By Baptist Message staff
DALLAS (LBM) – An amendment that would have specified in the SBC Constitution that only men may serve as any kind of pastor or elder failed during a vote by messengers, June 11.
Messengers cast 3,421 for the Law Amendment (60.74 percent) and 2,191 against (38.90 percent). Because a super-majority was needed, the amendment failed.
During the 2022 SBC Annual Meeting in Anaheim, California, messenger Mike Law, also pastor with Arlington Baptist Church in Arlington, Virginia, introduced a motion to amend Section III of the Southern Baptist Convention’s constitution to state that a church is in friendly cooperation with the SBC only if it “does not affirm, appoint, or employ a woman as a pastor of any kind.”
The motion was referred to the Executive Committee and was brought before messengers during the 2023 Annual Meeting in New Orleans. Texas messenger Juan Sanchez then presented an amendment phrased differently to the motion: Cooperating churches must “affirm, appoint, or employ only men as any kind of pastor or elder as qualified by Scripture.”
Eighty percent of messengers then approved the measure.
The following year in Indianapolis, Indiana, messengers cast 5,099 ballots in favor (61.45 percent) of the Law Amendment and 3,999 against (38.38 percent). However, the majority fell short of the two-thirds (66.67 percent) threshold needed in two consecutive meetings to amend the SBC Constitution.
“The aim of complementarianism is not to limit what women can do in the church, but to actually free them to minister in the church in appropriate rules alongside men,” Sanchez told messengers at this year’s meeting in Dallas. “Some might say there are better ways. Well, of course, but we have to start somewhere. So let’s start here, and let’s build upon this. We are standing on the shoulders of those who have come before us, just as was just celebrated and prayed for. We are unified by faith in Christ. We are unified in doctrine as Baptists, and we are unified together as cooperative and confessional. So let us confess what we believe, let us clarify what we practice, and let us cooperate with conviction.”
SBC EC President and CEO Jeff Iorg responded, noting that adding the amendment in the Constitution could present legal problems.
“My friends, there is legal risk to putting this item in the Constitution,” he said. “The courts do not interfere with our doctrine, but they do interfere with us when we move something into the Constitution and claim it to be a legal standard. You’re removing this conversation from theologians and pastors and handing it to attorneys and insurance companies. Now I cannot tell you today how much risk you are taking but I am telling you that you are taking some, and by the time we come back for the second vote on this matter next year, perhaps this will be much clearer. But it is my responsibility to caution you about voting for this amendment, because you are taking on this additional possible risk.”
