Three years ago, we did an expose demonstrating that 10% Of The Biggest Southern Baptist Churches Are Pastored By Women. This was around the time that SBTS president Al Mohler commented on RNS Ryan Burge article Most Southern Baptist Women Would Welcome a Woman Pastor. It’s Unlikely to Happen, where Mohler forcefully denied that SBC churches would stand for it and claimed that not a single SBC church has a woman pastor on staff.
And if you just take the headline at face value, it tells us that the majority of Southern Baptist women, the word of the headline was, “most,” would welcome a woman as pastor of the church. 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.
And:
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.
We noted that when you consider the top 500 biggest churches in the SBC, not only do 10% of these churches have formalized pastrixes in leadership, but another 91 churches have women on staff with the title of either “Minister” – such as “Women’s Minister,” “Youth Minister,” “Singles Minister” – or, to a lesser extent, “Ministry Director” or “Director of Women’s Ministries.”
While some are serving in faithful, biblically appropriate roles (if with loftier-than-needed titles), many who function in their given roles are doing so with the same authority and positioning in the church as the elders and authority of a pastor but without that specific title. This is the game many churches play.
Since many of the biggest churches do not list their staff, we excluded them. This meant that if you combined the two groups, at least ONE-THIRD of the country’s top 450 largest SBC churches have women pastrixes or women “Ministers” employed on staff. There’s more, however.
Recently, Arlington Baptist Church Mike Law filed a motion to amend the SBC constitution, clarifying that it “Does not affirm, appoint, or employ a woman as a pastor of any kind.” He reveals that he felt the need to offer this amendment because “five Southern Baptist churches, roughly within a five-mile radius of my own congregation, are employing women as pastors of various kinds, including women serving as “Sr. Pastor.”
As part of this amendment plea, he produces evidence that at least 170 SBC churches* list women as either Senior pastor, Lead pastor, Associate pastor, Assistant pastor, Children’s pastor, Youth pastor, or Elders of some kind. 217 pages of screenshots, websites and links buttressing his position. A typical example would be:
Will the SBC deal with it? Given that there is no appetite from leadership to tackle the issue in any serious way, we’re not holding our breaths.
- Regarding the 170 churches, Law offers a few caveats.
Note #1: Affiliations are listed per the SBC Workspace Database. According to Annual Church
Profile Coordinator for Lifeway:
“The information on the Affiliations tab [in the SBC Workspace Database] represents the
current affiliations of the congregation. If a relationship with the SBC is shown on the
Affiliations tab, then it is believed that the congregation is in friendly cooperation with
the SBC.” 1
Note #2: Some churches are in this document without “Southern Baptist Convention” being
listed as one of their affiliations. For example, a church might be affiliated with the NorthStar
Church Network and the Baptist General Association of Virginia, but not have the Southern
Baptist Convention listed as one of their affiliations. Such a church remains listed because of one
or more of the following are true:
1) They are listed on the churches.sbc.net website (the website has SBC|Churches up in
the right hand corner, and it states that these are “Our Churches”).
2) They are listed in the SBC Workspace database.
3) Local and State Associations often relate to the SBC on a national level, so there is an
open question of whether they are considered to be in friendly cooperation with the
Southern Baptist Convention for the purposes of seating messengers.
For these reasons the relationship between these churches and the SBC needs to be clarified.
Note#3: I have not examined all of the churches in the Southern Baptist Convention. These are
either churches I personally discovered along the way of writing to the SBC Executive
Committee, churches who disclosed their female pastors to me through correspondence, or
churches who were brought to my attention through colleagues.
