Following the passage of the Mike Law Amendment at the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) annual meeting earlier this month, several member churches have been exposed as having women pastors. The amendment, which was passed by a staggering 89 percent of SBC messengers, constitutionally prohibits cooperating churches from having women in pastoral roles in their churches. Despite this, many of these churches continue to defy the new rules even though a handful of them have already been disfellowshipped. One of these churches is Vanguard Church, a multi-campus megachurch in Colorado.

Tosha Williams, a pastor at this church, is among many women on staff who hold the newly-forbidden title. Williams recently penned a piece in the Christian Post explaining how her church has women pastors and no intention of changing it—the SBC’s new rules be damned. This flagrant disobedience to the Convention’s rules and biblical teaching reflects a worrying trend of rebellion and an unwillingness to submit to the authority of God’s Word.

Williams’s story starts with her visit to the Southern Baptist Convention in 1996. She and her husband, fresh graduates from the Dallas Theological Seminary, attended a meeting with the SBC Home Mission Board (now North American Mission Board). During this meeting, she shared her test results from a “spiritual gifts test,” which she said indicated that she had “pastoral gifts.” However, she says that the interviewer told her that even though she had the “spiritual gift” of pastoring, she would not be allowed to use her gift as a Southern Baptist.

Williams writes:

We all know Scripture teaches that spiritual gifts are from God. He chooses who gets which gifts; He decides how they are appointed. 1 Corinthians 12:11 clarifies, “It is the one and only Spirit who distributes all these gifts. He alone decides which gift each person should have.”

Nonetheless, our interviewer told me, after reading my test results, that my gifts were nullified because I am a woman. “Your spiritual gifts are those of a pastor,” he said, “and don’t ever think you’re going to use those gifts of a pastor in the Southern Baptist Convention.”

What’s interesting here is that whoever the interviewer with the mission board was told her that she had the spiritual gift of pastoring. In essence, he was telling her that the Holy Spirit gifted her with a gift that she was not allowed to use. This appears to be an ongoing problem within these Southern Baptist mission boards even today, as they continue to defy the biblical prohibition against women pastors and wrongly affirm the delusions of women who believe they have a gift that they do not have.

As stated in 1 Timothy 2:12, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.” The clear teachings of Paul in the New Testament are that men and women have different roles within the church, with the pastoral role reserved for men. This teaching isn’t based on the abilities or self-assessed “gifts” of the individual but on the divine ordering of the church established by God Himself.

While attempting to find the “spiritual gifts” test used by the mission board, I ran across this test published by Lifeway. While this may or may not be the same test used by Williams and the mission board during her interview, it’s probably safe to say that it was at least very similar. While Williams emphasized the spiritual gifts and personality tests that she and her husband underwent during their interview process, we must remember that such tests are unbiblical and the results are irrelevant, especially when they contradict the clear teaching of Scripture. Tests and self-assessments can be valuable tools for self-discovery and personal development, but they are not divinely inspired or infallible. It is dangerous to rely on them as authoritative or to use them to justify contravening Biblical principles.

Williams claims to use her spiritual gifts “submissively” and “courageously.” However, her definition of submission seems to align more with cultural sensibilities than with biblical teaching. In Ephesians 5:22-24, we read, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord… as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.” True submission to God’s will includes recognizing and honoring the God-ordained roles within His church, even when those roles do not align with our personal preferences or society’s norms.

“Turns out,” Williams writes, “as of this week, the Southern Baptist Convention is true to its word given me years ago, voting to communicate to every woman gifted by God with pastoral gifts: ‘You will never use those gifts of a pastor in the Southern Baptist convention.'”

Insisting that God is the one who called her to pastoral ministry, she writes, “I don’t know what the future holds regarding the SBC and Vanguard Church — or any other Southern Baptist church with women who serve in pastoral roles or have pastoral gifts. But I do know this. I have not been called by men. I have been called by God, and I will keep my word and obey Him as long as He gives me breath.”

Williams’s approach, while popular in a society increasingly influenced by feminist ideology, is not biblically sound. For her, or other women on staff at her church, to continue to operate in a pastoral role, despite the clear biblical teachings and the expressed wishes of the Convention, is storing up God’s judgment rather than seeking to be obedient to His word.

While Williams claims she has been called by God, the Bible reminds us in 1 John 4:1, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.” Her actions and the stance of her church seem to be more in line with secular culture than with Biblical teachings and the standards of the Southern Baptist Convention. It is imperative for us to pray for Williams and others in her position, that