One of the country’s biggest and best-known megachurches, Saddleback Church, is no longer a part of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) after bringing on a female teaching pastor last year

Saddleback was among five churches with female pastors who were deemed “no longer in friendly cooperation” with the denomination at a meeting of the SBC Executive Committee in Nashville on Tuesday

The Lake Forest, California, congregation ordained three women from the stage in May 2021[…]Last year, Saddleback selected Andy Wood as Rick Warren’s successor and the church’s lead pastor, and his wife Stacie Wood came on as a teaching pastor

Warren responded to calls for the SBC to cut ties with his church at the convention’s June 2022 annual meeting, held in Anaheim, California. “Are we going to keep bickering over secondary issues,” he said, “or are we going to keep the main thing the main thing?”

At the time, the credentials committee—the group tasked with recommending whether to disfellowship a particular church—hadn’t come to a decision on Saddleback, saying it wasn’t clear if the SBC’s statement of faith restricted women from any position doing pastoral work or with a pastoral title, or if it just applied to the senior pastor[…]
This week, the committee recommended Saddleback be disfellowshipped, saying the church “has a faith and practice that does not closely identify with the Convention’s adopted statement of faith, as demonstrated by the church having a female teaching pastor functioning in the office of pastor”[…]
The credentials committee also recommended a single church—Freedom Church in Vero Beach, Florida—be disfellowshipped for issues related to its response to sexual abuse[…]SBC has only acted to remove a handful of congregations since 2020, the majority of whom knowingly employed a registered sex offender as pastor. Others have been disfellowshiped for their stances on LGBT and racial issues