A Response To Coppenger: Women Are What?
by Kim L.N. Snyder

On April 11, 1996, Mark Coppenger, president of Midwestern Seminary, used a student body election chapel to make a few impromptu remarks regarding women in ministry. In doing so, he referred to women in the pulpit as an “affront to creation,” and stated that any church which allows a woman to preach violates creation order. I regret that such a high ranking officer of a major SBC institution chose to make such inflammatory and divisive remarks, assaulting historic Baptist principles of the priesthood of the believer and the autonomy of the local church in the process. From my perspective as a Baptists, I believe Dr. Coppenger has a right to his opinion; I also believe that he is wrong.

The Bible is full of passages which affirm women in the role of God’s servants. Joel 2:28–29 tell us that in the last days women will prophesy and receive God’s spirit. In Galatians 3:28, Paul writes that in Christ there is neither male nor female. Paul utilized women in his ministry, eight of whom are listed in Romans 16:3–16. Phoebe is called a deacon in the Greek text of Romans 16:1 and she is thought to have not only carried the letter of Paul to the Romans, but to have read it to them.

I often look to the example of Christ, who used a woman to reach an entire city (John 4:30–40), and used women to first proclaim resurrection (Luke 24:1–11). Christ took the time to instruct women as disciples (Luke 10:38–42) and women supported His ministry financially (Luke 8:1–3). If women are not acceptable as God’s servants, then why would Christ have these kinds of contacts with women?

One of our most basic historic Baptist principles is the priesthood of the believer. Part of this precious principle is the idea that each person has a direct link with God through their faith in Christ. No one goes through another person—male or female—to find out what God’s will for his or her life is. Gender is not a qualification for being a believer, or for responding to God. Salvation and calling are mediated through the work of the Holy Spirit.

Another precious historic Baptist principle is the autonomy of the local church. Long ago, when Baptists were first appearing, they struggled for the ability to find their own pastors, their own leaders, and not to be ruled by an external authoritarian structure. The local congregation, a body of individual believers, comes together in order to serve God as they understand His will for that body. Southern Baptist churches have historically rejected the imposition of authority from outside the local church, including denominational structures.

Yes, our churches have always come together to agree on principles, and to combine our strengths for the propagation of the Gospel, but these associations and conventions have never, and should never, attempt to dictate to a church whom they can or cannot call to service. If a church finds that a woman is the most qualified to lead their church from the pulpit, it is their business.

Women have made great contributions to Southern Baptists: Lottie Moon, who preached to so many lost souls in China; Fanny Crosby, whose hymns are sung every week and remembered far longer than the most brilliantly constructed sermons; the WMU, the only group to pay (and exceed) their pledge of $15 million to the 75 Million Campaign, which led to the founding of the Cooperative Program in 1925.

The roll call goes on and on, including countless mothers and grandmothers who have taught the Bible—even theology— to all ages without the supervision of men. According to a report of Baptist Women in Ministry in 1995, more than 1,100 women are currently serving as ordained ministers in Southern Baptists churches. In that same year, at least 10 Southern Baptist churches are known to have women as senior pastors.

Women preach in pulpits and out of pulpits every day. I have preached, I have married people, and I have buried people, and each time I have proclaimed the Gospel to those present. If someone has come to faith because of my witness from these pulpits, that decision had absolutely nothing to do with my gender. Faith decisions have to do with God’s work in the lives of persons, through persons. God’s work is His business and He chooses whomever He pleases as instruments of His work.

In Mark 9:32, Jesus rebukes the disciples for discouraging a man from ministering to others because he was not one of the twelve. Could this treatment not also apply to the issue of women in ministry? Perhaps the prophetic words of Gamaliel (Acts 5:38–39) are applicable, for if placing women in the pulpit is an act of God, it is foolishness to oppose it. If, however, women preaching is merely a human feministic trend, as so many chose to believe, then it will pass of its own.

Tell me, Dr. Coppenger, which is the greater evil: to risk offending God by allowing women to preach as they have been called; or to risk offending God by intentionally preventing His servants from doing what He has called them to do? Personally, I’d choose the first, but it is up to each of us, as individual believers and as Baptist churches, to decide what we will do with women in ministry. I must be obedient to what God calls me to do, and it that involves preaching, I will do it.

Kim L.N. Snyder is a student at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and on the Texas Baptists Committed Executive Board.

August 1996