Thread by @sometimesalight

I'm sure there are lots of things to say & think about Paige Patterson's removal/retirement (removalment?) but I'll just say this:

The whole process has been example of Baptist church culture writ large.

I say this as wife to Baptist pastor & having grown up under baptistic ecclesiology.

There's often a difference between our written polity & how internal cultural forces affect process.

I think anyone who has existed in Baptist culture knows instinctively how things work, but we don't always recognize them.

A couple things I'm observing:

1) Relationship btwn board & leader/pastor often shaped by force & presence of leader/pastor. Only one type of leadership can survive in this paradigm.

2) Congregation has a voice but aren't real decision makers despite polity that grants voting privileges

3) While women aren't in leadership, certain women are very powerful: pastor's/leader's wives. They may not have official authority but they have functional authority.

Again, I'm just observing here. I'm a member of a Baptist church, married to a Baptist pastor. But I think it's essential that we understand cultural dynamics in play.

I'm sure my Presby, Lutheran, Anglican counterparts can write similar threads about their own church cultures. What's important to me is that we're self-aware, that we recognize shaping forces.

The functional effect of Baptist culture is that it rewards people who have force of will & strong personalities. It's really hard to be a "quiet" Shepherd in Baptist polity.

IME, a Eugene Peterson model of pastoral care is *almost* impossible in Baptist culture b/c it lacks infrastructure that frees pastor/leader from work of maintaining his position.

There's so much going on here. It's hard to sort thru it all but suffice it to say that anyone familiar w/ Baptist church culture knows Patterson situation is as much about the dynamics of leadership as the surface Qs.

And b/c this is playing out at seminary level, you can assume it's representative of a whole lot of pastors who where trained to model same leadership dynamics in their individual churches.

So both churches & pastors come to expect this. If you survive the gauntlet, you're rewarded w/ authority & privilege. Those who don't go to dif denom or dif line of work entirely.

So the critique that Baptist church is run by strong men is true in one sense, but it's not as simple as identifying certain men as source of problem. A certain type of man gets to the top b/c of the larger culture.

***And I'm not saying that leadership in a Baptist org necessarily means a leader has abused power to get there, but that only a strong personalities will ever be seen as leaders.***