effort together. Thankfully, there seems to be broad agreement with what the Baptist Faith & Message (BF&M) says. We can’t be certain until the annual meeting next month, but I’m reasonably confident that we have broad agreement about what to do with Saddleback. Nevertheless, there is still some disagreement about other measures that we might take to make sure our complementarian commitments are clear. Pastor Mike Law has proposed an amendment to the SBC Constitution that would add some clarity, and I have already endorsed that proposal…
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A Word about Spurgeon and Female Pastors
Earlier this week, it was announced that Rick Warren had been installed as the honorary Chancellor of Spurgeon’s College in London. After his installation, Warren took the opportunity to double-down on his support for female pastors and to claim that “my views on ordination are identical to Spurgeon’s.” I am no expert on Spurgeon, but I am reasonably certain that Warren’s views on ordination are not identical to Spurgeon’s—at least insofar as it relates to the ordination of female pastors. In his book Lectures to My Students, Spurgeon devotes an entire chapter to “The Call to the Ministry.”* In that chapter, I can see at least three differences between Spurgeon’s…
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An Interview about Saddleback and the SBC
The guys at the radio program “Issues, etc.” wanted to know about what is happening in the SBC with respect to female pastors, Saddleback Church, and Rick Warren. So I spent about 40 minutes laying it all out for them. You can listen at the links below.
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Rick Warren Knows Exactly What He Is Doing
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) announced earlier this year that Saddleback church had been removed from the SBC over Saddleback’s calling female pastors. Just yesterday, the news broke that Saddleback has appealed that decision, which means that the matter will come before the messengers to the annual meeting in June in New Orleans. Rick Warren cites five reasons for Saddleback’s appeal. First, Warren claims that “we’re challenging the ruling on behalf of millions of SBC women” who are forced to sit on the bench and cannot participate in the Great Commission. This is a false claim. Southern Baptists believe that God calls and gifts women for ministry. It’s written in…
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On Women Pastors, Let’s Pray for Renewal Not Inquisition
When I was a Ph.D. candidate, I had a private conversation over lunch with one of our Theology professors about what it means to be a Baptist. I was green and more naïve than I should have been as a first year doctoral student. During the conversation, I tried to make the point that while believer’s Baptism is essential to being a Baptist, congregationalism isn’t. His response to me was simple, direct, and unperturbed. Congregationalism is just as central to being a Baptist as believer’s baptism. I left that conversation a little put off by what he told me, but I also left with a renewed zeal to find out…
