Editorial: My response to critique and question

What ministry roles are open to women? Southern Baptists have spent the last several years debating and deciding on this question.

The Baptist Standard has covered that debate and the corresponding votes in our news columns. We have also published related opinion articles.

During that time, I have been open about my support of women in ministry, even in pastoral roles and carrying the title pastor.

This morning, I published a critique of a Voices op-ed I published in the “Woman called to ministry” series a couple of weeks ago. The critique also questions my decision to publish that Voices op-ed.

The question, some of the critique, and my response follow.

The question and critique

At the end of the critique, the respondent asks, “What about the Baptist Standard publishing such an op-ed?”

The respondent follows by stating the op-ed clearly “intends to be an advocate of experience and desire over the plain meaning of the relevant biblical text.”

This assertion of intent is itself a stated opinion. It attributes motives to the Voices writer that cannot be known solely from what she wrote. It also implies there is no valid interpretation of the relevant biblical text other than “the plain meaning” of that text. This is debatable.

The respondent followed his assertion by claiming the Voices writer used “emotionally charged stories and examples to distract from the truth.”

As with the first, this second assertion of intent is itself a stated opinion, going beyond what can be known solely from the op-ed in question. Furthermore, to suggest the Voices writer intended to “distract from the truth” is a serious charge that could be leveled at anyone who uses emotionally charged stories and examples to describe their call to ministry.

The respondent also stated, “It is patently obvious the Baptist Standard is trying to influence the outcome of” the second vote on Al Mohler’s “Truth and Unity Amendment.” That vote is scheduled for the 2027 Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting next June.

My response

In response to experience: I don’t know a single call story that did not involve an experience. I don’t know how anyone can tell their own call story without describing that experience, however long and complex that experience or set of experiences may be. Experience—and the discernment process is an experience—is integral to the call.

In response to emotion: I’m not sure how any person describes their call to ministry without using “emotive language,” perhaps leaning heavily on it, even to the point of being “emotionally charged.” A call to ministry captures our whole being—thoughts, actions, and feelings—and often can’t be described as clearly in logical terms as in emotional terms.

Can emotion obscure or be manipulative? Yes. So can our psychology—the way we think. This is why a call to ministry needs to be discerned through prayer and within a community of mature followers of Jesus. I take the Voices writer to have done just that.

In fairness, I don’t think the respondent is completely discounting experience or emotion. Rather, I think the respondent would expect experience and emotion to be filtered and bounded by the interpretation of Scripture to which he holds, which I think he would say is not an interpretation but is Scripture itself.

My intent in publishing

In response to my intent in publishing the Voices op-ed in question: As the 2026 SBC annual meeting approached, I believed approval of Albert Mohler’s “Truth and Unity Amendment” on its first vote was a foregone conclusion. I believe the same about the second vote; I expect it to pass.

About the first vote: I believed passage was a foregone conclusion based on the level of support within the SBC during the last few years for the so-called Law Amendment, exclusion of churches with women pastors, at least one resolution on women’s roles, and doubling down on the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message’s language limiting pastors/elders/overseers to men.

And the fact Mohler carries significant influence in the SBC. That’s why he was marshaled to speak in favor of Saddleback Church’s exclusion from the SBC. Rick Warren speaking against that exclusion called for someone of similar status to speak for it.

Mohler’s “Truth and Unity Amendment” was approved on first vote by 74.66 percent. This did not surprise me in the least.

The second vote on Mohler’s amendment is scheduled for the 2027 SBC annual meeting next June. I have no reason to believe it will not pass on second vote, regardless of what I publish.

In the lead up to the first vote, knowing women’s calls to ministry were being questioned more broadly than the SBC annual meeting, I wanted to give women a place to tell their call stories. I asked women in various ministry roles who hold various convictions on the role of women in ministry to write.

My intent in publishing the Voices op-ed in question, along with the rest of the series, was and is to provide space for women’s call stories. In keeping with Baptist principle, I leave it to the local church to discern the validity of anyone’s call to ministry, woman or man.

My intent in publishing the critique, which was not solicited, was and is in keeping with my and this organization’s understanding there is a range of conviction in Baptist life on the topic of women in ministry that calls for our own earnest study of the matter.

Study the matter for yourself

The respondent concluded his op-ed with a recommended reading list. I do not question the academic rigor of the works he cited.

I will end my response with a corresponding reading list of work by reputable students of Scripture whose interpretation of the biblical text differs from those recommended by the respondent. The list is nowhere near exhaustive.

I offer this list not to persuade readers to adopt my support of women in ministry. I offer it because our position on women in ministry, and so many other topics in Scripture, should be a studied position. That requires considering varying interpretations under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the lordship of Christ Jesus, and in conversation with mature followers of Jesus. Truth can withstand the scrutiny.

• Understanding the Bible Commentary: 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus by Gordon Fee.
• Tyndale New Testament Commentaries: The Pastoral Epistles by Osvaldo Padilla.
• Women in Ministry: Biblical, Theological & Practical Reflections by Todd Still.
• From Genesis to Junia: An Honest Search for What the Bible Really Says About Women in Leadership by Preston Sprinkle.
• Fire in Her Bones: A Biblical Defense of Women as Preachers and Pastors by Ellis Orozco.
• A Voices series on biblical interpretation of women in ministry by Brent Gentzel.

Eric Black is the executive director, publisher, and editor of the Baptist Standard. He can be reached at [email protected]. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.