What is theologically moderate?

[retroGRAD3]

Not that I don't believe you, but can I get a source on that?

Woman ordination is above with Rick Warren's church

Baptizing homosexuals covered here:

There is a timestamp for "photographic proof of FBC Florida baptizing homosexuals"

 

[retroGRAD3]

Saddleback Church ordains three women, draws criticism

Saddleback Church, one of the largest churches in the Southern Baptist Convention and home to influential pastor Rick Warren, ordained three women as staff pastors, a move critics say violates the denomination's statement of faith.

www.baptiststandard.com

I wish this were true…

Essentially what was said at the convention meeting is that they don't know how to define "pastor" anymore. This is what Al Mohler took great offense at.

 

[Pilgrim]

Why would you get booted from the SBC for a female minister? I don't know that the SBC has ever had a position on this and I know of SBC churches with even female senior pastors. I guess some local associations may have a position on this.

Now that I've looked at it again, I don't know that it has ever been done on the SBC level, although it could be. But it has definitely been done on the state convention level as well as the association level.

Here's a case where the SBC Executive Committee kicked out a church for admitting gay members. If I'm not mistaken, there is a clause in their bylaws where they could do the same for churches who have women preachers. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...eorgia-church-accepts-gay-members/4840775001/

 

[John The Baptist]

Why would you get booted from the SBC for a female minister? I don't know that the SBC has ever had a position on this and I know of SBC churches with even female senior pastors. I guess some local associations may have a position on this.

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

From BFM, article 6.
This is how I see this is my mind:

Rick Warren: yeah, we’re southern baptist

Mohler: but you just ordained three women, contrary to the BFM.

Warren: yeah but that is a secondary issue, we don’t need to divide over that. We at saddleback want to be unified with the SBC.

Mohler: but… the BFM… the document that defines what it means to be a southern Baptist…

Warren: unity, Al, unity.

 

[Jake]

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

From BFM, article 6.
This is how I see this is my mind:

Rick Warren: yeah, we’re southern baptist

Mohler: but you just ordained three women, contrary to the BFM.

Warren: yeah but that is a secondary issue, we don’t need to divide over that. We at saddleback want to be unified with the SBC.

Mohler: but… the BFM… the document that defines what it means to be a southern Baptist…

Warren: unity, Al, unity.

Churches are not required to accept the 2000 BF&M which added that. Plenty still hold to the 1963, even conservative churches. https://bfm.sbc.net/comparison-chart/

My mom was licensed on the path to ordination back in the 70s/80s in an SBC church (one that is now dual affiliated with the CBF). There have been churches in the SBC ordaining women at least since then and it continues to go on today. I know of several SBC affiliated churches in my local area and through the Southeast which ordain women happily. If big names like Warren are doing it then surely plenty of less conservative churches are.

(Small note: I grew up at an SBC church that absolutely considered itself conservative. It was very influenced in the 00s by Warren. The church would not ordain women, but allowed women to preach, including those ordained in other congregations, and serve as "ministers" on staff effectively serving similar roles to elders or associate pastors.)

I would not be surprised if some local associations will not allow congregations with female pastors, but there are probably still ways they could affiliate if they wanted to. For example, the moderate Baptist General Association of Virginia (there is also a conservative Baptist association in Virginia) will admit churches from all over the country to it. Texas also has a more conservative and a less conservative association at the state level.

 

[Charles Johnson]

 

[Phil D.]

That's just silly. They would have simply returned to the Limmat to do that...

 

[John The Baptist]

Churches are not required to accept the 2000 BF&M which added that. Plenty still hold to the 1963, even conservative churches. https://bfm.sbc.net/comparison-chart/

My mom was licensed on the path to ordination back in the 70s/80s in an SBC church (one that is now dual affiliated with the CBF). There have been churches in the SBC ordaining women at least since then and it continues to go on today. I know of several SBC affiliated churches in my local area and through the Southeast which ordain women happily. If big names like Warren are doing it then surely plenty of less conservative churches are.

(Small note: I grew up at an SBC church that absolutely considered itself conservative. It was very influenced in the 00s by Warren. The church would not ordain women, but allowed women to preach, including those ordained in other congregations, and serve as "ministers" on staff effectively serving similar roles to elders or associate pastors.)

I would not be surprised if some local associations will not allow congregations with female pastors, but there are probably still ways they could affiliate if they wanted to. For example, the moderate Baptist General Association of Virginia (there is also a conservative Baptist association in Virginia) will admit churches from all over the country to it. Texas also has a more conservative and a less conservative association at the state level.

Thanks for the info. I was not raised Baptist, so the requirements confuse me. Church independence is foreign to my experience, until recently.

 

[arapahoepark]

Churches are not required to accept the 2000 BF&M which added that. Plenty still hold to the 1963, even conservative churches. https://bfm.sbc.net/comparison-chart/

My mom was licensed on the path to ordination back in the 70s/80s in an SBC church (one that is now dual affiliated with the CBF). There have been churches in the SBC ordaining women at least since then and it continues to go on today. I know of several SBC affiliated churches in my local area and through the Southeast which ordain women happily. If big names like Warren are doing it then surely plenty of less conservative churches are.

(Small note: I grew up at an SBC church that absolutely considered itself conservative. It was very influenced in the 00s by Warren. The church would not ordain women, but allowed women to preach, including those ordained in other congregations, and serve as "ministers" on staff effectively serving similar roles to elders or associate pastors.)

I would not be surprised if some local associations will not allow congregations with female pastors, but there are probably still ways they could affiliate if they wanted to. For example, the moderate Baptist General Association of Virginia (there is also a conservative Baptist association in Virginia) will admit churches from all over the country to it. Texas also has a more conservative and a less conservative association at the state level.

So basically the SBC still isn't even as conservative as many have been lead to believe? It's only a trickle down effect from the seminaries (or used to be anyway)?

 

[Jake]

So basically the SBC still isn't even as conservative as many have been lead to believe? It's only a trickle down effect from the seminaries (or used to be anyway)?

I'm much more familiar with Presbyterianism at this point, and don't keep up with all of the ins and outs of the SBC and don't fully understand Baptist policy. So perhaps someone can shed more light on this than I can.

I think the simplest way to describe it is that the Conservatives/Evangelicals won most of the institutional battles, but as the SBC is a very large group that is relatively easy to affiliate with, many of the "moderates" never left the denomination -- they simply have had waning influence. It's possible to affiliate with multiple local baptist associations which may form larger conventions/fellowships/denominations. Since it would be a tough sell for some folks to leave the SBC (think older generations who have always been Southern Baptist), many congregations keep this affiliation even if their location congregation is not in step with the mainstream of the SBC. Some may focus their efforts on the local congregation, on another baptist association, or in some cases, the local association may be more moderate than the SBC as a whole anyway.

 

[retroGRAD3]

So basically the SBC still isn't even as conservative as many have been lead to believe? It's only a trickle down effect from the seminaries (or used to be anyway)?

If you look at the last 3 presidents, the main pull appears to be to the left.

 

[Pilgrim]

I'm much more familiar with Presbyterianism at this point, and don't keep up with all of the ins and outs of the SBC and don't fully understand Baptist policy. So perhaps someone can shed more light on this than I can.

I think the simplest way to describe it is that the Conservatives/Evangelicals won most of the institutional battles, but as the SBC is a very large group that is relatively easy to affiliate with, many of the "moderates" never left the denomination -- they simply have had waning influence. It's possible to affiliate with multiple local baptist associations which may form larger conventions/fellowships/denominations. Since it would be a tough sell for some folks to leave the SBC (think older generations who have always been Southern Baptist), many congregations keep this affiliation even if their location congregation is not in step with the mainstream of the SBC. Some may focus their efforts on the local congregation, on another baptist association, or in some cases, the local association may be more moderate than the SBC as a whole anyway.

A lot of what you're seeing now are former YRR types who have moved left on social justice and related issues. That's more or less who is running things in the SBC now. And strange as it may seem to someone like Olson, Mohler enabled it, whether that was his intention or not. (The same goes for his friend at RTS.) Now he's a "Christian Nationalist." His failure to get a handle on CRT, etc. is why he did so poorly in the election a couple of years ago when he might have won by acclamation not long before that.

In the case of Saddleback and Andy Stanley (who isn't SBC--I don't think his church ever was, for what its worth) you're seeing church growth methodology move to its logical conclusion. Same goes for those Kellerite former PCA plants which are now "affirming" in the name of "human flourishing."

A lot of the 80s Baptist "moderates" have gone on to their eternal reward. They tended to be older than the conservatives to begin with. Many of their successors in places like the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship have gone hard left. Some liberal students from those days ended up in denominations like the UMC.

 

[SavedSinner]

This is a more nuanced way of looking at it. My perception is probably less accurate given my age (I was 9 in 2006) and the fact that my father was a reformedish SBC pastor (RTS grad). I never experienced hostility towards Calvinism in my childhood. I reckon Piper's popularity in the late 90s and early 2000s was more of a cult following from those who read Desiring God and had heard him speak at conferences? My dad had Piper's Hebrews cassette set in the late 90s.

I referenced Mohler because the overall direction of the seminary was going somewhat Calvinistic at the time following the conservative resurgence. My professors in Texas (almost all CBF Truett/Baylor guys) spoke of Mohler like he was Satan enfleshed, citing the Garland issue and his role in normalizing Calvinism in the SBC.

"lay-person" is now a word? It sounds so gay. Even layman was never really a presbyterian word, but wait--- I remember the old anti-establishment paper in the PCUSA "Presbyterian Layman" so maybe I'm wrong. Even in the OPC it is now apparently a sin to be a "misogynist" so is that why you identify as a "lay-person"? Will the church directories start showing he/she/they? This is ruining the language and our brains.

 

[Pilgrim]

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

From BFM, article 6.
This is how I see this is my mind:

Rick Warren: yeah, we’re southern baptist

Mohler: but you just ordained three women, contrary to the BFM.

Warren: yeah but that is a secondary issue, we don’t need to divide over that. We at saddleback want to be unified with the SBC.

Mohler: but… the BFM… the document that defines what it means to be a southern Baptist…

Warren: unity, Al, unity.

The issue here is the definition of "the office of pastor," which is not a biblical term. Mohler et al say it means elder. Others say that the understanding in 2000 was that it meant the "senior pastor" i.e. the main preacher. Mohler and friends are right biblically, of course, but the language in the BFM is too imprecise.

 

[John The Baptist]

but the language in the BFM is too imprecise.

Per usual

 

[retroGRAD3]

Per usual

And I believe this is on purpose.

 

[HauerVos]

"lay-person" is now a word? It sounds so gay.

I'm a lay-person by definition, or layman -- part of the laity. "lay-person" is just the language I'm familiar with. I hear "layman" used more when someone's asking another to dumb down their language... "Put it in laymans terms."

Even in the OPC it is now apparently a sin to be a "misogynist" so is that why you identify as a "lay-person"? Will the church directories start showing he/she/they? This is ruining the language and our brains.

I'm not in the OPC. I'm not tracking with you, brother.

 

[Pilgrim]

Saddleback, along with 4 other churches, has just been thrown out of the SBC for having a female pastor, which means that any church with female clergy is subject to being thrown out.

 

[Jake]

Saddleback, along with 4 other churches, has just been thrown out of the SBC for having a female pastor, which means that any church with female clergy is subject to being thrown out.

I found this article on the topic: https://baptistnews.com/article/sou...-church-saddleback-for-having-a-woman-pastor/

I guess I was wrong, as I did not know that the Executive Committee could do this and didn't expect them too. I'm also out of the loop on SBC politics.

I'm interested to know how this plays out. They expelled 4 other SBC churches for having female pastors, but all the others are senior pastors, whereas Saddleback was as another "teaching pastor." I know of other SBC churches that have female pastors who regularly preach, although at least one is withdrawing from the SBC right now. This may be a catalyst to get more of the other "moderates" out. As an aside, look at this bio of a female pastor at an SBC affiliated church I have family that attends: https://www.ardmorebaptist.org/team/gina-brock/

 

[Pilgrim]

I found this article on the topic: https://baptistnews.com/article/sou...-church-saddleback-for-having-a-woman-pastor/

I guess I was wrong, as I did not know that the Executive Committee could do this and didn't expect them too. I'm also out of the loop on SBC politics.

I'm interested to know how this plays out. They expelled 4 other SBC churches for having female pastors, but all the others are senior pastors, whereas Saddleback was as another "teaching pastor." I know of other SBC churches that have female pastors who regularly preach, although at least one is withdrawing from the SBC right now. This may be a catalyst to get more of the other "moderates" out. As an aside, look at this bio of a female pastor at an SBC affiliated church I have family that attends: https://www.ardmorebaptist.org/team/gina-brock/

Teaching pastor=preacher. I think it is more clear cut if it is a preacher, which the Babdists equate with pastor. This woman in the church in NC to which you refer is in charge of spiritual formation/pastoral care. If she doesn't preach (especially not regularly) many may not see it as being so clear cut. I think there are a lot more women "pastors" of this type than there are senior, lead, or teaching pastors.

 

[retroGRAD3]

Saddleback, along with 4 other churches, has just been thrown out of the SBC for having a female pastor, which means that any church with female clergy is subject to being thrown out.

Better late than never