During yesterday’s SBC Presidential Address, around the 23 minute mark, SBC president J.D Greear had a lot to say about the villainy of discerners and those who get into theological tussles over secondary and tertiary issues.
After saying the most positive surprise he’s had is appreciating the unity that “80 or 90% of our convention seems to have around our doctrine and our mission” Greear takes aim at the ones not included in his list:
“The flip side is the rancor and divisiveness of that 10%. They are focused on secondary issues, that you just have to wonder what that means about their priority and their love of the priority issue, the gospel.
I don’t mean that there’s not a place for careful, theological analysis, but there are those among us who seem to love division and have an unhappy appetite for conflict, who seem to live fighting over tertiary and non-essential things more than they love the progress of the gospel.
Greear laments that if you can’t be happy and rejoice in the SBC heads being in unity over the primary issues, such as the authority of scripture, then there is something wrong, again going on the attack and saying :
Jesus and the apostle Paul seemed equally concerned about those who would foster division over non-essentials.
Yes, we need discernment. But we also need to discern when our enemy is using a non-essential idea to divide god’s people dilute our effectiveness in the mission.
Southern Baptists have voted on what the standard of our unity is – it’s the Baptist faith and Message 2000. For those who would seek to divide us about other things, well, I think we should follow the counsel of the apostle Paul and that is to mark them and avoid them.”
Well, here is your chance.
A few months ago, to catalog the downgrade of the SBC, we directed ourselves to Thom Rainer’s website where he lists the SBC 500, a compendium of the 500 largest Southern Baptist Churches in the United States by membership size (or in this case, 494) ranging from the 1,092 congregants at Calvary Baptist Church in Dothan, AL all the way to the 31,215 reported by Newspring Community Church in Anderson, SC.
Using the Baptist Faith and Message (BFM) as our guide, as it is definitive on the issue: “While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by scripture” we surveyed every single one of these 494 churches to see how many of them have women pastors (i.e., pastrixes) in their employ.
The findings are pretty shocking.
Of the 494 churches listed, we could only find staff information on 446 of them. Of the 446 churches that we had data for, 47 of them listed women as “Pastors” on their staff pages as their official designation.
This means 10% of the top 500 biggest Southern Baptist Churches in the world are directly standing in defiance to the BFM and are sinfully serving in opposition to the scriptures and, according to J.D Greear, are violating the standard of your unity.
When you read through our methodology below, you’ll see that this is the lowest possible percentage. In reality, it’s probably closer to 20 or 25%.
Not only do 10% of these churches have formalized pastrixes in leadership, but another 91 churches have women on staff with the title of either “Minister” – such as “Women’s Minister,” “Youth Minister,” “Singles Minister” – or, to a lesser extent, “Ministry Director” or “Director of Women’s Ministries.
Combine the two groups and at least ONE-THIRD of the top 450 largest SBC churches in the country have women pastrixes or women “Ministers” employed on staff.
You want the receipts?
Here are the receipts.
You want it clickable?
We have it clickable:
FBC Alexandria,
Journey Church » Our Leadership
Bon Air Baptist Church | Staff
Crossland Community Church
First Hot Springs
The Connection Church
Westside Baptist Church
Grace Midtown Church
The Woodlands First
Skyway Church
Mt. Pleasant Baptist
Our Team – Passion Community Church
Staff at Lakeside Baptist Church
Columbia Baptist Church: Our Staff
Our Team — Clovis Hills Community Church
About | Daybreak Church
Church in San Antonio, TX – Ministries, Sermons | Grace Point Church
Our Pastors – Antioch Long Beach
Staff — FIRST BAPTIST OF GAINESVILLE GA
Staff | First Denton
Staff | Jacob’s Well Church
» NLCC Staff
Staff — Fellowship of the Rockies
Church Staff | NorthWood Church
AboutStaff | Bay Life Church
Discover – Casas Church
https://www.smzbt.org
LifePoint.tv
Staff — Woodcrest
Staff Members | NorthPointe Community Church
Our Staff | Abba’s House
Our Leadership | Word Tabernacle Church
Our Staff – Bethlehem Church
Our Pastors | New Faith
About – Lifepoint Church
Higher Dimension Church
Staff – The Heights Church
Our Staff & Elders | Beltway Park Church
Meet Our Team | BT.CHURCH
Our Staff | The Crossing Church
Pastoral Staff — Hillvue Heights Church
Pellissippi – Faith Promise Church
The Fountain of Praise: Home
Grace Point Church – Our Staff
Leadership / Staff
Here are 47 SBC Megachurches doing that very thing that SBC President J. D. Greear said not to do and violating the BFM 2000.
Given these churches are violating the standard of our unity, are you going to follow the counsel of the apostle Paul by publicly marking and avoid these divisive churches? Or are you going to continue to stay silent while they let their freak flag fly for all to see?
Your move.
