Despite their list, I don't think the SBC 'problem' with female pastors is as big as they think
Which makes their targeting of churches with female pastors careless as well as concerning
Mike Law emailed my husband last January.
Yes, the Mike Law who proposed the recent amendment to the SBC constitution banning female pastors. Mike Law who created the now infamous list of churches with female pastors. It was a cordial exchange. Law asked my husband to consider signing the petition to send to the SBC Executive Committee and my husband declined, stating that he supported women serving as pastors. I am rather certain Mike Law had no idea who my husband was at the time. He was just a name on Law’s list of potential SBC pastors. Below is the screen shot of Mike Law’s email.
But why did Law email my husband?
Because our church is still officially listed on the national SBC directory of churches. Note that Law asked to be notified if the church was “not in friendly cooperation with the SBC.” He wasn’t certain if the pastors on his email list would still consider themselves SBC. Our church has not considered itself part of the SBC for many years.
My husband made Law aware that he did not consider the stance of the SBC in friendly cooperation with our church.
That was January. Yet, (as of one hour ago) our church is STILL listed on the national list of SBC churches. Indeed, as we browsed through that list, we noted several churches that both support women in ministry and are not in agreement with the SBC. Even the SBC Executive Committee found that two of the churches they officially declared “not in friendly cooperation” with them over this issue last Spring were not SBC churches—not because of the SBC choice, but because those churches had already disfellowshipped with the SBC.
Isn’t that interesting? Makes you wonder if the SBC claim to represent more than 14,000 churches is accurate? (I am not sure how that number is derived; if it is derived from churches that send in the Annual Church Profile about membership and baptisms, then it might be accurate; if it is derived from the churches on their directory then, even as their directory cautions, it shouldn’t be considered accurate. If anyone knows how that number is derived, I would appreciate you telling me in the comments. UPDATE: See below in the comments. It appears the 14,000 churches probably comes from the Annual Church Profile reports which means it probably is more or less accurate. )
Regardless, if pastors in the SBC like Mike Law are intent on using the SBC national directory to hunt down female pastors (as Law did to compile the current list—see image above of front page of his list), the SBC Executive Committee should do some housekeeping and update their directory. My husband has emailed them twice—once last week and once a few months ago—asking how to have our church removed from the official list of SBC churches since we have already chosen not to cooperate with them (see screen shot of the directions on the database to have a church removed). From what I have heard, our experience is not unusual.
I recommend that every church that does not want to be considered in friendly cooperation with the SBC (or already considers themselves not in friendly cooperation) send an official letter to the SBC Executive Committee asking to be removed. If this is done, I suspect that the SBC will find that their supposed “problem” with female pastors is even more minuscule than they have reported (certainly much less significant than their sexual abuse problem).
Rick Warren lamented the serious decline of the SBC over the past few years. It has shrunk to the size it was before the Conservative Resurgence of 1979. I find this ironic since the conservative takeover was supposed to strengthen the SBC and save it from the disunity of theological liberalism. Yet the opposite has happened. The hardline conservative stance of the SBC has created disunity and led to the weakening of the convention.
To use an expression of my childhood best friend’s dad (a farmer), maybe all the SBC 2023 achieved was closing the barn door after the horses had bolted…This makes the SBC carelessness in targeting churches with female pastors on a public list even more egregious. (BTW, I consider what they did to fit the definition of doxxing. See definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary and Wikipedia below).
At the very least, the SBC needs to get their church directory up to date and remove the churches who have asked to be removed. Even if you disagree that it is doxxing, it is wrong to target any woman on a list—especially when those women and the churches they represent have already made the choice not to be part of the SBC.
*As an update, The Baptist Standard removed Mike Law’s list from their site today. I’m so grateful they listened to the concerns.
A church is added to the directory when it gives to the Cooperative Program. The directory is not combed over and edited very often. When I worked for an SBC entity and had to contact SBC pastors, I came across several, several churches listed in the directory that were no longer “in friendly cooperation.”