The SBC Had and Has a Rick Warren Problem

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The SBC had a Rick Warren problem – had because Warren is the former pastor of Saddleback and Saddleback used to be part of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The SBC has a Rick Warren problem – has because Warren still has a massive platform (this platform apparently includes a massive email list) and Warren is using that platform to appeal the exclusion of Saddleback from the Southern Baptist Convention.

The aim of this post is not to detail the history of recent conflict between the Southern Baptist Convention and Rick Warren. You can find plenty of online commentary on that drama. The aim of this post is simply to offer a regular pastor’s response to mega-church pastor Rick Warren’s “SBC Stand” campaign, a campaign based on ridiculous arguments, loaded rhetoric, and obfuscating statements.

What follows is Warren’s comments about SBC Stand in bold, followed by my response.

We stand on behalf of millions of SBC women whose God-given spiritual gifts and leadership skills are being wasted instead of empowered for the Great Commission. Great Commission Baptists believe Jesus authorized every woman to go, to make disciples, to baptize and to teach — just as he authorized every man. We cannot finish the task Jesus gave us with 50% of the church forced to sit on the bench. Response: Warren’s comments here assume that a person gifted for leadership is wasting their spiritual giftedness unless and until they hold the office of pastor (elder, overseer) and fulfill the function of pastor (elder, overseer). This claim would presumably apply to the millions of SBC men who are wasting their “God-given spiritual gifts and leadership skills” by working in the public square and serving as active laymen in their local church. Warren’s claim that 50% of the church (women) are being as to “sit on the bench” is also ridiculous. Again, this statement assumes that any believer not holding the office of pastor (elder, overseer) and fulfilling the function of pastor (elder, overseer) is making no contribution to the Great Commission. Apparently, Warren thinks pastors are the only Christians “in the game.” Anyone who has followed Warren knows that he has been passionate about getting believers involved in their local church – involvement that is not limited to the office and function of pastor. Thus, when Warren speaks this way, his argument appears to be manipulative and obfuscating. We stand on behalf of the hundreds of concerned SBC pastors who have female pastors serving on their staffs. These pastors are fearful and worried their congregations will also be disfellowshipped when their churches are discovered by the new SBC “inquisition.” Response: Warren rightly points out that there are Southern Baptist churches who use the title “pastor” to refer to their female staff members (ie, Children’s Pastor, Women’s Pastor, etc). Some of these churches use the title with all seriousness, believing that women can hold the office of pastor. Others use the title carelessly, not thinking about what these job titles actually communicate. The problem with Warren’s argument is that he implies these churches have only two options – either they can support SBC Stand, or they can face the latest SBC “inquisition.” First, Warren knows the historical use of the word “inquisition,” and he uses the word to scare people. There is no SBC “inquisition,” and the exclusion of Saddleback is certainly not the first act of exclusion taken by the SBC in recent years. Second, these churches have other options, including the option to leave the SBC and affiliate with other like-minded churches who support the ordination of women, or change the way they use the word “pastor” when speaking about staff members. Warren himself has admitted that most Southern Baptists do not agree with him on this issue. I think he’s right, and I’m left wondering why an enlightened person like Warren would even want to stay in a denomination that largely disagrees with his position. We stand of behalf of the dedicated International Mission Board (IMB) missionaries who recognize the historic value-added impact women in leadership offer the organization. There are many female leaders represented in the mission field who are dedicated to sharing the Gospel to all nations and in all languages. Women serve in various non-pastoral roles throughout the IMB at the director level and above on both field and staff leadership teams, including in senior leadership vice president roles. With a renewed emphasis on the restriction of women, the world will lose more godly female church planters and couples serving as pastoral teams in the mission field. Response: The notion that the SBC and the IMB do not recognize the “value-added impact” of women is preposterous! Women have historically been appointed to missionary service with the IMB, and this practice has not changed since the adoption of the BFM 2000. Additionally, the phrase “pastoral teams” is intentionally ambiguous. If this term means a pastor and his wife working as a team, fine. If this term means husbands and wives share the call to pastoral ministry, not fine. The BFM statements on ecclesiology in no way, shape, or form allow for anything like a “pastoral team” of husband and wife who share the call to pastor and the office of pastor. Elsewhere in the SBC Stand campaign, Warren tries to connect the fact that the IMB currently has fewer appointed missionaries on the field than in years past. This is a classic mistake of confusing correlation with causation. Warren doesn’t mention the financial woes of the IMB in previous years that led to a reduction in the missionary force. We stand on the foundational principle of the SBC that every church is autonomous. A decision this critical to the denomination’s future identity should be decided by the Messengers, not a committee, at the Annual Meeting in New Orleans in June. The Messengers must decide whether or not they want the Executive Committee to act like a Catholic magisterium. Response: Every SBC pastor I know who stands for the ordination of only qualified men to the office of pastor (elder, overseer) also believes in the autonomy of the local church. None of them are hoping to ditch congregationalism to elect a Baptist Pope. Warren is right to insight on the autonomy of the local church, but in making this one of his five pillars, he passively suggests that everyone and anyone who opposes his position is by default in favor of something akin to a “Catholic magisterium.” Again, more scare language. Warren fails to note that the SBC is a voluntary convention of churches, and as a convention of churches the SBC has the right to define the boundaries of affiliation. We’ve never allowed any and every church to affiliate with the SBC, and we’ve always had an idea of what like-minded churches would look like. Does this mean we’ve been a “Catholic magisterium” all these decades? Of course not. The convention of churches known as the SBC has every right to appoint committees and boards that will uphold the boundaries of the SBC as set forth in the BFM 2000. This is no threat to the autonomy of the local church, nor does it represent a move towards a more Catholic or Episcopalian form of ecclesiology. We stand to protect and uphold the shared values and mission of the SBC.   Our goal is to spark the thinking of Messengers regarding the future direction of the SBC. The Messengers must decide whether or not they want the Executive Committee to act like a Catholic magisterium. Response: Again, Warren’s statement here is well crafted and misleading. The statement implies that while Warren is on a mission to uphold the shared values and mission of the SBC, his opponents are simply out to accomplish some nefarious goal. Maybe that’s destroying unity? Maybe that’s imposing a “Catholic magisterium?” Whatever that horrible agenda may be, Warren wants us to be grateful for his heroic efforts to fight for the values and mission of the SBC. But what if the authors of the BFM actually believed that restricting the pastoral office to qualified males (as the New Testament clearly does) was essential to Southern Baptist churches working together in shared values for a shared mission? What if the overwhelming majority of Southern Baptists actually know what a pastor is and is not, and want the future of the SBC to be faithful to the clear teaching of the New Testament? In all reality, Warren doesn’t want to uphold the shared values of the SBC. He wants to reshape them to include the idea that women can be and should be ordained to the office of pastor (elder, overseer). Currently, the concerns about women serving as pastors is a subject of intensive debate within the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).  As followers of Christ, we’re never going to achieve unity on doctrine, but we can achieve unity on mission. Response: It is shocking to see a man who has devoted his life to the proclamation of the gospel simply throw his hands in the air, despairing of the possibility of Southern Baptists finding any kind of doctrinal unity. If this is the case, the BFM has absolutely no role in Southern Baptist life, and all manner of “false teaching” should simply be accepted with the understanding that doctrinal unity is impossible. It’s equally shocking that Warren would think there could be some sort of missional unity in the absence of doctrinal unity. Assuming he’s right, how would we actually define the mission? How would we define success? How would we have any basis for deciding who to work with in achieving this nebulous, undefined mission. Warren knows better than this. He knows theology drives mission, and his statement here is a manipulative attempt to frame the issue in a friendly, winsome, cooperative way. Warren knows Southern Baptists are committed to the idea of cooperation, and he is now suggesting that cooperation trump doctrine in defining the nature of our association as a convention of churches.

Rick Warren is no dummy. He’s a brilliant man and a world-class communicator. These five statements (the sixth point above is a summary point taken from the SBC Stand website) are purposefully written both in what they positively say and negatively omit. Notably missing from Warren’s recent social media posts is any coherent argument regarding the New Testament passages that clearly limit the office of pastor to qualified men. Warren has offered plenty of end-run arguments from other passages, but these arguments all confuse the idea that women are called to share the gospel with the idea that women ought to hold pastoral office. His arguments also imply untrue and uncharitable things about regular pastors like myself who have not moved off of the traditional view of recognizing only qualified men as pastors.

The question is, what is Rick Warren’s real motive in making this stand and objecting to the exclusion of Saddleback? One possibility is that Warren knows the SBC will not follow him down this road, but he wants the publicity and the attention that will certainly come by dragging this process out. Maybe Warren wants to be a martyr, and he wants the watching world to see him as a victim in this whole scenario. Achieving martyrdom and victim status would be quite a feat for a man who “discipled” more men than all of our SBC seminaries combined (insert eye roll emoji).

Another possibility is that Warren actually thinks the SBC will follow him down this road and affirm that women ought to be ordained to the office of pastor (elder, overseer). This will be determined next week in New Orleans.

Motives aside, the solution to this problem is really quite simple:

The messengers of the Southern Baptist Convention in New Orleans should uphold the decision to exclude Saddleback.The leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention needs to be clear about the parameters of cooperation set forth in the BFM 2000. Those churches that strongly disagree with the SBC’s position on ordination should withdraw their affiliation. Those churches that have been careless with the title pastor (elder, overseer) need to rethink how they use the word.

By the end of next week, I pray that Southern Baptists can say we had a Rick Warren problem.