Southern Baptists reject constitutional ban on women in pastoral roles

SBC churches are autonomous and can hire their own staff and own their own property. A church can be found to no longer be in “friendly cooperation” for any number of reasons, including how it handled allegations of sexual abuse.

If it is ruled that a church is not in friendly cooperation, they cannot seat messengers at the annual meeting but they can still come as guests. They also cannot participate in education assistance programs for seminary students and could lose access to health care and insurance programs.

On Tuesday, messengers — the name for convention delegagtes — voted to expel First Baptist Church of Alexandria, Virginia, for affirming women as pastors even as senior pastor. The church’s senior pastor is a man and its pastor of children and women is a woman.

Last year, the denomination rejected appeals over the ouster of two churches: Saddleback Church of California and Fern Creek Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. Saddleback, founded by Rick Warren, the best-selling author and influential preacher, was one of the largest SBC-affiliated megachurches in the nation.

The ouster of Saddleback was a shock, leaving many wondering what or who would be next.

Even before the 2023 Saddleback vote, though, the Rev. Allen Jackson, senior pastor of Dunwoody Baptist Church, had decided to postpone his retirement until after the annual meeting. He wanted to make sure that whatever happened the church would navigate through it without any pressure.

A woman serves as the children’s pastor at the Mt. Vernon Road congregation.

“When all this came up, the thought of trying to find a new head pastor, given the uncertainty of our role in the Southern Baptist Convention, it just felt like it was a better idea to push it back a little bit.”

Dunwoody Baptist Church has a woman who is named the children’s pastor. She came in under Jackson’s leadership and succeeded another woman who held that same role and had retired.

When the search team began to talk with possible candidates, many wanted clarity about “what they would be getting into. Are you a Baptist church, a Southern Baptist Church, an independent Baptist church, are you a nondenominational church? And it was important for them to be able to provide that answer.”

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