Female pastors and the SBC.
ICYMI, the Southern Baptist Convention ejected Saddleback Church last week because Saddleback has a female teaching pastor on staff. The SBC is a denomination that many Baptist churches are affiliated with. When you fall under a denominational umbrella, you are expected - required? - to uphold the guidelines set forth. For the SBC, one of these is that affirming, appointing, or employing a woman as a pastor of any kind is unbiblical as the office of pastor is limited to men.
I can point you to people who have dug in deeply to do the work of unpacking the scriptures typically used against women in ministry. Or you can scroll the comments of any post I’ve ever made about being a female pastor to see the low hanging fruit that strangers on the internet love to use as Bible bombs commonly launched anonymously in my direction. It’s the same few words, lifted off the page, void of any context over and over again.
What really gets me, and what I’m going to speak to today, is not even the people who want to use one string of 19 words to correct, disprove or condemn (yep, condemn) my life. It’s the “prove it, show me scripture outside of your own desire or opinions” challenges that make me roll my eyes every time.
I love scripture. I’ve come to study it more and more in recent years. But I love it enough, and respect it enough, to really understand it. To hold it accountable for what is really being said. To look at the culture, language, time, audience and context of the time and recognize where we’ve misinterpreted it by reading it within our own - very different - culture, language, context and time.
I also love God. I love His Holy Spirit within me. I’ve come to rely on His power more and more in recent years, too, as I’ve practiced discernment, felt Him leading me and learned to trust not only God but also myself. Does experience replace scripture? No. But neither does the Bible eliminate personal experience with a God who told us, repeatedly, that He wants to be in relationship with us. Who told us in Deuteronomy 31 that He would never be absent in our lives. Who told us in John 14 that He would send His Spirit to live within us, to teach us and guide us personally.
People who want me to proof text evidence to defend my role as a pastor assume I woke up, decided I wanted power and trampled every weak man in my way until I got the title I was coveting.
This couldn’t be farther from the truth.
I was a kindergarten teacher for 12 years. I was good at it. I could see how everything from my personality to my skill set was designed to be a kindergarten teacher. No one, including me, ever thought I would do anything else. Then life (*cough* God) took a few turns and I found myself on staff at Mosaic, a church I helped launch in 2006 and have been involved with ever since.
When I came on staff, I was offered the role of campus pastor. I said absolutely freaking not and made them change the title to campus director. Because even then, I understood the weightiness of the title. I understood that pastors were set apart and special and called and, honestly, better Christians than I was. I knew it was not a title to be taken lightly, just picked up and slapped on like a nametag.
And then I accidentally started pastoring. I didn’t see it at first. I was leading. I was taking care of my people. I was encouraging and challenging and supporting and teaching them. I was advocating for what they needed. I was running a campus, kinda from the ground up. I was building teams. I was creating a culture and fostering connections. I was praying, grieving and celebrating with them. I gave them my whole heart because I didn’t know how to lead otherwise.
While it was happening, Holy Spirit was stirring within me. I was hearing it at conferences, through other speakers, in Instagram posts, from my own pastor. The idea that I was pastoring and should pursue ordination. And I said no. God very clearly said to me about a year in, “You didn’t just take a job, I called you to ministry.” I said “Eh, ok.” He said “Pastor” and I said “No.”
1 John 4 says to test every spirit. This is another verse people like to use against me as they imply that I’m being led by satan or overpowered by demons. (It’s right there in the comments, I can’t make this stuff up.) I’m not sure supernatural evil beings would use their power to draw more people into doing God’s work but, as I’m not actually possessed by those spirits, I can’t say for sure. What I can say is that I spent 2 solid years wrestling through, testing and arguing with the spirit that was calling me to pastor before I finally submitted and gave up what would’ve been MY choice (of staying a normal person) to follow in obedience and get ordained. It was 3 years after I turned down the title of campus pastor that I finally stepped into it. And the next day, and the next Sunday, nothing changed except my title. Because I had already been doing the work of pastoring. I had already been following God’s lead.
Women in ministry leadership, especially pastoring, aren’t naive. We know we are stepping into the hardest path in ministry. It’s clear that much of the world doesn’t think we should be here. This is never new information for us. We receive more criticism and have to work harder than the men in this position, proving ourselves, defending ourselves, fighting harder for acceptance, answering questions the men never get asked, with less opportunities, support and networking availability. I’ve been to innumerable conferences where I don’t fit any of the workshop categories because I’m neither in women’s ministry or children’s ministry nor am I the wife of a pastor. I doubt a man has ever had to stand, uncategorized, in that weird state of limbo.
I can’t speak for all female pastors but this wasn’t an idea I just had one day and decided to go for. This WAS a testing of the spirit. It was a wrestling and a fighting back. And it continues to be in a world that is not quiet about their opinions of my life.
But here’s where you can’t shake me: God called me. The Holy Spirit wouldn’t let me go. If there’s a line in the Bible (which I’ve yet to read, BTW) that’s says “women can not be pastors” then I look forward to sitting down with God and that writer in heaven one day to figure out where was the miscommunication happened because there was clearly a breakdown somewhere. No stranger on the internet was present when God was calling me, speaking to me, refining me and changing me from the inside. “The Holy Spirit will never call you to something that goes against the Bible.” That’s probably right. So I guess you need to keep looking for that clear and definitive “Women can not be pastors” verse if that’s the argument you want to stick with.
As far as the SCB goes, it’s unfortunate but I’m not the least bit surprised. People in power will do whatever they can to keep their power and the SBC is one of the largest denominations there is. Fear of losing out makes people cling harder to what is tangible and in their control. Plus, it’s a lot easier to use blanket scriptures to defend your actions when you’ve convinced yourself that you have it all figured out. This is an argument I can’t even enter. Because I will tell you right now: I do not know what every scripture means. I do know what God thinks or what He meant when He inspired the writers to use the words they did. Anyone who claims full competency of God or the Bible is living a completely different faith than the one I find myself in. It’s not a discussion of two sides at that point. It’s debating two different belief systems.
Acts 5:38-39 says that plans of men will fail. But if they are of God, they can’t be stopped. “You will only find yourselves fighting against God.”
My hope with this announcement of the SBC is that it will open people’s eyes. Not people in the SBC, not even people who are convinced that females can’t pastor. But people on the outskirts, people who have been watching the church from afar, people who have left “The Big C Church,” people who find discomfort in religion but can’t shake being drawn back to God… I hope it brings them hope. Hope that things are changing. Hope that God is moving outside of religious boundaries. Hope that God is bigger than churches, denominations or religious systems they previously thought He was confined to. Hope that they can, in fact, come to trust the Holy Spirit of God speaking directly to them.
Stacie Wood is still a teaching pastor at one of the largest churches in the country. Saddleback’s rejection did not equate to a rejection of her position. It did not disrupt God’s call on her life. It did not remove her title. It did not disqualify her. It did not interrupt how God is moving through her. She is still pastoring. She is still calling for unity within the body of Christ. She is still teaching, leading, loving and serving her church. And if her call is of God (which I fully believe it is), she cannot be stopped.
