Georgia Baptist executive threatens to “shut down” women in ministry meeting if pro-SBC guidelines not met
By John Pierce Executive
Editor, Baptists Today

ATLANTA—Baptist Women in Ministry of Georgia moved their Oct. 26-27 meeting from a Georgia Baptist Convention conference center to a local church after receiving a letter from GBC Executive Director Robert White threatening to shut down the meeting if participants affirmed women pastors or spoke negatively about the Southern Baptist Convention.

“The (GBC) administrative committee was gravely concerned and even angered about our hosting this conference at Norman Park,” said White in a Sept. 12 letter to Laura Willis, administrator of Baptist Retirement Communities of Georgia and a BWIM member.

White informed Willis that, in an effort “to calm the concerns in our committee,” he was sending his executive assistant Fran Waymack to monitor the conference “should anything untoward occur in the meeting.”

White said Waymack and conference center director Bill Townes were instructed “to shut the meeting down immediately” if participants mention or promote the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship; distribute materials which mention CBF for fund raising; show a “tone of sympathy or general support of CBF;” make negative remarks about the GBC or SBC; promote women pastors “in deference to the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message as approved by the (SBC) and (GBC):” or use “strange communication about ‘Mother God,’ ‘Goddess Sophia’ or any such thing.”

The latter prohibition referred to a Baptist Press account of a national women in ministry gathering this summer just prior to the CBF assembly in Atlanta. The group’s use of feminine descriptions of God was criticized by some Southern Baptists.

While White has publicly opposed requiring GBC staff to endorse the controversial 2000 BF&M, he warned any “promotion of women as senior pastors” during the women in ministry meeting “would be a frontal attack on the (SBC) and (GBC).” Both conventions have adopted the revised doctrinal statement that denies the pastoral office to women.

White also indicated that the fundamentalist- controlled committee had expressed “great concern” about guest speaker Molly Marshall of Central Baptist Seminary in Kansas City, Kan., a former theology professor who left Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Ky., after conservative trustees brought in Albert Mohler as president.

After receiving White’s letter, the group initially rescheduled their meeting for Camp Pinnacle, a north Georgia facility owned and operated by Woman’s Missionary Union of Georgia, and where previous BWIM of Ga. meetings have been held. But to avoid another potential clash, the meeting was finally moved to the First Baptist Church of Morrow, Ga.

Georgia WMU leader Barbara Curnutt was reportedly informed by convention leadership that it would not be in the best interest of WMU to host the event. A few years ago the GBC administration committee approved funds to enable Georgia WMU to retire the debt on a new building at the camp.

Wendy Joyner, pastor of Fellowship Baptist Church in Americus, Ga., is president of the BWIM of Georgia. At her urging, the group decided to meet in the southern part of the state this year and, therefore, had made reservations at the GBCowned conference center‚—a former college campus site—in rural Norman Park.

Joyner said the group’s steering committee plan to meet just prior to the annual meeting and draft a formal response to White’s letter.

(Reprinted by permission from Baptists Today, an autonomous national news journal. To subscribe call toll-free 1-877-752-5658.)

October 2001