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All confessions of faith will leave some arguments unsettled. Our Baptist Faith and Message certainly does and you see it reflected in this issue’s discussion of women in local church ministry. You’ll notice that the participants all sought to base their beliefs and practice on what the Bible says, even though they found different nuances within the same verses. Perhaps a person can escape those quandaries within the bounds of his own head but certainly not in a broader dialog. God has not chosen to settle every debate and curiosity that arises within his people.
Our confession of faith affirms, for example, the personal and visible return of Christ but does not specify the order of the events. Some are more certain of the details and order of things, according to their favorite eschatological views and might wish that we would corporately “take sides.” But would doing so truly define the doctrine and practice of Southern Baptists? I think it wouldn’t.
Regarding the role of women in the church, the BF&M tries to say as much as the Bible does say and as little as possible of what the Bible does not. Our statement says nothing about ordination of deacons or ministers. It says nothing about deaconesses or lady youth ministers. It refers only to the role of pastor. We know who the pastor is. He’s the one who preaches from your pulpit or live video feed each Sunday. He’s the spiritual leader of your congregation. He’s the husband of not more than one wife. Southern Baptists have said that this person should not be a woman because passages like 1 Timothy 2 indicate this. That’s it, and I think that’s enough to say. It’s apparently enough to raise the ire of other evangelicals and some Southern Baptists, though they very rarely have women pastors either.
You see, we weren’t trying to define “nice” or “Christian” or “orthodox” or even “Baptist” in this document; our goal was to describe, within the bounds of what is also Baptist, orthodox, and Christian, the doctrinal and practical consensus of autonomous Southern Baptists, specifically as it relates to the various para-church ministries we’ve built together.
We should keep trying to understand God and his Word more completely, but we avoid shortcuts that settle things that he has not. God has not told us all he knows or all that we think we’d like to know.
It is in the taking of shortcuts that we make one of our most persistent mistakes in the settling of hard questions. Our desire to succeed should not trump biblical authority as we decide what we should do. My biggest concern related to those debates of our age that will not be settled by a useful confession is pragmatism. The temptation to solve difficult puzzles by means other than biblical rots the core out of many well-begun ministries.
Doing things “because they work” rather than from conviction or biblical interpretation may be fine when you’re picking a lawn service but it rarely leads a church to a better form of governance, to name one example. A primary explanation that some denominations give for an episcopalian (bishop-led) form of governance is practicality. I can see that. How much simpler some things might be if someone with authority over both pastor and congregation could mediate disagreements. Doesn’t it sound tempting to have an experienced professional find your next pastor for you? The more top down our governance is, the more potentially efficient it can be. After all, didn’t the apostles have that kind of authority relationship with churches? And it can be inconvenient to seek biblical guidance regarding the doctrines that lead us to local church autonomy. Do all redeemed and Spirit-indwelt people have access to the holiest place or is it just the highest ranking religious professionals? We shouldn’t ask, “does it work?” until we are confident that we’ve discerned what is right. They can be vastly different things.
Pragmatically based faith and practice can also be contextualization run wild. The “why” we do things often becomes temporal or rooted in one subculture. If that happens, we’ve gone from timeless principles leading to contemporary practice, to temporary principles leading to enculturated priorities. This situation is behind churches or denominations for whom the most important thing they do is based on what’s on the cover of Newsweek this week (e.g. nuclear proliferation, global cooling, overpopulation, women’s liberation, homelessness, global warming, world famine, climate change, homosexual rights, etc.)?they scamper from one cause to another, solving nothing.
Following our own wisdom also tempts us to draw universal principles out of good things we’ve seen happen in our own very unusual places during unusual times. We write a book, other people who desire to lead such an exciting ministry attempt to apply these newly timeless principles in their settings and we all wonder why it doesn’t turn out the same. Inappropriately pragmatic churches, liberal or successful, are always behind the ball in their pursuit of what others declare relevant.
Proverbs 14:12 warns us that there is a way that makes sense to us but doesn’t turn out well. If we only do what seems right or what works in theory, we’re a merely human organization, no better and actually worse than any other civic group. I say we are worse because we claim to be more by calling our group a church. Apart from the headship of Christ and aside from his revelation in Scripture, we’re just a group of well-meaning guys who sing too much.
There’s a sense in which we’re all tempted toward a too-human ministry. We preach or teach as though we know what will work in the lives of individuals, families, churches and communities. We just don’t know that; neither do we know what they need. God knows that and his Holy Spirit regularly uses biblical preaching to do work where the preacher never knew the need.
Our ministry is mostly pragmatic if we pursue perceived needs. We’re missing something if we only do those things that a club full of lost people could have figured out just the same. If we preach the Word and seek God’s will in the whys and hows of our ministries, we’re ahead of the ball because God knows where it’s going.
