Saddleback Church, Women Pastors, and Baptist Polity

Photo by Alexis Brown on Unsplash

There was a furor in 2021 when Saddleback Church, the second largest SBC Church in the USA, ordained three women pastors. This led to debates about the office vs. function of pastor, should women do seminary degrees in pastoral ministry, can women pastor other women, if so, can you call them “pastors.” Plus debates over the spectrum of complementarianism and calls for Saddleback to be disfellowshipped from the SBC. In fact, at the 2022 SBC convention in Anaheim, former Saddleback senior pastor Rick Warren, addressed the convention, “Are we going to keep bickering over secondary issues,” Warren asked, “or are we going to keep the main thing the main thing?”

Well, now in 2023, the SBC executive committee has voted to disfellowship Saddleback church over the issue of women pastors.

To be honest, I think it’s sad that the SBC executive committee has shown Saddleback the door, while SBC churches and entities continue to throw out the welcome mat to Christian nationalists like William Wolfe. As someone who likes and loves my SBC friends, I am genuinely grieved that Saddleback is being thrown out while outspoken Christian nationalist William Wolfe is getting increasingly platformed. The SBC should treat Wolfe’s toxic mixture of white nationalist race-baiting and theocracy the way Joe Biden treats balloons over Alaska!

Let me make two observations from Australia.

First, in Australia, complementarian denominations like the Sydney Anglicans, who are far from feminist radicals, ordain women to the Diaconate (giving them the title “Rev.”), and employ many women in pastoral roles in their churches. About 25% of Sydney Anglican churches allow women preachers even if they do not allow women to serve as senior ministers or ordain them to the priesthood. My point is that other complementarian entities are not quite so freaked out at the prospect of women being pastors by either title or function as long as they are subordinate to a senior pastor who is male. Note, not my view, but #JustSaying.

Second, Australian Baptist churches went through this same debate in the 80s and 90. FYI, back then, I was a Baptist and on the complementarian side! The problem was that in Australian State Baptist Associations ordination was done by the association as a whole, so all the Baptist churches ordained all the Baptist ordinands. Well, when some churches wanted to ordain women as associate pastors or senior pastors, that became an issue, because not all Baptist churches wanted to ordain women. The solution/compromise proffered in New South Wales was to adopt a more American model of ordination. Baptist pastors would be accredited by the State Association (e.g., police background checks, psych evaluation, etc.), but ordination was done by the local church not by the State Association. In effect, NSW Baptists turned to the American system of ordination by the local church to stop Baptist denominations from splitting over the issue of women’s ordination. So, it’s ironic, that the SBC is now splitting over the issue of women’s ordination as pastors.

The episode of Saddleback vs. SBC shows the tension in Baptist church polity. What matters most? Confessional unity on a secondary matter or the independence and autonomy of Baptist congregations? Baptists have traditionally valued the latter more than the former.

But hey, I’m Anglican and egalitarian now, not my monkey, not my circus, I’m not gonna tell my Baptist friends how to be Baptist! Just pointing out how it all looks from Australia!