Messengers to the 2023 Southern Baptist Convention upheld the Executive Committee’s decision that Fern Creek Baptist in Louisville, Ky., Freedom Church in Vero Beach, Fla., and Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., are not in friendly cooperation with the SBC.
Both Fern Creek Baptist Church and Saddleback Church were deemed by the EC in February not to be in friendly cooperation with the convention because of their positions on women filling the office of pastor. Freedom Church was so deemed because the church failed to cooperate to resolve concerns regarding an abuse allegation. Both the Florida Baptist Convention and the Treasure Coast Baptist Association disfellowshipped Freedom Church last year.
Each of the three churches had the opportunity to appeal that decision during the 2023 SBC Annual Meeting in New Orleans.
SBC Executive Committee Chairman David Sons invited Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, to present a response to the appeals of both Fern Creek and Saddleback. The response to Freedom Church’s appeal was given by EC member and Florida pastor Dean Inserra.
Messengers then voted via ballot vote either “yes” to affirm the EC’s decision or “no” to reinstate the church. In each case, they voted to sustain the EC’s actions — Fern Creek: For 91.85 percent (9,700), Against 7.63 percent (806); Freedom: For 96.46 percent (9,984), Against 3.31 percent (343); Saddleback: For 88.46 percent (9,437), Against 11.36 percent (1,212).
FERN CREEK BAPTIST CHURCH
Linda Barnes Popham presented the appeal on behalf of Fern Creek Church, where she is in her 31st year as full-time pastor. Popham expressed the church’s commitment to the Southern Baptist Convention while upholding her church’s authority under the doctrine of the priesthood of the believer to interpret the Bible as it feels the Holy Spirit’s guidance.
“We know that Jesus is the only way to the Father, we know that His word is perfect, and we know that one day He’s coming again,” Popham told messengers. “But we also know that the Spirit gives illumination to our hearts and minds, and therefore we don’t all interpret every Scripture the same way. We believe that the Bible allows women to serve in ways in which all of you do not agree, but we should still be able to partner together, as the prophet said, by enlarging the place of our tent, and lengthening our courts.”
Popham presented the pastorate as her God-given calling, describing herself as a “student of the Word.”
Mohler countered that the SBC has the right to choose its standards for determining whether churches are in friendly cooperation with the SBC. Affirming local church autonomy, he said the convention “has the sole responsibility to establish its own membership and to define what it means to be a cooperative Southern Baptist church.”
He presented the issue of a woman serving in the pastorate as an issue of “fundamental biblical authority that does violate the doctrine and the order of the Southern Baptist Convention,” adding, “That is the only issue that is addressed by the messengers today.”
He implored messengers to take Popham and Fern Creek “at honest word, as to a difference in both doctrine and order.”
FREEDOM CHURCH
Freedom Church’s appeal was made by Donald Stewart, an elder at the church.
“Although innocent of these charges, our former pastor wants the focus of Freedom Church to be on Jesus Christ, not on him. Therefore, on May 22, he (Richard Demsick) resigned and is no longer involved in the leadership of the church,” Stewart said.
“Our long-standing policies and practices show that we very much act in a manner consistent with the convention’s beliefs regarding sexual abuse. At the time our former pastor was called, and even to this day, there have never been any allegations of sexual abuse brought against him by any women, anywhere under his pastoral care or otherwise. This has been confirmed through an independent investigation done by the Anglican Church of North America,” Stewart told messengers.
Inserra told messengers the EC and the SBC Credentials Committee stand behind the decision to consider Freedom Church out of cooperation.
“The individual was investigated by another denomination, which found credible allegations of sinful conduct and reported an admitted pattern of sexual misconduct with women under his pastoral care and supervision,” Inserra said. “Both the Florida Baptist Convention and the Treasure Coast Baptist Association provided Freedom Church with a confirmed and admitted sexual misconduct of the individual … yet Freedom Church took zero action.”
The pastor’s resignation has been described as a “strategic move,” he said, “to get the church back into the Southern Baptist Convention, while the individual remains in a leadership role and is only stepping back until things are settled with the SBC.”
SADDLEBACK CHURCH
A Southern Baptist vote to disfellowship with Saddleback Church would be a vote to disregard a history of ministry amid disagreement, said Saddleback Church founding pastor Rick Warren.
“For 178 years, the SBC has been a blend of at least a dozen different tribes of Baptists. If you think every Baptist thinks like you, you’re mistaken,” Warren said.
Southern Baptists have worked in a spirit of “mutual commitment toward the inerrancy and infallibility of God’s Word and the Great Commission of Jesus Christ,” Warren said, adding that such a spirit of cooperation cannot exist without looking past those disagreements.
“No one is asking any Southern Baptist to change their theology. I’m not asking you to agree with my church. I am asking you to act like a Southern Baptist,” he said.
Mohler agreed with Warren that Saddleback has every right to have women pastors. Saddleback just can’t do it and remain in the Southern Baptist Convention.
“We look to this issue because Southern Baptists decided that it is not just a matter of church polity,” Mohler said. “It is not just a matter of hermeneutics. It’s a matter of biblical commitment, a commitment to Scripture that unequivocally — we believe — limits the office of pastor to men.”