ST. CHARLES, Mo. – Messengers to the Missouri Baptist Convention’s (MBC) annual meeting, Oct. 28-29 here, approved the creation of a task force to aid in the evaluation of a church’s position on certain elements of Baptist identity, especially the office and function of pastoral leaders being limited to biblically qualified men.
The motion passed overwhelmingly, with fewer than a dozen “no” votes.
The task force came about through a motion by Jeremy Sells a messenger from First Baptist Church. His motion asked for the task force to provide guidelines to the MBC Credentials Committee for “evaluating a church’s position on issues, including the office and function of pastor/elder/overseer being limited to men as qualified by scripture, and report a recommended process to the messengers of the 2025 Annual Meeting for approval for immediate implementation.”
The goal of the task force is to bring clarify any areas of ambiguity, Sells said.
“Slippery slopes are built on the hills of ambiguity,” he said. “My prayer is that this task force will help us speak with greater clarity on this vital issue, because we need healthy, faithful churches that exist for the glory of God.”
David Kruger, a messenger from First Baptist Lynn, asked to amend the proposal to swap “issues” with “Baptist identity,” saying the latter term offered more specificity. Sells accepted the amendment as friendly.
After the vote approving the motion, Chris Williams, MBC president and pastor of Fellowship, Greenwood, said he was thankful for the task force and its mission.
“This is something we’re going to look and make sure we get right,” he said. “In Baptist life, we have in the past voted on things we weren’t fully aware of, and there were unintended consequences. We’re thankful we’re going to have a Task Force to look at this and come back next year with all the facts and the right recommendation.”
The question of women pastors, elders or overseers has recently been a high-profile issue in Baptist life.
The Southern Baptist Convention in 2023 voted in the first step of a two-step process to add to their constitution the requirement that pastors must be men. The required follow-up vote in 2024 received support from 61 percent of messengers, short of the 2/3 supermajority needed to added the requirement to the constitution.
However, Article VI of the Baptist Faith & Message 2000, Southern Baptist’s doctrinal statement, reads in part, “[the Church’s] two scriptural offices are that of pastor/elder/overseer and deacon. While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor/elder/overseer is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.” This section cites, among other Scripture references, 1 Timothy 2:9–14 and 1 Timothy 3:1–15.