California megachurch rejected by Southern Baptists for having female pastors

The vote against the re-admittance of Saddleback megachurch by the Southern Baptist Convention was announced on Wednesday.

By Colman Rowan

Published: June 14, 2023 5:13pm

Updated: June 15, 2023 10:20am

Saddleback megachurch, which has over 20,000 active members, was voted on Wednesday to not be allowed re-admittance to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) for having women pastors.

The SBC once again holds strong to their controversial stance that women should not be pastors since having kicked Saddleback and four other churches out of the Convention in February.

The policy of the SBC states, "While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture."

In February, which is when Saddleback was first kicked out, the SBC's recently re-elected President Bart Barber reportedly said, “in June we will find out what the messengers feel about Saddleback having a woman pastor as part of the regular preaching team.”

Before being voted out, Saddleback was the denomination’s second-largest congregation. The SBC delegates rejected an appeal by Rick Warren, the retired founding pastor of Saddleback, by a 9,437-1,212 vote. Warren had reportedly asked the SBC to allow disagreements “in order to share a common mission.”

“Messengers voted for conformity and uniformity rather than unity. The only way you will have unity is to love diversity. We made this effort knowing we were not going to win,” Warren reportedly said at a news conference after the results were announced.

“There are people who want to take the SBC back to the 1950s when white men ruled supreme and when the woman’s place was in the home. There are others who want to take it back 500 years to the time of the Reformation,” Warren reportedly said. “I say we need to take the church back to the first century. The church at its birth was the church at its best.”

Along with Saddleback, another smaller church, Fern Creek Baptist in Louisville, Kentucky, was denied admittance to the SBC for the same reason, which is the first time, according to the AP, that the SBC has voted a church out for the reason of allowing female pastors.