Voices: Some truth and unity for Texas Baptists

The SBC has spoken. Now Texas Baptists must decide who we will be.

Pentecost. It is 9 in the morning in Jerusalem, and the Spirit falls. Wind. Fire. Ordinary men and women spill into the street, speaking the wonders of God in tongues they never learned, and Peter stands to explain.

This, he says, is what Joel foresaw: “I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy” (Acts 2:17).

The first sermon of the church does not merely permit daughters to speak. It mobilizes them to speak to the crowds, as the prophet foretold. They were and are essential to God’s plan to redeem the world.

Clear testimony of Scripture

Last week, the Southern Baptist Convention made a choice. By three to one, its messengers voted to bar from cooperation any church that affirms a woman in the office or function of a “pastor.” They did not stop at the title, or even the office. They reached for restrictions on the function. Women are not to go around pastoring.

This is their right. Baptist bodies are free. But so are we, and the question now is not what they have done in their house. Can a little truth and prayer bring some unity to ours?

With this move, the SBC has overcorrected against God’s design for our sisters and daughters and acted in a reactionary way that neither honors the clear testimony of Scripture nor our shared experiences with God over the past 140 years.

We aren’t naive. We know the danger. When the culture writes a church’s theology, that church is already lost.

Texas Baptists have and will always stand on the authority of God’s word. We do now. Most of our churches haven’t been pursuing cultural trends nor are secular feminist pressures a driver.

If at some point you find my reasoning to be beyond Scripture, I’ll be happy for the insight, but on this count, the SBC is simply in error, in part, because some have rather suddenly become more concerned about the patterns of men in the 17th century than the women of the first.

More than a few hundred words are going to be required to unwind it all, but let’s begin here.

Precise interpretation

It may be true that a church or denomination can honestly read that the overseer or elder of a church should, under most circumstances, be a man, but what simply is not defensible is that there is any such thing in the New Testament called the “office of the pastor.”

Neither does the New Testament teach women are barred from functioning as shepherds within a church family. In fact, women clearly shepherd in most every Baptist church in our world.

Overseer and elder are not common terms for most Baptist churches, but precision in the way these terms are used and understood is suddenly important to our current discussion. So, let’s look closely to what the Bible says and the words it uses in this matter.

Although many Baptist churches use the word “pastor” to mean the “overseer” of their church as did the guys from the 17th century, this is not precisely in line with the New Testament. Again, now is a time for precise interpretation.

The word “pastor” is only mentioned once in the New Testament. In Ephesians 4, we find this term, which comes from the same root as the word “shepherds.” Pastors are given as gifts to the church and listed among a host of other gifts like evangelists, prophets, teachers, and apostles.

In Scripture, we find clear biblical examples of women as prophets, teachers, and evangelists, and it is more likely than not that Junia was an apostle. In the same way, we have examples of women shepherding others, like Priscilla with Apollos or Phoebe in Romans 16. Whether Priscilla or Phoebe are overseers or not could be debated; whether they were shepherding cannot.

Lots of ordinary people who are not necessarily overseers had all these gifts in the first church and likely have them in various combinations in your church.

Again, Ephesians is the only place in the New Testament that mentions “pastors,” and there’s no textual reason to think pastors can’t also be women. These are giftings with functions, and there is no faithful way to see any of these gifts restricted only to men.

In Matthew 20, Jesus teaches us the greatest among us will be those who are best at serving, and in many of our churches, the greatest servant-hearted members are women who pastor people around them through ministries, groups, or outreach efforts of the church.

‘Pastor/elder/overseer’

Perhaps you see in Scripture the need for a church to have a man as the chief overseer. Fine. You may even call him “Reverend,” “Preacher,” “Brother,” “the Pastor,” or “Senior Pastor. But these extra-biblical ways of referring to the overseer of our churches must not cause us to be confused about the function of the many pastors in our churches.

Everyone who has a gift for shepherding others is using pastoral gifts. They are pastoring in your church.

I understand the objection. Doesn’t Scripture command the elders to shepherd the flock? It does. Overseers are commanded to shepherd in Acts 20. Something similar is said in 1 Peter 5.

Of course, overseers would pastor. Indeed, some in our modern world seem slow to do so. But it does not follow that only overseers shepherd. That same verb describes what countless gifted believers do for the people of God every day.

The flock of those who shepherd is far larger than the roll of those who oversee, and the New Testament nowhere says otherwise. To reason from “overseers shepherd” to “only overseers may shepherd” is not exegesis. It is a logical leap in exegetical clothing.

All who shepherd

For 25 years, our church has used the biblical term pastor to describe many of the people in our congregation. We have class pastors, age group pastors, community pastors, outreach pastors, and teenagers who pastor their peers in table groups every Sunday.

These are not offices of power. They are expressions of giftings and functions in the church. Other bodies elected by our church family join me in accomplishing formal oversight, as has been the pattern for most Texas Baptist churches across history.

We use the term “pastor” anytime we find someone who demonstrates God has given them this pastoral gifting. In a tradition that holds dear the notion of the priesthood of every believer, our path in this matter seems like a pretty Baptist thing to do.

Men and women have these gifts in our church as they do in yours, and I am thankful for all those who have taken up the responsibility of shepherding alongside me.

There are so many ways people shepherd. Across time, Baptists have all celebrated the pastoral gifts of women likeLottie Moon and Annie Armstrong. We have found pastoral encouragement in the words of Fanny Crosby and Charlotte Elliott.

The Spirit’s pastoring work has reached us through Bertha Smith’s revival calls and the pastoral guidance given through Betty Criswell’s radio Bible class. Many have been helped by Anne Graham Lotz’s prophetic voice. And who could deny the Spirit’s blessing on Tillie Burgin’s pastoral passion expressed through Mission Arlington?

Call these women whatever title you please. Every one of them, and millions of other Christian women around the globe, shepherd others, and in doing so they are the gift to the church that Ephesians 4 promises.

But, by the standard the SBC just approved, not one of these women was honoring God’s intention for their lives or their churches. Their functioning was out of bounds. These women should have been policed. Their leaders rebuked. Their churches expelled.

No Texas Baptist I’ve ever met believes that … or wants it for our future.

Our daughters will prophesy?

The SBC has overreacted to address the ill currents in the culture, erred in the opposite direction, and now demands obedience to its new and unbiblical standard.

Much more remains to be discussed. In the coming weeks, I will invite us to move through a number of issues this recent action has raised. We will move slowly and eventually consider what Scripture means when it says our daughters will prophesy and what it costs the church to pretend it means nothing.

For most of us, this is more than a theological debate. In my own church, Beth James shepherded our children for 10 years. She did not do it alone. She gathered men and women around her, opened the Scriptures to them, and taught them to teach God’s word to the children of our community.

She loved and cared for hundreds of kids and their families in the most painful and consequential moments of life. To call her a director or a coordinator would not be the Bible’s language for what she did. It would be ours, chosen to avoid the word the New Testament provides us.

She was a pastor of children. She shepherded families. That is the plainest, most biblical title for the function she carried. You will learn more about Beth in the weeks to come.

Not beyond fellowship

To any church who may disagree with us: I think you are mistaken, but I do not think you are beyond friendship or cooperation. I understand the streams that have led you to your position, and although we may not see eye to eye on these matters, I would never vote to push you out of our common work.

We Texas Baptists have make-or-break issues. What we call the shepherding people in our church should not be one of them.

Cooperation does not require me to control your church, nor do I have any desire to dictate what function or title you allow people to do or hold in your fellowship.

We can visit about this over coffee, both grow in our understanding, and stay friends. We have kept that magnanimous spirit for 140 years in Texas, and our great common mission field can’t afford for us to lose such a spirit now.

Let’s value the women in our churches and mend the bridges among us.

Brent Gentzel gives leadership to First Baptist Church in Kaufman. The views expressed are those of the author.