Within the Southern Baptist Convention, Lifeway Christian Resources functions as their publishing arm for all things bible studies, books, and even bibles. As with the liberal drift seen in the other SBC entities, Lifeway did its fair share in promoting anti-white Critical Race Theory and has published studies sponsored by the Soros-backed Evangelical Immigration Table to promote mass immigration.
Ben Mandrell is the CEO of Lifeway. Previously, Mandrell was a pastor for 17 years where he, in 2015, planted Storyline Fellowship in Denver, Colorado. He received his MDIV from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville and currently resides near Lifeway HQ in Nashville, perhaps going to the same church as other SBC leaders. At the helm of the publishing arm, Mandrell is instrumental in promoting feminism within the Southern Baptist Convention, which has an ongoing issue regarding female “pastors” and women otherwise holding offices similar in function.
In a recent podcast for Lifeway Women, Mandrell posited the question that frames the Acts 2 church as “good for women” and the “marginalized” because it “treated them equally.” Elizabeth Hyndman and Andrea Lennon are the hosts of the podcast. This is an innately egalitarian framing that needs to be rebuffed as Scripture does not usurp hierarchy but rather worships a god of order. The absence of hierarchy is the absence of order.
The conversation then shifts into “legitimate” church hurt many women feel. Mandrell is asked “What would you say is encouraging to you when you study the Acts 2 church [that is] specifically for women?” The follow-up question is “Why should we (women) want to get back into church?”
Mandrell answers:
I do agree with you. If I was a woman, I would feel hurt. My daughter when I went to back to the church, we planted on our 7th anniversary. We went and I told the kids it would be great if any of you would have the courage to stand up and talk and share a story, share a memory. And so my daughter got up there, notes in hand, and absolutely crushed it and. Lenny and I were like, where did that come from? A well meaning church member came up afterwards and said “Too bad she’s a girl ’cause you really have your dad’s gift.” That made me so mad? Because I do not want my daughter to feel like because she’s a woman, her voice doesn’t matter, cannot teach, she cannot be involved. We have so much work to do in moving forward and understanding why high capacity women need to be in the room where it happens, they need to be helping making the decisions they need to be shaping the culture of the church, while we also respect our doctrinal boundaries.
He uses a story involving his daughter as emotional manipulation to suggest that women need to be involved in making decisions in the church. None of that was found in Acts 2 or the early church. In fact, the Apostles developed a decision-making process in the early church that did not involve women being “in the room where it happens.”
How does Mandrell suggest involving women? Managerialism:
So churches that are doing this really well are getting creative. They’re saying let’s put an Advisory Council together like men and women that just meet regularly, talk about the vision strategy for the church. Let’s get away from nomenclature. Let’s get the right people in the room and dream up what the future of the church is. The more the churches are doing that, the more that women are coming back. So I would encourage women to I and most at least larger cities are some churches that are thinking this way. Find those churches and get involved. Because they’re looking for ways to use women and it’s long overdue. [emphasis added]
Essentially, Mandrell’s solution is for churches to operate not by elders, deacons, or synods as prescribed in Scripture, but through church committees. Going away from “nomenclature” basically means downplaying theology and titles, which ultimately means downplaying Scripture. He wants to maintain the pretext of orthodoxy while getting as close to the line, which he calls “getting creative.” Even terms like “vision strategy” are straight out of the Church Growth handbook, which applies Managerialism to operate a Church like a business that requires marketing and views size (or other metrics) as a determinant for success. Humans become interchangeable cogs to keep the system going. The system become layered in bureaucracy. This is how Storyline Fellowship operates with its female “executive director” and “ministers” in what is basically an egalitarian church. Their “executive director” has an MDIV from Gateway Seminary, which is an SBC seminary. Because the SBC seminaries are training the very women who are subverting their doctrine.
Contrary to Mandrell’s claim, this strategy will not succeed because it inevitably waters down doctrine. The reason women are leaving the church is because of feminism, which is acknowledged even by secular sources. Among Gen Z, 39% of Gen Z women identify as religiously unaffiliated, compared with 31% of Gen Z men, meaning that men in this cohort are more religious than women. According to the Survey Center on American Life, “Sixty-one percent of Gen Z women identify as feminist, far greater than women from previous generations.”
Women are not leaving the church in droves because of “abuse” or “church hurt,” but because of feminism. This is the very same phenomenon occurring in politics with Trump vs. Kamala being a campaign of Masculinity vs. Feminism. There is no appeal to these women except by watering down proper theology.
Under Mandrell’s headship, Lifeway’s approach seems to be all about appealing to women.
The only man promoted on their website is Tony Evans, who has gone incognito for reasons. All the other names promoted by Lifeway are women, the most notorious of which have atrocious theology. Priscilla Shirer is a female pastor who delves into the Prosperity Gospel. Jen Wilkin is an advocate for female leadership in the local church, very much in line with Ben Mandrell’s managerialism or the PCA’s use of “shepherdess.” Jackie Hill Perry equates heterosexual sin with sodomy while previously supporting the enneagram, which is pervasive among women in the church. Head of Proverbs 31 Ministries, Lysa TerKeurst has preached at Steven Furtick’s Elevation Church. Needless to say, Lifeway’s target audience is women.
Conclusion
Under Ben Mandrell’s leadership, Lifeway has gone full egalitarian to its own demise. Their catalog entirely appeals to women with content by authors who undermine Scripture. At best, it is because they cannot compete with Ligonier Ministries or Reformation Heritage, but clearly, Mandrell believes women need a seat at the table, so Lifeway only publishes the best women, who all so happen to have atrocious theology.
Contrary to Ben Mandrell’s claim, violating Scriptural ecclesiology will not improve the church. Churches are not supposed to operate via egalitarian committees of men and women but through pastors/elders and deacons. Churches should not have “executive directors” or other titles that circumvent prohibitions on female ordination just so women can feel included. Giving women authority in the church undermines true doctrine. The rot in the Southern Baptist Convention runs deep, and Mandrell’s leadership is a feminist drift that messengers have fought against in recent years.
2 Responses
Going to say this is an unfortunate sentence “The absence of hierarchy is the absence of order.”
Because order could take other forms than hierarchy. The reality is much of what is in woke culture is not just anti-hierarchy as defined in the bible, but more a hedonistic, me first over everyone else mentality that ends up looking ever more chaotic as norms no longer can hold together outside of the strucfture it over turns. In other words, its not that there isn’t order with out hierarchy, it’s that the woke push the emphasis of so so many other things as primus that Nothing is. If you took the Incredible’s Villain, Syndrome and twisted his words around you could say. In a non hierarchial order, everyone is at the top…. and when everyone is at the top… noone will be.
Lifeway bought up all the Family Christian Bookstore locations, ceased selling good books and only sold Beth Moore heresy books, then surprisingly couldn’t turn a profit and then shut all their physical locations down. I’m still VERY salty about that.