The Rev. Rick Warren has delivered 1000’s of messages asking for a non secular response throughout his 42 years as founding pastor of Saddleback Church in #outhern California’s Orange County.
But few of his appeals had been freighted with as a lot significance because the three-minute and ten-second handle he made Tuesday to the roughly 11,000 delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention’s enterprise assembly.
In February, the denomination’s govt committee voted to expel the megachurch for appointing a girl as a “teaching pastor.” Southern Baptist doctrine — established in a doc referred to as the “Baptist Faith and Message” — restricts the place of pastor to males.
Mr. Warren, a fourth-generation Baptist preacher, mentioned his congregation agrees with “99.99999999999%” of the doctrinal assertion, differing solely with “one word” in that doc.
He requested, “Isn’t that close enough?”
Mr. Warren mentioned some circumstances do justify booting church buildings from the denomination, however this disagreement was not a type of.
“We should remove churches for all kinds of sexual sin, racial sin, financial sin, & leadership sin – sins that harm the testimony of our convention,” Mr. Warren mentioned.
“But the 1,928 churches with women on pastoral staff have not sinned,” he mentioned. “If doctrinal disagreements between Baptists are considered sin, we all get kicked out! You’ll never get 100% of Baptists to agree 100% on 100% of every doctrine.”
In response, the Rev. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, mentioned the prohibition on feminine pastors was inserted into the “Faith and Message” assertion “because 30 years ago, this issue threatened to tear this denomination apart.”
He mentioned, “Southern Baptists decided this is not just a matter of church polity. It is not just a matter of hermeneutics. It’s a matter of biblical commitment, a commitment to the scripture that unequivocally we believe limits the office of pastor to men.”
Saddleback was considered one of three SBC congregations difficult their elimination and searching for a vote of delegates on the enterprise session in New Orleans, which concludes Wednesday. One is interesting on the identical grounds as Saddleback — Fern Creek Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, the place the Rev. Linda Barnes Popham is the pastor.
A 3rd congregation, Freedom Church in Vero Beach, Florida, appealed its expulsion over a problem involving alleged sexual abuse by its pastor.
The church mentioned the cleric resigned in May and thus the church needs to be readmitted. A member of the SBC Executive Committee mentioned the resignation was a tactic to rejoin the SBC.
All three appeals concerned paper ballots so the outcomes gained’t be out there till Wednesday morning, a spokesman for the SBC Executive Committee confirmed.
In different conference enterprise, the Rev. Bart Barber, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Farmersville, Texas, gained a second one-year time period as SBC president.
Mr. Barber defeated the Rev. Mike Stone, who was additionally a runner up in 2021, by a margin of 68.4% to 31.4%.
Speaking to delegates in opening remarks, Mr. Barber made an indirect reference to the sexual-abuse scandal revealed final 12 months, whose aftershocks proceed reverberating all through the 13.3-million member denomination.
He mentioned Baptists ought to search for the nice whereas recognizing the unhealthy.
“A good sense of taste arising out of a distinctively Christian aesthetic empowers you to acknowledge the ugly things in the world without losing hope,” Mr. Barber mentioned. “Even when the ugly is all around you, Jesus empowers you to be able to see the beautiful things and to dwell upon them.”
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