Saddleback Church, the multi-site megachurch founded by Rick Warren, ordained a woman to serve as a “campus pastor” even as the congregation is expected to appeal a recent decision from the Southern Baptist Convention to disfellowship the entity over similar moves.
Officials on the denomination’s Executive Committee voted earlier this year to remove Saddleback, one of the largest churches in the United States, because of its decision to ordain several women as pastors over the past two years. Warren, who maintains a founding pastor role at the California congregation, announced Andy Wood as his successor to serve as senior pastor last year and appointed his wife, Stacie Wood, to serve as a teaching pastor, generating controversy days later at the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Anaheim.
Saddleback Church Lake Forest, one of more than a dozen Saddleback branch campuses, announced last week that Katie Edwards had been appointed as the body’s new campus pastor. Images posted by the church showed Andy and Stacie Wood praying over Edwards on stage.
The move comes weeks before Southern Baptists are scheduled to convene in New Orleans for the next annual meeting of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, where Saddleback Church will likely contest the disfellowship decision from the Executive Committee.
Warren has defended his position on female pastors, which he adopted three years ago, in a recent interview with Russell Moore, the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today and the former president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. Warren also claimed in a floor speech at last year’s annual meeting that there exists a distinction between the “gift” and the “office” of pastor.
Churches in the Southern Baptist Convention, an association of autonomous congregations which jointly fund seminaries, missionary efforts, and publications, must adhere to the Baptist Faith and Message doctrinal statement, which affirms 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.”
Mike Law, a pastor at Arlington Baptist Church, plans to introduce an amendment to the denomination’s constitution at the upcoming meeting in New Orleans to clarify that the Southern Baptist Convention will “only deem a church to be in friendly cooperation” if the congregation does not “affirm, appoint, or employ a woman as a pastor of any kind.” Law and other ministers have documented cases of several hundred female pastors who currently hold positions in Southern Baptist churches.
Law said in remarks to The Daily Wire that the most recent move from Saddleback Church to ordain a female pastor “shows the continued need for our convention to be clear and committed to our doctrine,” adding that “we can begin to meet this need by taking the first step of adopting the proposed constitutional amendment this June.”
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Controversy over the appointment of female pastors at Southern Baptist churches occurs as the denomination sees the largest single-year membership decline in at least a century. Beyond the lockdown mandates, which accelerated broader trends toward diminished church attendance in the United States, several ministers have identified the female pastor phenomenon as evidence of the denomination’s theologically liberal drift. Bart Barber, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, and other leaders have faced criticism for neglecting to rebuke the dozens of churches which have installed female pastors.
Warren himself was one of several prominent evangelical ministers to endorse wearing face masks as a fulfillment of Jesus’ command to “love your neighbor as yourself.” He also affirmed Francis Collins, the former director of the National Institutes of Health who declared himself an “ally” of the LGBTQ movement and supported human fetal tissue research, as a committed Christian and a “man you can trust.”