Rick Warren REMOVED From Southern Baptist Convention?!

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Hey guys, Colin here, and welcome back to Fight For Truth, the channel where we bring you Christian commentary about the things that matter.

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In today's video, we're going to be talking about Rick Warren. He's the author of The Purpose -Driven Life and founding pastor of Saddleback Church.

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Long story short, the Church has been officially disfellowshipped by the Southern Baptist Convention, or SBC.

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The question many people are asking, then, is why? And the answer is fairly simple. To put it bluntly, the

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SBC has relatively low doctrinal standards for joining their denomination. To illustrate this practically, let me remind you that Stephen Furtick's Elevation Church is technically affiliated with the denomination despite his consistent false teaching.

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Evidently, the doctrinal standards are, again, not exactly sky high. Nevertheless, one of their doctrinal standards, on paper anyways, is that you cannot have women leading churches as pastors and or teachers.

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Why? Well, because, quite simply, the Bible outright prohibits the practice of having female pastors and church leaders in 1

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Timothy 2 .12 and a number of other places. And for all its faults, the SBC does recognize this basic biblical truth.

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And they simply ask their churches to recognize it as well. Despite this, in 2021, it was reported that Rick Warren's Saddleback Church had publicly ordained not one, not two, but three female pastors.

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And of course, this caused quite a stir among conservative SBC members, who rightly called for their immediate removal from the denomination.

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But it seemed, for the moment, that nothing concrete was done about it. The SBC National Convention came and went, and Saddleback Church was still an

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SBC church. And with all of this transpiring, Rick Warren broke the news that he would be giving the reins of Saddleback to a new senior pastor,

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Andy Wood. Only there was one catch. Andy Wood immediately made his wife, Stacey Wood, a teaching pastor as well, meaning she can preach and teach with biblical authority over the entire church.

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And this could have been the straw that broke the camel's back. Andy has only been the senior pastor for about eight months, and already the

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SBC have disfellowshipped the congregation for breaching their standards of church practice and government.

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And this should just about bring us up to the present day. So what I want to do next is take a look at Rick Warren's response to the

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SBC's decision, because it seems he is most definitely not going down without swinging. On both

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Twitter and Instagram, here was Rick's response, quote, Friends, worldwide, I'm so touched by your love.

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Kay and I love you back. We'll respond to the SBC in our time and way through direct channels.

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Our newsletters, 600 ,000 church leaders, Daily Hope radio broadcast, 1 million

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PDC alumni pastors list, 11 million social media followers, Luke 2343, end quote.

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There are several things that need to be responded to here. First, Rick thanks his audience for their love and support during this time.

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It almost seems he's implying that he's been persecuted or hard done by in some way. But let's just go back to the basic facts here.

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The Southern Baptist Convention has a biblical standard that they want their churches to follow. Saddleback knew this standard and chose to break it anyways because they want to have an unbiblical church structure.

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In other words, the SBC simply chose to enforce their own rules on a member of their own organization who broke their rules intentionally.

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Which part of that seems unfair to Rick Warren? And also, why exactly does he seem unsatisfied or upset that he's not allowed to join a denomination and then break the doctrinal standards of that denomination?

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Guys, the whole reason we have any denominations in the first place is so we can have collections of like -minded churches with the same standards.

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So again, there's really no way that Saddleback is being persecuted or wronged here. At least, not that I can see.

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And secondly, Rick Warren makes a pretty big deal about all the numbers his church has been able to generate.

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Quote, newsletters, 600 ,000 church leaders, Daily Hope radio broadcast, 1 million

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PDC alumni pastors list, 11 million social media followers, etc. But I can't help but ask the question.

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What exactly does any of this have to do with the situation? Is he implying that his audience is bigger than the

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SBC? Is this some sort of message that the SBC doesn't realize what they're missing in kicking out

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Saddleback? I'm just asking questions here because I'm genuinely wondering what the audience size of Saddleback has to do with them clearly breaking the standards of Scripture and the standards of the

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SBC. At the very least, it seems like a red herring, a distraction from the actual issue.

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But in any case, at the end of the message, he says, quote, Luke 23, 43. Let's read that passage, quote.

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And he, Jesus, said to him, the thief on the cross, truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise, end quote.

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As many of you know, Jesus was crucified with two criminals. One of them makes fun of Jesus, telling him that if he really is the

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Christ, he should save himself and the criminals as well. But the other criminal recognizes that he has committed a crime, while Jesus lived a perfect life.

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Luke 23, 43 is Jesus assuring this repentant thief that he will be in paradise with him that day.

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So as you can see, it's really surprising that Rick Warren quotes this passage. He could have simply quoted something vague about unity.

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Or he could have taken a Scripture out of context to support female pastorship. But instead, he quotes

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Jesus' response to the thief on the cross. This has left many people scratching their heads, speculating as to what this means.

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Is Rick making the case that the SBC is proverbially crucifying him or something like that?

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Is he implying that he and his church, like Jesus, are being attacked unfairly when they've done nothing wrong?

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Or is he merely making the case that he and Saddleback Church too, despite their suffering, will be with Jesus in paradise?

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I'm not telling you what he meant by this, I'm just asking questions here. But regardless of any speculation, hopefully we can all agree that Rick's message here is some sort of thinly -veiled shot at the

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SBC's decision. But again, I want to make it clear that Saddleback willingly and publicly chose to disregard the doctrinal standards of the

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SBC. It's not as though they've been unfairly criticized for absolutely no reason. Also, let me ask the obvious question.

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Why is it that one would want to be in a denomination that does not share their theological distinctives?

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That is literally one of the only reasons that denominations exist, so that they can have important theological distinctives that they unite over.

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But with that said, I also want to take a look at what Rick Warren said at the SBC National Convention last year, because it really sheds light on this whole situation.

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Watch this. You know, it's customary for a guy who's about to be hung to let him say his dying words.

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I have no intention of defending myself. I have taught my kids and grandkids for years,

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I am most like Christ when I refuse to defend myself. The Bible says Jesus spoke not a word unto them when

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Pilate accused him of all kinds of things. So I have no intention, I have most of you on my mailing list anyway, and I can write you and tell you what

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I believe about the gift of pastoring as opposite from the office of pastoring.

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But I'm not here to talk about that. So there's a few observations here and a few similarities. First, you can see again that Rick Warren is comparing himself to some sort of man who is being executed unfairly.

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In his mind, he is being metaphorically hung by the SBC. But once again, I just want to establish that Rick Warren is not the victim here.

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He refused to follow the rules of the SBC, and as a result, they have removed his church from the

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SBC. No one is hanging or crucifying or otherwise executing Rick Warren as an innocent man.

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This is like a man holding a noose around his own neck while he yells at a crowd of people to stop choking him.

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It's like a man holding a gun to his own head and begging the SBC to stop pulling the trigger.

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There's really no obvious way in which Rick Warren is being unfairly persecuted here, and that cannot be understated.

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Secondly, Rick says that he could stand up and tell you all about the differences between the gift of pastorship as opposed to the office of pastorship.

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This seems to be his central theological reason as to why he thinks women can be pastors. But I think

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Rick is asking the wrong question here. The question is not, what is the gift of pastor as opposed to the office of pastor?

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Rather, the question is this. What has God said in His Word clearly about how the office and function of pastorship should be carried out in the

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Church? It's that simple. Or, we could instead ask, should women have authority over men and teach them formally in the

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Church? The answer to both of these questions is abundantly obvious. As we mention many times on this channel, 1

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Timothy 2 .12 says this, "...I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man."

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And Paul roots his argument here not in the cultural norms of his time, but in the creational decree of God.

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In the next verse, he says, "...for Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived, and became a transgressor."

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So regardless of Rick Warren's frankly confusing ideas about the gift of pastoring, the

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Bible makes it clear that women cannot exercise any so -called gift in a way that formally teaches or exercises authority over the

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Church. Keep in mind, when I say Church, I'm talking about the corporate body of men and women. And Saddleback has clearly disobeyed the

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Scriptures on this as well as the rules of the SBC. And they did this at the very least by making Stacey Wood a quote, "...teaching

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pastor." And besides this, there is not a single example in all of Scripture of a woman being promoted to the office of elder or being given charge to teach the

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Church. Instead, we have a very clear and obvious pattern of men exclusively leading the

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Church. And this is why I find Rick Warren's statement here confusing and unhelpful.

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It does not describe the clear teaching and pattern of Scripture. Instead, it seems to be an obvious attempt at creating some sort of loophole to circumvent the text and promote unbiblical feminism in the

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Church. You see, Saddleback is just one small example of the huge theological drift we have seen in modern evangelicalism for years now.

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As more and more churches submit to modern feminism, let's pray that strong biblical churches would continue to refuse.

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I pray this has been a blessing to you, and please know this video isn't meant as a sinful attack, but rather as a biblical critique.

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Please pray for this channel and for anyone discussed in the video. Thankfully, there are many biblical churches and ministries in the world today.

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Check out the teaching ministries and church networks linked in the description. And by God's grace, let's move forward joyfully, holding to the truth of God's Word.

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