I am writing from the Ozarks instead of a convention hall in Orlando. My voice will not echo through the Orange County Convention Center this week. I will not stand at a microphone while Southern Baptists debate the Truth and Unity Amendment. But the question before them reaches every church that claims to stand under Scripture: should a cooperating church affirm, appoint or endorse women as pastors or overseers, including in a pastoral preaching role?
The question being debated there reaches all the way here. It has reached Cedar Ridge Baptist Church, ten miles down a winding dead-end road in the Ozarks where I pastor a small congregation and where we are asking God to fill our worship leader role. What if a faithful, gifted woman applies? What do we do when the need is real, the person is sincere and the Word of God still speaks? This is not just a convention debate in Orlando. It is a question sitting in my little church, among people I love, asking whether our practice will match our confession.
Before I say anything else, every faithful pastor already knows this. A church without godly women would be a building with lights on and the heart missing.
I have seen women carry the life of the church in ways no annual report can measure. A great grandmother opens a worn Bible over a table of restless children and teaches them that Jesus loves sinners. One mother sings while her own heart is bruised on Mother’s Day. A faithful sister notices the lonely man before the deacons do. Another quietly prepares a meal, sends a card, rocks a baby, teaches a girl how to pray or sits beside a hospital bed when words have run out.
These women are not decorations in the house of God. They are daughters of the King, heirs of grace, servants of Christ, and gifts to the church! So when Southern Baptists talk about women and the pastorate, we had better speak with trembling hands. Harshness will not help us and mockery will not make us faithful. Cold men can take a true doctrine and make it sound cruel. Lazy men can wave the banner of male leadership while refusing the burden of spiritual responsibility. Proud men can defend the pulpit with their mouths and dishonor it with their lives.
The first word to men in this debate should be repentance. Yet repentance does not mean retreat. Tenderness does not require fog and love does not ask the church to blur what Scripture makes plain.
The issue before us is not whether women are gifted. They are. Scripture bears witness to the courage and usefulness of faithful women. Nor is the question whether women may serve, teach in proper settings, disciple, counsel, evangelize or strengthen the body. They must. Titus 2 commands older women to teach younger women. Priscilla, alongside Aquila, helped explain the way of God more accurately to Apollos. Lois and Eunice filled Timothy’s childhood with Scripture.
Sideline women and the church cripples itself. Place women into the pastoral office and the church disobeys the Lord. Both sentences need to be said.
Paul’s first letter to Timothy does not come to us as a stray rule torn from context. It is an apostolic word to a younger servant charged with putting a troubled church in order. False teaching had crept into Ephesus and the gospel itself was at stake. Then Paul turns to prayer. He calls the church to pray for all kinds of people because there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all. Paul’s argument moves carefully. He confronts false teaching, calls the church to prayer and then addresses order in the gathered church.
The same apostle who commands prayer for the nations also gives instructions for men and women in worship.
“Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man” (1 Timothy 2:11–12).
Modern ears struggle with those words. I understand that. Our age hears restriction and assumes contempt. It sees order and suspects oppression. Many women have been mistreated by men who quoted the Bible with selfish hearts. We should name that sin without flinching.
Paul, however, does not ground his instruction in male ego, cultural custom or church politics. He reaches back to creation.
“For Adam was first formed, then Eve” (1 Timothy 2:13).
There is the hinge. Paul places the order of the church upon the order of creation. Men and women bear equal worth before God. In Christ, believing men and believing women share the same salvation, the same Spirit, the same inheritance and the same access to the Father. Equal worth does not erase distinct callings. Grace restores men and women as men and women.
The trail continues. “If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work. A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife” (1 Timothy 3:1–2). Titus tells elders to hold fast the faithful word, exhort by sound doctrine and refute those who contradict it. Acts 20 gathers the elders of Ephesus and tells them to shepherd the church of God. First Peter 5 calls elders to feed the flock and take oversight under the Chief Shepherd.
Different words appear along the road: pastor, elder, overseer, shepherd. They keep leading to the same office. This is why titles alone cannot settle the matter. A church may erase the word “pastor” from a staff page and still hand over the function. Another may keep the language of the Baptist Faith and Message while treating its boundaries like suggestions. Drift rarely enters the church with a marching band…it comes quietly, one exception at a time, one renamed role at a time.
Southern Baptists have already confessed that the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture. The question in Orlando is whether our cooperation will match our confession. I support Dr. Mohler’s effort because a confession that never governs practice becomes religious furniture. It sits in the room. People admire it. Nobody lets it rule the house.
Faithful brothers may worry that another amendment strains our cooperation and I understand the concern. Baptist churches are autonomous. The SBC is not a hierarchy ruling local congregations. We cooperate voluntarily for missions, theological education, disaster relief and gospel work.
Cooperation, though, has always required truth. Friendly cooperation cannot mean doctrinal make-believe. When a church says one thing on paper and blesses the opposite in practice, local autonomy does not make the problem vanish. The SBC has every right to say, “This is what churches in friendly cooperation with us believe and practice.” Boundaries are not hatred.
We do not honor women by asking them to carry what Christ placed on the shoulders of qualified men. Receiving their gifts within the wise design of God honors them. The church honors women when it protects their dignity, listens to their counsel, welcomes their service and refuses to flatter them into a role Scripture has not given.
Men should feel the weight of this more than anyone. If we say the pastoral office belongs to qualified men, our lives had better make that doctrine look beautiful. The pulpit is not a stage for ambition. It is a place of trembling. The office is not a prize. It is a towel, a basin, a burden, a cross.
A man who wants authority without holiness is unqualified. Any preacher who loves being right more than being Christlike should fear God. Brothers who defend male leadership while neglecting prayer and courage are arguing for a doctrine their lives do not adorn. Paul tells men to lift holy hands without wrath and doubting before he speaks about women in the gathered church. Holy hands come before strong votes. Prayer comes before platform debates. Repentance belongs before resolutions.
Still, after prayer, after humility, after tears, we must obey. I want little girls in our churches to know they can serve Jesus with all their hearts. They should see faithful women opening Scripture and strengthening the saints. Those same girls should also see qualified men shepherding the flock with tenderness and backbone. May they grow up in churches where women are cherished and the Word is obeyed. Those two desires belong together.
The world may call this backward. Some wounded believers may hear it with suspicion. Certain critics will frame this as fear of women, fear of equality or fear of losing control. My answer is simple. Gifted women do not frighten me. Disobeying Christ does.
Southern Baptists in Orlando, please choose the kind of unity that can survive an open Bible. Let clarity come with tears in our eyes. Truth should sound warm in our voices. Our cooperation should be strong enough to say what Scripture says and humble enough to repent where men have failed.
Let us bless our sisters without burdening them with an office Christ has assigned to qualified men. May God raise up men who deserve no applause for taking responsibility, only grace for carrying what He has given. Keep the pulpit under the Word, the church under Christ and our confession joined to our practice.
For the good of women, the repentance of men, the health of the church and the gospel we must preach until the Chief Shepherd appears.
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