If I ever leave the SBC (no intention to do so), I’ll never comment publicly about the SBC again. Some who have left are akin to a church member who leaves for the church across town but still wants to talk to anyone who will listen about the old church. Life is short, move on.
@GMathis89 Really insightful and hits on some similar things I’ve been researching with regard to soul competency and Mullins.
I couldn’t find your article from that Hanover link? Is there another way to read it?
@jakegwright I’m sure the comeback is “Scripture is silent on the issue of ‘interim pastor’ so we have guidance as to who should serve” or something like that.
@griffingulledge It is primarily a business meeting. Yes. Maybe not only, but definitely primarily.
My frustration has been that some people openly roll their eyes at us doing business as if we were there for something different.
Yes. Exactly.
This is a business meeting. Not a pep rally or even a worship service.
Come prepared for business. It’s ok, good even. Don’t feel guilty about it. It is what it is designed to be!
Yearly reminder: the SBC Annual Meeting is a business meeting.
As a rule of thumb, you should be wary of anyone who tries to guilt-trip messengers for wanting to discuss the business of our cooperation during the one time a year we gather to discuss such matters.
Classic @DFWAirport
Flight delayed. Board plane. Sit on tarmac for an hour.
Every trip something like this happens here.
Is this the worst airport in the US for delays?
(Context: last trip I got home a day late because of delays at DFW)
A fundamental divergence exists between natural or patriarchal complementarians and their ideological complementarian or egalitarian counterparts.
The former seek alignment with the grain of creation order, applying the logical entailments of nature—understood as a teleological reality rather than mere biology—across the domains of church, family, and society.
The latter tends to regulate practice primarily through explicit biblical injunctions, often reducing nature to biology and thereby encouraging the spirit of maximal freedom within the letter of scriptural prohibitions. This produces a minimalist ethic that asks how closely one may approach the boundary of explicit commands, rather than how one might most fully embody God’s design and joyfully live in accord with it. Ultimately, this approach tends to erode the boundary itself or circumvent it through appeals to cultural context or the latest proposals of textual criticism.
This distinction becomes especially significant when one recognizes that key biblical texts on gender and authority presuppose, promote, and defend a deeper “logic of creation”—what C. S. Lewis termed “deep magic”—rooted in natural/moral law. Rather than searching for the broadest possible array of non-ordained roles for men and women in the church (an impulse more reflective of contemporary cultural pressures than scriptural precedent), the operative question shifts to: How does one live most faithfully in accordance with the gendered existence God has ordained?
When biblical texts concerning gender, roles, authority, and relationships are read against the backdrop of created order, they cease to function merely as regulatory fences or outmoded remnants of a bygone era, and instead illuminate a positive vision of gendered existence. The governing concern thus becomes the embodiment of one’s divinely given purpose rather than the negotiation of permissible exceptions.
The sad reality is that, over time, the minimalist posture tends to erode the boundary lines of created order itself. What begins as an effort to maximize freedom within the letter of explicit commands eventually normalizes that which is unnatural, so that what was formerly pursued as a possible exception comes to be regarded as an inalienable right—which in actuality kicks against the goads of Nature and Scripture.
I disagree, but I get that some may prefer another path forward than a constitutional amendment on the SBC female pastor issue.
But I will NEVER understand the “Yes, God limits the preaching function to qualified men…except one day a year (Mothers Day)” pushback to it. Never.