Southern Baptist women have their place in fulfilling the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20), but not as senior pastor, teaching pastor, elder or bishop. That was the decision of Southern Baptists who met earlier this week in New Orleans for their annual convention.

The convention schedule included appeals from two churches that had been disfellowshipped for having women in key leadership roles, Saddleback Church in California and Fern Creek Baptist Church in Kentucky. Author of “The Purpose Driven Life Rick Warren,” was pastor of Saddleback until he resigned for health issues, and appointed a husband-and-wife team as senior pastor and teaching pastor.

Eighty-nine percent of voters – representatives from churches referred to as Messengers – sided with the credentials committee’s decision to disfellowship the two churches.

Rev. Johnny Dammon, pastor of First Baptist Church of Lake Charles, was at the meeting and heard the appeals. “It was all pretty straight forward,” he said. “The appeals were made in good faith by good, godly people and my sense of it is that they were sincere, but the decision by the credentials committee was to declare these churches not in “friendly cooperation with the convention,” Dammon said.

Rev. David Ernest, First Baptist Church of DeQuincy, said the pastor from the Kentucky church was a very good speaker. “You could tell she was a preacher,” he said. However, in her opening remarks, she said she was more conservative than most Southern Baptist pastors.

“I thought, obviously not,” Ernest said, “or you wouldn’t be up there speaking.”

He said resolutions presented to further clarify ambiguous wording in the Confession of Faith after the vote had nothing to do with the disfellowship of the two churches. Resolution five celebrates the value and importance of Southern Baptist women in fulfilling the Great Commission. Resolution six urged churches to uphold all the biblical requirements for the church’s two biblical offices, pastor and elder.”

Ernest pastors a conservative church that has held strong convictions concerning the Baptist Faith and Mission for 120 years. “It would have been hard for us to continue cooperating with the Southern Baptist Convention if it didn’t take a stand. I think there would have been a mass exodus if we didn’t uphold what the Bible clearly teaches.”

“This decision might make us look bad to some, at the surface,” said Bruce Baker, Carey Baptist Association Executive Director, but that’s objectively and excruciatingly wrong. This is not a brand new issue, it has been brewing for at least 20 years.. We addressed this issue in the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 and most people thought it was abundantly clear what the position was.”

Others disagreed, making it necessary to clarify the position this year. The Southern Baptist Convention was organized in 1845, but the first formal confession, The Baptist Faith and Message wasn’t adopted until 1925. In 1963 it was revised. It wasn’t revised again until 2000 to “clarify Biblical truth for a changing culture,” according to a Baptist Press article. The Baptist Faith and Message is divided into sections, and the following excerpts are from article/section six, “The Church.”

In 1925, it was worded, “ A church of Christ is a congregation of baptized believers, associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel; observing the ordinances of Christ, governed by his laws, and exercising the gifts, rights, and privileges invested in them by his word, and seeking to extend the gospel to the ends of the earth. Its Scriptural officers are bishops, or elders, and deacons. In 1963, the wording was changed to,  “Its Scriptural officers are pastors and deacons. In 2000, the following was added. “Itts scriptural officers are pastors and deacons. While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”

The article was amended Wednesday, June 14 and now reads, “Its two scriptural offices are that of pastor/elder/overseer and deacon. While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor/elder/overseer is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”

“Historically, most denominations only had men as pastors,” Baker said. “Clearly there are women in the Bible who served to share the gospel but there has been a tension in Southern Baptist life regarding where they fit in today.”

The decision for men in the top leadership role was based, in part, on I Timothy 3:2, ‘a bishop must then be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, given to hospitality, apt to teach.’ It would be hard for a woman to be the husband of one wife,” he said.

Baker said when churches began hiring females to be senior pastors, it created problems even with the men and women most sympathetic to women in ministry. Few have done so. Only seven of 45,000 SBC churches.

“Regarding women in the ministry, the question is, “does the Bible provide any limitations on service: For Southern Baptists, the clearest answer is, ‘Some.’ While this runs counter to the contemporary cultural trend, we don’t have the option to overlook or reject the biblical standard in favor of the cultural moment. Some people will interpret this as a rejection of women. This is too shallow an interpretation. This is primarily a submission to the Bible.

He is disappointed that evangelical theology is being hijacked by politics, and not just at the Southern Baptist Convention. But he appreciates that the “missiology”” is still on point, to spread the gospel, to love our neighbors as ourselves. He and a group of 25,000 people from all over the country are doing that through disaster relief work. He would rather talk about that, and the impact of the Southern Baptists sexual abuse task force.

“The Bible is the authoritative source in our lives, not just to believe it, but to practice it, whether that is in keeping with culture or not. I am restrained by what the scripture says, whether I agree or not, I seek to obey it,” Baker said.

Dammon, who served as a Southern Baptist International missionary for 15 years, said, “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing and that’s spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth.”