Courier Conversations
This Podcast of Courier Conversations will be a conversation of topics with a variety of guests that concern, inspire and inform Christians about current events Worldwide. We hope you'll find our stories informing and encouraging in your daily walk with Christ.
Courier Conversations
Women Pastors: A Debate on Scripture's Authority
A thought-provoking examination of biblical authority versus cultural accommodation unfolds as we dive into the New Yorker's recent mini-documentary questioning whether the Southern Baptist Convention can survive without women pastors. We analyze how the video juxtaposes compassionate female leadership against supposedly rigid traditionalism while missing the fundamental theological principles at stake.
The heart of this conversation isn't about personalities or even church growth strategies. Rather, we examine how passages like 1 Timothy 2-3 and Titus 1 have historically informed Southern Baptist understanding of pastoral qualifications. Tom Askell's powerful statement from the documentary perfectly captures the conservative position: "It's God's world. He sets the rules. It's Christ's church. We can't make it up as we go."
We challenge the documentary's narrative by examining real growth numbers from churches committed to biblical authority. While mainline denominations embracing female ordination have experienced significant membership losses over decades, many theologically conservative SBC churches are thriving. Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, for example, has nearly doubled its attendance in just four years while maintaining traditional positions on pastoral leadership.
Baptist polity gets special attention as we clarify misconceptions about church autonomy and denominational boundaries. The SBC cannot "remove" churches—it can only determine which congregations maintain "friendly cooperation" with the convention's stated beliefs. This distinction matters tremendously in understanding what's actually happening when messengers from churches with female pastors are unseated.
Looking ahead to the upcoming Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Dallas-Fort Worth, we invite you to follow our coverage at baptistcourier.com, where we'll provide timely updates and thoughtful analysis of this ongoing conversation within America's largest Protestant denomination.
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Welcome to the latest episode of Career Conversations. I am Jeff Robinson, I'm President and Editor-in-Chief of the Baptist Courier and Courier Publishing, and with me, as usual, is my co-host, travis Kearns, who is, I always like to say, the DOM. I just, I'm an old Southern Baptist. I can't get over being a DOM of the Three Rivers Association. You're the admissions strategist, in fact right, for the Three Rivers Association, and Travis is a trustee for the Baptist career and we appreciate his service. And so today we're going to talk about a lingering issue among Southern Baptists over the last what would you say, five years or so, probably. So yeah, the New Yorker yesterday published on my birthday. They had the audacity to publish a video, kind of a video. What would you maybe call?
Speaker 1:it Video documentary, mini documentary yeah kind of a mini documentary asking the question can the Southern Baptist Convention survive without women pastors? And that is the issue that has raised its head, I guess. First, in what? 2019 in Birmingham, the convention, and really since then we've been talking about now.
Speaker 2:It's been around longer than that, but most recently, yeah, 2019.
Speaker 1:And now to be clear, the SBC is not on the cusp of voting to ordain women, quite to the contrary. But the New Yorker is arguing in this video very clearly that the Southern Baptist Convention is dying, will continue to die unless it does in fact ordain women. In the video featured are really two. They juxtapose two pastors Linda Barnes Popham, who's the pastor of First Baptist Church of Fern Creek in Louisville, kentucky, and has been for many years whose church was removed from the Kentucky and has been for many years whose church was removed from the convention and I don't think that's the right language.
Speaker 2:You can help me here Last summer, yeah, so just briefly. The church wasn't removed from the convention because there's nothing to remove it from.
Speaker 1:You can't remove it from the convention.
Speaker 2:Right. The only thing that happened is their messengers were unseated, not allowed to vote. They could come back, the way the convention polity works. They could come back this summer and try to seat messengers again, but the convention would have to vote to unseat them again, because it's only unseating for one particular convention annual meeting. But they were unseated so it's very likely they won't come back. That's right.
Speaker 1:So you kind of have her in this. It's one versus two in the video. You have Linda Popham on one hand. On the other hand you have a longtime friend of mine, tom Askell, pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, florida. Tom again longtime friend. I served for several years with him on the Founders Ministries Board and we've been friends for a long, long time and Tom's a good man. And so, travis, did you take a clear message from sort of the tenor of the way this video they go about it? We'll get into the substance and get into the parts where you agree with and disagree with. But what if you were an innocent bystander, you weren't a Southern Baptist? What would you take from this video? Or would you take an even-handed? I don't know what was decided.
Speaker 2:No, I think it was obviously very slanted. I think it was slanted towards Linda Popham's side of things, or maybe even say not just her side, but the 9% of people at that annual meeting last year who voted to leave their messenger seating intact voted to leave their messenger seating intact. You know, the last scene juxtaposes Askel outside of his home shooting a bow and arrow at a target. Makes him out to be kind of the consummate Southern patriarch, redneck kind of man, while she is playing piano inside their sanctuary and I think she's playing Just as I am, if I remember right, that's right but kind of makes her out to be the loving, compassionate, Christ-following pastor, whereas he is made out to be this not evil genius, bad villain in a movie kind of way. But it does make him out to be very much a supporter of this really strong-handed patriarchy. So yeah, I think it was very much slanted towards what we would say would be a more liberal reading of 1 Timothy 2, 1 Timothy 3, and Titus 1.
Speaker 1:That's right, and they show her observing the vote last summer in New Orleans and basically Linda Popham.
Speaker 1:Once the vote results are announced, she calls Southern Baptist hypocrites and says why do I threaten these people? And it just seems to me the way this is portrayed is it's the nice people versus the mean people. And we know we all want to be nice and in the United States of America the two sides, the political sides, we're really nice to each other, right, but no, it really is that it does come down to that, because she said why do I threaten these people? And of course she does, or you shouldn't make a. There's no, she doesn't make the argument from specific scripture, but it says the Bible is on her side as far as ordaining women. And really I'm sure Linda Popham is a nice lady. That's not the debate here. I don't know her, I've never had the privilege of meeting her.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I worked in some of the leadership in the Long Run Association, which is now the Louisville Regional Baptist Association, and got to meet her. She's very friendly. She's shockingly other than the female pastor issue. Very conservative Right, that's right.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I mean, that's not what this is about. It's about the principle of sola scriptura, it's about scripture. It is, yeah, and Tom makes that very clear but again that side is presented as narrow and kind of out of step with modern culture, which is true, I mean we are out of step with the culture. And of course, al Mohler, our old boss, makes several appearances in there and I felt like he's portrayed as very harsh because he's just a man of the word. But why do I threaten these people? That, to me, was almost the thesis for her in this, but it's a debate over Scripture.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not a threat from a specific person.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So when we make it personal is when it turns the wrong direction. And it's not even a threat necessarily of a particular hermeneutic where you might look at 1 Timothy 2 or 1 Timothy 3 or Titus 1 and interpret those texts in certain ways. It really is a debate over the authority of the text and what the text says. There is no question that 1 Timothy 2, 1 Timothy 3, and Titus 1 teach that men, biologically born men, are the only ones eligible to be pastors, elders, overseers, bishops however you want to translate that word, episkopos in 1 Timothy 3. So it's not a threat from her, it's a threat from the way she reads Scripture. So it's a direct affront and an assault on the sufficiency and authority of the text and the clarity of the text of Scripture. Yeah, so it's not from her, it's an overarching hermeneutic.
Speaker 1:That's right, and Tom about halfway through this, and I invite our listeners to go and find that and it's short, it's what? 17 minutes, 17 minutes.
Speaker 1:Yeah something like that. He says and this gets right to the heart of it, where we stand, it's God's world. He sets the rules, it's Christ's church. We can't make it up as we go, and that really is the bottom line, right, and it seems simple to us. I don't think any of us would deny that women are gifted, that women are. I know some women who are fantastic teachers. They're clear, they're brilliant, they know the Bible. No one denies that. Sure, and one of the things that it's hard to understand why being a pastor is seen as having the greatest value within the church. My church has a plurality of elders. We have several pastors, so we don't have one man. We have a lead pastor, but we don't have one man.
Speaker 2:We look to and say he's sort of the supreme pontiff, as it were, and so I don't know why the sort of or to use a cartoon we grew up on the Flintstones he's the Grand Poobah of the water buffaloes, yeah that's it.
Speaker 1:But I don't understand why Women play significant roles in the church and their gifts are needed and are deployed across the church, and you see this throughout the history of the church and now we're grateful for that. So I don't know. There always seems to be a pragmatic, emotional argument behind this, and in this video I think that's true.
Speaker 2:Again, it is yeah, and it's also interesting there's a juxtaposition towards the end between a dying SBC and a growing Fern Creek Baptist Church. You're kind of comparing apples and washing machines here when we talk about the SBC getting smaller but Fern Creek growing. What I would have loved to have seen would have been a comparison between Grace Baptist Church and Fern Creek Baptist Church, rather than the entire SBC. Tom Askell makes the point in the documentary or in the video that yeah, the SBC does need reform. The SBC is dying because baptisms are down, some church numbers are down, things like that. However, I think it's a larger conversation to have as to why the SBC may be experiencing some lower numbers than recent years.
Speaker 2:I'm not incredibly sure it's because of reasons like the documentary makers are making it out to be, that it's theological conservatism run amok. I think a lot of it has to do with churches. It's theological conservatism run amok. I think a lot of it has to do with churches being more serious about membership roles and about baptism and things like that. However, they do make this very emotional, as you mentioned, differentiation between this SBC that's dying because they're run by the patriarchy versus this compassionate, this compassionate conservative or compassionate loving church in the suburbs of Louisville, pastored by a woman. And why should she be such a threat? She's baptizing people. She's seeing people come to Christ. She's very conservative. In fact, she even mentions people left my church when I was hired as pastor, not because I'm a woman, but because I was too conservative. So yeah, it's very much bent that direction.
Speaker 1:Well, and I think an argument can be made from just from sort of objective evidence looking. Noone has to look no further than the mainline denominations. Over the last what 30 years or so? The mainline denominations? There's been a mass exodus out of those churches, but Some of which are pastored by females, because they're liberal theology, because they don't stand for anything. I often go to Cincinnati, ohio. I'm a Reds fan and so my sons and I will go up there and watch baseball. Bless your heart. Yeah, I know you feel Yankees fan. We'll do another episode on that later.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:But you go into Cincinnati there's one of the most beautiful church buildings I've ever seen in my life. On the left. You go in it Some of you if you've been on Interstate 75, you've seen it. It's beautiful and it's an old Lutheran church and I don't think there's a church there anymore. The last account I had, and this was maybe a decade or so ago, there was maybe 20 people the thing seats. There's no telling how many people it seats but but there's been a mass exodus out there and I think the church building is being used for something else now, and I mean it's the old Gothic-style architecture.
Speaker 1:It's a gorgeous church. But that's true of the mainline denominations the Presbyterian Church USA, the Lutheran Church USA and some of the United Methodist Church. They split and they're losing, they're bleeding members and have been for 30, 40, 50, really back after the fallout from the 60s, which was the soil in which the feminist movement grew. And so I know that her church, fern Creek, first Baptist Church, linda Popham's church might be growing, but that would be very much the exception rather than the rule among churches with female pastors.
Speaker 2:Yep, I just pulled numbers very, very quickly, quickly in an internal SBC database to look at Grace Church in Cape Coral see the numbers that they reported to the Florida State Convention. I'm sure they're strong. Yeah, they're growing by leaps and bounds. So, 2021, they had 280. In morning worship 22, they had 385. 23, they had 417. 24, they had 436. They've nearly doubled in four years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'm well aware of that church.
Speaker 2:It's very healthy, that is not a dying church by any stretch of the imagination or by any definition of growth or death. It is absolutely a growing church beyond the shadow of any doubt. So, yeah, it's not this mixture of dying SBC versus Fern Creek. It's as you mentioned. It's not this mixture of dying SBC versus Fern Creek. It's as you mentioned. It's not churches pastored by females, I would argue, and we don't have hard numbers on this, but I would argue are not growing in these ways. Fern Creek is very much, probably an exception and probably a very minority exception to the rule.
Speaker 1:That's right, yeah very minority exception to the rule. That's right, I think. I mean we live in a very anti-denominational age, an age that embraces what I would call a sort of a fuzzy feeling, one of the fuzzy feelings about Jesus. They don't you know, anti-denominational age. I don't think being a Southern Baptist means to younger people now what it did to me when I was, you know, 20 years old, 25, 30 years old, because they've grown up in non-denominational, inter-denominational churches and those have kind of proliferated around the country and it's very popular. So I think it owes as much to that as anything else because evangelicalism is growing. I know Al Mohler's written about this and has talked about this on the briefing in his radio show things over the years when you and I were at Southern and evangelicalism.
Speaker 1:Though the strong evangelical churches are growing. I mean I go to. I am a member of one of the just in my opinion of course I'm a little prejudiced, but the finest churches in your association and it's a theologically robust, missions-minded evangelistic church and in just the year, maybe 18 months we've been there, it's grown. We've probably added 100 members, I don't know, maybe more, maybe 120. And I'm convinced it's because we preach the Bible, we hold to sola scriptura. We preach, we want to reach the lost. Yes, we do show compassion. We have ministers of compassion. Linda Popham talks about that and how she's feeding the poor and all those things, and we're doing things like that too, but in more of a gospel-centric context, and I'm convinced it's growing and it's growing. We're adding young people, we're adding senior adults, we're adding all ages, and so I think it's pretty typical among conservative evangelicals?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is, and just in our association of right at 100 churches, there are a very, very small minority that are plateaued or declining. The overall majority are adding new people on a if not weekly basis, on a monthly basis. They are seeing people come to Christ, they're baptizing. Just this year, among our 100 or so churches, we're seeing five new churches started in the area and already one on tap for next year, and these are churches that are all like-minded like faith and practice.
Speaker 1:They're proclaiming God's Word its sufficiency, its authority.
Speaker 2:They're concerned about gospel proclamation with unbelievers. They're concerned about discipling believers with going to other places for the sake of missions. I mean, they're all over the place. So it very much is not an exception to see an evangelical church growing. It's the rule to see that happening, at least in our area. I can't speak for all areas, I can't for ours, because I just see the numbers on a regular basis and see the. I'm in the churches. In fact, just this past weekend I was in a church that a few years ago was running less than 20, and now they're 80 to 100 on Sunday morning. And now they're 80 to 100 on Sunday morning. So that's a significant growth factor in a rural church, a church set in a rural setting. So yeah, I mean churches are growing and, as we mentioned earlier, I think those like Fern Creek are not growing. I think Fern Creek is a it may be the unique church.
Speaker 2:I don't want to say you know a unique or an unique because it's unique or it's not, but I think it might be the unique church in that theological and polity setting that actually is growing.
Speaker 1:And the common denominator, as you said in your church, is this one in your association.
Speaker 2:Oh, it is absolutely belief in the sufficiency and authority of Scripture, 100%.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they're growing. And Rick Warren they show a clip from Rick Warren from last year. Of course, saddleback was also ruled to be not in friendly cooperation with the SBC and not allowed to seek messengers. And voted about what? 92%? I think it was 93%. And he said it's not smart, when you're losing half a million members per year, to knock out churches who are in fellowship with you.
Speaker 1:And to me it begs the question. I mean, rick Warren has long been driven by numbers, long been driven by pragmatism. You know, we heard his take on himself and his ministry in Anaheim a few years ago when he got up and touted the number of the millions he's won to Christ and all those things. That's another discussion for another time. But it is about the sufficiency of Scripture. It's not about numbers for Southern Baptists, I don't think. I don't think it is about how many people we can put in the seats and how many things we can boast of having done. It is about the sufficiency of Scripture. And Scripture, as you said, 1 Timothy 2, 1 Timothy 3, the qualifications for elders. Qualifications for elders in Titus 1 could not be more clear. I mean the masculine pronouns there, the qualifications. It's very clear. But I mean that by no means diminishes women.
Speaker 2:Right. It's interesting. The makers of the video argue that the SBC is trying to remove female pastors, which is not at all the case. The SBC has no authority over local church whatsoever.
Speaker 2:What the SBC nationally is trying to do, and what a number of state conventions and associations are trying to do, is say these are our theological bookends.
Speaker 2:If you fit inside these bookends, we want to work together, we want to share money, we want to share ideas, resources, whatever it may be. If you don't fit within the bookends, then we're not saying you're not a church or you're a complete heretics we might be in some cases but we're simply saying you don't fit inside our doctrinal parameters. So because you don't fit, we're going to remove you from being inside those parameters, simply because you don't have a practice and belief that's close enough to what we're saying you need to have in order to be part of us. If the local church has autonomy, so does the local association, so does the state convention, so does the national convention. All four of those, if I can put it this way, those four levels have their own independence and their own autonomy to do with their belief and practice, what they want to do. So our association is different from others. State conventions are different. The national convention does what it wants to do inside of its own parameters.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, I've been a Southern Baptist my entire life and I've always been. In the years I've been in ministry, the last three decades, I've been amazed at how much variety there is within the SBC and how much we love each other and we're happy to cooperate between churches. You know, you and I have talked about this. We're more Calvinistic, some are more Armenian in terms of their theology, but we're together for missions and we've had discussions, brotherly discussions, about those issues throughout the history of the SVC, but we cooperate together.
Speaker 2:And Paul talks about this in the beginning of Romans 15, where he's ending up his discussion from 14 on Christian liberty. Beginning of 15, he talks about Christian liberty not dividing us, but we should all be found to be one in Christ and be united rather be divided just over some issue of liberty.
Speaker 1:Well, we're going to talk about this again here in about two weeks. Southern Baptists will gather in Dallas, fort Worth area, on June 10th and 11th, for our annual meeting, really the only two days when Southern Baptists officially exist as a denomination, literally and truly legally. We have a lot of ministries, of course, but so we will probably come back and talk about that. Maybe on our next episode. We'll be beyond the convention. After that, you and I will both be there. We're covering it. You'll be looking to the Baptist Career for coverage. Look to our website. We'll be updating that throughout the convention. So we look forward to providing coverage for that, and then we'll come back and give some analysis on our next episode. But today we're out of time and this won't be the end of this discussion for sure. And so pray for Southern Baptists, pray for unity, pray for clarity, pray for a strong witness before a watching world. The light and the darkness that's what we want to be, always and ever, as Southern Baptists who love God's Word and love people. So be sure, and like us on Facebook and all the other social media platforms, give us a five-star review. We're available on all those platforms. I won't even name them, you all know them by now.
Speaker 1:Of course, if you're listening to this, go to wwwbaptistcareercom, our website. We have a careerpublishingcom where books are available we're about to publish. In the next year and a half to two years We'll be publishing about 36 books. So it's going to be kind of an explosion coming out of the river. We'll become a torrent from Baptist Publishing and we'll be previewing those on this show and interviewing authors and things like that in the future, and those will be previewed and advertised in the magazine on the website. So don't miss that. So we look forward to coming to you again in the middle of next month. Until then, we covet your prayers and appreciate your listenership.
Speaker 3:We're glad you joined us for Courier Conversations, where we are informing and inspiring South Carolina Baptists and beyond. For more information about these topics and more, subscribe to our e-edition or go to our website at baptistcouriercom. The Courier is located in Greenville, South Carolina, as a multimedia ministry partner of the South Carolina Baptist Convention. To comment about today's podcast email us at conversations at baptistcouriercom. This podcast, produced by Bob Sloan Audio Productions,
