We’ve been told that nothing related to female ordination is on the agenda at this General Conference session. We’ve been told that it was too controversial, too divisive, so we’re taking a session off from dealing with it. There will be no votes on anything related to female ordination. It’s going to be a boring session with nothing terribly important on the agenda, just a few administrative odds and ends.

That was a lie. The purpose of the lie was to cause those of us opposed to female ordination to drop our guard. The purpose of the lie was to advance the cause of female spiritual headship by stealth.

As Gerry has pointed out, no General Conference session has ever voted to approve female elders in local churches. A spring council in 1975 recommended that we have female elders. In 1984, an Annual Council allowed for the ordination of female elders under certain very strict and narrow conditions—the main one being that there could be no suitable male candidates—which conditions have been completely ignored in liberal precincts of the church.

Thus far, no General Conference session has ever placed its stamp of approval on female elders. But that could change this week. The pro-female ordination faction that is clearly in control of the GC—Ted Wilson’s purported opposition to female ordination notwithstanding—has conspired to arrange that this GC session will effectively ratify female elders through changes to the church manual.

First, it is hard to overemphasize how contrary to apostolic guidance female elders are. An elder is to be “the husband of one wife” (Titus 1:6; 1 Tim. 3:2) and “apt to teach” (1 Tim. 3:2) but a woman is not permitted to teach a man (1 Tim. 2:12) and is directed to be silent in church (1 Cor. 14:34; 1 Tim. 2:11). Elders “rule well” (1 Tim. 5:17) but women are not permitted to have authority over a man (1 Tim. 2:12). An elder must “manage his own family well and see that his children obey him, and he must do so in a manner worthy of full respect. If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?” Scripture is clear on men being the head of households (Eph. 5:22; Col. 3:18; Titus 2:5), so the manager of the family, and the candidate to become an elder in the church, is the husband and father. Older women are admonished to teach the younger women “to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.” (Titus 2:4-5)

Biblically, there can be no such thing as a female elder. Those of us who wish to retain Scripture as the rule of faith and practice in our church have consoled ourselves with the fact that no General Conference session had ever endorsed female local elders. But, again, that is all scheduled to change this week.

First, the delegates are asked to amend the wording on the church manual on ordination of elders “for consistency of wording,” but it is clear the changes are to allow for, and ratify, female elders:

“Once ordained, elders need not be ordained again if reelected, or upon election as elders of other churches, provided they have maintained regular membership status. They are also qualified to serve as deacons the deaconate.”

The term “deacon” is male in gender whereas “deaconess” is female. The “deaconate” is non-gendered and covers both deacons and deaconesses. Hence, substituting “the deaconate” for “deacons” permits and encourages the idea that a female elder might later be elected as a deaconess, something foreclosed by the existing language.

This is made clearer in the next agenda item, which adds this language to the church manual on the ordination of deaconesses:

“Elders subsequently elected as deaconesses should not be ordained as deaconesses, because ordination as elder covers this office.”

This is much more explicit in making the point that women can be elders, and that’s the real point of adding the language. Asking someone who has previously served as an elder to serve as a deacon is not appropriate for several reasons, and it happens very rarely, if at all. That being the case—and I’m certain it is—what’s the point of adding this language other than to underscore the propriety and normalcy of female elders?

The next agenda item is to add this language to the church manual on “Pastors and other church employees”:

“Soon after Christ’s ascension, the apostles faced increasing demands with the fast-growing church in Jerusalem. To cope with these challenges, they divided the leadership responsibilities in the local church into different areas. Seven men were chosen to “serve tables,” caring mainly for the practical and material needs of the church, while the apostles confined themselves “to prayer and the ministry of the Word” (Acts 6:2, 4). Both leadership groups were involved in serving or ministering, but the manner of their involvement differed significantly. These avenues of ministry reflect the offices of deacon and elder/overseer described in Paul’s writings (Phil. 1:1; 1 Tim. 3:1-13; Titus 1:6-9). While most elders and deacons ministered in local settings, some elders, such as Timothy and Titus, were itinerant and supervised greater territory with multiple congregations (1 Tim. 1:3, 4; Titus 1:5).”
“In harmony with the leadership model of the Jerusalem church, the apostles appointed elders as spiritual leaders in every church (Acts 14:23; Titus 1:5). This practice explains why apostles, when they left Jerusalem to preach the Gospel, did not leave a leadership vacuum in this major center of the early church. Several years later, Barnabas and Saul delivered to the elders the relief contributions they had collected from far-flung churches for the needy believers in Judea (Acts 11:29, 30). As Ellen G. White indicates, the ‘organization of the church at Jerusalem was to serve as a model for the organization of churches in every other place where messengers of truth should win converts to the Gospel.’ —AA 91.”

This pointedly underscores the fact that local elders are the permanent spiritual leaders of a church. Elders can be local but they can also be itinerant and “supervise greater territory with multiple congregations.” The qualifications for the office of elder are the same as the qualifications to the office of bishop; an elder is biblically the same as a bishop; a bishop could be called a supervising elder or an itinerant elder. The only arguably higher office were the apostles, and since the apostles have all passed away, in the modern church there is no higher office than elder.

Again, let us emphasize that in the Bible there were apostles, elders and deacons. Biblically, there is no office of pastor (pastoring is a spiritual gift, not an office), conference president, union president or GC president. Biblically, there is no office higher than elder. So if women can serve as elders they can serve as anything else, including GC president.

Are you now comprehending what it means to have female elders? If the elders are the spiritual leaders of a church, and women can be elders, then we have institutionalized female spiritual headship. If we have approved of female elders, is there any principled reason for refusing to ordain women “ministers”?

The answer, of course, is “no,” and the people who drafted these proposed changes to the church manual understand that very well.

And just to underscore the point that spiritual leaders can be women, the delegates are being asked to remove a gender-specific statement from the Pen of Inspiration that states that the men who stand on the wall and watch are, well, men:

“Men appointed of God have been chosen to watch with jealous care, with vigilant perseverance, that the church may not be overthrown by the evil devices of Satan, but that she shall stand in the world to promote the glory of God among men.”—TM 52, 53.

The drafters want that to be struck out:

Additionally, the pro-female ordination faction have not given up on the local option for female ordination to gospel ministry. This has been their preferred the strategy from the beginning, and in both 1995 and 2015, they wanted permission to ordain women at the election of the local division. This week, the delegates are being asked to approve a new insert on cultural sensitivity as an aspect of mission:

“Our mission remains unchanged wherever we find ourselves in the world. The Seventh-day Adventist Church has been organized for the purpose of mission. However, the way in which we fulfill that mission will of necessity take a variety of forms due to different cultural and societal norms. As we seek to share the gospel in cross-cultural contexts, we will encounter societies where particular religious bodies deem other writings as sacred, where restrictions to religious freedom sometimes exist, where diverse points of view and practices occur, as well as other challenges. To fulfill the mission in such diverse contexts, we rely on the guidance of the Holy Spirit and employ a flexible approach to sharing God’s love in a manner that reaches hearts, while preserving our unique calling and identity as Seventh-day Adventists.
The conditions Seventh-day Adventists face in sharing the message of Jesus to people of other religions largely parallel those that the apostles encountered. How they went about the mission is instructive for us today. Although they modified their approach in keeping with the audience, they never deviated from proclaiming the uniqueness of Jesus as the hope of the world. They never suggested that they had come to help their hearers find a deeper spiritual experience within their own religions; on the contrary, they challenged them to turn to the salvation provided in Christ.

Groups should be formed to lead the people from a non-Christian religion into the Seventh-day Adventist Church. In forming such groups, a theologically sound, culturally informed plan of action should be prayerfully developed and followed to guide these new believers into membership. These groups should be established and nurtured in collaboration with local administration and guidelines of the world Church. Leaders of these groups should make every effort to lead the people into membership in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

The language regarding “different cultural and societal norms” and a “culturally informed plan of action” plays into the pro-female ordination faction’s longstanding attempt to get female ordination approved on a local option basis, wherever “culturally appropriate.”

Clearly, a large of chunk of the church manual changes being sought of the delegates is obviously related to the issue of female ordination. The topic is as much on the agenda this week as it ever has been.

Where Was Ted Wilson?

Question: Where was Elder Ted Wilson when all this was being put on the agenda for this General Conference session? Can he read? Can he think biblically? Does he understand the implications of what the delegates are being asked to approve?

The answers are: a) he was right in the middle of it, b) yes, c) yes, and d) of course he does.

I no longer believe that Elder Wilson opposes female ordination. We saw yesterday—in his response to my friend Jonathan Zirkle’s motion to revisit an unauthorized ADCOM statement cravenly supporting forced vaccination—just how passionate and persuasive Wilson can be when he really opposes something. We’ve never seen that from him—not even one percent (1%) of that level of enthusiasm—in opposing female ordination.

Female ordination is by far the most important issue confronting the Seventh-day Adventist Church. If we get this wrong, we’re finished.

Female spiritual headship will lead to liberalism in the SDA Church, and liberalism leads to collapse and ruin. This inexorable law is the outworking of created, innate differences between men and women. Women are relationship-oriented; men are principle-oriented. Women are more inclusive, loving, nurturing, and more willing than men to sacrifice principles rather than relationships. Men are the locus of the rules committee; they are better able to see and uphold doctrines and standards, and less willing to sacrifice them to maintain relationships. Women and men both carry these characteristics into ministry.

As a result of these innate characteristics, churches with a large contingent of female clergy end up having very few non-negotiable standards of behavior and almost no required beliefs and doctrines. Look at mainline Protestantism in the United States: every church that has adopted female ordination has become more and ever more liberal, and they are rapidly losing membership and relevance. The Episcopal Church, the church of George Washington and many of the nation’s founders, has because of its extreme liberalism become a byword for ecclesiastical failure. The Methodists and Presbyterians are not far behind on the road to ruin.

Mark this well: if the Seventh-day Adventist Church accepts female ordination, we will have no further role to play in salvation history. If we do as the mainline Protestant churches have done, we will fade into irrelevance just as they have.

Some Adventists seem to believe that because we are God’s remnant people, things will be different for us, that we can somehow sow the fields with feminism without reaping the baneful harvest. The Jews, who according to all of Scripture were unquestionably and unequivocally God’s chosen people, thought God would overlook their idolatry, too. But it does not work that way. The Jews were not spared the consequences of their actions—not the eradication of the northern tribes, not the Babylonian captivity, not the catastrophe of 70 AD—nor will we be spared the consequences of ours.

Elder Wilson seems complacent and unconcerned about the certain destruction that female spiritual headship will wreak on the Seventh-day Adventist Church. In the seven years since the 2015 vote, he failed utterly to impose any meaningful discipline on the six unions, including the Pacific Union and the Columbia Union, who continue to ordain women.

In 2012, two years after Elder Wilson became General Conference president, the Columbia Union and the Pacific Union unilaterally decided that they were no longer bound by the Adventist Church’s policy not to ordain women. Both Dave Weigley and Ricardo Graham held constituency meetings at which it was voted to ordain women. Elder Wilson attended both of those meetings, begged the attendees not to flout denominational policy, and darkly promised consequences if the constituents voted to ordain women.

That was a decade ago, yet there have been no consequences, nor will there be any.

Elder Wilson made a grave error in trying to fight this as mere “policy” rather than on the clear Bible doctrine of male spiritual headship. It was obvious from the beginning that fighting this issue as a policy issue was sure to fail. And fail it did. Yet the intervening decade has done nothing to convince Wilson that the issue not merely one of policy but of Bible doctrine.

This is not just a question of what strategy will or will not work in confronting the female ordination insurrection. Elder Wilson, as president of the General Conference, should do what is in his power to promote Bible truth, to promote pure Bible doctrine, in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. If he really believed that the doctrine of male spiritual headship is Bible truth, he would preach and promote that doctrine regardless the outcome.

And yet he refuses to use his bully pulpit as GC president to expound, explain, defend, exegete, teach, and promote the Bible doctrine of male spiritual headship. Not only does he hold himself above the fray, he has not, and it seems that he will not, deputize others to make the case. For example, he seems hesitant to ask the editors of the Review and/or the Sabbath School Quarterly to try to explain this clear Bible doctrine.

The case for male spiritual headship is sporadically being made by independent Adventist evangelists and preachers such as Doug Batchelor, Steven Bohr, Steve Wohlberg and others, but what we really need are more leaders in the official, tithe-supported Adventist Church to take up this issue. The independent ministries are directed outward, toward evangelism; what is needed is for the shepherds of the flock already gathered into the fold to explain what Scripture says about the differing roles of men and women.

Elder Wilson convened a series of four Bible study meetings in 2013 and 2014 on the issue of female ordination—the Theology of Ordination Study Committee—but when the time came to formulate the question to be presented to the 2015 Session in San Antonio, he punted. No issue of doctrine was submitted.

Instead, the question was essentially the same one submitted in 1995: may divisions decide the female ordination question on their own for their own territories? He gave the Leftists a consequence-free second bite at the 1995 apple.

One of many problems with submitting the same issue in 2015 that had been submitted 20 years before is that the Pacific Union under Ricardo Graham and the Columbia Union under Dave Weigley had already demonstrated that they would not be bound by a General Conference Session vote on that policy issue. They had already rebelled on that issue. To re-submit the same question—with no doctrinal component and no built-in enforcement mechanism—would accomplish nothing.

Seven years on, we see that it accomplished nothing. The same unions that were rebellious before are still rebellious today, and seemingly no closer to seeing any meaningful discipline today than they were seven years ago. Before the San Antonio vote, it should have been made clear to Weigley and Graham that if they if they lost the vote and female ordinations continued in their unions, Weigely and Graham would be fired and their unions dissolved and converted to GC mission fields.

Instead, we had seven years of half-hearted, ineffectual attempts at largely symbolic discipline, none of which have succeeded. In 2016, there was the “year of grace” that came and went; in 2017, an attempt at symbolic discipline was shot down at annual council; in 2018, some “disciplinary committees” were voted into existence, but these committees never met even one time and were disbanded, then in 2019 annual council downgraded Wilson’s proposed “reprimand” to a “warning” to the six unions ordaining women, then nothing after Covid took over and everyone started (non)working remotely.

But Elder Wilson’s failure to discipline the unions who thumbed their noses at the San Antonio vote was nothing compared to what he’s doing now. With these changes to the church manual, he’s giving them victory in principle. Because, Biblically, there is no higher church office than elder, and this GC session is poised to ratify female elders.

No, I do not believe that Ted Wilson really opposes female spiritual headship.

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