Episode Transcript
[00:00:17] Speaker A: The Southern Baptist Convention met recently in early June, June 9th and 10th in Orlando at the Orange County Convention Center. And as usual, one of the motions, a very actually small moment in the entire meeting, made major headlines, is making major stir around the country.
Everybody on social media is buzzing about it.
ABC and cnn, all the major news outlets, headlines. Because Southern Baptists voted not only to prohibit women from the office of pastor, but have put forward an amendment that now prohibits women from performing the functions of a pastor.
So that feels like a very fine distinction, but made for some big headlines.
Now, what's interesting is that some of the reports have not simply stated the facts. They've openly suggested, surprise, surprise, that this amendment is backwards and bigoted and that it communicates to women that they are worthless, their value is less than that of men and all sorts of other things. And again, there's been immense amounts of confusion about what happened, about what it means. And then frankly, just a lot of the disagreements that exist within our culture got aired out. And of course, that's why the news media reported on that very small part of the convention. So on Word and Flesh, we want to slow down in this episode and respond to this thing that just happened. And that if you're on social media, which if you're not, great, by the way, good for you, good job. But if you are on social media, you have probably seen somebody post one direction or the other about this. And so we want to ask just a couple simple questions and we're going to try to keep this brief. And you can look at the timestamp on this and see how brief we kept it. But a couple questions.
Is that actually what Southern Baptists believe? Namely, do Southern Baptists believe that women are worthless or of less value than men?
Secondly, does restricting the office of pastor to men only mean that women don't matter in church life?
And then finally, how do we then flesh out that?
We could call it attention, but I don't even know. I don't even think it's attention. I think it's a beautiful design, but that the culture wants to make feel like attention because it's crazy and is, you know, godless and lost its ever loving mind. Ask me how I really feel. But how do we flesh out this beautiful design that God has made for the home and the church at Riverview? Those are our questions and we're going to try our best to dive into some answers to those questions. Welcome to Word and Flesh, a Riverview for River, a podcast for Riverview Baptist Church, a Riverview for Podcast Baptist Church. There you go. All of the above.
[00:03:09] Speaker B: Nailed it then.
[00:03:09] Speaker A: That doesn't make any sense. Okay, I'm just talking now. Somebody saved me from me.
[00:03:13] Speaker C: Continuing the podcast by Riverview Baptist Church for Riverview Baptist Church.
[00:03:17] Speaker A: That's a good line. I'm going to propose a new tagline, something easier for me to say. We're glad that you're joining us today.
I'm Nathan Bechtel. I realized when I introduce our elders, I usually don't say my own name, which is kind of presumptuous, like I think I'm something, you know, or whatever. So I'm Nathan Bechtel, one of the elders, the newest elder, actually, at Riverview,
[00:03:38] Speaker B: recently became friends with Weird Al.
[00:03:40] Speaker A: I have a photo of me almost touching Weird Al. We were so close.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: Wow, you guys are kindred spirits.
[00:03:47] Speaker A: What a concert. Dude, this is not what you're to talk about.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: Zero interest. So let's move on.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness. Okay. And we're with Pastor Michael Bean and Pastor Ryan Anderson, and we're going to dig in on this a little bit today. So let's start by reminding the definition that we've been working. This issue almost as by design dovetails wonderfully with the sermon series that we just wrapped up about God's design for men and women in the home and the church.
So in that series, we had been using a definition of a virtuous man. We're talking about a virtuous man, a virtuous woman. And we used those terms, virtue, to kind of refer to like a man and a woman leaning into, living into and obeying what God meant for them to be in his world.
So a virtuous man is a male who takes initiative to lead, provide, and protect others with humble self sacrificing love under God's authority. That was our definition that we were working with.
Before we get into this, just Ryan is going to give us like a super, super concise explanation. And I proposed this and I got some disagreement on whether we needed to talk about this or not, but we're going to do it. On what, why this matters. Because I think actually probably like most people, normal people, and I mean that in a good way, don't actually know or care very much about Southern Baptist mechanics. And does the SBC have like, authority over Riverview Baptist Church or what is when they pass an amendment or propose an amendment or whatever, what does that actually mean for a local church? Who says we're an SBC church?
Help us unpack that real fast.
[00:05:26] Speaker B: Well, one of the The Baptist distinctives is the autonomy of individual local churches, which means that the binding authority for every local church is that church's own governmental polity. Meaning if that some Southern Baptist churches, that is a single pastor, some, that's a board of deacons, some of. For our church, that is the body
[00:05:46] Speaker C: of elders and the congregation.
[00:05:50] Speaker B: And of course.
[00:05:51] Speaker A: Well, yeah, ultimately the congregation, absolutely.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: And elder led congregations.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: Right, but the. But yes, so yeah, go ahead.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: But the elders, you know, with the accountability of the congregation, we get to Michael and I don't have to call the bishop and ask him what to preach this Sunday. We get to decide that. We don't have to ask him what the church needs to believe on this or that.
[00:06:11] Speaker A: And that's what you mean by autonomy. The local church is self governing.
[00:06:14] Speaker B: We're self governing.
[00:06:15] Speaker A: We're a principle within Baptist life. And it's actually very distinct from a lot of other traditions and denominations who have hierarchical structures like regionally. Right. That kind of zoom out. They have the answer to those structures or frankly you get removed.
[00:06:31] Speaker B: Right.
[00:06:31] Speaker A: As a pastor or whatever.
[00:06:34] Speaker B: So the National Southern Baptist Convention, which is the business meeting, it is a really just a massive business meeting that just happened.
The Southern Baptist Convention by definition, really actually only exists for those two days of the year, doing the business for the other 363 days of the year, in a way.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: Why the word convention kind of works there. It's an annual event where churches that are cooperating with the Southern Baptists sbc, I mean, come together.
[00:07:03] Speaker B: Right.
[00:07:03] Speaker A: And so make some decisions.
[00:07:05] Speaker B: There's, there's really two main. I would say there's probably more than two. But for the purposes of this conversation, two main purposes for that convention.
One is to do the business of our cooperative work. Southern Baptist churches cooperate through the cooperative program required to do that in order to be in the National Southern Baptist Convention.
And the meeting is doing the business of those cooperative dollars. The IMB gets this and the NAM gets this, yada, yada, yada.
[00:07:34] Speaker A: The other part is money and making sure what happens needs to happen.
[00:07:38] Speaker B: Right. The other part of that is what does it mean to be a Southern Baptist church? These two days have a lot to do in defining that.
That generally is the Baptist faith and message 2000. The convention is enforcing that. It's probably not the right term, but providing guardrails so that in those two days for churches to remain in friendly cooperation with the National Southern Baptist Convention based on their cooperative giving, but really more importantly their theological confession, they use
[00:08:11] Speaker A: the term like friendly cooperation. Even in distinct from like member.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: Right. It's friendly cooperation.
[00:08:16] Speaker A: You're just cooperating with the SBC and churches because churches are self ruling. They choose whether or not they're going to cooperate with the sbc. The sbc.
If a church decides to be way out of line with what the SBC says a Southern Baptist church is and believes, what's the worst thing that can happen to that church?
[00:08:39] Speaker C: So let me jump in. I think, you know, number one, it is important and you kind of touched on it. It technically is voluntary.
[00:08:46] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's what I was trying to get.
[00:08:47] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a voluntary decision by each local church so that, you know, the church property is owned by the church. Everything is contained inside that single congregation.
The piece that this amendment was meant to help us with is really, Southern Baptists have not had a mechanism to, to confront churches that technically give and say they're in friendly cooperation, but actually aren't because they're doing things that don't align with Baptist doctrine or belief.
[00:09:16] Speaker A: Yeah. With what the SBC has said. This is our doctrine, this is our belief on this issue. And some churches have gone, yeah, we're doing different than that.
[00:09:23] Speaker C: Yeah. And we're still going to call ourselves Southern Baptist. And so the thing that would be the right thing and really the thing with integrity to do would be for those churches just to say, hey, we're going to move on. We're going to not be a Southern Baptist church anymore. We don't agree with the doctrine, we're done.
But what happens is those churches oftentimes will try to stay in and convert the convention, push the body to go a particular way.
[00:09:48] Speaker A: Drag it to the left. I like that's the term. Yep.
[00:09:51] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:51] Speaker A: And so the first time that's happened won't be the last.
[00:09:54] Speaker C: Correct. And that's why this amendment has been written. That's why the credentials committee exists now to essentially evaluate churches that seem to not be in friendly cooperation from a doctrinal perspective.
[00:10:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Good. And then again, the goal being that you could remove a church from being a.
In friendly cooperation status.
That's the goal. And go ahead if you want to add something to that.
[00:10:20] Speaker B: Well, there's just so many. There's just so much history there that's really hard for us to even encapsulate. But the reason that Dr. Mohler had to bring this amendment is because.
[00:10:30] Speaker A: Who's Dr. Mohler?
[00:10:31] Speaker B: President of Southern Seminary. He's the person who brought this amendment to the floor.
[00:10:34] Speaker A: Okay, thank you.
[00:10:35] Speaker B: He's the best leader in the Southern Baptist Convention, in my not so humble opinion, but because previously churches were. Because the Baptist faith and message does say very clearly that the office of pastor is reserved for men.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: Right.
[00:10:52] Speaker B: Churches on the left said, well, but women can do pastoral things, pastory stuff.
[00:11:00] Speaker A: Not put them in the office.
[00:11:01] Speaker B: But we're still in friendly cooperation.
And so basically they'd have integrity, to Michael's point, skirting around the rules. Dr. Mohler, very conservative. Bastian says, come on, guys, let's be clear here.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: Yeah. So it was to provide clarity on a value that already existed within sbc. And.
Okay, so enough there, enough there. If you thought that was fascinating, you're welcome. If you thought that was horrific, it's. Nathan, sorry, it's my fault. I just wanted to give some backdrop there.
And the why we're talking about this and the why people online are kind of losing their minds about it. So there's that.
Okay, so we did some of this point. One kind of first question already in terms of what did Southern Baptists actually vote on? You kind of just explained that the amendment itself. Did you. Does anybody have the amendment language in front of him? We don't have to. No, I don't have any. But the point of it was to clarify already.
The Southern Baptist Faith and Message said that the office of pastor is reserved for men. But there was, like, we just said there were some churches that were going, well, we just, you know, we'll have women doing literally just being pastors, but not in the office of pastor. Because that's. That's a loophole. Right. And so the whole goal was to close the loophole and go, no, no, no. We mean the office. And then obviously, the functions of pastoring the church are reserved for men. So it's not an actual real change in a belief. It's a clarification. That was the whole. That's the whole thing.
The debate was not about whether women can serve in the church.
[00:12:42] Speaker C: Right, right.
[00:12:43] Speaker A: Which. What a red herring. I mean, immediately that came out, this like, oh, well, you know, apparently women are not, you know, qualified to help in church life and stuff. And I'm like, that's such a disingenuous take on that. I don't even wanna.
[00:12:57] Speaker B: It's a highly unintelligent take.
[00:12:59] Speaker A: It's.
[00:12:59] Speaker B: It's.
[00:12:59] Speaker A: It's like. I mean, honestly, it intentionally misreads it. I think it's. It's. It's a. It's a dishonest way to approach that. I'm gonna read this portion of this awful Facebook Post, go for it. That I think actually encapsulates the whole, like, within Christianity, but kind of feminist encroached into this certain flavor of Christianity perspective on it.
Says this woman posted this.
I won't mention her name, but she said, personally, I think every Southern Baptist woman serving in any capacity at a Southern Baptist church should step down immediately. No more teaching, no more leading in worship. No more leading children's ministry, youth ministry, or women's ministry. No more organizing, planning, serving, discipling, mentoring, volunteering, or filling every gap the men don't want to fill. And while they're at it, they should probably step out of the kitchen too, let the man run the whole church, clean the toilets, make the coffee, the sandwiches, make the cookies, one the nursery, da, da, da, da, da. You get where she's going with that. And then she goes, if women are too spiritually dangerous to lead, then surely they're too spiritually dangerous to keep the church functioning.
And also, so triggered by that post. So triggered.
Remind me, did the amendment say that women are spiritually dangerous?
[00:14:18] Speaker C: No.
[00:14:19] Speaker A: Okay. Does anybody even know what that would even mean to say a woman is spiritual? Say any person is spiritually dangerous?
What a nonsense.
[00:14:26] Speaker B: That's obviously downstream of feminism that says men don't like women because women are threatening to their power. So, Michael, what did something that this actually vote on?
[00:14:35] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. So the voting was essentially to add an amendment and ultimately to protect the.
[00:14:45] Speaker A: Found it.
[00:14:45] Speaker B: That's the amendment.
[00:14:46] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: So here's if you want to read it.
[00:14:48] Speaker A: Okay, got it.
[00:14:48] Speaker C: I got it.
[00:14:49] Speaker A: You got to kind of look up at the mic, though, because I don't.
[00:14:50] Speaker C: It says, the Southern Baptist Church does not act to affirm, appoint, endorse, or endorse a woman serving in the office or function of a pastor, elder overseer, such as preaching to the assembled congregation. And so that's the actual language. And it is again, aimed at a particular, frankly, I think, dishonest approach that some of our churches were having and saying, hey, we're not going to call women pastors, but we'll let them do pretty much what pastors do.
And so it was meant to close that loophole. That's what was voted on. It has to be voted on again at next year's convention in order to actually be ratified and affirmed.
But here's what I think really matters is, okay, there's no doubt this is a, you know, hot button issue.
It's made a lot of waves. We just read this on Facebook.
Why do we believe this? Why can't Women be pastors, I think that is. Let's just start there and then move forward. And so, you know, we go to
[00:15:57] Speaker A: the Bible, find out what God says about these issues.
[00:16:00] Speaker C: Yeah, okay. That's. That's the bottom line. You know, if someone were to ask me, why do Southern Baptists believe women can't be past pastors?
I would say, in short, if I were being kind of terse, I would say, because we believe the Bible, that's the bottom line. We want Scripture to inform us on how to live our daily lives, on how to live in our marriages with our children, among our families, and how to live within the church. We believe the Bible speaks to those things very clearly. And so we're going to just do
[00:16:33] Speaker A: what God's word says, even if we find that it goes a little bit against what the culture says, or very against. Okay, I just want to clarify that, because I thought we were supposed to just let, like, the culture guide whatever the church wants to do. That was my thought on that. So little sarcasm there.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: Yeah, no.
[00:16:51] Speaker C: And again, I mean, so some of this you've heard already through the Virtuous Manhood Womanhood series. The thing that is new today is in particular the Office of Pastoral Leadership. And how do women relate to that? I think that's the new piece today. So here's The Bible's teaching.
First Timothy 2 is, I think, probably the key passage, the key text.
And then we can kind of work out from there. It says this first Timothy 2, picking up in verse 11, it says, Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. Paul goes on, I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man. Rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve.
And we'll pause there. There's more in 14 to 15 that could take us down a long theological rabbit hole.
But for now, I think what we would say from that is those instructions are incredibly clear.
And that matters in particular that text, because it is related to 1st Timothy 3. It precedes 1 Timothy 3, where the qualifications of an elder and a pastor are explicitly laid out. And so one Timothy is a pastoral epistle written to a pastor about how to order a church.
And then he says in that very letter, hey, there's a place where a woman should be quiet inside the church. And the teaching function of the church.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: Good. And we're going to get into what that means, what it doesn't mean in a sec, because again, a lot of times the clarifications you have to make on what it doesn't mean come from people. Just maybe some people genuinely just aren't very good at reading and understanding. But I think a lot of times what it is is people very intentionally trying to misconstrue a position in order to try to shove leftism and other things into the church practice and stuff. So we'll clarify what that means a little bit. But yeah, I think you're right. First Timothy 2, you cannot. Like, that's just so clear.
And, you know, folks will want to go, well, it was just cultural for that moment or whatever. And I'm like, well, you better be careful doing that because you're going to do that with like scripture sufficient.
[00:19:06] Speaker C: Yeah, you can do it with anything.
[00:19:07] Speaker A: Yeah. And so no, like, Paul is really, obviously. And again, Paul then references. So actually almost as though to answer folks who would say, well, it's just. It was just he was talking to the one church that Timothy was there with, you know, whatever. Paul goes just so that you don't think that I'm gonna zoom us real quick back to Genesis, creation order and go there and go. That's where this comes from.
Because God ordered the world and God didn't mess up when he ordered the world. He wasn't like, oh, you know what I should have done is I should have made Adam and Eve at the exact same moment.
And that way nobody would get confused. You know what I mean? God was intentional in the way he made the world. And it's a good design. He kept calling it good.
So Paul takes us back there or Timothy back there, but us now to help us see that this was not just a, you know, like microscopic context that Paul's giving this direction in. Paul is appealing to God's created order, God's good created order in the world.
And then we're to reference that when we come up against sin and brokenness and how it wants to distort God's good created order.
[00:20:14] Speaker B: I just think it's always important to remember the moment of time that we're in.
Of course, as Baptists, we believe that the Bible is absolutely authoritative for all matters of faith and practice and doctrine.
And sometimes in our interpretive tradition, we do rely on the history, the historical beliefs of the church to. To provide guardrails for things that are complicated.
Right. It isn't just we're in 2026 and we're trying to figure this out. No, it's a whole interpretive tradition together.
[00:20:53] Speaker A: The history of the church understood this for 2000 years.
[00:20:55] Speaker B: I say that to say when historic Catholics, historic Orthodox folks and historic Protestants all agree.
They're probably not wrong.
[00:21:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:11] Speaker B: And they've agreed on this issue for nearly 2,000 years. I mean, this conversation is a very new conversation. We're talking 100, 150, 200 years old. And in the span of human history, that's a really, really brief span of time.
[00:21:30] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:21:30] Speaker B: And so it's just important to say there has been almost univocal agreement for all of Christian history that men and women are designed to do different things, and especially in the church. And that's okay.
[00:21:43] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's good. And I think that helps us. Then when we read those passages, Michael just read and go, it seems like it's saying this. And then we go, what has the church always said about the thing that we just thought it was saying?
Okay, then I think you're probably on the right track and making some radical change to it is certainly going to lead you down the wrong path. And then you can see the fruits of how that's borne out in a lot of those churches anyway.
[00:22:12] Speaker C: And so the last thing I would just say to this is, so what's at stake is, again, it's not about cultural preference, about, hey, this is what a group of white men in a room in 2026 think is good or right. It's not about, hey, let's try to get back to 1940s and 50s Americana or whatever the case may be. It's just very simply, again, honestly, what does the word of God say? Is it timeless?
And I think that's what's at stake.
[00:22:42] Speaker A: So let's look at then.
Yes, amen to that.
First Timothy 2.
You didn't read 8 through 10, but folks should read that because it gives you more context that Paul is basically instructing Timothy on order in worship and how this is how this needs to be. But in verse 12, it says, I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, rather she is to remain quiet.
That also goes to 1 Corinthians 14. Anybody have that one?
[00:23:14] Speaker B: I did.
[00:23:15] Speaker A: Ryan, turning there. First Corinthians 14.
[00:23:18] Speaker C: Yeah, same thing. So Paul, again, the Context is in First Corinthians 14. He's giving instruction about orderly worship inside the life of the church. And so once again, picking up in
[00:23:33] Speaker B: verse, okay, why is what you just said really important?
[00:23:37] Speaker C: That what this is is then essentially it's teaching on the technical term is ecclesiology. It's teaching on how should the church be structured, how should it function, how is order preserved, Order in the church Inside the land.
[00:23:52] Speaker A: That's a good thing. Honestly, there was a time, really briefly, that I was younger and thought that sort of like just pure, kind of like flowy, what you would frankly call probably disorder was more authentic stuff. And there was this whole moment that we had culturally, not too long ago that thought that. And increasingly I look back on that and go, okay, authentic is good, but disorder is not good. In fact, Paul makes that super clear that disorder is. God is a God of order. He ordered the universe. He ordered like, like the atomic structure of everything in the universe. So order is how things flourish. So just to lean into that in case folks kind of go, yeah, but you know, over structured is like not authentic and stuff. It's like no man. God set forth an order for things because that's how things thrive.
[00:24:41] Speaker B: Well, the reason I wanted Michael to hone in there a little bit is because a lot of what you're reading on the social media world and a lot of what you're reading as refuting what Southern Baptist just did, are appealing to other passages in scripture that do elevate women as doing some special things, but are not talking about the order of the church.
[00:25:00] Speaker A: Okay, good point. Yeah, it's good.
[00:25:01] Speaker B: This is specifically talking about the order of the church. And so we have to remember, we have to read scripture in its context.
[00:25:07] Speaker A: Okay, novel idea. Thank you.
[00:25:09] Speaker B: You say what you're going to say
[00:25:10] Speaker A: for bringing that up.
[00:25:11] Speaker C: So 1 Corinthians 14, picking up verse 33, says this. For God is not a God of confusion, but of peace.
As in all the churches of the saints. The women should keep silent in churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission. As the law also says, if there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. That's bold.
[00:25:33] Speaker B: And again, your scriptures, if you read in the ESV and probably almost all of them give you the very purpose of this text, the subtext, which is not original to the text, but it's an interpretive ad. Orderly worship in a book written to a church.
[00:25:47] Speaker A: That's the subtitle right there is, yeah, orderly worship. Yeah. So he actually uses the word shameful there. And actually I want to lean into the hardest parts of this instruction because I think that they feel hard, but they're actually fairly. I don't want to say easy, but like, we can actually unpack what these things mean in a way that's not like trying to wiggle our way around some uncomfortable Truth or something.
He uses some pretty clear terms and ideas that our culture cannot even comprehend. That he mentioned that a woman should remain silent says that it's shameful.
There are things that this means and there are things that this doesn't mean. And I think that we can articulate those. So help me understand. Does this mean, Michael, that when women are walking down the hallway, walking through our beautiful new welcome area, that the Lord has provided for us, that they better not even breathe very loud?
[00:26:50] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:26:51] Speaker A: Is that what this means?
[00:26:52] Speaker C: Definitely not. That's not what is in play here. Yes.
No, what is in play? And again, I think if we're not careful, we can again misunderstand the passage because we start to think of it outside of its context. He's talking about how do we order the church in particular for worship, for worship services, for the gathering, for. For the body of believers.
And so when he talks about that women should remain silent in the church, one of the things that is at stake is the larger congregation. That there's a place where a woman should not speak. And here's the key. On her own part, like in her own authority. That's right. In her own authority.
And the reason, the way we know that is the context. He says immediately, if there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their own husbands. And so this is really important. And I think even for our single women that are perhaps listening, in the word for woman, here is the Greek word gune. It can be translated woman or wife. And in this context, I think it's pretty clear what is in mind is wives. In particular, Wives should be silent. And I do think that single women have a little bit more. Not that they can preach or teach, but they have a little more leeway than the woman who is married, she is, to go home and ask her own husband if there's a conflict or a debate, she doesn't need to speak up and stand out. She can go home and work that out with him. Though the unmarried woman, I think, has a little more leeway to do that. But the Paul.
[00:28:29] Speaker A: But she doesn't have a husband, which gets to the whole conflict that Paul's trying to avoid there.
[00:28:34] Speaker C: That's exactly right.
[00:28:35] Speaker A: Which is when you have a man and a woman, a husband and a wife in the church setting. And a difference of theological or a difference of scripture, interpretive or a difference of application of scripture starts playing itself out in the congregation between a husband. In the worship, between a husband and wife. I think that's a large part of what Paul. I Don't know if I'm just saying he's just trying to avoid things, but I think that's the danger that he's trying to help the Corinthians navigate away from. And then Timothy as well, is this. Because when that happens and you see it happening, it's uncomfortable because you're like, whoa, are we seeing, like, division within a marriage happening right there? If you had a husband and a wife kind of, you know, in the midst of whatever the worship or a church event or a life, whatever it is. And he's like, I think I believe this scripture means this. And she goes, well, I think it means this. And it's like, whoa, I think they should have talked about that at home first. Right. They come together as one in the body.
And then again, if they kind of go, it actually seems like our elders actually think it means something else.
Well, they ought to work that out at home. And then the husband ought to come to the elders and go, so what's our position on this thing? And then they talk about it, you know, have various discussions, whatever. He goes and talks to his wife about it. And they are one in that. That is the whole goal of, I think that guidance.
[00:30:04] Speaker C: I would agree.
[00:30:04] Speaker A: And that's part of why, you know, referencing single women, they don't have a husband.
They're under the authority of spiritual authority of the elders in the church. I would argue that single women, at least for a while, are under their father's authority. And so there's. There's still things that exist there. But, yeah, the idea of go home and ask your husband. We don't have a husband. You can't do that. Right. But the idea is you're not in a pastor, teaching authority role there. We want to preserve that for men, and we will preserve the unity of the family unit within the church.
[00:30:36] Speaker C: That's exactly right. And so, yeah, the home and the church work together constantly.
That is God's good design. Both of those institutions were given by God and God. God has ordained it as such that men should lead in both contexts.
And so you look at 1 Timothy 2, the teaching or authority that is referenced. A woman should not teach or have authority over a man.
I want us to parse that out just a little bit, because I think that's where in particular, women are kind of barred from holding the office of pastor.
What would you guys. In what ways is that? Obviously, in what ways could we show grace? In what ways might it be okay for a woman to teach? In what context?
[00:31:24] Speaker B: Well, I think where it's okay. And even encouraged and even certainly implied is that women teaching over other women is a great, beautiful, helpful thing.
[00:31:37] Speaker A: But still, specific direction on that actually should happen. The older women should test the younger women.
[00:31:41] Speaker B: It should happen.
Now. Even an abstraction to that lately has been that happening outside the authority of the elders in a body.
Those two things seem to work together. But anyway, women teaching other women is taught, it's described, it's. It's exemplified as a good and beautiful and helpful thing.
I think certainly a woman preaching is just a no go for a number of reasons.
[00:32:08] Speaker A: But Paul says it like preaching, like preaching in the gathering to the gathered body. Gathered body, yeah.
[00:32:14] Speaker B: Right now you can make an exception. Well, a woman preaching to other women at a women's conference, great thing. That's fine. Yep.
I would use the word teaching, but
[00:32:22] Speaker A: either way, we have women read scripture during the worship service.
[00:32:26] Speaker C: I'm fine with that.
[00:32:27] Speaker A: Yeah. And I mean, the idea there is they're not. They're reading God's word aloud.
And that's happening under the. They're. They're not exercising pastoral authority. They're not teaching the scripture.
[00:32:38] Speaker C: That's right. It's not a teaching function.
[00:32:41] Speaker A: And they're under the authority of the elders in the church. Right. Like that's the context in which that happens at Riverview. Right.
[00:32:48] Speaker B: Yeah. I think, you know, a conversation that, that I think a lot of actual Baptist churches are trying to.
To work out right now is, okay, so what does that look like for a woman to teach a mixed gendered group in, say, a life group setting?
And I would say that's a teaching function, which means there are very, very few realities where that should work, if any.
[00:33:17] Speaker C: Yeah. So what the elders would say, and I think this is important, it's not just Ryan or just me or whoever, but that, that teaching function at Riverview, our life groups are those that lead. Those groups are entrusted with a very clear teaching role.
[00:33:37] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:33:39] Speaker C: And so for us, that looks like. Yeah. Not having a woman lead and teach men week in and week out, perpetually.
Does that mean then that a husband and wife couple couldn't work together? I don't think so. I think it means that they could, but the man should still be primary in the teaching function.
[00:33:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
And think of it to an extreme example. Like if in that context it's like, well, we put the woman as the main life group leader there and she's actually like the. She's like the scripture teaching leader over her husband in that life group. You go, well, I wonder what The
[00:34:16] Speaker B: Bible says, yeah, there's a few problems with that.
[00:34:18] Speaker A: So again, that. It's pretty plain that you wouldn't do that.
[00:34:22] Speaker C: Right. And again, that's exactly right. It gets the home out of order. If the woman is teaching and the man is sitting back, he's supposed to be the spiritual leader of his wife.
[00:34:31] Speaker B: Well.
[00:34:31] Speaker A: And frankly, because he should be leading family worship at home. Right. I mean, again, he's the spiritual leader in his home. The church is fundamentally composed of families. Right. God made Adam and said it's not good for him to be alone, and then he made Eve, and that was good. Like God made the family. And that's. Again, there are people who have lost a spouse or are unmarried or all these things. But we exist within the context of family.
You at least have parents. Right. So that order in the home is kind of the underlying foundation of the order within the church.
They should not conflict with each other.
[00:35:10] Speaker C: That's exactly right. Yeah. And I think so we'll just. I'm going to drop a name.
That's where Beth Moore went off the reservation. I mean, that's where she lost her credibility as any kind of a Bible teacher is when she started to say, essentially, I don't care what my denomination thinks, I don't care what my pastors think. I don't care. I'm just, I have the gift of teaching or preaching that is not supported by Scripture. And I would just say, you know, how in the world could her husband lead in any kind of credible way with her doing that?
So, yeah, the church and the home have to work together. And I think then again, we. We're looking at not only just picking on her, but saying, this is just the reality. This is the way God designed it. And so when you look at 1 Timothy 2, when you look at 1 Corinthians 14, or you look at 1 Timothy 3, where Paul starts to outline who are the elders, what is an elder, what must he be? What is the very first qualification? How is he described A husband of one wife. A husband of one wife, which, by
[00:36:16] Speaker A: the way, is a man.
[00:36:17] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:36:18] Speaker A: Just because, you know, it's 20, 26 and we clarify that even.
[00:36:21] Speaker B: I want to comment on what you just said. There's a lot there.
I think what we need to say as it relates to all of these passages we just said, first Timothy Titus, 1 Corinthians is, you know, a lot of times conservative theologians get accused of trying to.
The language is like, take us back, take us back. Because right now, as we have progress, so Take us back. I would just say biblical conservatism is not trying to take us back. It's trying to redeem what is good and best and bring it about in culture.
And so when we push back on these issues, that culture is frankly winning on. What we're not saying is, let's go back where women could never leave the house and only had to ever be in the kitchen. We're not trying to take us back
[00:37:06] Speaker A: anywhere, back to a particular point in time. We say this was the ideal moment.
[00:37:10] Speaker B: We're not trying to conserve a moment in time. We're to trying. We're trying to build structures, which I think is exactly especially what Paul is trying to do in the Corinthian Church. There's a massive amount of confusion about proper male and female roles in the church, in the home, about spiritual gifts,
[00:37:25] Speaker C: about all kinds, everywhere.
[00:37:26] Speaker B: And so he's like, hey, let's redeem the authority structure.
So that's one part. The other thing I just want to comment on, especially as it relates to Beth Moore, and this is the conversation in the woman conversation is, well, Pastor Michael, what if I have a subjective call to teach and preach?
[00:37:41] Speaker C: Right.
[00:37:42] Speaker B: And I would just say back to that. Well, that might be fine, but scripture gives you a very clear direction to use that gift. Do I believe that some women have a level of ability to teach? I do.
Maybe Beth Moore has that. I don't particularly enjoy her teaching, but maybe Beth Moore has that Scripture gives her an outlet, a design, a place to exercise that.
Where she went wrong is to Michael's point, well, forget about Scripture's designs. I'm going to do it wherever I want to do it, however I want it to whoever I want to do.
[00:38:16] Speaker A: Nothing should limit my exercise of what I believe.
[00:38:20] Speaker B: And what I'm saying is that I have a subjective feeling of a call does not outweigh scriptures description and prescription for how someone's giftings are to be used.
[00:38:29] Speaker C: Absolutely. And by the way, that's true for men as well.
[00:38:32] Speaker B: Of course it is.
[00:38:33] Speaker C: No man has the authority to just walk into a church and say, well, I feel like I should be a deacon here or an elder here or anything of that nature. No, even a life group leader here. I think I need to be the life group leader. No, the church observes an individual and through the Spirit, affirms an individual through the leaders and through the process of ordination and says, we together see this gifting in you. And as a voice, as one body, we affirm that.
And so no man or woman in really Any context should just say, well, I am the self appointed final authority of my gifting and calling.
[00:39:13] Speaker B: Yeah, that's crazy.
[00:39:14] Speaker C: That is, that's crazy. It's not helpful for anybody.
[00:39:16] Speaker A: Yeah. And again, I mean, the church having that authority, it's like, thankfully, Paul actually gave us quite a bit of clarity on things. And then in this cultural moment, we would discard half the clarity because we don't like it or whatever.
We, I mean, not we, but you know, they.
And so. Okay, let's.
We're going long and we didn't want to go long, but let's move through a couple other quick, quickly, as quickly as we can. Questions.
[00:39:44] Speaker B: Just.
[00:39:44] Speaker A: I think we've said some of this already. Does this mean that women can't like, be involved in ministry in any way?
[00:39:49] Speaker B: Of course.
[00:39:49] Speaker A: Obviously not.
[00:39:50] Speaker C: Right.
[00:39:51] Speaker B: You just preached a sermon on that.
[00:39:53] Speaker A: Yeah, you mentioned lots of them. First and foremost, you know, should the Lord see fit to provide them children, that is their first calling in terms of like teaching and administering the gospel is in their home under their husband's authority. Man, they should be teaching every day their children within their home. And then like, goodness, there is so much impact that women in our church have in our children's ministries. Right.
[00:40:19] Speaker B: Well, even just women to younger women.
[00:40:21] Speaker A: Yeah. And again, the Bible says older women teach the younger men, instructing them in like, how to be godly women, how to work out all this instruction that God has given us. Does this mean that a woman could never, like, if they encountered a lost person who happened to be a man, like, share the gospel with them? Does this mean they can't do that?
[00:40:40] Speaker C: Of course not.
[00:40:41] Speaker A: Okay. Hey, well, you know, we're going to the absurd question.
[00:40:44] Speaker B: We're talking specifically about the ordering of the gathering of the church.
[00:40:49] Speaker A: Have there been any famous, like women missionaries ever, Brian, that you can think of that you might have named your daughters after or something like that?
[00:40:56] Speaker B: They're both single women.
[00:40:57] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's interesting and important.
[00:40:59] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:41:00] Speaker A: So, yeah, like it's, it's not at all saying women can't speak the gospel to other people. Women can't be involved in significant ministry within church life, within the home.
[00:41:14] Speaker C: Right, right. And I would, I would say again, we don't have time to run through them all, but just a few examples, you know, Priscilla and Aquila instructing Apollos, they did that together as a couple. She some way added value to that conversation. We don't have the details of that, but that was recorded for a reason and a purpose. Phoebe serving the church. Lydia Supporting Gospel Ministry. You know, again, Titus, two older women instructing the younger those things are. And I just want our women to hear me say this because we have talked a lot about what women can't do. Those things are vital and in fact, it's not appropriate for a man to do so. For instance, I don't need to spend time with a 20 year old girl alone.
That would be foolish, sinful and problematic in a thousand different directions.
So who's going to do that?
I can't do it. Who's going to do it? We need women to do these things. There is a vital role that women play in the life of the church. And for us to pretend that that's not there, like, I think that's really what your Facebook post did in a really stupid way, to be totally frank. But yeah, there is this important role that women play that again, we complement one another. We work together for the glory of the gospel.
[00:42:32] Speaker A: What a terrible thing to say that women should like, rage, quit every role within the church because what? Because they can't.
[00:42:39] Speaker B: I'm going to get triggered too.
[00:42:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I know, but it's like, man, okay, actually, I'll say this a little more pastorally.
[00:42:47] Speaker B: There you go. Please do.
[00:42:50] Speaker A: It's hard for me.
If that's the instinct that you feel whenever you hear about this kind of clarification being brought into the sbc, if your instinct is, well, if they can't value women enough or if they think women are dangerous in some way, and maybe I'm just going to peace out, I would admonish you, encourage you to not do that sinful thing and boycott God's design for the church, but instead commit yourself to understanding God's beautiful, good design for the church and believe by faith. Because honestly, faith might just be the thing that for a minute, until you're just kind of baked in attitude, man, we all, we're like, we're born in the water that we're swimming. Like, we're born in the cultural moment. And it shapes us in ways that other cultures in future times will look back and go, oh my gosh, I cannot believe that they thought that way. Right? So I think we have to have a lot of grace for people that go, well, this just goes against everything I've ever thought.
[00:43:57] Speaker C: Yeah, and I agree with that.
[00:43:58] Speaker A: Well, I get that. I actually get that because you live in kind of a crazy moment, honestly. And I myself have recognized postures, thoughts, beliefs that I've had to make adjustments on over the year because I go well, that's out of step with scripture. So my encouragement to folks that have that internal kind of visceral reaction to something like this would be to say, let your faith in God and in His Word bridge that gap for now. Like, bridge the gap where you go, this feels.
It makes me mad or triggering or it feels oppressive or whatever. Trust the Lord in His Word, submit to His Word and the good design there and see the fruit he brings forward in that. Because this is. I keep going back to this idea, like, what's good is good, what's good is good. And if God says it's good, and
[00:44:51] Speaker B: who gets to define what's good?
[00:44:52] Speaker A: Well. Right. And you should go to God's Word to find out who defines it. Right. And that's what we're doing here in this podcast at Riverview in the sbc. Not that people do it perfectly right, but we are. Then that's why we have God's Word as this anchor point to go to. So that's my encouragement. That would be how I would encourage folks is to go, if this is deeply troubling or bothering to you and you find yourself wanting to appeal to, like, cultural values and go, yeah, well, I think I'm just going to go with that instead, because that fits more what I'm predisposed to think.
Let faith in God and His Word bridge that gap. Trust your husband, if you're married, lean into that relationship. Let your spiritual leaders, the elders in your church, provide authority and guidance on these things. And again, let that all come out of God's Word.
[00:45:48] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:45:48] Speaker A: And then see that God brings really, really good fruit from that monologue.
[00:45:53] Speaker C: Now, here's the. The thing, too. I think the reason this triggers some of us, and maybe some women in particular, is there's a cultural assumption that we just have as Americans, which is role determines value.
What I do is who I am.
And the biblical framework is actually, friend, that's completely wrong. That is the world's metric system, but it is not the metric system of the gospel. The way that you know who you are is because you are who God says you are.
You are made in his image. You are beloved and Christ has died for you. There is nothing more that can confer greater value to you. Like, if you have that, you have everything. If you don't have that, you have nothing.
And so you can be a pastor, quote unquote, and male or female, be an absolute loser and on your way to hell. Why? Because you don't know Christ. You're not in Christ to be in
[00:46:59] Speaker A: that role in the church.
[00:47:00] Speaker C: Now, here's the thing. Do you still have value?
Yes. Because you're made in God's image. And because, again, Christ died for sinners. And so we want to see people at Riverview. And if you're listening and you're not a part of Riverview, assign your value and your worth not in what you do, but in who God has said you are. If you are in his image and Christ has died for you, man, let that be enough. Is that not enough? I mean, there's. I talked to some pastor friends that sometimes say, like, you know, man, I'm starting to really feel burned out, and I think I want to give up, but I don't. You know, my family's struggling, and I'm spiritually dry, and I don't know if I can keep going a whole lot longer, but I just can't give up my ministry.
And I just think, dude, you're going to sacrifice your family and your relationship with God for ministry.
What a horrible trade. What are you doing?
And so, in the same way I would say to a woman, don't sacrifice what God has given you in this good design for this role the world says you have to have.
[00:48:15] Speaker A: Great.
[00:48:16] Speaker C: It's just. It's not.
It's not worth it.
[00:48:19] Speaker A: Ryan, you want a closing thought on this?
[00:48:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, you know, one of the.
One of the things that I think Christians just need to say in these matters is try it God's way and see if it works.
Try it God's way and see if it's not beautiful and amazing and sweet and precious in the way that he's made it.
You know, we say, well, I don't want to talk about this, because it's a little. You know, it pushes back in the culture, and it's just like, okay, that we can maybe. Maybe just take the pressure cooker off of it for a minute and say, try doing it God's way, and I promise you, take it to the bank.
It will bring joy, it will bring flourishing, it will bring peace.
Because you're not fighting against what God has made good and precious and beautiful. Try it his way.
[00:49:12] Speaker A: So good. I mean, Psalm 119, right? Like, why does the psalmist rejoice in God's law so much? Because it brings life sweeter. Because God's order brings good into your life. That's why I always thought Psalm 119 was kind of odd. For a while, I was like, why is he talking about God's law so much? Right. It's like he's talking about, you know, numbers and Leviticus and stuff.
But the more you think on that, the more you go rejoicing in God's good design. You do that because you recognize that it brings abundant life, it brings flourishing to people who submit to it. So I think. Go ahead.
[00:49:54] Speaker C: Well, I'll just say so as we wrap up the accusation that I think, you know, is kind of in the ABC like news headline that hey, this, this communicates that Southern Baptists don't value women. I would just say again, nothing could be further from the truth. Like we need, the world needs spiritually mature women who can absolutely disciple others, teach truth, give good wisdom and counsel.
[00:50:19] Speaker B: I want to say something so edgy and model God.
[00:50:22] Speaker A: We can edit it out if it's
[00:50:23] Speaker C: bad, but let me just finish this. And I would just say this like we need women to model godliness. And a part of that is women that can say, I believe God's way is best in this area.
[00:50:37] Speaker B: Amen. Amen.
[00:50:38] Speaker C: And man, I don't know, I'm kind of getting emotional thinking about it. But we need more women like that in the church.
[00:50:45] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:50:46] Speaker C: And that is, again, that's something a man cannot do.
There's something about that that men can't do that is beautiful and right and good and glorifies God and so.
Yeah, I'll leave it there. Go ahead, Ron.
[00:50:58] Speaker B: Well, I was just going to say, you know, we've talked a lot about like these news headlines and I just think it's really important not to take headlines that bash the SBC for not valuing women but honor Muslims as valuing women.
[00:51:16] Speaker A: Right.
[00:51:18] Speaker B: Probably just turn off the news to just. I don't want to detract from that point because that's such a great point. Turn off the news, ladies.
Find that 20 year old woman in her church and say, come over for dinner tonight. I want to show you what God's taught me about being a woman.
[00:51:33] Speaker C: Yeah. And I'll just say as a dad, there's 20 year old and 22 year old women in our church that I want my 14 year old daughter to be around right now.
[00:51:41] Speaker B: Right.
[00:51:41] Speaker A: Like I was going to say, if you're the 20 year old woman, seek out someone for you and then seek out someone to, to invest in.
[00:51:47] Speaker C: There are good, meaningful, eternal things for you to be doing right now, ladies. I promise you.
[00:51:53] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:51:54] Speaker A: Good. All right.
Well, when we said short, we meant like three minutes shorter than our most recent episodes.
[00:52:00] Speaker B: I didn't know where we're at.
[00:52:01] Speaker A: I didn't. I won't tell you, but we hope that this has been genuinely clarifying and encouraging to you men and women, as we, as we seek to submit to God's word and trust, his really good design for men and women, for the home and for the church. And our encouragement to you, again, would be to lean into those things, to press into those things and just see. Just see if God won't bring really, really beautiful fruit in your lives further up and further in. We'll see you soon.
[00:52:38] Speaker C: Sa.
[00:53:07] Speaker A: Jesus.
Ra.
[00:53:58] Speaker B: Ram it.
