NAMB's New Church Plant's Lead Pastor is a Woman

A new Church plant from the Southern Baptists Convention’s North American Misson Board (NAMB – the church planting arm of the SBC) has tongues wagglin’ and liberals defendin’ after it was revealed that one of their lead pastors is a woman.

Jamie Farver, who co-leads 1Name Church with her co-pastor husband, is described on the church’s website under the “meet our pastors” section, as an “incredible wife, mother, and leader.”

Subsequent chyrons all across the website and in media reinforce this reality that she is a “lead pastor.”

Naturally, this is strictly prohibited by the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, which says “While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”

Despite this clear violation, we don’t expect anyone in the SBC or NAMB leadership to care, which is why we routinely dog them for their disobedience to the scriptures. In fact, we rarely expect anyone to acknowledge it, given how frequently they flagrantly flout how wretched they are, revealing the corruption and lack of integrity buried deep within the denomination.

Part of it is that it’s most prominent leaders don’t even acknowledge a problem. SBC President-Elect Al Mohler, for example, is convinced that the SBC has no women pastors, despite visuals like the above. He recently said:

…That’s rather stunning when you consider the fact that out of the almost 40,000 churches associated with the Southern Baptist Convention, not one of them has a woman as pastor…The problem with that is not one of those churches has a woman as pastor…We’re talking about 40,000 churches. And at the moment, I don’t believe that a single one of them has a woman as pastor…Again, the math, 40,000 roughly, and the other column zero. That’s not a close call…Again, 40,000 in one column, zero in the other…If Southern Baptists want Southern Baptist churches to have pastors who are women, they can do it, but they don’t do it.

Last year we did a big expose on this, when we discovered that 10% of the biggest churches in the Southern Baptist Convention have women pastors on staff, and another 15% have women functioning in the role of pastor, just without the title. 47 of them based on 466 churches. Add another 35,000 churches to the list, and it doesn’t take much to know we have a problem.

It is a fact. It has been a fact for years. It has been a fact for years that you can throw a rock into any random Baptist potluck and hit a pastrixes right in her Beth Moore Study Bible for the amount of them there are scurrying around unrebuked and un-kicked-out-of-convention.

Here’s some of what those churches look like.

FBC Alexandria ,
Journey Church » Our Leadership
Bon Air Baptist Church | Staff
Crossland Community Church
First Hot Springs
The Connection Church
Westside Baptist Church
Grace Midtown Church
The Woodlands First
Skyway Church
Mt. Pleasant Baptist
Our Team – Passion Community Church
Staff at Lakeside Baptist Church
Columbia Baptist Church: Our Staff
Our Team — Clovis Hills Community Church
About | Daybreak Church
Church in San Antonio, TX – Ministries, Sermons | Grace Point Church
Our Pastors – Antioch Long Beach
Staff — FIRST BAPTIST OF GAINESVILLE GA
Staff | First Denton
Staff | Jacob’s Well Church
» NLCC Staff
Staff — Fellowship of the Rockies
Church Staff | NorthWood Church
About Staff | Bay Life Church
Discover – Casas Church
https://www.smzbt.org
LifePoint.tv
Staff — Woodcrest
Staff Members | NorthPointe Community Church
Our Staff | Abba’s House
Our Leadership | Word Tabernacle Church
Our Staff – Bethlehem Church
Our Pastors | New Faith
About – Lifepoint Church
Higher Dimension Church
Staff – The Heights Church
Our Staff & Elders | Beltway Park Church
Meet Our Team | BT.CHURCH
Our Staff | The Crossing Church
Pastoral Staff — Hillvue Heights Church
Pellissippi – Faith Promise Church
The Fountain of Praise: Home
Grace Point Church – Our Staff
Leadership / Staff

The fact that a new NAMB church plant is operating in direct violation is only news because it lists Jamie as a “Lead Pastor” whereas most SBC churches give their pastrixes titles like “Worship Pastor” or “Spiritual Formations Pastor.” As a result, the only way corrupt organizations respond and act is by threats to their existence in the form of defunding.

If NAMB is going to actively plant churches with women pastors on staff, NAMB should be immediately defunded by the SBC and local churches ought to loudly and vocally cease contributing to the Cooperative Program, shouting out exactly why every step of the way.