In response to the approval of a last-minute motion by a cabal of SBC insiders led by James Merritt, SBC president Bart Barber appointed a twenty-member task force, known as the Cooperation Group, to study and define the limits of “friendly cooperation.” In other words, how much could a member church’s doctrine and practice deviate from the plain meaning of the Baptist Faith and Message (BFM2000) (particularly regarding the hot-button issue of woman “pastors”) and still be considered in “friendly cooperation?”
The move followed recent decisions by SBC messengers to disfellowship Saddleback Church for ordaining women pastors and approve an amendment to the SBC constitution codifying that churches with women pastors would are not in “friendly cooperation” (amendments to the SBC constitution must be approved two years in a row to apply). While Barber insists that the role of the Cooperation Group is not “to rule in any way on the constitutional amendment proposed by Mike Law and amended by Juan Sanchez,” the messenger-undermining purpose of the group is clear – particularly as Barber has stacked the group with a veritable cantina bar-worthy cast of progressive egalitarians. Even Merritt, the gay-approving former SBC president who slipped the last-minute poison pill into the messengers’ drink, says the group’s purpose is about the role of women in ministry.
It’s an elegant, if crass, workaround, where even if the SBC constitution ends up saying specifically that the BFM2000’s prohibition on women pastors means lack of friendly cooperation, the Cooperation Group will have introduced its own muddy, subjective framework to confuse the issue just enough to make the issue of women pastors unenforceable. Even Barber insinuated that passing the “Law Amendment” would likely irrelevant because the Executive Committee (presumably with heavy influence from the “Cooperation Group”) would “rewrite” the SBC Constitution (at 8:10+).
Barber explains the makeup of who he’s choosing for the scheme:
“The Cooperation Group contains a mixture of men and women, pastors and laypeople and denominational workers, people from various parts of our geography, and people of different ages. Additionally, following the messengers’ instructions, the Cooperation Group contains people broadly representative of the various points of view that comprise the family of churches that is the Southern Baptist Convention. The breadth of the Southern Baptist Convention includes people and churches who do not affirm the entirety of The Baptist Faith & Message…”
Enter Rev. Dr. Jerome F. Coleman, the Lead Pastor of First Baptist Church of Crestmont, in Willow Grove, Pa.
Coleman is a member of the Cooperation Group appointed by Barber due to give their recommendations this summer.
He also happens to be married to Rev. Kim A Coleman, the Executive Pastor of the church.
Not content to stay in the background, Pastor Kim regularly preaches during the morning service.
This means that Barber appointed someone who, if their church had been considered for disfellowship at last year’s Convention, would like Saddleback have certainly been disaffiliated from and excised by the denomination.
It gets worse. The church frequently invites preacher ladies to attend the pulpit and speak at conferences.
Last of all, Rev. Kim Coleman is not the only woman pastor at First Baptist Church of Crestmont, but rather there are TWO women pastors, making them the majority clergy.
Call us crazy, but a church living on borrowed time where the women pastors outnumber the male ones 2-1 is not what most Southern Baptists envision when they consider selecting members who are “broadly representative” of the denomination, and don’t think for a moment Barber doesn’t know it.
