Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.
Those are the words of Jesus, recorded in Matthew 23: 23-24.
Combine them with the words recorded in Proverbs 16:18: Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall – and you have the Texas Baptists of July 2023, who are rushing, hell-bent, down the destructive path already well-worn by their Southern Baptist brethren.
Last month, it was Southern Baptists making news at their meeting in New Orleans with their attack on women who have followed God’s call to serve as pastors, and the churches that have honored that call, by axing two prominent churches and threatening to place hundreds of others on their chopping block.
This week, it was Texas Baptists’ turn to seize the limelight during their meeting in McAllen. On Monday, as reported by the Baptist Standard, “Meredith Stone, a messenger from Calvary Baptist Church in Waco, introduced a motion that the BGCT ‘affirm women in all ministry and pastoral roles, and that the BGCT Executive Board be instructed to have staff create programs, resources and advocacy initiatives to assist churches in affirming appointing and employing women in ministerial and pastoral roles.’”
The week before the meeting, the Baptist Standard had published a commentary titled Women in ministry need more than neutrality, in which Stone, executive director of Baptist Women in Ministry (BWIM), previewed her motion by explaining that “A motion like this would not advocate for affirmation of women in ministry to become a matter of fellowship or disfellowship within these denominational bodies. Instead, it would ask the messengers of these conventions to send a strong message that women are fully valued by both God and God’s people, and to take specific actions putting that belief into practice.”
That’s all. Seems simple enough, doesn’t it?
No, not for those who fear the loss of male domination in their churches and convention.
Stone’s motion was followed by a companion motion by Ellis Orozco, “that the BGCT ‘uphold the autonomy of the local church to affirm a member church’s authority to call women to congregational and vocational ministry as they, under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the guidance of sacred Scripture, see fit.'”
In other words, in any role, including pastor.
In Tuesday’s business session, the Baptist Standard reported, “Matthew Richard, pastor of First Baptist Church in Llano and chair of the committee on the annual meeting, reported the committee considered ‘out of order'” both of these motions.
What was the committee’s rationale for ruling Stone’s motion “out of order”?
“Richard explained the committee considered Stone’s motion in violation of Article 1, Section 2 of the BGCT constitution. It states: ‘This Convention is and always shall remain, only and solely a medium through which Baptist churches may work harmoniously in cooperation with each other, promoting the work and objects set forth in this constitution. It has not, to any degree, and shall never have any ecclesiastical authority. It shall not have and shall never attempt to exercise a single attribute of power or authority over any church, or over the messengers of the churches in such wise as to limit the sovereignty of the churches, but shall recognize the sovereignty of the churches under the one Sovereign, Jesus Christ our Lord.'”
Wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute! The BGCT has no “ecclesiastical authority” over its member churches? Furthermore, it shall never attempt to exercise “power or authority over any church”?
I have two things to say about that.
First, my friend Meredith was very clear, before she ever introduced her motion, that “A motion like this would not advocate for affirmation of women in ministry to become a matter of fellowship or disfellowship within these denominational bodies.” She was explicit in stating that the motion was not intended to exercise “ecclesiastical authority” or “power” over any church. So the committee’s rationale falls flat – it was a red herring from the get-go.
Second, let’s take a look back at another controversial BGCT annual meeting held in November 2016. The week before that meeting, the Baptist Standard reported, “Officials with the Baptist General Convention of Texas notified two churches an affirming stance toward LGBT members places them outside the bounds of ‘harmonious cooperation’ with the state convention. BGCT Executive Director David Hardage, BGCT President René Maciel and Executive Board Chairman David Russell sent letters Nov. 8 to First Baptist Church in Austin and Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas.”
Messengers to the meeting affirmed the officials’ letter the following week. As the Baptist Standard reported, “Messengers to the BGCT annual meeting in Waco approved a motion from Craig Christina, pastor of Shiloh Terrace Baptist Church in Dallas, declaring, ‘because of the historical and biblical positions of the BGCT as stated in multiple resolutions, motions and actions, that any church which affirms any sexual relationship outside the bonds of a marriage between one man and one woman be considered out of harmonious cooperation with the Baptist General Convention of Texas.'”
It was left to the BGCT Executive Board to enforce the vote of the messengers, which it did in its meeting the following February, officially removing the two churches from fellowship with the BGCT. I attended that meeting as a visitor, writing my own account of it in a blog post titled When family doesn’t want you anymore. The result was expected; however, I was surprised to hear the chair of the Executive Board, prior to the vote, make an impassioned plea for the Board to “call sin sin,” in other words, to vote “yes” to remove those “sinning” churches. I thought it inappropriate for the chair to blatantly influence the vote on such an important matter.
About a year later, at a totally unrelated meeting, I mentioned my church to a gentleman sitting to my left and told him that we had been “kicked out” of the BGCT. As I was saying that, I noticed, sitting to my right, another man who happened to be the chair of the BGCT Executive Board. So I grinned and pointed at him, and said, “and this fellow led the way in kicking us out.” I was stunned to hear him say, without even looking up from his laptop computer, “I was just following orders.” Hmmm, where have we heard that before?
But back to my second point. Where was the committee on the annual meeting in 2016 to rule Craig Christina’s motion “out of order” for being “in violation of Article 1, Section 2 of the BGCT constitution”? That motion, unlike Meredith Stone’s motion in 2023, actually did seek to exercise “ecclesiastical authority” over two churches. Yet not a peep was heard from the committee that time! Hmmm, I guess they were “just following orders.”
The deafening racket you hear is the sound of Thomas Helwys and John Smyth spinning restlessly in their graves. They would be shocked to see the name of the movement they founded in the early 1600s – “BAPTIST” – being used to impose creeds on believers and their churches. Those “four fragile freedoms” described so eloquently by Walter B. Shurden in his classic book, The Baptist Identity – Bible Freedom, Soul Freedom, Church Freedom, and Religious Freedom – are now treated as disposable by those calling themselves “Baptist,” the very people who once treasured them.
What is equally troubling is the spirit of those who are committing these hypocrisies. There is a mean-spiritedness that has characterized this second Fundamentalist Takeover (of the BGCT) just as it characterized the first one (the SBC) 40 years ago. In her “advocacy update” following the meeting in McAllen, Meredith Stone writes:
- Advocacy for Baptist women in ministry looks like being told that a group of male pastors and leaders had already decided what would be best for women in ministry and the convention.
- It looks like receiving emails attempting to bully you into not making a motion because you would “force a dividing line where none needs to exist.”
- It looks like being told that an institution’s autonomy to make decisions is more important than the autonomy of women to follow God’s call.
- It looks like watching as those in power assist men in their efforts and ignore you.
She goes on to provide suggestions for those who want to join BWIM in advocating for equality of women in Baptist life and leadership. You can read her full Advocacy Update: Behind the Scenes here.
Meredith Stone and others advocating for women who choose to follow God’s call to serve as pastors or in any other ministry role have encountered attitudes, actions, and a spirit that is not Baptist, it does not even remotely reflect the spirit of Jesus Christ. I was not at the meeting in McAllen, but I remember the last BGCT annual meeting I attended – in 2016, when messengers voted to remove my home church, Wilshire Baptist in Dallas, by a margin so thin that determining the outcome required THREE separate votes.
Prior to the vote, messengers lined up at the microphones to advocate for their position on the motion. Protocol required that YES and NO speakers alternate. I saw Kyndall Rae Rothaus, then pastor of Lake Shore Baptist Church in Waco, step to a microphone to advocate against the motion. However, because the previous speaker had also taken that position, she had to yield to the man behind her in line, who was advocating for the motion. That man, well aware that Kyndall was waiting to speak, stepped to the microphone and called for the question, thus squelching any further discussion and sending Kyndall back to her seat without the opportunity to speak publicly to the motion.
That, my friends, is a prime example of the very bullying to which Meredith Stone refers.
My friend Shirley Taylor, in her book Dethroning Male Headship, reminds us that Mary Magdalene was the “first preacher of the New Testament gospel. ‘He is risen!’ the shout was heard that first Easter morning. Even today Christians greet each other ‘He is risen!’ and the response comes back ‘He is risen, indeed!’ That is the gospel. In those simple words, the good news of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is expressed. According to the apostle Paul, that is the entirety of the gospel of Christ (1 Corinthians 15:3-5). Those words were first conveyed by a woman. . . . Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John tell different aspects of the same story. The scriptural witness is unanimous; it was women who first told the good news that Jesus had risen from the dead.”
Yet some Texas Baptists insist on demeaning and bullying women, telling them to “wait” (for what?), while they cherry-pick the BGCT Constitution and proof-text the Bible to protect their power and dominance over others. Hardly the spirit of Christ!
Wilshire Baptist Church’s website states, under the heading MISSION, “THE WILSHIRE MISSION is to build a community of faith shaped by the Spirit of Jesus Christ.”
I pray that, someday, this will become the mission of Baptists throughout Texas. Until then, we will keep advocating and agitating for Baptists to quit telling God whom God can and cannot call to service, and how God can call them!