Curious Objections to the Law Amendment
June 3, 2024
We're a week out from the SBC gathering in Indianapolis, a great city where I lived for a couple of years when I worked for the State Convention of Baptists in Indiana (SCBI). At last year's meeting, we voted to amend the bylaws to exclude churches who designated women as pastors. In The Baptist Faith & Message, we said that this this sort of labeling was unscriptural, and, accordingly, we voted to no longer recognize Saddleback Church as being "in friendly cooperation." But we also said that we needed a lasting, firmly ensconced standard to deliver ourselves from convention-to-convention, majority votes on this matter, subject to narrowly circumstantial ebbing and flowing. Bylaw changes take more than a one-time, two-thirds majority vote, so we need to repeat ourselves at this coming Convention. So I thought I'd pitch in some thoughts to encourage our following through with the action initiated at the 2023 meeting in New Orleans.