The day of Pentecost (Acts 2) was the second thing that changed his mind. “We know women were in the upper room. We know women were filled with the Holy Spirit. We know that women were preaching in languages that other people couldn’t hear to a mixed audience. We know it was women and not just men. Women were preaching on the day of Pentecost,” Warren stated.
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In Acts 2:14-18 Peter explained that they weren’t drunk and recited the prophet Joel’s words,” Warren delineated. “[Peter] explains why you’re now seeing women preaching on the very first day of the church.”
Warren continued: “Peter says, in the last days, I will pour out my spirit on all flesh, all flesh. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. That’s different than the Old Testament. Russell, I’ve looked at over 300 commentaries on those verses and it’s interesting to me that almost everybody says, ‘Yep, in the church everybody gets to play, everybody gets to preach, everybody gets to prophesy.’ “
Warren said the people who don’t like that verse just ignore it, and cited Grace Community Church’s pastor John MacArthur as one who skips over it.
The third thing that changed his mind was the passage where Mary Magdalene told the disciples of Jesus’ resurrection (Matthew 28:1-10).
“I noticed that the very first sermon—the very first Christian sermon—the message of the gospel of good news of the resurrection, Jesus chose a woman to deliver it to me,” Warren said. “[Jesus] had Mary Magdalene go and tell the disciples. Now that clearly wasn’t an accident. It was an intentional. It’s a whole new world, baby!”
“He has a woman tell the apostles…Can a woman teach an apostle? Evidently,” Warren said. “[A woman] did it on the first day. [Jesus] chose her to be the first preacher of the gospel.”
Moore Clarifies Warren’s Stance on Women Teaching Men
In an attempt to make Warren’s beliefs clear, Moore asked, “So after the last three years, you would support men and women as elders, a senior pastor, as everything within the church?”
“I would! I would,” Warren emphatically replied. He added, “with humility, it doesn’t bother me if you disagree with me.”
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Warren called it “nonsense” for Baptists to make the role of women in the culture a litmus test to define whether or not you can be a Baptist or not.
Given the history of the SBC, Warren said that “The very first Baptist confession in 1610 says the officers of the church are elder, not pastor and deacons and deaconesses. That’s the original Baptist confession. So do you want to go back to the original or not?”
Warren then told people to go read the preamble of The Baptist Faith and Message and they will see it “is not binding on anybody. It says it in the preamble, this is not binding on any church. But now we’re turning it a confession into a creed and we’re weaponizing it—we’re starting an inquisition—and if this, this now falls into place, any pastor each week can stand up say, I want to kick out that church because they disagree on dispensationalism.”
“We should kick out churches for sin. We should kick out churches that harm the testimony of the convention. This isn’t harming the testimony of anybody,” Warren stated. He believes the issue surrounding whether or not a woman can have the title of pastor and teach men is a disputable issue like the Apostle Paul references in Romans 14. “The problem with fundamentals is there are no disputable, no secondary issues with them. Every one of them matters.”
