Our 83 member Executive Committee has not served us well recently. While the EC individuals may all be stellar people, clearly the organization as a whole is an embarrassment to the SBC. Perhaps if the new CEO has success he can rectify this situation. One hopes and prays.
A question: Who appointed this beleaguered group to rule on individual pastors as being “biblically disqualified?”
No one. Yet, they have done just that and it may be demanded of them that they do so regularly, if the Law amendment passes.
Recent EC church expulsions included West Hendersonville Baptist Church for “acting in a manner inconsistent with the Convention’s beliefs regarding sexual abuse as demonstrated by their retaining as pastor an individual who is biblically disqualified,” The EC did not cite a specific offense for the “biblical” disqualification. The convention’s beliefs regarding sexual abuse was cited. Also citing which biblical qualification was not met would have clarified their decision. Their discussions on the church and pastor were secret, but that’s another issue.
The church may well have been a prime candidate for expulsion but ruling the pastor “biblically disqualified” was a foolish mistake and is not the job of the EC and certainly not of any handful of EC members.
Imagine this, pastor of any kind: A small group of people that don’t know you, have never met you, probably haven’t talked to you meet in secret to rule on whether or not you are a “biblically qualified” pastor. Sure, you were put before a committee of other pastors and perhaps laypeople for examination before you were ordained. All that is in the context and environment of the local church. Properly so. It’s not the job of the EC or any other group of SBC bureaucrats to rule an individual disqualified.
Rob Collingsworth has a thorough and quite lengthy treatment of the Law Amendment: Five Reasons to Oppose the Law Amendment. One of the reasons suggests an unintended consequence of inserting this phrase in our SBC constitution: “any kind of pastor or elder as qualified by Scripture.”
The zealots who proposed and support the amendment intend for females to be targeted; however, “qualified by scripture” formally gives convention messengers, the Executive Committee and subcommittees of the EC power to rule on individuals as being biblically qualified or not.
The SBC to my knowledge has never made rulings that approved or disapproved of individuals. We don’t have a blacklist of men who should not be pastors. We are a convention of churches, not pastors or members. We may one day have a database with people, clergy and lay, who have been determined to have been guilty of some abuse, but this list isn’t one that biblically disqualifies individuals. It is information accessible by churches for their staffing and volunteer decisions. Information only.
I’ve served in associations with biblically unqualified fellow pastors. Some were intemperate. Some were inhospitable. Some were unfaithful to their wife. Some were recent converts. Some had appallingly bad reputations in the community. Some were not good managers of their family. Many were not self-controlled. Many were not gentle.
At no level, EC and convention-wide, state convention, nor association was there ever any official ruling that these men were biblically unqualified. Autonomy lets that task reside with each local church. Our entities are free to make their own determinations about employees or students. No level of SBC life blacklists individuals or rules them qualified or unqualified.
Is the EC to now assume the responsibility for ferreting out “biblically unqualified pastors”? It’s not hard to determine if a pastor is male or female but why should we tolerate intemperate, inhospitable, ungentle men as pastors? Why should be tolerate, as we have since the beginning, adulterers, racist, or immature pastors? Shouldn’t churches that call or retain such men as their pastor be excluded?
Apparently, we’re past that now since the most dysfunctional, corporately incompetent, and inept trustee board among us, The SBC Executive Committee, has ruled that a church has a biblically unqualified pastor. The Law amendment would insert that language into the constitution and that power would be given to the EC, even to a committee of EC members who meet in secret to make that determination.
If passed, I would have a sheaf of names for the EC to examine. None are female.
This is absurd, unworkable, and dangerous. The EC overreached by including the phrase “an individual who is biblically disqualified” in regard to excluding that church.
So, is it a good idea for SBC messengers or the EC to create a hierarchy of disqualifying characteristics for SBC pastors?
Not in my view.
I don’t trust the trustees. I don’t trust the messengers who are easily stampeded.
I do trust local churches.
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