This concerns the recent expulsion of Rabbit Creek Baptist church, Anchorage, AK. The church has a female children and families “pastor” but “the position was not stated as a cause of the EC’s action.” Instead the EC noted that “Rabbit Creek Senior Pastor Mark T. Goodman and at least four other Rabbit Creek staff members signed Baptist Women in Ministry’s Open Letter to Baptist Women supporting women in church leadership and asserting that “Jesus did not place any limits on women’s roles.”
The female pastor was among those identified and targeted by the zealots who sought to amend SBC documents to excise women from being pastors of any kind. The Rabbit Creek pastor and several other church leaders signed the Open Letter in support of their staff member. The pastor stated to the EC that the church “do[es] not ‘closely identify’ with the Baptist Faith and Message statement that reads “the office of pastor/elder/overseer is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”
The pastor’s written statement is sufficient for the EC to cover their actions in excluding the church. If anything is clear about the male dominated SBC it is that in doctrinal matters men are attuned to female anatomy while being oblivious to any other characteristic that might fall under “qualified by Scripture.”
When was the last time the EC examined a church because their pastor was an adulterer, managed his household poorly, or had a poor reputation in the community? Never.
Even though the convention failed to pass the Law amendment, the EC receives anonymous tips on churches that have a woman in a staff position that uses the term “pastor.” The idea that we have a cadre of misogynists who search the convention for children’s or preschool staff members, or any other non-senior pastor staff positions, and report these anonymously to the Executive Committee, is a disgrace to the convention and to the cause of Christ.
But the EC, apparently, is open to a purge of such Christian women from our convention. In doing so, they necessarily define some terms not defined in our governing documents.
The ridiculous “pastor/elder/overseer” phrase that was amended into our statement of faith in a few seconds and on a whim has to be applied in some concrete fashion to a church under investigaiton by the EC. Thus, in the EC’s interrogatory letter to RCBC they ask: “Scripture provides that the ‘office of pastor/elder/overseer functions as the overseer of the congregation. Does your church see any distinct differences between the primary functions of the lead pastor and female staff members with the title ‘pastor'”? Please explain.”
The triple slash atrocity in the BFM has to be handled. The RCBC pastor replied that the children’s pastor was not an overseer but, as all staff that deal with an age group do, she “shepherds” the children. “Aha! There’s a pastor!” Well, Aha!, there’s not an elder or overseer or a pastor with oversight of the church. We’re back to square one on the question of the BFM addressing senior pastor or sub-pastors. It’s vocabulary police.
I suggest that the EC define the terms and lay out how they will handle the process of ad hoc exclusions. They should also make any reports public and the name of the reporter public. (Reporting sex abuse should be allowed to be anonymous, as it currently is.) The EC has proven incapable of handling most everything else, so I’m not optimistic.
RCBC provided the EC with sufficient cover to be excluded, so the smug divines that handled this matter can rest easy.
But what about this: The state convention (Alaska Baptist Resource Network) supports the church. Will the EC now attempt to exclude the entire state convention for this?
I predict not.
The EC should get out of the exclusion business. They have the de facto policy of ignoring large churches and going after small churches. They have the de facto policy of ignoring racist churches, churches that do not practice congregational polity, and any churches whose pastors of any kind are not biblically qualified, save for ones that have a woman in such an alleged position.
Final shot: We don’t have a database, but by heaven, we got rid of a church that had a faithful, dedicated, longsuffering children and preschool pastor.
We wanted the EC to have authority to make quick work of excluding churches. This is what we get. Stop it.
_________________
Advice to churches that get an interrogatory letter from the EC: send a general “thank you” letter for their inquiry but decline to explain anything about your church. The EC is only looking for ‘gotcha’ quotes.
The RCBC pastor was kind enough to share the EC’s letter to me and his response to them.
.
