Some Southern Baptist churches would ordain a ham sandwich.
One pastor told me that his ordination was a joke.
One ordination council in which I participated would have been a joke if I had not been present. No one seemed to know why they were there.
Ordinations are quickly given but rarely revoked.
Ordinations are not registered with any SBC body that I know of.
Ordinations have no recognized requirements in the SBC.
We Southern Baptists are not sacerdotalists but what are we?
Ordinations require no particular education even though many laypeople think that a seminary ordains a minister after he receives his degree.
I have no doubt that some convicted sex abusers who served in SBC churches are still ordained ministers.
Ordinations cheaply and quickly given are like counterfeit money, they drive down the value of all currency, even legitimate ones.
Ordination is one of the most valued components of local church autonomy. Every church posesses the right to ordain whom they choose.
As it stands, the SBC at no level (association, state, national) has any means by which to evaluate ordinations or ordinands.
Over my time as an SBC pastor, now semi-retired, it seems to me that the trend has been for churches to no longer involve other churches or associations in ordinations but to go it alone.
This is a source of embarrassment.
Ordinations should mean something to both the church and ordinand beyond that it likely qualifies the person to take the housing allowance income exclusion.
_______________
The third segment of the Houston Chronicle series features an incident involving ordination. The matters currently being discussed have many components and parts. Ordination is one part of being Southern Baptist that has received less scrutiny that it should have.
The idea that one church ordaining someone gives them credentials to go serve another church is strange. It’s poor ecclesiology in my opinion. I see no biblical precedent for that kind of ordination.
Adam, are you saying a church should vet a potential pastor beyond an ordination certificate or are you saying churches should not ordain men for the purpose sending them to another church?
I am saying that a man is not a pastor unless he is serving in the office of pastor in a local church. One church can recommend a man to another church to go there and serve as a pastor. That seems healthy and biblical. But one church (or association or convention) cannot make a man a pastor in a way that qualifies him to now go and serve other churches as a pastor.
Dean, I agree with the quote from John Gill below. Unsurprisingly, he said it much better than me.
Since we now have more quotes from Gill, this is the quote I was referring to that I agree with: “churches have a right to choose and ordain their own officers, and which are ordained, for them, and for them only; that is, for each particular church, and not another.”
So were you ordained afresh at every church you served?
Agreed, a pastor is not a pastor unless he is pastoring; an ordained man is not a pastor. In my experience that is one of the ways a church recommends men to other churches, he is ordained; signalling that they have recommended him. It is up to each church to then evaluate whether he is qualified to be THEIR pastor.
It’s my understanding that CH Spurgeon was not ordained. Among many others.
In early baptist life a church the expectation was that the pastor would be called from among their own. John Gill taught that he “must be a member to whom he is to be ordained as a pastor.” He adds, “His qualifications, such as has been observed, must be known by the members of the church, and must be proved and approved of by them; yea they must be satisfied that he has the gifts for their edification; for a man may have gifts for the edification of one church, which are not for the edification of another…” So for this early Baptist Theologian, ordination was by a local church for one of their own for ministry in that local church and not another.
This approach seems more biblical than the precarious situation I get put in when I get a call to attend an ordination council where I am at times faced with a candidate which I do not know and cannot possibly in good conscience know whether he is an appropriately gifted; intellectually, morally and spiritually prepared; God called man.
IMHO ordaining deacons should be a church matter. But ordination of pastors should require Associaton involvement. Perhaps DOMs should be the ones to ordain. However it is sadly hard to get many pastors to participate in ordination. And I have never heard of a candidate failing to be ordained.
Many DOM’s are a joke and have no involnvement in the lives of the men they’d be ordaining. This would make them like some sort of Bishop. I don’t disagree the system needs help but I don’t think that is it.
The Greatest early Baptist Theologian is John Gill. In his book “Body of Divinity” he aught that “churches have a right to choose and ordain their own officers, and which are ordained, for them, and for them only; that is, for each particular church, and not another.” p. 867. This model has been abandoned in Baptist life but is a better model than an ordination that follows the preacher wherever he goes without being in subjection to local church accountability.
Well said, William. I’ve been concerned about this for a long time. When we ordain I invite associational representatives as well as pastors of churches in our association. We have a deliberate, rather theologically involved, council meeting and we talk about ordination to our church so that they understand what it is and why it’s done.
Ditto
You make a good point, but Southern Baptist Churches by nature are autonomous and the authority to ordain a person rests exclusively with a given congregation. Anything more, and you are moving away from sacrosanct Baptist polity.
I understand the lament, but what do you propose to do about the problems?
Any solution to the problems you list are likely to require some top-down mandate or bylaw that the SBC is purposely not capable of enforcing or even enacting. At the core, when it comes to these issues we are lamenting that independent churches have differing standards for things. What did we think was going to happen?
Let’s say a church with qualified, Biblically faithful pastors & deacons; examine a candidate and with no outside input deem him worthy of ordination and so ordain him. Is that a problem? If not and our problem is churches are not doing the hard work necessary, then we are back to my 1st point, the SBC is incapable of instituting and managing such details of regular church life.
This is from Al Mohler’s 2/11 episode of The Briefing (https://albertmohler.com/2019/02/11/briefing-2-11-19/):
Spurgeon “was not ordained. He and so many other Baptists of the era considered formal ordination beyond prayer, the congregation’s affirmation, and the laying on of hands as foolish and confusing popery.
“Furthermore, Baptists, at the heart of our conviction, do not believe in any sacrament of ordination. We don’t believe in any separate status of ministers, but yet we often allow the implication to be that it’s so. We talk about someone as an “ordained minister.” That makes no sense, at least it shouldn’t make sense in Baptist life unless that person is ordained and active in ministry in a local church and accountable to that church.
“You look at rosters of denominations that say they have ordained ministers, but they’re not in ministry. That should not happen in the Southern Baptist Convention. One might be a retired pastor or a retired minister, but we do not understand any special class of persons as being “ordained” and somehow holding a special sacramental status. That’s antithetical to Baptist doctrine.”
Excellent….
A very simple first step:
No more ordination councils meeting the same day that the church has scheduled the ordination service.
How many of us had the “examination time” on the same day that the bulletin announced we would have an ordination service? And did so with an open invite to the local area for any ordained minister to come by and be a part of everything, with no designated questions, life evidence, or even a backstop where someone could say “Let’s think on this another week” without substantial embarrassment?
And, I know, we should do what’s right more than we should worry about embarrassment. Those of you who have served long enough to knock the idealism back a touch, how many times do we really do that?
Space out the examination of a potential ordination from the service. Have some lifestyle involvement before you sign the paper.
The case could also be made that somewhere we need a central list of those who are ordained and where they are serving–but if BaptistBlogger is accurate, we’re not exactly great at keeping lists of churches/pastors up-to-date even with ACP data coming in. I’m not sure we have the efficiency with data to keep up such a thing.
Someone brought up the question, “What is the solution?”
I’ve been asking that question for a long time. There are no easy answers. Some want to go “big government” – denominational registration of pastors, etc. That has problems, of course.
Issues such as this, in a free church polity, are always going to be thorny. Asking the questions and defining the problem are always going to be easier than fixing the system.
Good post, sir.
There should be standards for licensing/ordination of Baptist ministers. Some suggestions:
1. The candidate should be a mature believer, involved in servant leadership in the local church. His home church should enthusiastically support his call. His family must recognize his spiritual leadership and his wife should be supportive.
2. The candidate should submit to a criminal background check and financial review. In our world, you have to try to weed out sexual predators and crooks. “He must have a good report….”
3. He should have some basic theological education or be actively pursuing it. This is readily available and affordable. There is no excuse for ordaining people with no training. “Study to shew thyself approved unto God….”
4. He should be able to give his personal testimony, and state of his theological beliefs in his own words.
5. If He is going to preach, he should be heard by different churches. In the past, a church would license a man to preach and recommend him to sister churches. If the wider body of faith recognized his gifts and one church called him to be their pastor, then, and only then, would he seek ordination. What happened to this sound practice?
Any candidate for holy ordination should be thoroughly examined, warned and instructed by an Associational Ordination Committee of local Pastors, Deacons and DOM. This task should be taken seriously. The DOM should take a leading role in this process. (Per John Gill: If the candidate’s Pastor and Church wish to ordain him without participation by sister churches, then they should employ him on their staff alone and not recommend him to other churches.) Paul said, “Lay hands suddenly upon no man;” i.e. be very careful whom you ordain to the gospel ministry. With our Baptist polity we cannot enforce guidelines for ordination on individual churches, but that does not mean we should not set standards and teach and publish them. It would save a great deal of grief for the Body of Christ.
As soon as the denomination adds standards, it creates a hierarchy. In this case it would seem the cure is as bad as the disease. Nobody has mentioned my ordination for at least 35 years. If it didn’t hang on my wall, I’d probably never think about it either. There is the minor problem of the government requirement for official credentials to do weddings in some states. An interesting discussion.
Autonomy doesn’t negate responsibility and skill. We have a strong process that includes theological training and background checks. A candidate has to genuinely apply for ordination at Hickory Grove. If a church will take the time and create a lengthy and rigorous process then some of the issues of ordaining losers will be taken care of much earlier. We have turned several down. I even stopped a meeting in mid council to deny a candidate. There’s a lot at stake and churches should have robust screening for ordination candidates.
Mr. Pressley, based on your experience, what sorts of things should cause an applicant not to be considered, or to stop his ordination process? I think that takes a lot of moral courage; I imagine the ordination process is usually a fait accompli.
Part of the solution would be to admit that government tax policy has driven the policies of SBC local church ordinations. Megachurch celebs have as well with individuals wanting to be connected with one of the celebs. Another is the strange concept of the clergy free agent, have ordination will travel.
If tax policy has driven our enough of our ordinations to make a difference then the majority of our churches are not only sub-Biblical, but do not qualify as churches. I’ve seen some awful behavior by churches and her members in my comparatively short life & ministry; but I’m not jaded enough to buy that explanation.
I don’t understand the mega/celeb point; might be me, but I don’t get it.
“Free agency” may be strange, may not be; seems the way Baptist churches have given approval for someone in their congregation to pursue vocational ministry. If the “receiving church” hasn’t vetted a candidate beyond “Are you ordained?”, then they get what they deserve.
I’m wondering if anybody knows of a church pulling / revoking the ordination of somebody? Personally I’ve never heard of it and would not even know how to go about starting such a process. However, if an ordained pastor falls into incredibly sinful behavior what process, if any, exists within the context of the SBC to “pull his papers”? It seems many times it is too easy to ordain somebody and impossible to “unordain” them.
We have no process… since no SBC entity can tell a church whom to ordain or in-ordain…and the SBC doesn’t ordain anyone. I have heard of a couple churches revoking an ordination upon some great sin, but very few. Good for them on following through.
I suppose I don’t see a crisis here, at least not in the simple way excursion of the way ordinations work. Not that many churches don’t treat it lightly, or are too hasty to ordain someone. Perhaps the crisis is that so many great it lightly…but that is not something any top down program, resolution, or even suggestion is going to fix….But there are a few thing’s that have been mentioned that I DON’T see a problem with:
I suppose I see ordination as just ONE of the ways a church recognizes its Pastors as having the call and the role of minister in their church. If the desire to be able to perform a wedding plays into ordaining someone who has been functioning as a pastor already, I don’t see a problem with that. If the desire to give him ordination to allow him some tax relief via housing allowance, I’m ok with that too.
If a Church decides that it has enough qualified, mature men (whether, Pastors, deacons, former Pastors, or simply mature godly men) to convene an ordination council and recognize whether a man is qualified to be ordained, without any outside input. I’m ok with that. If they do want area pastors involved, I’m ok with that too.
If a church looking for a pastor considers whether a person has been ordained and ONE of the factors when selecting an outside person to be their pastor, I’m Ok with that too. I don’t think we are bound to agree with John Gill on this one. I don’t see a great need to re-ordain…unless that is their practice, in which case that’s fine too.
Some of these suggestions are valid. I wonder, however, if it’s helpful for the notion of ordination to be truncated to the views of one particular denomination. This is SBC voices, so I get it that the conversation is prejudiced in that direction. But, what exactly does it mean when we say certain ideas are “biblical” when no biblical references are given? That seems to be an argument from tradition (which is an approach often criticized by Southern Baptist’s). I’m responding more to some of the comments then the original post itself.
I personally think conversations surrounding ordination ought to head in the direction of ecumenism. I’m aware this raises a host of other questions (e.g., is full autonomy in all matters beneficial?, How important is Scripture in the conversation?, Why has the SBC ordained so many folks who are in federal prisons—which is where I presume much of this conversation is stemming from according to a recent survey that was released, etc.). In my opinion, asking more questions and making less assertions is a healthier way to learn—a scarce thing in SBC life these days,
Other traditions certainly have a more robust ordination process. I wonder if the SBC couldn’t learn and work alongside other denominations for a tighter process?
Amen to these thoughts.
Also, One practice I have seen among some churches recently is the practice of “hiring” a “Director” if some certain Ministry (Director of Worship, Director of Yourh ministry)…but withholding the title of Pastor/Elder untill the candidate has been at the church for some period, maybe 3-6 months, so they can get to know him and see if they really want to have him take the role of an “Elder/Pastor”.
While not directly related to ordination (they may or may not re-ordain a man at that point if he has already been ordained, ) but they would be doing something similar without callin it that: Recognizing him as a pastor. I think this approach can motivate some of the risk of elevating a man to being your pastor after only a couple meetings, based only on his past ordination or past title as a pastor somewhere else.
*Some experienced staff pastors might bristle a bit at being temporarily downgraded to “Director” for a season, , but I think a humble man making a ministry transition would recognize the wisdom of that approach.
**I also realize this probably would not work as well for a Senior Pastor role. Very few churches would likely want to hire a “Director of preaching, and be taught each week by a man who was not the “Pastor”.
-Andy
Several years ago we were traveling on the east coast on a Sunday morning and as we often would do, we stopped into a local Baptist Church. As it turned out it was not an SBC church and our family were the only caucasians in the congregation. They welcomed us enthusiastically and we had a great worship experience. It was different than anything I had ever participated in. Sometime in the recent past, the gentleman who was preaching had surrendered to the ministry. This was to be his trial sermon to see if they would license (not ordain) him to preach. When he got up to preach there were 8 ministers on the podium with him. Every few minutes one of them would get up and pat him on the back and make an encouraging comment – preach on brother, you’re doing great, that’s a great point, etc. I was encouraged and I was only watching. After he finished the congregation voted unanimously to license him and they had dinner on the grounds. They said that after some time passed and he had a ministry assignment they would ordain him. All in all a very encouraging experience.
Just thought you might like to see how one church did it!
Here’s an interesting question. How should a pastor respond if the CHURCH that ordained him has strayed and he is no longer in agreement with THEM? That actually applies to me. Is it right to continue to refer to myself as ordained by _______ church if their theology has changed?
When we served as missionaries in the Philippines, the Philippine government required a special license to solemnize marriages. A pastor had to be ordained to obtain a license. Really, most of our Southern Baptist practices in regard to ordination have more to do with tradition than with the Bible. Churches are too quick to ordain; that’s for sure. In my personal experience, and I’ve been in ministry for fifty years, I’ve never known a church to revoke an ordination. However, I know some that certainly should.
The question we need to ask concerning ordination is what does the scriptures teach us about it? That’s what we need to stick to, not some tradition or etc.