What is the role of women in the local church?
I am firmly complementarian. I believe women have an important role in the local church. Most Southern Baptist churches have committees so that means Southern Baptists see that women can have roles as committee members.
We also have requirements for the Committee on Committees and Committee on Nominations that they be lay people and not just ministers that are on these committees and our trustees. Our women serve well as committee members. I believe that the Baptist Faith and Message is our guide on women in ministry.
Now, when I was regional leader down in South America, I had five ladies who were female church planters. So when I got there, I said, “Well, what is it you do?” They said, “We just facilitate. We don’t preach.”
One of them told me, “I just show Wade Akins church planting films, ‘Ways of God.’” The ladies who are missionaries are either working with women or they’re in facilitation roles on the mission field, that’s all I can speak to. We have female professors [at Midwestern], but they’re teaching in college, more of the secular subjects.
We want to support our women in ministry.
Do you believe there is an elite group of leaders running the SBC?
The Southern Baptist Convention is 14 million people. I like to say that, if you add up the countries of Paraguay, Uruguay and Panama, you get 14 million people. It would be hard to find a power structure among 14 million.
My short answer is no, because I knew these guys when they were young. I knew Johnny Hunt when he was 40 years old or younger. I met him out on the mission field. Johnny came down and helped me. Ed Litton came down and helped me. Ken Whitten came down and helped me. I know all these guys. They did not set out to be an elite. Some people may call them elite, but they’re just guys pastoring, preaching the Gospel. I think those that maybe want to be recognized, maybe younger guys that, but that’s not why we were called into ministry.
I pastored a church that, back when we used to call the number you had in Sunday School, averaged 409 in Sunday School. The years I was there at First Southern Baptist Church, Glendale, that was the fourth largest church in Arizona.
We had come home for two years on a leave of absence from the IMB because we have a handicapped child. She’s in the Missouri Baptist Children’s Home group home. We raised her on the mission field. She can’t read or write, but she learned to speak Portuguese, so figure that out. So what I struggled with, did I want to stay in the States and pastor a larger church? But God called me to go to the mission field, back to the mission. So that’s when we went to North Africa, first to Tanzania and then to North Africa.
