Actually, Southern Baptists don't mind having women as pastors

What I learned from accidentally becoming a 'pastor' in an SBC church

Officially, the Southern Baptist Convention is opposed to women’s ordination. A few weeks ago — for the third year in a row — the SBC voted on the issue, with the majority affirming that churches may employ “only men as any kind of pastor or elder.”

The SBC is the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S., and for the last several years, a group of men have focused on ridding the denomination of churches with women in pastoral roles. They’ve proposed an amendment to the SBC constitution that would refuse membership to any church with a woman pastor.¹

There’s just a slight problem with their strategy: there are — and will always be —women serving as pastors in SBC churches.

I know this, because I was one.

Type “pastor” into the stock photo search and nearly every image is a man on a stage with a microphone. Is that what a pastor is, or should it look something more like the picture above? Photo by Jonny Gios on Unsplash

Calling a woman Leader is dangerous

For most of my life, I never considered it possible for a woman to preach a sermon or have any kind of authority in the church. I’d only seen men in the pulpit, only heard men’s voices on Sunday mornings.

But when I filled in to lead Bible study one evening at our prison ministry, I discovered how much I loved teaching the Bible. Eventually, I launched a women’s study for our Southern Baptist/Acts 29² church.

Soon after this, our pastors decided to form a new women’s ministry, and asked me to lead it. As the Deacon of Women³ I reported directly to the lead pastor — though as an unpaid volunteer.

When I started the role, I was afraid to even call myself a “leader.” In my understanding, women who became pastors did so out of a sinful desire for power. I didn’t want anyone to mistake me for that type of woman.

But the pastor said I had leadership and teaching gifts, and he encouraged me to develop them.

I cautiously began exploring the concept of “leadership,” reading books the pastor recommended. I wanted to understand how I could stay within the boundaries of what was allowed for women in a complementarian church.

Being a “pastor” was the farthest thing from my mind. I was simply excited and grateful to serve women… until I started to bump up against some uncomfortable realities.

It’s the same work, but not the same worth

The women’s ministry grew quickly. We eventually had six different leadership teams running multiple programs and events, including a Bible study that grew to nearly 100 attendees. It was a lot of work, but I loved it.

But at the same time, I found myself discouraged by what felt like a lack of support from the male pastors. I would ask for events to be included in the Sunday morning announcements or weekly email newsletter, only to find out the pastors wanted to prioritize events of their own — and theirs always came first. We would spend large portions of staff meetings talking about the youth pastor’s plans, making sure he had enough volunteers and staff support for his programs. Women’s ministry came as an afterthought, if we discussed it at all.

I started to wonder: Am I doing something wrong? Am I not communicating well? I tried to evaluate my programs in comparison with those run by the pastors on staff. But the more I reflected, the more unsettled I became.

At this point the women’s ministry was one of the largest in our church, serving one of the biggest groups (except for kids). But where the youth group, community groups, and children’s ministry were all overseen by a staff pastor — each of whom had his own paid administrative assistant (a woman, of course) — the women’s ministry was run by me, a mom of 4 who wasn’t paid, had no administrative help, and wasn’t even considered a staff member.

I couldn’t avoid the comparison. I was doing essentially the same things as the men — even writing and presenting what were essentially sermons at our women’s studies.

Up to this point, I’d fully believed the complementarian phrases about how women and men were “equal in value but with different roles.” But how was my “role” different from the male pastors?

In addition to doing the same types of work, I was even carrying the same essential responsibility for the spiritual health of people in our church. The pastors expected me and my team to “shepherd” women, which is just another way of saying pastor.

“Meekness” by Eustache Le Sueur, 1650. Photo by Art Institute of Chicago on Unsplash.

My role and the role of the male pastor/elders were not “different” but with “equal value.” Our roles were the same, but valued quite differently.

If a man did the work, he would be called “pastor.”

If a woman did the same work, she could be called a “women’s ministry leader.”

The only pastoral work I was NOT allowed to do were the functions that carried public recognition and privilege: voting, preaching, earning a paycheck, and holding the title of “pastor.”

It was fine for me to do the work of pastoring — the day-to-day care for the congregation and responsibility for discipleship — but it was not ok for me to have any pay or privileges as a result.

I could do the work, but I couldn’t have the title.

I could function as a pastor, but I couldn’t be called one.

Title vs. function — what makes a pastor?

It’s challenging to convey tone through the written word. Perhaps you’ve read resentment or bitterness in my story. On the contrary, I was grateful for my responsibilities, and believed unpaid ministry was the best way to serve.

My church never paid me for my work. I'm glad.

That doesn’t mean I was unbothered, of course! I was frustrated that the women of the church were undervalued by the men in charge.

But my years in that volunteer position forced me to reevaluate everything I believed about gender roles and the nature of “pastoring.”

Again, I didn’t care if I had the title⁴, but it became clear to me the SBC had it backwards. Preventing women from being called “pastor” didn’t stop me — or the many other women like me — from carrying out what are arguably the most important pastoral functions of care, counsel, prayer, and personal relationships. We were being pastors, and the men in our church, and all over our denomination, were just fine with it.

The men of the SBC continue to focus on a particular title because of the power and prestige they’ve attached to it. But it doesn’t matter who gets to be called “pastor.” What matters is who actually does the work of pastoring.

Historian Beth Allison Barr helped me understand how we ended up here. In her recent book, “Becoming the Pastor’s Wife,” she illustrates the many ways the early church ordained women.

“For the first thousand years of Western church history, ordination tied a particular function (think pastoring) to a particular office (bishop, priest, deacon, abbess, etc.) within a particular community (church, diocese, monastery, etc.). While ordination could include administering the sacrament, it didn’t have to. It could include consecration but didn’t have to. It could include preaching and teaching but didn’t have to.”⁵

But with changes in politics and church culture, ordination became a matter of status and power. The Catholic church used ordination to define who had sacred authority to forgive sins and administer the Eucharist, for example, and in the medieval era the office of priest became a path to a comfortable and secure income. And of course, today the title “pastor” is more about who gets the microphone than who cares for people.

Yet even as the power, privilege, and prestige available to “pastors” were reserved for men only, women kept serving the church anyway.

As Barr explains: “History suggests that ordination has less to do with the work of ministry and more to do with how that work is recognized.”⁶

The SBC won’t ordain women as pastors. Year after year, it affirms the choice to withhold that title from women. But at my former church, and at thousands of other churches like it, we hear a different message, week after week:

“We’ll never call you a pastor, but we’re happy to let you to serve us as one.”

1. More than 60% of voting members have supported the amendment each year, though this is short of the supermajority needed to amend the constitution. In 2023, the convention even kicked out its largest church because it began to ordain women.

2. Acts 29 is a church-planting network that has made news (and was the subject of a podcast) for domineering and abusive leadership. Our church emphasized its membership in A29 — our pastor was part of national leadership for many years — and downplayed its Southern Baptist affiliation, though its doctrines aligned with the SBC.

3. Since our church didn’t believe women could be ordained, we were “commissioned” to deacon roles instead.

4. I’m actually not sure if it’s helpful for anyone, man or woman, to be paid a full-time salary to “pastor,” or for the role to be considered a professional career. Perhaps bivocational is a better option? I don’t have firm opinions yet, but if you do, please share in the comments!

5. pg. 59-60, “Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to Ministry.”

6. pg. 67, “Becoming the Pastor’s Wife”