The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has chosen to discontinue its relationship with two congregations that employ women as pastors, the Executive Committee announced earlier this week.
The Executive Committee met in Nashville, Tennessee, on Feb. 16-17. During the meeting, the committee adopted the recommendation of the Credentials Committee to disfellowship The Crossing Church in Tampa, Florida, and Zion Temple Baptist Church in O’Fallon, Illinois.
Marycia Blake is the lead pastor of Zion Temple Baptist Church, and Tamara Dumas co-pastors The Crossing Church with her husband, Greg Dumas.
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In recent years, the SBC has disfellowshipped several churches for having women serve as pastors, the most prominent being Saddleback Church.
While the SBC is a voluntary affiliation of independent congregations, part of the requirement of remaining “in friendly cooperation with” the denomination is that a congregation must hold to a “faith and practice” that closely aligns with the Baptist Faith & Message 2000 (BFM), the denomination’s most recent statement of faith.
The version of the BFM that was adopted in 2000 states that “while both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.” In 2023, the delegates of the denomination, called messengers, voted to strengthen the language of “pastor” to “pastor/elder/overseer.”
The question of women’s ordination has been a hot-button issue at the denomination’s recent annual meetings. Some have advocated for a measure that would ensconce a prohibition on women serving as pastors into the SBC’s constitution.
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However, these efforts have thus far failed, with critics of the measure pointing out that the denomination already has adequate means to disfellowship churches with women serving as pastors via the Credentials Committee.
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