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As a pastor, I am new to the ABC-USA and I find myself in disagreement with two areas. I do not mean to be asrgumentative or disagreeable. This is my disclaimer up front. By background is in fellowships more conservative than the
ABC would be considered. I give this only as backgroung information so you know where my heart is. Question #1: I do not see the role of Pastor for women in the scriptures given. Can someone please enlighten me why this is practiced within our association? Sometimes I think we, as Christians, change things for our purposes but not God's plan. I believe the hearts of these women are with right intentions but believe this is not God's plan as we find it in Scripture. Question #2: The feeling outside the ABC (and I am sensing inside) is that we are not taking a strong enough stand against homosexuality. Please know that the is no ill intent nor homophobia involved here. This is a clear violation of Scripture and I cannot understand why their is no disassociation from those who choose to practice such a lifestyle and call it Biblical. Again, this is not meant to be inflamatory of divisive.

Welcome, Pastor Pete. There aren't a whole lot of ABC folks here; Ed Pettibone and I are the ones that spring to mind, and Tim Bonney is now Methodist but used to be ABC.

On the issue of women pastors, I think Ed and I are both firmly in favor of ordaining such women as believe themselves to be, and are believed by a local church to be, called to the job. (Ed's wife Trudy is an ABC pastor, and my own church has a woman pastor, Rev. Judy Gay. Note that she is a Gay but not a gay, which can complicate or enliven discussion of your second Serious topic.) ABC has had some female pastors since before it even became ABC (back around 1950, the name was changed from "Northern Baptist Convention" to "American Baptist Convention"; the C changed from "Convention" to "Churches" later), but as in most denominations the number of women pastors was quite small until the last couple decades. Since ordination is at its root a function of the local church, it is local churches' decisions that have led to the increase. Whether this was done because of God's leading or in the face of it, I cannot say for sure, but my belief has always been that women are just as likely to be called by God as men, so I've never worried about it. I don't see a clear unified teaching on the subject in the scriptures, but would be happy to entertain your own reading.

On the issue of homosexuality, Ed will be more in agreement with you than I will, though the devil may, as they say, be in the details. I am an individual member of AWAB (the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists, the main organization of mainly ABC Baptists advocating for full inclusion of GLBTQ Christians in our churches. Ed, on the other hand, would be happy if we AWAB types would all just go away and be our own denomination. (That's my reading of it; Ed tends to pick nits, so he may want to argue the minutiae of my interpretation.) I don't see any particular evidence in the Bible that God wants sexual orientation treated as a make-it-or-break-it fellowship buster. I fail to see how advocating disfellowshipping can be other than divisive.

I am interested in how you came to pastor an ABC church without having hashed this all out previously. I would think that for a Baptist with a strong bias against women pastors and non-exclusionary treatment of homosexuals any number of other Baptist groups (the Alliance of Baptist being the only other obvious exception; they tend to be more like immersionist UCCs) would be a better fit. What is your background, denominationally and also in terms of seminary education?

Again, welcome. I hope we can have some useful discussion on these topics.

Pete,

As Hauro has said I'm a former American Baptist so I have a pretty good understand of the ABC system. Honestly I don't know how the ABC could take a stronger stand against homosexuality. The denomination already officially considers it incompatible with Christian teaching. But ABC churches and regions are autonomous. There isn't much else the ABC can do because taking a position on such issues is really up to the local church.

Tim;
I know the official language makes a clear statement. I guess I am curious as to what it takes for the ABC to no longer allow a church to maintain its fellowship status. I would think proclaiming unnatural as the norm and clearly ignoring the teachings of Scripture as being a justifiable reason. What would it take then? Isn't it OK to tell a church they have the right t believe and practice what they like, just not in this particular fellowship of churches?

My impression is that at the national level, the constituents are Regions, not churches, so the question would be what needs to be done to disfellowship a Region, not a church. It would be within the Regions, and/or perhaps within the Areas within Regions, that the question of disfellowshipping a particular church might be raised. What we had here in the ABC-NW, that eventually led, thank God, to the founding of our Evergreen region, was that the By-Laws required a supermajority to disfellowship (I think it was 2/3 plus one, or maybe it was even 3/4). For a decade or so this issue brought our Region to a grinding halt, as roughly 60%, but never the needed 67%, of the churches voted year after year to expel Seattle First Baptist and University Baptist (the two ABC-NW churches that were affiliated with AWAB and/or had hired or ordained openly GLBT ministers). Virtually no mission stuff got done.

At one point during those years my pastor included a poll in the Sunday Bulletin prior to the ABC-NW annual meeting, or maybe the Biennial, asking among other things for people to vote yes or no on "Homosexuality should be treated as a sin". He later told me that the response on that particular question in the poll was precisely 50% yea and 50% nay in our congregation.

Personally, I am in favor of Evergreen's approach, which has largely defused the issue within our Regional fellowship.

Ed: Haruo for a church to be recognized by an Association and/or the National ABC-USA they must have the endorsement of each entity.

And If the wish to leave of their own accord they must have the approval to withdraw from each. We just went through this with one local church in our association. The reasoning has to do with ownership of assets.

Ed;
I thought within the ABC there is no ownership of assets by the ABC. Each church being autonomous.

Pete

Ed; Hauro, according this on the ABC-USA website the NW region is comprised of Washington, Idaho, Montana and Utah. Would that include any churches in Seattle?

And when was the Evergreen Region begun?

Here is an interesting page http://www.abc-usa.org/portals/0/ABC10FactsBrochure.pdf

Ed: Hauro in reading the history of the Evergreen Region I read [quote]There was a need to find the ground for “common ministry” among the churches of this “New Region.” The reason the “New Region” was asked to form, was not a reason to establish a “New Region”. In other words, “homosexuality” or “welcoming and affirming” could not be the identifying characteristic, issue or definition of the New Region. It simply did not have anything close to universal support among the churches and coming together under any “issue” was deemed to be unhealthy by the Team. Therefore, common ministries needed to be identified and seriously considered and lifted up to bring unity and purpose to this New Region.

That sounds to me like; Although the reason to establish a "New Region" could not be stated as, being accepting of homosexuality, since that issue of "did not have anything close to universal support among the churches involved" and "coming together under any single 'issue' was deemed to be unhealthy by the Team." The team got creative and came up with some inventive new ways to distinguish them selves from existing regions other than something diametrically opposd to the stated policy of the denomination. And from here it sounds like an acknowledgment of having been asked to leave the NW Region due to the welcoming and affirming stance by a significant number.

So far all of the annual meetings have been held in the Seattle area. As for "when consensus is reached", I'd have to ask you to come attend an annual meeting (we would welcome and affirm you!) or attend such a meeting of a group in your area that uses a similar system (Quakers often do, for one).

Evergreen does not exercise any control or attempt to exercise any control over local churches' standards for admission to church membership. But the arguments over First Baptist and University Baptist within (the old) ABC-NW had much more to do with the question of ordaining/calling openly gay clergy than with any regional effort to restrict local church membership.

I thought there was a time limit on finding a new regional home, and failure meant you're outta here.