The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is now preparing to consider an overture known as CON-10, a proposal that would require ordained ministers, if they are in a sexual relationship, to live in a monogamous one. The fact that such a requirement is controversial inside a Christian denomination feels almost too strange to write.
Ruin often begins with a question: “Did God actually say?” That question has a hiss underneath it.
I am writing as a Southern Baptist pastor who supported Dr. Albert Mohler’s Truth and Unity Amendment at the SBC. My support rests on the conviction that the Bible speaks clearly about the office of pastor. I supported the amendment, but I did not feel victorious. I felt sober and a strange sadness of watching Christians vote on something our Bibles have already said. My concern reaches beyond one amendment, one denomination, and one convention vote. I am pleading with Christians because the same old question keeps returning.
Has God actually said a pastor must be a qualified man? Does Scripture really bind marriage to one man and one woman joined by Him? Must sexual holiness belong in the life of those who shepherd His people?
Genesis 3 is not a children’s tale with a moral at the end. It is history with blood in the roots. The world was still clean then. Shame had not entered the human face. Adam had no scars and Eve had no tears stored in memory. God had spoken, and His Word had given shape to the world. From dust He formed the man. Out of the man He made the woman. Into their hands He gave work, worship, marriage, rest and one clear command.
Then the serpent spoke. That should have ended the conversation. A creature speaking against the order of God should have sent holy alarm through the garden. Eve owed the serpent no hearing. Adam, standing with her, owed God his courage. The moment the enemy made God sound narrow, harsh and withholding, the man and the woman should have answered with the Word of the Lord and turned away.
Instead, they listened. Before the fruit touched the tongue, the heart had already leaned. Sin begins deeper than the hand. Hands reach because desire has already bowed. Through the serpent, the enemy questioned God’s Word, blackened God’s character and made obedience feel like captivity. This is why I cannot treat the debate over women pastors as a small thing.
I know some dear Christians feel tired of the subject. Others worry that holding the line will sound unkind to gifted women. A few speak as though the pastor’s office were only a ministry label that can be adjusted according to need, gifting or cultural pressure. Yet Scripture gives the church more than a staffing policy. It gives an order rooted in creation and carried into the household of God.
Paul writes, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man,” then reaches back to Eden: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve” (1 Timothy 2:12-13). When he describes an overseer, he says the man must be “above reproach, the husband of one wife” (1 Timothy 3:2). Titus says an elder must hold firm to the trustworthy word so he may teach sound doctrine and rebuke those who contradict it (Titus 1:9).
Creation stands beneath the office, while character belongs inside the office. Doctrine guards the office. Pull one thread while promising the garment will hold and soon the cold wind finds your skin. My plea is not an attack on women. God forbid.
The church would be poorer, colder, and weaker without faithful women. Women were last at the cross and first at the tomb. Paul commended Phoebe. Priscilla helped explain the way of God more accurately to Apollos alongside her husband. Mothers and grandmothers place Scripture into the bones of children before many pastors ever step into a pulpit.
Their worth does not hang on the title pastor. The women of the church are not waiting outside the life of the body unless they stand behind a pulpit. They are already inside its bloodstream. A biblical church does not honor women by ignoring God’s Word. It honors women by receiving God’s design as a gift instead of treating it like an embarrassment.
The question before us is whether the church has permission to move a boundary God has drawn because our age finds it offensive. Denominations do not wake up one morning debating monogamy by accident. The road from one compromise to another is not always straight and every church that stumbles in one place does not arrive at the same cliff by sundown. Still, the habit of compromise is real. Once a church learns to set aside Scripture in one place, it has practiced the very motion it will use in the next. The slope is spiritual. Obedience becomes negotiable.
At first, the slope can feel gentle and compassion seems to lead the way. Someone says, “We only want to recognize gifts.” Another says, “We only want to affirm love.” Later comes, “We only want to make room.” Before long, old words sit on the table and nobody knows how to use anymore: holiness, repentance, covenant, authority, obedience. Beneath every public debate sits the same private question. Will Scripture rule the church or will the church revise Scripture until it blesses what the age demands?
If marriage can be loosened from the pattern Jesus gave, “from the beginning” male and female, one flesh, joined by God, then why should anyone gasp when another committee asks whether clergy monogamy is required? Rarely does the serpent tear the whole house down in one blow. Board by board, he loosens the structure.
Southern Baptists should tremble here. We are capable of boasting in a confession while drifting in practice. Sound doctrine can sit on paper while our courage leaks away in committee meetings, job descriptions, platform invitations, children’s curriculum and private conversations where everyone fears the word unkind. A convention vote can draw a line, but local churches must live on the line after the microphones are packed away.
Paul warned Timothy that people would refuse sound teaching and gather teachers to suit their own passions (2 Timothy 4:3). His charge was simple: “preach the word” (2 Timothy 4:2).
The church does not love the world by lying to it. We love sinners by telling the truth that can save them. Faithful women deserve the whole counsel of God. Men must be called to shoulder the weight God assigned them. Pastors must meet holy qualifications. Confused people need more than baptized confusion. Christ deserves a church that guards what He purchased with His blood. A church that cannot say no will eventually have nothing left to say.
This is why the Truth and Unity Amendment matters to me. It is a fence around a field where sheep graze. Fences can look harsh to wolves and narrow to wanderers, yet shepherds know why they stand there. A fence is love with posts in the ground.
When Adam and Eve listened to the serpent, their eyes opened, and shame rushed in. Fear sent them hiding from the sound of God walking in the garden. Sin always takes us there. It promises light and leaves us covering ourselves. False freedom ends with sinners afraid of the voice they were made to love.
In Genesis 3 God came looking for sinners. He spoke judgment, then gave a promise. The seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head. Christ came as the last Adam, faithful where the first Adam failed, obedient where we rebelled, wounded for sinners, risen with life in His hands.
So I write with urgency, and I write with hope. Southern Baptists, hold the line. Christians, hold the Book. Pastors, preach with tears and backbone. Churches, cherish your faithful women and obey your faithful Lord. Refuse the serpent’s old question when it returns with modern manners and church-approved vocabulary.
God has spoken and His Word is not a cage for the church. It is the roof over our heads, the bread on our table, the lamp in the dark and the fence around the sheep Christ bought with His blood. The safest place for the church is still under His Word.
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