Why I Believe Saddleback Should Be Reinstated to the SBC

The Disfellowship of Saddleback and the Question of Reinstatement

Welcome to the program, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Justin Peters. I hope that this finds you and your family doing well today. I want to thank you so much for joining me for this podcast. No, the title is not clickbait.

No, I have not lost my theological mind, nor am I out of my gourd. I actually believe that Saddleback Church should be reinstated, should be voted back in to the SBC at its annual meeting this coming June 11th through 12th in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Now, for those of you who may not be aware, I'm sure most of you are, Saddleback Church was disfellowshipped from the SBC by its executive committee earlier this year. Why? Well, it goes back to May of 2021 when Saddleback made a lot of news by ordaining three women as pastors in its church.

Saddleback is one of the largest churches in the SBC, and you see here in the article, it says, quote, Yesterday was a historic night for Saddleback Church in many ways, the Southern California megachurch's Facebook page announced on May 8th.

We ordained our first three women pastors, Liz Puffer, Cynthia Petty, and Katie Edwards. And you see there the three ladies kneeling down, being ordained as pastors, and Rick Warren there kind of towards the left giving his approval.

Not only his approval, this was done at his behest. This was done under his leadership because he, three years ago, or a couple of years ago, changed his theology from complementarianism to egalitarianism.

Now, Rick Warren put out a video today, I believe, he says he's neither complementarian nor egalitarian, but that's a farce. Rick Warren believes that women can and should serve as pastors in a church, and there is no distinction by saying, oh, well, there's pastors and then there's senior pastor.

You will not find the term senior pastor in the Bible. There are just pastors, elders, and overseers, bishops, depending upon which translation you use. And those three words, those three titles are used interchangeably.

In other words, a pastor is an elder, an elder is a pastor, an elder is a bishop, a bishop is a pastor, a bishop is an elder. Those three terms are used interchangeably in scripture. So you won't find anything like senior pastor.

So Rick Warren believes that women can serve as pastors, and he led his church to ordain three women as pastors. So he is egalitarian, make no mistake about it. In fact, later in this same article, it says that Kay Warren, wife of Rick Warren, preached this weekend at Saddleback's Mother's Day services, while speaker and author Anne Graham Lotz preached at Second Baptist Church in Houston.

You will not want to miss Anne Graham Lotz, the best preacher her dad, Billy Graham, ever heard. It says Ed Young, former SBC president and pastor of Second Baptist, said this in an online invitation to the congregation.

Now, so here you have women, Kay Warren and Anne Graham Lotz, preaching at Southern Baptist churches. And the argument is, well, it's okay once in a while for a woman to preach in church, because after all, this is just Mother's Day.

Well, no, dear friends, it's not Mother's Day, it's the Lord's Day. And every church service must be vertically oriented. It is about God, not about us. And I've often wished one Mother's Day, which is always on Sunday, of course, I would love to go into a church, and instead of hearing happy Mother's Day, I would love to hear someone say, happy Lord's Day, because that's what it is.

It is the Lord's Day, but I digress. And to have a woman preach when the local church has gathered together for worship is a clear violation of scripture. And Saddleback Church was disfellowshipped because of that very reason, and because the Southern Baptist Convention has always held since its inception, that only men are permitted biblically to serve as pastors, elders, bishops, and only men can preach.

And for a woman to preach is, at least when the local body has gathered together for corporate worship, men and women present, for a woman to fill the pulpit and preach, that is a very clear violation of scripture.

And so the Executive Committee of SBC disfellowshipped Saddleback Church. A little further down in the same article, Bible teacher Beth Moore, who recently announced she no longer identifies as a Southern Baptist, preached Sunday at Lake Point Church in Rockwall, an SBC congregation that draws more than 14 ,000 in attendance.

Consistent Application of the SBC Standard to Other Churches

So you have here in this one article, you've got three of the largest churches in the Southern Baptist Convention having women preach on Mother's Day service, well, Mother's Day Sunday, which as I said, that's the Lord's Day.

It's not Mother's Day, not when it comes to church, it's not. So that brings me to why I believe Saddleback Church should be reinstated, because if you're going, and I say you in reference to the messengers who will be at the convention coming up here in about three weeks or so, if you're going to disfellowship Saddleback Church for ordaining three women as pastors, then you're also going to have to disfellowship Second Baptist Church in Houston because they have women preach on Sunday morning from time to time.

You can't separate the function from the office of pastor. Having a woman preach in corporate worship on a Sunday morning is as much a violation of scripture as is having a woman ordained as a pastor.

So you're going to have to disfellowship Second Baptist Church Houston, one of, if not the largest churches in the SBC. You're going to have to disfellowship Lake Point Church in Rockwall, Texas with an attendance of about 14 ,000.

You're also going to have to disfellowship Elevation Church in North Carolina, pastored by Stephen Furtick. And you may be wondering, well, why is that? Well, when you go to their website, as I did, here's a screenshot.

You look at Our Beliefs, Our Code, and then Leadership there on the right. Notice under Leadership, it says, meet the lead pastors, plural, meet the lead pastors who set the vision of Elevation Church, and then learn more.

That's something you can click there, learn more. And so I did click it to learn more, and it takes you here. Leadership, Pastor Stephen and Holly Furtick. Now, in case you're thinking, well, that just said, and by the way, these are the only two leaders listed on the church's website.

I was kind of surprised at that. I figured a church that size, it's massive, would have many, many, many pastors, but these are the only two pastors listed here. And you may be thinking, well, it just says Pastor Stephen and Holly Furtick doesn't call her a pastor.

Well, look carefully there. It has two more links. You can go to Stephen's personal website, stephenfurtick .com, there at the bottom, and hollyfurtick .com, there at the bottom. It takes you to their respect.

So that's kind of, it's misleading at best, but I went to their YouTube channel, and now look at this. Look at their YouTube channel, 2 .61 million subscribers. That is huge. That is huge. Elevation Church, mainly because of its music, is reaching, unfortunately, millions upon millions of people.

That is a massive number of subscribers to a church's YouTube channel. I don't think I've ever seen a church that has more subscribers than that, than Elevation Church does. I may be wrong, but I'm not aware of it.

But at any rate, the point is this, Elevation Church's reach is huge, massive. And this is a, now look at the date, May 14th, 2023. This is a sermon that was posted on their YouTube channel just as of this recording, Sunday before last, so about a week and a half ago.

The title of the sermon is Sudden Strength, and it was preached by Holly Furtick. And notice there in the description, in Sudden Strength, Pastor Holly Furtick reminds us that the strength we need for tomorrow is blah, blah, blah.

So Holly Furtick is a pastor. This is their official YouTube channel, and they call her Pastor Holly Furtick. So here is another massive SBC church with a female serving as a pastor. But not only are you going to have to disfellowship these churches, you're going to have to disfellowship a lot of churches.

The Problem of Hundreds of Churches With Female Pastors

Let me show you this article. This was posted just this past May 17th. The title is Rick Warren Outlines Five Reasons Saddleback Will Challenge Its Expulsion from the SBC. And I get down a little further into the body there.

It says Rick Warren is quoted as saying this. He writes this, quote, We're challenging the ruling on behalf of over 300 concerned pastors who have written to me and have female pastors serving on their staffs.

Dear friends, these are SBC churches. And they saw that Saddleback was disfellowshipped by the executive committee, the SBC, because they ordained three women as pastors. And since then, just a little bit earlier this year, since then, Rick Warren has received letters from over 300 other SBC pastors who also have females serving as pastors.

Maybe not the senior pastor, but again, that's a distinction without a difference. There is no such thing as a senior pastor in the Bible. They wrote to him worried that they would also be disfellowshipped.

So friends, it's not just a handful of the larger churches in the SBC who have female pastors or women preach on a Sunday morning. You've got hundreds. In fact, look up here a little bit later in parentheses, Rick Warren says, I've seen one list with over 1 ,200 names of Baptist women as pastors in just Texas churches.

If that's true, over 1 ,200 females serving as pastors just in the state of Texas, Houston, we have a problem. There is no telling how many churches in the SBC have women serving as pastors. So you got quite the pickle there.

To all the messengers, if you are a messenger, if you're going to be at the annual meeting coming up here in New Orleans, you're in a pickle because if you're going to vote to disfellowship Saddleback Church to be logically consistent, you're also going to have to vote to disfellowship all of these other hundreds, if not thousands, of churches in the SBC that also have women pastors.

You're going to have to disfellowship them too. To be logically consistent and to maintain, I would think, to maintain personal integrity and character, you've got to disfellowship all of these other churches as well.

You've got to bring some motion to the floor for the delegates, for the messengers to vote on any church that has females serving as pastors, regardless of whether or not they're the senior pastor. They should be disfellowshipped too.

I'll be honest, I don't think there's not a snowball's chance, and you know where, that that's going to happen. But it should. It should happen because that's the only way to be logically consistent and to maintain integrity.

And dear friends, you cannot vote to disfellowship Saddleback and not vote to disfellowship all these others because that's differing weights and measures. And God frowns upon differing weights and measures, to put it lightly.

Proverbs chapter 20, verse 10, differing weights and differing measures, both of them are an abomination to Yahweh. Dear friends, you can't have differing weights and measures. You cannot judge one church and hold that church to a different standard than you do all the other ones.

So if you're a messenger, if you're going to be at the annual meeting of the SPC, if you're thinking, oh yeah, I'm going to vote Saddleback Church out, let me challenge you on that. I don't see how you can unless you're willing to vote all of these other churches out.

And I'll throw another wrinkle in here. If you're going to vote out Saddleback Church, then you're also going to have to vote out First Baptist Church Orlando, Florida, but not for women pastors, at least I don't think.

Maybe, but you're going to have to vote out First Baptist Church Orlando because First Baptist Church Orlando baptizes open homosexuals. Now, I've done several videos on this. I will put links down below in the description.

You can see this. If you don't believe me, you can watch it for yourself. These are just a few of the screenshots that I have in these videos. Here you see, this is a man named Joe Mills, and Joe Mills is a homosexual.

You see here pictures of him at his wedding, getting married, quote unquote married, to a man. Joe Mills is a member of First Baptist Church Orlando. Not only is he a member there, but he was recently baptized there.

This is a picture of his baptism there on the left, and that is Joe Mills in the middle, Danny DeArmas there in the blue hat. He is the senior associate pastor at First Baptist Orlando. The man in the back is Chris Bacon.

He is also one of the pastors at First Baptist Orlando. They baptized Joe Mills knowing completely that he is an open homosexual married to a man. Not only did they baptize him, but they also allowed him to baptize other people in their own baptistry.

That's the picture there on the right. You see there, Joe Mills in the blue shirt, and he is baptizing this woman. This is the baptistry of First Baptist Church Orlando, an open homosexual. Now, I wish no ill on Joe Mills at all.

In fact, I feel sorry for him that First Baptist Orlando has not cared for him in a biblical way and told him that he is outside of Christ. He cannot possibly be a Christian, according to 1 Corinthians chapter 6.

But there is freedom found in the gospel if he will truly repent of sin, which obviously he has not. But if you truly repent of sin and place his faith in Christ, he can indeed be made new, as his shirt ironically says, because at least at this point, he has not been made new.

If he had been made new, he would not be homosexual. So, messengers, I don't know what to tell you. You're in a pickle. Again, to maintain logical consistency and to maintain personal integrity, character and integrity, and to not violate scripture, to not judge with differing weights and measures, which are an abomination to Yahweh, an abomination to God.

You can't vote to disfellowship Saddleback and not all these others. And quite frankly, I just don't see that happening. I don't see all of these other hundreds, if not thousands, of churches being disfellowshipped.

Reinstating Saddleback to Avoid Double Standards

So for all of you who are messengers, will-be messengers, and you're going there with a well-entrenched complementarian theology on these issues, and you think, I just can't wait to raise my little yellow placard to vote to disfellowship Saddleback Church.

Hold on. If you do that, then you're going to have to vote to disfellowship all of these other churches. And that is just not going to happen. So to be integrous in this, and to avoid sinning against God, going afoul of Proverbs 20, verse 10, and also Proverbs 20, verse 23, to not judge one church, hold one church to a standard that you're not willing to hold all the other churches to, then you're going to have to vote to reinstate Saddleback Church into the SBC.

All right, dear ones, thank you very much for joining me. Until our next time together, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of His Holy Spirit be with you all.