Saddleback Church

• Saddleback founder and former pastor Rick Warren appealed the church’s ejection at the 2023 conference.
• About 88% of messengers – Southern Baptists’ language for delegates – then voted to reaffirm the church’s expulsion.
• The proposed amendment to exclude any church that hires a woman as a pastor must be voted on again at next year’s annual meeting.

The ‘woman question’

• Women were not allowed to serve as messengers to the SBC until 1918.
• Until the 20th century, only men gave the missionary organization’s report to the SBC.
• Those beliefs formed a basis for gender hierarchy that ultimately triumphed over more moderate egalitarianism in the late 20th century.

Southern Baptist controversy

• In the 1970s, greater numbers of women entered the six Southern Baptist seminaries, many professing a calling to the pastorate, even though most churches still refused to ordain them.
• I was a student at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the 1980s.
• As historian Barry Hankins also concludes, the “gender issue” eventually became a central issue for Southern Baptist fundamentalists as their takeover of the SBC proceeded.
• A number of Southern Baptist churches had ordained women, and some had called women as pastors.

First in the Edenic fall

• In 1984, as fundamentalists gained greater control, the SBC passed a resolution against women’s ordination.
• The Southern Baptist Convention has no official control over local churches.
• Some local churches did ordain and call women to the pastorate, and their local Baptist associations “disfellowshipped” those congregations, excluding them from participating in the local association.

‘Gracious submission’

• For Southern Baptists, the statement of faith is not a creed but rather a set of largely agreed-upon beliefs.
• Seminaries and denominational agencies, such as the International Mission Board, however, must work within the guidelines of the statement.
• In seminary leaders’ thinking, however, she was teaching men the Bible, which they forbid women to do.

Future purge

• If the proposed constitutional amendment passes next year, it will likely lead to a purge of many other Southern Baptist congregations.
• Already, the pastor who proposed the amendment has compiled a list of 170 churches that he claims are in violation of the ban.

• "SBC at the Crossroads" begins its staggered release today with, Part 1: "Denial or Revival?"
• This isn't a glitch or the result of a pandemic; it's a trajectory we've been on for a while.
• I have Southern Baptist pastors on both sides of my family going back four generations.
• Pastor Warren is scheduled to give a 3-minute appeal to SBC messengers from the Convention floor at the Annual Meeting in New Orleans on the afternoon of June 13, 2023.

• LONDON, May 15, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Spurgeon's College, based in Croydon, London and one of the UK's leading Christian Colleges, today jointly announced with Pastor Rick Warren his installation as its first honorary Chancellor.
• Pastor Warren will need no introduction for many Christians as an innovative American pastor, renowned author, and global influencer.
• Pastor Warren is the author of The Purpose-Driven Church and The Purpose-Driven Life, which have sold over 84 million copies worldwide.
• "I am delighted to have officially joined Spurgeon's College as its first Chancellor at this important time in its development and mission," said Chancellor Warren.

• As the school's Director of Learning Environments, Joe Way was in charge of educational technology, and his phone was buzzing.
• When Way took the job at USC just seven months earlier, he had been encouraged to think BIG.
• "USC billed itself as a global institution, but it really didn't have the technologies to live up to that," Way says.
• Overall, Way considers himself blessed to have found this niche, and he encourages others in the AV industry to consider higher ed.