Law Amendment prohibiting women pastors rejected; Southern Baptists elect N.C. pastor as president at annual meeting
At least for now, Southern Baptists believe the denomination’s confession of faith – the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message (BF&M) – adequately limits the role of “pastor” to strictly men and not women.
The so-called Law Amendment, a proposal to formally ban churches with women pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) Constitution, was decided Wednesday by messengers to the SBC Annual Meeting in Indianapolis to be unnecessary after the amendment received 61% support – short of the required two-thirds supermajority. With 8,298 messengers voting, the 5,099 ballots to pass the amendment reflected 61.45 percent approval, falling short of the two-thirds vote required for adoption.
The amendment’s original author, Pastor Mike Law of First Baptist Church in Arlington, Va., expressed his support “because it is faithful to God’s inerrant Word.” Law remarked, “Southern Baptists love the Bible and long to be faithful to the Bible.”
Ironically the day before, SBC messengers voted overwhelmingly to remove First Baptist Church of Alexandria, a historic Virginia congregation that supports women in any pastoral role, including senior pastor. The vote came after a neighboring church reported the congregation’s controversial practice of having a woman as pastor for children and women. The denomination’s credentials committee recommended the church’s expulsion as it conflicts with the BF&M, which states that only men are qualified for the role of pastor. Ninety-two percent of messengers approved the church’s ouster. The Virginia congregation has been involved in the nation's largest Protestant denomination since its 19th-century founding and has contributed millions to denominational causes.
Pressley Elected SBC President
North Carolina pastor, Clint Pressley, was elected as the next president of the SBC after winning 56% of the final run-off race. Pressley is the senior pastor of Hickory Grove Baptist Church in Charlotte, earned a master of divinity from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and has served on numerous denominational boards. In his role, Pressley will preside over the annual meeting and appoint members to the denomination’s committees. His nearest opponent, Tennessee pastor Dan Spencer, received 44% of the votes. Pressley expressed his support for amending the SBC Constitution to ban churches with women pastors, a measure that failed to pass in this year’s meeting.
Sexual Abuse Recommendations Approved
Messengers overwhelmingly approved two recommendations by the SBC Abuse Reform and Implementation Task Force (ARITF), referring them to the SBC Executive Committee for implementation. The move closes a chapter of Southern Baptist life marked by three consecutive annual meetings where new task forces were appointed to make recommendations toward and implement abuse reforms.
Vitro Fertilization Opposed
Southern Baptists approved a nonbinding resolution cautioning couples about using in vitro fertilization (IVF). The resolution urged couples to consider the ethical implications of reproductive technologies like IVF, which has become a prominent issue in the wake of an IVF controversy in Alabama.
The resolution agrees that embryos are children, regardless of location in or outside the womb, and expresses alarm over the common production of frozen surplus embryos. It denounces medical experimentation on frozen embryos and any use of “dehumanizing methods for determining suitability for life and genetic sorting.”
The resolution expresses sympathy for couples struggling with infertility but urges them to weigh the issues and encourages couples to adopt frozen embryos. Some messengers defended the technology, while others said the destruction of frozen embryos outweighs any benefits from IVF. The SBC is trying to open the conversation and remind Southern Baptists of their long-held beliefs of the sanctity of human life.
About 2% of births a year involve IVF, a process by which multiple eggs are harvested, fertilized, and implanted to create a pregnancy. The Alabama ruling and the stance by the SBC raise questions about what should happen with unused embryos.
The resolution, the first of its kind for the SBC, could potentially impact other conservative denominations.
NAMB Exhibit Controversy
Perhaps the most controversial moment of the week was the reaction to a tweet by Kevin Ezell, president of the North American Mission Board (NAMB). After Ezell posted a photo of the entity’s exhibit featuring a realistic Indy race car wrapped with a NAMB logo, NAMB was skewered on social media by critics who said it was another example of the entity’s wasteful spending and financial excess.
Scott Patton, an Oklahoma pastor, posted on X/Twitter, “I Pastor in one of the poorest native American communities in Oklahoma. Our little Church gives consistently to help feed, cloth, and send kids to Church camps. Yet @NAMB_SBC will spend money on this? And the @SBCExecComm does not have the guts to bring the basic 990 transparency standard for a vote to Messengers? @OKBaptists this is not the way! @bartbarber.”
Another pastor identified as Josh M on X posted, “I have to ask @kevezell ... you knew how posting this would look. Is there another agenda to doing so? Were you just trying to make Southern Baptists angry? Can you explain the thought process that led to this post? I’m an SBC pastor, our church is faithful to AA and CP.”
Other Matters
A motion to amend the SBC Business and Financial Plan to require Convention entities to disclose all financial information included in Form 990 was referred to the SBC Executive Committee for response at the 2025 annual meeting.
Messengers declined several motions regarding the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC): 1) To allow the ERLC to raise funds from outside the Convention, 2) To request the resignation of Brent Leatherwood as ERLC president, and 3) To reallocate all Cooperative Program funds designated for ERLC to the International Mission Board.
Messengers declined a motion to direct the new SBC president to appoint a task force to “examine all relevant public court filings and oral arguments submitted by NAMB since 2017 to determine if NAMB’s representations are consistent with SBC governing documents, Baptist polity or create new risks for churches or other Baptist bodies associating with the Convention’s EC or its entities.”