Rick Warren and the Undermining of the Faith

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GUEST: TOM BUCK, Senior Pastor, First Baptist Church (Lindale, TX)

In late May, pastor Tom Ascol, who was then a candidate for president of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), joined us to discuss some of the pivotal issues facing the largest Protestant denomination in America. Their annual convention came and went in mid-June in Anaheim, CA, with Ascol finishing second in the voting for president behind a less biblically-conservative candidate named Bart Barber.

There is a major debate taking place within the SBC that is representative of the larger debate within the Evangelical church on issues related to gender, race, and sexuality.

Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in Southern California, is the most well-known pastor within the denomination. His church and best-selling books, The Purpose Driven Life and The Purpose Driven Church, have impacted the evangelical church’s ecclesiology (i.e. the doctrine of the church, including methodology) more in the last 25 years than anyone or anything else.

Last year, in clear violation of Scripture (e.g. 1 Tim. 2:11-14; Titus 1:5-9) Warren led the way in appointing three women to pastoral roles at Saddleback and just recently announced a husband and wife will be replacing him in a kind of dual pastoring role when he retires this year.

Despite Warren’s actions being in violation of biblical and denominational beliefs, the SBC chose not to disassociate from Saddleback and gave Warren six minutes to speak at their annual meeting. We will air the audio of that on this week’s program. Our guest is Tom Buck, pastor of First Baptist Church in Lindale, TX and a noted theological conservative within the SBC.

“This is 2022…get over it” is not the right response to the issue of appointing female pastors. The response to this question is tectonic, determining whether a church or denomination remains faithful to God’s word or regresses into more rebellion.
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Related Resource:

• Rick Warren Address SBC Messengers in Anaheim (2022)