Home Christian News SBC’s NAMB Clarifies ‘Only Qualified Men’ Can Preach at Their Church Plants

SBC’s NAMB Clarifies ‘Only Qualified Men’ Can Preach at Their Church Plants

“We are committed to the Baptist Faith & Message 2000 and are complementarian by conviction,” Ezell said. “There should be no doubt about our expectations. We love and support our missionaries and our prayer is that every Southern Baptist will continue to confidently and enthusiastically support them as well.”

Women Pastors in the SBC

Leading up to this year’s SBC annual meeting in June, considerable debate centered on how SBC churches ought to approach the question of women in leadership.

In February, ChurchLeaders reported on SBC Pastor Tom Ascol’s call for NAMB’s President Kevin Ezell to explain why the SBC funded a church with a woman pastor on staff, saying, “This is unacceptable.”

Nate Scholmann, another SBC pastor, published an article detailing four NAMB church plants that have female pastors on staff and requested clarity from NAMB.

SBC pastor Tom Buck also asked for clarification after receiving an email from Ezell stating “…we do not fund any plants who have women as lead pastors, etc.”

Related article: SBC’s NAMB Questioned for Funding Church Plants With Female Pastors

In response to Ezell, Buck asked, “Does this mean you do fund plants that have women on staff as pastors in other capacities? For example, children’s pastor, youth pastor, administrative pastor, or any role with the title of a pastor?”

Ezell responded, “NAMB only approves biblically qualified men to serve in the role of a pastor at plants which we endorse and fund. In addition, they are required to whole-heartedly embrace Baptist Faith and Message 2000. BFM2000, and specifically the role of women in the church are among the things our assessors discuss with candidates during assessment — all of it in harmony with BFM2000…At all of our plants, men occupy the senior pastor role. We don’t look at staff rosters to see what titles they’re using for other roles. The 52,000 autonomous churches in the Southern Baptist family use a wide variety of titles for staff roles.”

After being elected SBC president, Ed Litton was asked for his thoughts on allowing churches that have women pastors to join the SBC. Litton said, “I think that’s something we are going to have to work out. What we need to do is hear each other out…’How do you define that role that you ordained that person to?’ ”

Litton added, “The best thing for us to do is not make it a national issue of it, but let that association work it out. The Baptist Faith and Message does not address ordination. We are going to keep it within those boundaries as much as we can.”

Related article: New SBC President Ed Litton Talks About CRT, Women in Leadership, and Sexual Abuse in Press Conference