BaptistLife.Com Forums.

Sandy,

The authorized region staff have access to all the profiles in the system I believe. Some persons mark that they don't want to go to certain regions. I had a couple of very conservative regions marked that I'd not consider going there on my profile.

But there can be other factors that keep a woman candidate from being submitted to a church. If the ministry gifts the candidate shares on the profile don't match, at least in part, the gifts the church is looking for then it won't end up being shared with them just because they are a woman.

You can also list the kind of positions you are willing to interview for. So for example my profile was marked that I'd not be interested in interviewing for an associate position. So my name likely would not be submitted for such a position.

When I first went to a Mennonite Brethren Church in the mid 70's, they had a new pastor who had been called from an internship position at the biggest Baptist church in town. I was told that the two MB seminaries, one in California, and one in Kansas, were not producing enough graduates for the demand, and Baptists were "close enough". He and his wife and two babies were a breath of fresh air and the congregation grew, partly in the fact that several couples and singles from his "Young Adult" ministry at Big Church on the Hill followed him. By the mid 80's, there was talk of resuming the military draft system, and after a great deal of personal study and prayer, he felt he could no longer in good conscience pastor a church with a tradition of pacifism, and accepted a call to a Baptist church in a neighboring state. His assistant reluctantly took over, calling himself "an assistant under-shepherd". His wife was much more judgmental, determined to stamp out "Secular Humanism" and "Unisex Dressing" as tools of the devil. I made the mistake at a baby shower of making a gift basket for the new mother of handy items I had found useful, including a bottle of Witch Hazel for--uh-- sensitive tissues. The nurses at Oakland Naval hospital recommended it to me when I had my first child, and it came in handy for all kinds of stuff, but because it said "Witch" on it, I was looked on as a dangerous influence, let alone Ivory Soap which was made by -GASP Proctor and Gamble, who was being boycotted by many fundamentalists for it's supposed satanic logo of the moon and stars. When rent started rising on our little apartment, I found it necessary to take a part time job as a security officer on weekends, when my late husband could watch the kids on his days off, I was further shunned for working outside the home and wearing a "Man's uniform". They lost an alto in the choir and our dollars in the offering plate over that nonsense, and many of the "Ethnic MB's" began drifting to other congregations in the valley.

more voices

http://readingreligion.org/books/anatomy-schism