Expelling churches with women pastors: Unstated reasons

I grant that the Surry Baptist Association expelled their member church because they believe that having a woman as pastor is biblically prohibited and harmful to their wonderful unity.

No one else will say it but there are other reasons why we expel churches with women pastors. I often write humor pieces. This isn't one.

1. A church that has called a female pastor is an easy target.

As was said elsewhere, "What do you need to know besides the gender?" Right-O. I take it that the brothers in Surry Association knew enough, once the gender was known, not to believe that much else was necessary.

We Southern Baptist pastors like easy targets and simple decisions. No fuss, no muss, no bother. And it doesn't get any easier and simpler than this.

2. We savor the ability to be selective in our discipline.

And there is no safer selective decision than this one. After all, we're men, right? No one can do this to us because we have gender immunity.

I humbly acknowledge the basis for such decisions, our Baptist Faith and Message Statement, which says,

While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.

Not much wiggle room there. Commenters have put it succinctly that those who believe in women pastors and those who don't cannot both be right. I can't argue with that.

Perhaps we could check the sentence that precedes the one quoted above:

[The church's] scriptural officers are pastors and deacons.

Many SBC churches now have the office of Elder. This is a direct violation of the BFM. That manner of church organization is defined as unbiblical.

What shall we do with those? Expel them? Alas, Plodder isn't hearing the clamor for the same from where he sits and types. Perhaps elsewhere in the SBC hinterlands such sins are rooted out and churches dispatched for such things.

Surry Association waited less than a week to initiate discipline against Flat Rock Baptist Church. Where are those with a burning, unquenchable zeal for purity who will lead the associations in excising the sinful, unbiblical practice of Elder rule?

Lest we forget, both the BFM and Surry Association point to 1 Timothy 3 in regard to scriptural qualifications. That passage says in part that an overseer must be:

the husband of one wife...sensible...respectable...not a bully but gentle, not quarrelsome, not greedy...one who manages his own household competently...a good reputation among outsiders...

"Not a bully"? I know quite a few pastors who are bullies. Where is the zeal against those? I know pastors who are quarrelsome, who are greedy, who are appallingly poor managers of their households, and some who have disastrously poor reputations in the community. Where is the zeal against those?

To understand Surry Association's action you need only know one thing: They know how to spot a woman in a pulpit. The scripture about what overseers "must" be is, manifestly, just words on a page fit to be ignored.

3. Pastors know how to manage a career in this business.

I know a few pastors. I've got friends who are pastors. I hear a lot about pastors and it is the rare pastor who is not looking ahead to (a) a larger church, (b) an appointment to some committee or board, and/or (c) a future paycheck from some denominational entity. In fact, an ambitious pastor can make his bones in situations like this one. Conversely, if a pastor is on the 'wrong' side of a question like this, it can follow him forever. There is (Gasp!) ambition among us pastors. And pastors know what greases the skids for their future. They also know how to avoid the potholes.

No, I certainly do not know the state-of-mind of the brethren in Surry Association, but no pastor can say with a straight face that motives are pure for all who are involved in this.

I still would not vote to expel a church from my association if they called a female pastor. We all make our decisions. Mine is not particularly courageous, as some have labeled it. I merely see it as both reasonable and Christian.

I just wish that if we are as Southern Baptists going to follow this pattern in our associations, state conventions, and SBC, we would be honest about it.

Unity Through Purity

Restoration to doctrinal purity and a renewed sense of unity in the churches of our Association were our goals. Unity must always be one of our highest priorities; but it must never eclipse the priority of doctrinal purity.

The two sentences above come from the document described as “Article Concerning SBA Messengers' Decision Regarding Flat Rock Baptist Church which is found on the Surry Baptist Association website here. The authors are Dr. Joel Stephens, pastor of Westfield Baptist Church and Vice-Moderator of the SBA, and Rev. Jim Richland, associate pastor of Westfield Baptist Church and chairman of the Membership Committee of the SBA.

It's a pretty standard conservative treatment of the matter of women as senior pastors. I wouldn't quibble too much about it - standard, sterile, boilerplate seminary classroom stuff.

Unity through purity.  Work with me here, brethren: An antidote to doctrinal miscegenation?

I know the intent. There are things we must share in order to be grouped together in associations, state conventions, and the SBC. I don't argue that Surry can draw their lines anywhere they doggone well please. I just wouldn't vote to draw it as they have.

Of the list of requirements for overseer in 1 Timothy 3, referenced in the document linked above, at least half a dozen are always, always, violated by some pastors of some churches in every association I have ever been around. There's not an association in the SBC, anywhere, that this very day does not have at least one "quarrelsome" pastor in it. So, they get a pass? And you wouldn't have to look hard to find a pastor who is a "lover of money." Greedy with impunity?  Guess so.

Which doctrinaire associational officer, which membership committee in pursuit of purity will lead the charge to excise quarrelsome and greedy pastors from among us? Sixteen days, the length of time it took to get rid of the church which called a pastor with long blonde hair and lipstick along with her seminary degree, is too long for any quarrelsome pastor in an association.

Consider the thinking here: The association claims grave harm by one of its churches which called a female pastor. The offending church has damaged the unity in the association. The happy Baptist ship of Surry has been rocked.

The association as victim.

Plodder is not there yet. I can't see the poor pastors in the association and the unfortunate DOM wrapping themselves in the mantle of victimhood - the Woefully Beleaguered Majority.

One might reasonably conclude that the more damaged party is the church and their new pastor. Bailey Edwards Nelson shows up for her first Sunday at Flat Rock Baptist Church and that very week the church is notified that associational expulsion action is pending. There's your victim.

Consider more of the thinking here, words of the Dr. and Rev. named above:

Sadly, those in leadership at Flat Rock Baptist Church have chosen a different path. As you may have heard, the Surry Baptist Association‟s Membership Committee invited the leadership of Flat Rock to meet to discuss this situation. Flat Rock refused their invitation and thereby closed the door on any reconciliation with the Association. For that reason, a motion was presented to the messengers of the Surry Baptist Association last Monday to withdraw the SBA‟s affiliation with Flat Rock Baptist Church. The motion passed by a very large majority.

‘We-hate-it-but-they-forced-us-to-do-it’ Got it. “We hate it…we didn’t want to do it…they made us do it.” What’s next, “This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.”

What’s that hollow ring I’m hearing?

Nonetheless, the deed is done, done badly perhaps, but done.

So, when can we hear from the estimated 20% from that associational meeting who voted against the expulsion of the church?

No, I wouldn't vote to kick a church with a woman pastor out

Flat Rock Baptist Church in Mount Airy North Carolina was quickly and summarily expelled from the Surry Baptist Association the other day according to this APB story from last week. Seems the church had done the unusual, the unthinkable, the unpardonable - they called a female pastor, Bailey Edwards Nelson, pictured at left here.

Tony Cartlege calls it 'courageous, the association calls their kicking out action was an attempt to facilitate "restoration to doctrinal purity and a renewed sense of unity." You bet.

"Unity through purity",the associational mission statement?

Sounds rather foreboding.

The association's response may be read here. It is a rather sterile treatment of the matter which concludes that they did the right thing but that folks should be nice to the new pastor and pray for her. Her what? Success? Souls saved?  Her church to grow? Oh, pray for her to repent and disappear from Surry Associaion. 

Fellow SBC blogger Howell Scott has a good piece on the matter here. Scott takes the association to task for being hasty in this action. The fellow churches took all of two weeks to kick the church out, not much of a honeymoon. Guess time was of the essence for the brethren. I mean, she might have preached a pretty good sermon, led someone to Christ, or (gasp!) even baptized a new believer. You bet, get that church out of the association before anything like that can happen. They did.

I've been in a number of associations and understand that this is a pastor-driven business and sometimes the pastors smell blood and get in a feeding frenzy and act with haste. This is such a case.  Dare I call it a lynch mob mentality? Naw, not the men of the cloth in that association - fine, upstanding, erudite, scholarly gentlemen.

Well, I read that the vote to expel the wayward church and pastor was 80%. Perhaps some of the 20% will speak up. 

I understand that associations are autonomous and may expel churches with female pastors or left handed pastors, whatever they decide among themselves. No one tells a Baptist association what to do, sometimes not even Jesus...but I wish Jesus had been consulted at greater length on this matter. It looks bad for everyone.

No, a woman pastor is not my thing. But no, I wouldn't have voted to kick the church out. Yes, I would have treated the new pastor just like I have treated female pastors (all Methodists) who have been my neighbors over the years at various times. I'd be kind, helpful, encouraging.

This type of situation will only be more frequent in the future. We had better find a better plan for handling it.

We are on the same side, aren't we?