The SBC will decide if it kicks out churches led by women. Why some are already on their way.

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Jennifer Brown answered the call to ministry at Nashville First Baptist Church, where she grew up attending and eventually received her ordination in 2017.

But Brown knew since 2000, when the Southern Baptist Convention changed its doctrinal statement, “If I went into ministry, Southern Baptists didn’t have a place for me,” she said in an interview.

Brown now pastors University Baptist Church in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, which is inactive though still affiliated with the SBC.

Similar to 2000, next week is another turning point for women pastors in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination when it gathers for its annual meeting in New Orleans. The convention faces decisions on codifying a ban on women pastors and reversing the ouster of two churches with women pastors, California megachurch Saddleback Church and Fern Creek Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky.

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A campaign for the constitutional ban, led by Virginia pastor Mike Law, published a list of churches with women pastors. Brown’s church is among them. In addition to creating safety concerns, the list was further evidence of an increasingly untenable culture for women pastors in the SBC.

Staff at several of the churches on the list told the USA Today Network – Tennessee their church finalized or started the process of leaving the SBC or are waiting for the convention to kick them out.

“I am saddened but not surprised. I am grateful for the Southern Baptist church that raised me, that endorsed me and saw my giftings for ministry,” Brown said. “And I am grief filled they will never benefit from my gifts.”

The reinforced exclusion of women pastors will affect some churches symbolically and others materially, said Meredith Stone, executive director of Baptist Women in Ministry.

As a nonprofit that works with ministry leaders in the Nashville-based SBC and other Baptist denominations, Stone has fielded concerns about churches with women pastors and the status of employee benefits the churches currently receive through Guidestone Financial Resources, an SBC-affiliated retirement and insurance agency.

In a display of solidarity, women pastors on Law’s list wrote an open letter published by Baptist Women in Ministry celebrating women in ministry.

Others feel “as soon as they actually do what churches prepared them to do, they are pushed aside and turned into props for this political move,” Stone said.

Law responded to concerns about safety that some women pastors on his list expressed.

"Unfortunately, if I didn’t compile this already-public information, some Baptists would deny this is happening.  So my goal was to give messengers, the decision-makers, the unvarnished proof of public information," Law said in a statement. "But just like any list of public names and addresses, those on the list should be treated with kindness and respect."

There have been dueling campaigns in the lead-up to the June annual meeting, one side led by Law advocating for the ban and the other side championed by Saddleback founding pastor Rick Warren. But the voice of women are not front-and-center on either side — a notable message about the debate.

“The SBC is not worth fighting for,” Stone said. “But women are.”

Churches finalize exits

Some churches on Law’s list have few ties to the SBC or left the convention years ago.

Abby Thornton Hailey, pastor at Broadneck Baptist Church in Annapolis, Maryland, said she was “baffled” to find her name on the list.

Broadneck Baptist withdrew from the SBC 25 years ago and hasn't been active in the convention since the mid-1980s when the Home Mission Board stopped offering the church financial support when they called a female pastor.

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Since then, Broadneck has had more women pastors than men, Thornton Hailey said.

“I'm grateful to serve a congregation where gender has never been an issue, and that our affiliations with the Alliance of Baptists and American Baptist Churches USA (through the DC Baptist Convention) give us full support,” Thornton Hailey said.

Another major group that affirms women pastors, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, is affiliated with many churches on Law’s list, even if they are still technically SBC-affiliated. The SBC is a complementarian denomination, meaning it believes men and women have certain assigned roles.

First Baptist Church in Front Royal, Virginia, hasn’t supported the SBC for 30 years and is more involved with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, said Christy McMillin-Goodwin, its senior pastor.

But the congregation realized after appearing on Law’s list it still needed to formally vote to leave the SBC. That vote happened May 21 and McMillin-Goodwin sent letters to the SBC and the state convention asking to be removed from any rolls.

Also, an attorney for FBC Front Royal has written to Law about taking the church off his list.

Churches initiating their exit

For other churches, the list and the renewed focus on women pastors has been an impetus to leave the SBC, a place where some women called to ministry have long felt unwelcome.

“Talking to the other women who have been on (the list), we all feel a little bit of solidarity because it’s a little bit fraught growing up in the Baptist world as woman who feels called to ministry,” said Carlisle Davidhizar, associate pastor at May Memorial Baptist Church in Powhatan, Virginia.

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May Memorial doesn’t have close ties to the SBC, but still sends financial support to the SBC Cooperative Program budget and the annual Lottie Moon Offering missions fundraiser.

Davidhizar grew up in churches that didn’t support women pastors. They “loved (her) in every way they knew how,” she said, but were “sometimes confused” about her calling in life. May Memorial is the first church she’s worked at that has called her a “pastor.”

Now, after a 123-year-long relationship with the SBC, May Memorial is prepared to take steps to leave as soon as possible. Davidhizar first wrote about May Memorial initiating the process to leave in a column for Baptist News Global.

The idea of formally leaving the SBC is “sad and hopeful” to Davidhizar, she said. Growing up in the SBC molded her in many ways, but, “at the same time, it feels encouraging and I feel very supported to be in a place that is willing to say, ‘We will leave the Southern Baptist Convention before we say women are not equally called to ministry.’”

Michael Edwards, the church’s senior pastor, said his church, for the most part, doesn’t care if ties are broken with the SBC. To formally leave, the church will have to change its giving plan and send a letter to the SBC Executive Committee.

“I haven’t felt like we have been at home in Southern Baptist life for many years,” Edwards said. “We’re more concerned about what God has called us to do right here in the community and the people that God has called here to help us do it, whether they are male or female.”

Churches awaiting their exit

Other churches feel the onus is on the SBC and if it wants them out, it has to do the heavy lifting.

“We’re just kind of waiting and seeing if they kick us out, then no worries,” said David and Kim Booker, pastors of Acts Church in Waco, Texas. “But we’re also not initiating leaving.”

The husband-and-wife duo have felt in lockstep with Southern Baptist “foundational biblical orthodoxy” since they founded Acts in 2006.

“We believe the Bible absolutely teaches male headship in the home, the husband over his wife,” the Bookers said. “We do not believe the Bible teaches male headship in the church.”

Brown said University Baptist is also waiting but has zero doubt that SBC leaders will eventually disfellowship the Mississippi congregation. In fact, their state Southern Baptist convention already did that nearly eight years ago after University Baptist became an LGBTQ-affirming congregation.

National SBC leaders would have done the same as the Mississippi convention if they learned about University Baptist’s LGBTQ-affirming stance. But it’s only due to University Baptist’s recently elevated profile for having a woman pastor — an issue the SBC is less clear on how it enforces compared to LGBTQ views — that will likely trigger the church’s ouster.

“We are who we’ve been,” Brown said. “We are Baptist in polity, we are Baptist in practice.”

This current debate in the SBC is just as much about a pastor’s gender as it is local church autonomy, a key Baptist tenet. A large percentage of Southern Baptists agree in principle with Law’s proposal to ban women pastors, but fewer will support it next week out of concern it opens a Pandora’s Box of credal overreach.

But Brown feels that’s already happened.

“We did not change, and our identity did not change,” Brown said. “Southern Baptists have chosen to narrow this definition.”

Katherine Burgess covers government and religion for the Memphis Commercial Appeal. She can be reached at katherine.burgess@commercialappeal.com or followed on Twitter @kathsburgess. Liam Adams covers religion for The Tennessean. Reach him at ladams@tennessean.com or on Twitter @liamsadams.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Southern Baptist Convention: Role of women pastors at 2023 meeting