EDITOR’S NOTE — The article originally appeared at thealabamabaptist.org and is in response to an editorial written by Jennifer Davis Rash, president and editor-in-chief of TAB Media Group, which publishes The Baptist Paper and The Alabama Baptist.
By Robert L. Wilson II, lead pastor of First Baptist Church Meridianville, Alabama
As an Alabama Baptist, I read Jennifer Rash’s opinion piece, “Pondering how to understand the coming ‘truth and unity’ SBC amendment,” with deep concern. I appreciate The Alabama Baptist’s long history of serving our churches with news and commentary, and I understand that opinion pieces invite conversation.
But because this piece addresses a matter soon to come before the messengers of the Southern Baptist Convention, I believe several of its statements and implications deserve a direct response.
Rash writes, “If you are attending the meeting and planning to vote as a messenger, I encourage you to read the amendment’s wording carefully and consider all aspects of what it means before casting your vote.” I agree. Messengers should read the wording carefully.
But careful reading should also include careful representation. The proposed amendment does not ask messengers to vote on rumors, fears, or imagined consequences. It asks them to vote on specific language concerning whether a cooperating church may “affirm, appoint or endorse a woman serving in the office or function of a pastor/elder/overseer, such as preaching to the assembled congregation.”
That wording did not arise in a vacuum. For more than five years, Southern Baptists have debated how our Convention should respond when churches use the title pastor for women, install women in pastoral office, or assign women to the public preaching and shepherding function Scripture ties to pastor/elder/overseer.
This conversation has involved Saddleback Church, Fern Creek Baptist Church, First Baptist Church Alexandria, the Law Amendment, multiple Credentials Committee decisions, and repeated annual meeting debate. To frame this as an unnecessary novelty ignores the actual history of the discussion.
