This week, the Southern Baptist Convention convenes for its annual meeting, There will be much discussion, perhaps another amendment or two, \u00a0and then a vote on the issue of churches who have female staff members who carry the title of \u201cpastor.\u201d\u00a0 My feelings on the issue are forged by two experiences.\u00a0 The first goes back to my teenage years.\u00a0 During my sophomore year of High School, I was in an accident in which the second vertebra of my neck was broken.\u00a0 I spent the next nine months, homebound, out of school, off the athletic teams, away from many friends, recovering.\u00a0 My only real connection to my outside world was through the Youth Pastor at the church where my dad was Senior Pastor.\u00a0 Had it not been for this God called and deeply committed Youth Pastor, I might not have made it through the experience, much less felt God\u2019s call to ministry.\u00a0 The second experience was in one of the twenty-nine churches where I have served as Interim Pastor.\u00a0 The Children\u2019s Pastor at this church was an absolute joy with whom to serve. Hardly a month went by that children weren\u2019t baptized – most of whom were personally led to the Lord by this Children\u2019s Pastor then adequately discipled by the same. \u00a0I thank God for both of these pastors.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the Youth Pastor was named Robbie and the Children\u2019s Pastor was named Candy. To think that these two churches could be voted out of the Southern Baptist Convention for having a female staff member with the title of \u201cpastor\u201d is beyond my ability to reason. We are a diverse convention – \u201cmany members in one body\u201d (Romans 12:4), always have been, always will be. \u00a0We will not all agree with the final vote, whatever it is. \u00a0I just pray that wise heads prevail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week, the Southern Baptist Convention convenes for its annual meeting, There will be much discussion, perhaps another amendment or two, \u00a0and then a vote on the issue of churches who have female staff members who carry the title of \u201cpastor.\u201d\u00a0 My feelings on the issue are forged by two experiences.\u00a0 The first goes back…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3515"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3516,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3515\/revisions\/3516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}