Loading summary
Transcript31 lines
- [00:00]
Jonathan Swan
Foreign.
- [00:08]
Denny Burke
Download of cutting edge complementarian commentary and one stop shop for egalitarian opposition research. I'm your host, Jonathan Swan, executive editor of icon, a journal for biblical anthropology. And I am joined by our typical usual full crew here. Denny Burke, the president of cbmw, and Colin Smothers, the executive director of cbmw. Guys, did you have a wonderful Memorial Day this week?
- [00:35]
Colin Smothers
It was a great American Memorial Day. We ate hamburgers and bacon and, you know, all the stuff.
- [00:43]
Jonathan Swan
Denny. I grilled out steaks and I went down to the river and sat in the middle of it in a lawn chair and it was a great day.
- [00:50]
Colin Smothers
Did you go down to the river to pray.
- [00:57]
Jonathan Swan
In the way that Paul tells us to pray? Continually? I was living life Coram Deo before God.
- [01:02]
Colin Smothers
There you go.
- [01:04]
Denny Burke
Well, I'm glad for both of you. Hey, we're going to return our podcast back to the subject of the Truth and Unity amendment because the Internet just hasn't had enough of it yet. Just to get you caught up, if you haven't watched our last episode or listened to, we had Dr. R. Albert Mohler on who has proposed a new constitutional amendment for this upcoming sbc or he will propose it and it updates the Constitution to specify that SBC churches should not, to quote his proposal here, should not act to affirm, appoint or endorse a woman serving in the office or function of a pastor elder overseer, such as preaching to the assembled congregation. So what we want to do for the next few minutes is answer some objections to this Amendment. Of course, Dr. Mohler, we had him on and you can go back and listen to that and hear his thoughts on it. But Denny, there have been a number of conversations that have cropped up, especially on X Facebook. And so I just want to throw some of these objections out to you. Here's the first one, and we've heard this one throughout the these last few years as we had the Law amendment and now this Truth and Unity Amendment is this. We don't really have a female pastor problem in the spc, so why even bring this up?
- [02:24]
Colin Smothers
Well, I understand the objection and I'm partly sympathetic to it in the sense that I agree with what Dr. Mohler said on this podcast last week. We're not an egalitarian convention. I mean, the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention are not egalitarian. We they're overwhelmingly, convictionally complementarian. It's written into our faith statement. And people, there's broad agreement about our faith statement. And when you look at the challenges that have happened on this issue over the last several years, everybody always reminds of this. But when it came to Saddleback and it came to Fern Creek and then there were some other churches even after that, in subsequent years, Saddleback and Fern Creek were 20, 23 in New Orleans. Then he had other churches after that. The votes to remove those churches with female pastors are always like 90%. I mean, it's not. This is not something where Southern Baptists are backtracking on their views about complementarianism. So I agree with what Dr. Mohler said. I don't want to overstate the thing. Like, we're like the whole convention has become egalitarian. I don't think that's true. However, I do believe that there are issues and there are some churches that are out of step with friendly cooperation. They're just there. I mean, it's a big deal that probably the largest Southern Baptist church in the convention, Saddleback, was doing this. And we had a church right here, Fern Creek, in Louisville. They had been doing this for many, many years. One thing that people often ask is, why are you just now doing this? Some of these churches have had female pastors, and you never acted on it. Why now? Well, the answer to that is because there wasn't a mechanism to do it until 2019. In 2019, as a part of the abuse reform efforts, there was an amendment to our bylaws and to our Constitution, basically, that made the credentials committee of the Southern Baptist Convention a standing committee so that you could report churches throughout the year. It wasn't just a committee that existed, you know, two. Two days a year at the Southern Baptist Convention. And so that's why all these membership challenges and all these discussions have been happening since 2019 and really since after Covid, because, you know, we didn't have the COVID meeting year. So it's been like 2021, 2022 and 23. That's where all the conversations have come up. So that's why the timing of it. But I agree that there's not. I don't think we're being overrun with egalitarianism, but I do think that there are problems at the margins and the Southern Baptists need the wherewithal to speak to those churches. I'll say one more thing. I do think then in a lot of otherwise complementarian churches, there is some concept creep in some areas. In other words, they're not formally changing their theological position, but they've had some concept creep around the title pastor. And my hope for those churches is not that we would just Flush them all down the toilet. That's not what I want. I want them to stay as a cooperating church. I just hope that we can kind of tighten everything back up. In other words, hey, you're using the word pastor wrong here. As a result of these conversations, you might ought to not do that. Don't assign the word pastor to people who aren't functioning that way. So I would hope that those churches would kind of self correct and we would just continue cooperating. I would hope that any inquiry into those churches would give them a chance to do that.
- [06:04]
Jonathan Swan
Hey, one quick note on that, Denny. I agree with you that egalitarianism is not a rampant problem in the spc. I do believe that the vast majority of Southern Baptists are conservative on this issue and genuinely believe that what the Bible teaches and our confession teaches at the office of pastor is limited to men qualified by scripture. That said, I don't know if you saw this poll being circulated by Sam Rayner just today from Church Answers. And it, you know, polls are just as good as a sample size. So I can't testify to how good this poll is, but it reported that only 55% of Southern Baptists actually believe that the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by scripture. Now who knows how the question was asked again, who's being pulled there? But, but I think that at least is a data point for us that says, hey, this isn't just no big deal at all. And the fact that we have been five plus years debating this issue without coming settled as a convention saying, no, this is what we believe. We believe our confession still and we're going to practice our confession still in our churches so folks can go look up that poll. But I do believe that, no, it's not an overwhelming problem. Sam Raynor posted it two hours ago.
- [07:22]
Colin Smothers
I haven't seen it yet. Okay, here are my initial questions though. Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me if you're polling Southern Baptist pews. You know, there's all kinds of beliefs you're going to find in Southern Baptist pews. But I'm talking like on the floor of the convention. It's not 50, 50.
- [07:39]
Jonathan Swan
Right.
- [07:39]
Colin Smothers
The people and the invested people who show up to the convention. It's not 50, 50 or whatever.
- [07:46]
Jonathan Swan
Yeah. It's overall, it's over 90%. Yeah, absolutely.
- [07:50]
Denny Burke
Yeah. And that's what matters. When you have those 90 plus votes on churches of the largest church in our denomination and arguably one of the most influential pastors in a generation, that really says something about the Principles that we hold. You know, I also think we need to consider this principle of renormalization, the idea that it only takes a handful of people in any body to, like, fundamentally change an institution, a country, a culture. And while it may not be a pervasive problem, it is one that runs against our stated beliefs. And so for that reason, we would want to clarify our beliefs and act in accordance with them. But also we need to recall the history of other conventions. And even our country, it's been just a small minority of people in our country who have turned the sexual revolution, turned our way of life on its head. And so we just need to be aware of those things in our own denomination. Okay, here's another one. Denny, you mentioned this earlier. We have these votes. You have saddleback, Fern Creek, 88, 90 +% say, hey, these churches are not in friendly cooperation, so the system is working. Why do we need this amendment?
- [09:04]
Colin Smothers
That's another good question. I think it's a fair question. Listen, if you want to come to the Southern Baptist Convent every year and have fights about specific churches on the floor of the convention and have votes on the floor of the convention every year, like we did in New Orleans with Saddleback and Fern Creek, if you want to do that every year, every other year, and have one or two or three or four churches that we're arguing about on the floor of the convention every year, yeah. You should not want this amendment, and you should not want bylaw 8. And you should want to change things so that we could just do everything on the floor every year. I would argue I've been back and forth on this, but I'm kind of at the place where I don't think that's a very wise use of our time. We're an enormous denomination. We have a lot of things to do that are very important. We're joined together for the purpose, not of. Minding the borders all the time. That's not what the convention is for. It's for our cooperative work together for theological education, for missions, for church planning. That's what the main things we're about. And the more that we're doing this stuff during the convention time, I think the more of a. It's not a good use of our time. And I think it's wiser to make use of the committee that will deal with these issues in the interim in between conventions. And so the amendment gives clarity to the credentials committee, which will make those decisions in between conventions. And when they make those decisions, if the church doesn't contest it, it's just over. You see what I'm saying? And so we don't have to consider on the floor. The only way that you'd have to consider on the floor is if they appealed it. And what happens with a lot of churches that get referred, some of them you never even hear about, because they just quietly say, you know, we don't match up with this, and we're not going to fight this. We're just going to withdraw. And so that's what's happened with a number of churches that have been been referred, and that's fine, but it's better than having to fight it out on the floor. When you can just do that, that seems a lot easier. So, yes, we do have a process that we could do this on the floor every year if you'd like. I just don't think it's the wisest thing. And it would be better to take care of it through the credentials committee, through the mechanism that we have.
- [11:33]
Denny Burke
So, Denny, you're saying that the Truth and amendment, or Truth and unity Amendment, actually is to promote unity in the convention?
- [11:41]
Colin Smothers
Yeah, I mean, I don't think there's. On the floor of the convention. There's got to be 90 plus percent agreement about what our doctrinal statement says and about female pastors, I think there's probably that much agreement about women preaching to the gathered assembly. So why. Why would we do this every year on the floor? You know, I'm the president of cbmw, okay? We have, you know, partners that are more than just Southern Baptist. Today's a Southern Baptist show. We had a PCA show a couple weeks ago. But, you know, but, you know, I'm president of cbmw, and even I'm tired of talking about this on the floor of the convention. Right? Like, I want us to not have to do this on the floor. I would rather have, you know, some clarity, offer some clarity to the credentials committee that they would then, you know, act decisively in some cases where they, in my view, haven't acted decisively in the past. My example of that is just Saddleback. The credentials committee initially did not act to remove Saddleback in Anaheim. And it was clear that the floor of the convention didn't like that. And so they brought back another recommendation the next year. But the credentials committee has not been overzealous. It's not like they. They've been trying to, like, persecute churches that don't deserve it. That's not what it's been at all. If anything, I think they've been a little, you know, not zealous enough. They haven't, you know, acted, you know, more decisively enough. So I think that the, the amendment would help with that so that, you know, churches that are clearly in violation don't have to be brought to the floor. They could just take care of this in between conventions. And if there's a dispute, then the. The church can appeal it and they have the right of appeal to the floor.
- [13:25]
Denny Burke
To your point, Denny, the matter of re litigating this every year is going to get tiresome. It actually is not the best way to steward our time. Especially when, when you remember the, you know, 10 years ago we were talking about Calvinism and Arminianism. Those are actually issues that we can debate within the convention because we have a compromised document in the BFM 2000 on this issue. We actually have really clear boundaries that are already set. In other words, the debate is already settled and this amendment will get us down the road to, I guess, fully, hopefully, and finally settling it. Okay, here's the thing.
- [14:04]
Jonathan Swan
Yeah, it's really the case of the squeaky wheel getting the grease. I mean, we're talking about 10% or less, 10% or fewer messengers that are showing up that would be ostensibly in favor of keeping these churches. And yet how much of the run up of the debate to the convention, to the General assembly or the annual meeting. I should say we're not the pca. And how much of just the oxygen. That's right. How much of the oxygen is being taken up not only at the meeting, but again before the meeting, on just this issue, when it's so not only clear in our confession, but clear in the messengers that show up 90%. And so I'm just as tired of it as you guys, and I'm ready to move on. Let's put this to bed and let's move on.
- [14:56]
Denny Burke
Not only that, I mean, the BFM 2000 was written partly in response to these issues. But let me go to the next one here. All right, There are these quotes circling around one of them of Dr. Mohler, especially since he's put forward this Truth in Unity amendment. The quote is, we would never presume to tell another church whom they may call as a pastor. So we have this quote circling around. And so people are saying, hey, listen, this amendment is undermining church autonomy. You are telling churches what kind of pastor they can or cannot have.
- [15:31]
Colin Smothers
Yeah, and I've seen that quote going around. People are saying, Look, Dr. Mohler said in the year 2000, right after the BFM came out that we would never presume to tell a church who they can call as pastor. And they're sending that around like it's some kind of a gotcha. Okay, first of all, let me just say this is not the first time that quote has gone around. It's just the first time. It's funny because I've seen it go around numerous times in the past and it's like everybody forgets that this has gone around before. What Mueller said then was correct. It's what all of us should be saying. If you're a Baptist, we cannot and we must not tell a church what they have to do in terms of who they call as pastor. There's nothing that we can do about what a church, what a Baptist church does when they call a pastor. We removed Saddleback three years ago. They still have female pastors. We have no control over who they call as pastor. And we would never presume to tell them who they can call as pastor. The only thing that the SBC does is say who we're going to cooperate with, which means who we're going to pool our assets with for theological education, for missions, and for church planning. Okay? And we're basically saying we're not going to pool our assets with you because we think that you're not in enough doctrinal alignment with us. But they're going to do whatever they want. And so there's no contradiction there. What he said in 2000 is what we all should be saying today. If you're a Baptist, okay? Now I know a lot of our people listening to CBMW podcast aren't Baptist, but just a little Baptist 101. Here. We're an autonomous church movement, which means every single church is independent, independently governed. It's not owned by the denomination or run by the denomination. The churches voluntarily participate in an association and cooperate together to pool their assets for Greater Kingdom purposes. But the sbc, the executive committee, the people in Nashville, they don't tell one single church what to do. They don't. Even if they did tell them what to do, the church would look back and say, well, that's great, you said that, but we're going to do what we want. If somebody in Nashville called our church today and said, we don't like your pastor, get a new one, we'd say, sorry, this is our pastor. So it's hard for people to understand this, but the SBC really is a bottom up denomination. It's run by the churches and the messengers that they send to the Convention. It's not run by people in Nashville or by, you know, anybody else. The churches are autonomous.
- [18:09]
Jonathan Swan
Yeah, that's what I was going to say is, you know, news flash, you know, Fern Creek still has women pastors. Saddleback still has women pastors. Nothing that we did enter the removal, changed their operation and their governance, etc. What it did, though, is, you know, other Southern Baptist churches in Louisville, you know, when you're driving by, you're looking up Southern Baptist churches in the area. Fern Creek shouldn't be popping up as a Southern Baptist church, coloring the reputation of the other Southern Baptist churches, identifying with the other Southern Baptist churches when it is so clear that they're out of step with the rest of the churches in the area in their faith and practice. So it's a matter of just identity, integrity. It's a matter of doctrinal fidelity. For the Southern Baptist Convention and for those individual churches, it's beyond me why those churches want to cooperate with the denomination that says in our confessional documents we will plant churches that ordain men as pastors qualified by scripture. I don't know why egalitarian churches want to stick around the sbc. I don't get it.
- [19:14]
Denny Burke
Yeah. Ultimately, there is an issue of honesty here. If you're going to align with churches who very explicitly state that the office of Pastors for qualified man. All right, here's the last question I want to ask you guys. And it's maybe one of the most more powerful objections or hesitations to the amendment, and it's this, that perhaps the language of function is too broad and it may open up the credentials committee, or it'll open it up to people wanting to pursue witch hunts on churches who have a female children's minister or director or something.
- [19:51]
Colin Smothers
Yeah, I mean, I. I totally get that. You know, if you read the amendment, it says a cooperating church would not act to affirm, appoint, or endorse a woman serving in the office or function of a pastor, elder, overseer, such as preaching to the assembled congregation. And so I've. I've been. You know, Mueller's the one proposing this amendment. He was on our. Our program last week. He's been around, you know, everywhere else and since then, saying the same thing over and over. The whole reason that that last clause is there, such as preaching to the assembled congregation, is because the function he primarily has in mind is that preaching to the assembled congregation. And because that's where we have consensus as a convention, I think most people would agree with that, that a woman should not preach to the gathered assembly. So that's the whole reason that that clause was brought on there at the end. But a lot of people are still saying, you know, but still function is broader than that and it can include other things. And therefore this amendment is going to be used to prosecute by some future committee. Our current committees have not. Current past committees have not been overzealous, but maybe there's going to be some future overzealous committee that's going to come along and go after the church that has the female children's minister. And this is where I think there's just kind of a misunderstanding about our polity. This if, if messengers wanted to challenge a church, a church that had a female children's minister, this amendment doesn't give them the power to do that. They already have the power to do that. Our current structure already allows for that challenge to happen. You see what I'm getting at? It's not this add. This. This amendment does not add or take away the right of messengers to make a challenge on those grounds. It doesn't add or take away the right of the credentials committee to choose to remove a church on those grounds. It doesn't do that. Now all it does is say you ought to be paying attention to the office and function of a pastor and particularly preaching. And so I think it's going to give guidance to our credentials committee about what the priorities are. And the priorities explicitly are the office of pastor and preaching. Now, if you want to say, well, somebody's going to come down the line and they're going to use this to take out the churches with the female children's ministers, I want to say they could do that. Now if we vote this down, they could do that. Like an overzealous credentials committee without this amendment can still do that. Do you see what I'm getting at? So, but I don't think people understand that. So this amendment is not adding or taking away some right or ability of the committee to do that or not do that. All it's doing is making explicit where there's consensus in the convention and it's that the office of pastors wanted to men is qualified by scripture and, and they should not function in preaching to the gathered assembly. That's what the amendment is doing.
- [23:13]
Jonathan Swan
Well, just to be clear on that one, just real quick, John, the reason why the function language was added was actually in part response to some of these churches, these egalitarian churches playing this shell game with the title of pastor. They thought they'd Be cute. And they changed all of their pastor titled office holders to shepherd. And so the concern is, well, you know, if a church like that, you know, changes all of their titles to shepherd and doesn't name pastor, then, you know, they're sort of doing an end run around an amendment like this. And the point is, no, everybody knows what we're talking about. We're talking about this primary spiritual office in the church, an office that is a pastor, elder, overseer. And, and even if a church were to innovate on their titles to try to stay in as an egalitarian church, we know that the function of pastor is this, which is why that clause is there at the end that Denny mentioned. But it's specifically talking about the office that we all know that the Bible defines and again restricts to qualified men.
- [24:19]
Denny Burke
I think you can make a case that the way that it's written represents the heart of where the convention is. Now, if you look at the most recent, most important votes on the kinds of churches that have been excluded, right, deemed to be not in friendly cooperation, it's those who have females who are pastors, called pastors and who do the work of preaching. There is just no desire, I don't believe among current Southern Baptists to go and to litigate and to prosecute churches with the female children's minister.
- [24:53]
Colin Smothers
And listen, make no mistake, if. Let's just say that somebody wanted to do that. If you brought to the credentials committee a church that a female children's minister, the credentials committee would say, this is ridiculous, they wouldn't take it. But let's just pretend for the sake of argument, you had a credentials committee that was overzealous. We don't have this, let's say we don't even have the amendment. They just decide, yeah, we don't like this. And so they recommend removal of a church with a female children's minister. If that came to the floor of the convention, you know what would happen? The messengers would reject that recommendation like 90% because that's just not where the Southern Baptist Convention is. The credentials committee is not going to do that. But even if you had one that would do that, the floor of the convention is not going to tolerate that. We have a consensus about, about preaching to the gathered assembly. I think a pretty good consensus on that and on the office of pastor. And that's what this amendment is addressing.
- [25:56]
Jonathan Swan
You know, one other thing that I've seen, former SBC President Bart Barber, he recently released a video about sort of the misguided approach of this amendment. And we should all be aiming at, you know, bylaw 8 and its reformation instead of this, this amendment. And what I would say to that is, it doesn't have to be either or. There was nothing in that video that told me I don't need to support this amendment. Yeah, if there's some process problems, the way the Credentials Committee and the Executive Committee relate, and then how things come to the floor, fine. You know, look at the Bylaw eight. But we are in, again, year five, going on year six of not fixing this problem. And I still have not seen a legitimate, concrete proposal that would change the status quo. Instead, we're just all saying, well, why don't we look over here or why don't we try over over there? But right now in Orlando in June, we know of the text of the motion that's going to be made to amend this constitution to move the ball forward on this conversation. So what I want to say to those may be convinced by that video, don't approach it like an either or. Vote for the amendment. And then if you think the bylaw 8 could be smoothed out better, the way the Credentials Committee functions, et cetera, pursue that, too. But don't deep six this particular amendment in pursuit of that, because you know what that's going to do. It's going to kick the can down the road an entire other year with the convention not going on record that we are faithful to our confession, we are faithful to the Bible, and we want to continue to be so.
- [27:29]
Colin Smothers
And I would just say, as you know, I agree with you. I think it's a both and it's not an either or. And I'm saying that as somebody who for a long time has thought there's flaws with bylaw 8, I think bylaw 8 has some issues with it. I think Bart identified some of them, frankly. So I'm not saying he's making bad points. I just don't think it's an either or. And, you know, so it can be a both and. And I'm totally open to conversations about bylaw 8. However, I don't want to settle that on the floor. I think that would. Would, you know, require a longer conversation because it's going to take a lot of fixing. I don't. I mean, we're deep in the weeds right now, and a lot of people who are not super invested have already turned this podcast off. It's okay. We'll try not to do this every week. But if you go look at that bylaw, it's pretty byzantine and long and it's going to take some doing, but I don't think that that it needs to be an either or thing.
- [28:27]
Denny Burke
Wow, Denny taking shots at the Byzantine today. Okay, well, thank you to our Anglican Lutheran PCA brothers and sisters who let let us the privilege to discuss some SBC matters. Denny and Colin, I'm sure we'll be discussing it more, but for everyone who's listening, thank you. Hey, subscribe like share the podcast. And for, hey, almost 40 years worth of resources, go to cbmw.org.