Why I have questions about Saddleback as the SBC champion for female pastors

Thanks to Lori Adams-Brown for the reminder that ends never justify means

First Baptist Church of Nashville not far from where I am currently working in the SBC National Convention archives.

I write this from the DFW airport, waiting for my flight to board. I’m headed back to the Southern Baptist Convention archives in Nashville. In thirteen days, Rick Warren will ask the SBC messengers to re-fellowship (is that a word?) one of the largest Baptist churches in the world back into the SBC.

For those of who need a reminder, Warren started Saddleback Church in 1980 in Lake Forest, California. It grew rapidly from a high school theater to a multi-site megachurch, boasting a regular Sunday attendance of more than 20,000. Although the church has never advertised as Baptist, Warren is as Baptist-born and Baptist-bred as a pastor can be. His most recent video series, preparing the ground for his upcoming showdown with the SBC over female pastors, outlines a shiny Baptist pedigree—from famous names of his family members and mentors (like Charles Spurgeon, Annie Armstrong, W.A. Criswell, and Billy Graham) to his own life as a fourth-generation Baptist pastor.

I think Rick Warren is about as close to royalty as Baptists get.

Not to mention the crazy growth of the church he started into a multi-site megachurch and his meteoric rise as one of the best-selling authors of all time. In 2004 Forbes magazine compared the remarkable success of Rick Warren and Saddleback to businesses like Google and Starbucks, remarking that Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Church had (at the time) sold more than 1 million copies and his sequel The Purpose-Driven Life more than 12 million copies. Almost ten years later The Purpose-Driven Life has sold more than 50 million copies.

Y’all, I’ve sold WAY more copies than I ever thought possible with The Making of Biblical Womanhood. It is a drop in the hat compared to Rick Warren. I can’t begin to imagine the name-recognition he has all over the world due to the continued popularity of his books.

I actually remember when The Purpose-Driven Church first launched. I was in college, working on my first degree. Everyone was reading it. By the time I graduated with my BA in History, Rick Warren was a household name in my white evangelical world. I didn’t know much about him at the time. I didn’t know that he had been preaching since he was a teenager, running youth crusades and being mentored by Billy Graham. I didn’t know that W.A. Criswell (the former pastor of First Baptist Dallas who opposed Brown vs. Board of Education, btw) would have a study chair that would eventually become Rick Warren’s study chair—showing their ministry relationship. What I knew was that Rick Warren could grow churches. What I knew was that Rick Warren was gospel-centered.

What I knew was that Rick Warren’s church gave me hope.

A steady stream of practical ministry help flowed from Saddleback. To me, this practical ministry help seemed to support the ministry gifts of women even while outwardly maintaining a complementarian stance. By the early 2000s, I was beginning to feel the growing resistance to women’s ministry leadership in my own church circles. I found spaces that supported women without continuously mentioning women’s subordinate status nor continuously reminding that a woman’s primary ministry should be the home a breath of fresh air. I looked forward to attending Youth Specialities conferences where I could listen to Doug Fields (the youth pastor at Saddleback for 18 years under the leadership of Rick Warren) talk about female leaders in youth ministry just as he talked about the male leaders. My husband and I used Field’s book, Your First Two Years in Youth Ministry, to equip our own youth workers. From my outsider’s perspective, Saddleback seemed a church more focused on spreading the gospel then worrying about women stepping outside their “God-given” boundaries. When I first read the story about Saddleback ordaining three women pastors, my heart leapt with joy. Of course Rick Warren would be the one SBC pastor to champion women, I thought. His voice would matter, I thought. Surely people will listen to him, I thought.

Saddleback filled me with hope.

Indeed, one difficult afternoon when I was reeling from yet another attempted social media take-down of The Making of Biblical Womanhood, I received an unexpected and unsolicited note of encouragement from Rick Warren. I have never before spoken of this publicly. I only do so now because I want you to know that Rick Warren helped me. He didn’t have to. He didn’t know me from Eve (he still doesn’t; we have never corresponded again). But he encouraged me at a critical moment and I have never forgotten it. His actions towards me seemed to fit with what I thought I knew about Saddleback: it was a source of ministry encouragement and support for women in ministry; a place more interested in spreading the gospel then maintaining male power.

But I was an outsider looking in.

I only knew what I read in the news and heard from Rick Warren himself. I was never a woman working inside Saddleback nor even in Saddleback daughter churches. I was never under the leadership authority of Saddleback pastors.

So when I heard allegations that Andy Wood, Rick Warren’s successor at Saddleback, had bullied a female pastor and her husband to the level of “an abusive staff culture,” my heart sank. I hoped it was an anomaly. I hoped it didn’t represent the leadership of Saddleback more broadly. I still hope that, as I always hope for the best in people.

But I’m less sure of that hope.

The more I have read about the alleged bullying of Lori Adams-Brown and her husband at Echo Church, the more concerned I have become. While I agree with Rick Warren that women should be free to minister however God has called them and that the disfellowshipping of churches by the SBC isn’t very Baptist, I worry that the public fight for the autonomy of local churches to ordain women will do little to alleviate the everyday misogyny faced by SBC women called to ministry. As Lisa Weaver Swartz shows in her Stained Glass Ceilings: How Evangelicals Do Gender and Practice Power, telling women we support their ministry is not enough; we have to intentionally create spaces that support female pastors—including helping male pastors understand that ordaining a woman doesn’t magically erase sexism from her work environment.

I do not have insider information about Saddleback. What I do have is evidence from the SBC archives (where I currently am working) that show how deeply rooted sexism seems to be in SBC leadership structures. What I do have is evidence of recent SBC pastors who have created hostile environments for women (including alleged abuse and assault). What I do have is the testimony of a fired husband/wife pastoral team who were asked to sign NDAs (y’all, that is just never a good sign). What I do have is Andy Wood and Echo Church featuring Mark Driscoll in a leadership conference. What I do have is the wise counsel of Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer in A Church Called Tov about “power through fear cultures” that predominate in too many of our churches.

What I do have is enough questions to make me cautious.

I am thankful for kind words from Rick Warren to me as well as the support he is currently showing for women in ministry. But the reality is that fighting for female ordination will do little good unless we fight just as hard to uproot toxic church cultures that privilege the male perspective, center authoritarian structures, and silence the voices of women.

I think folk fighting for SBC women to be able to be pastors should fight just as hard to make sure that SBC women are able to flourish as pastors.