Money for considering female pastors

[Matt Richard]

The CBF of Missouri approved a measure on Sept. 17 in an attempt to encourage search committees to at least consider a female candidate when looking for a pastor -- offering a cash incentive.

http://www.wordandway.org/index.php?opt ... &Itemid=53

I'm not sure the pros would outweigh the cons in this proposal. Thoughts?

[Stephen Fox]

Very interesting question.

Any woman who can preach as good as Fleming Rutledge should get the call with no under the table schemes.

Maybe more version of the copastorate featured in October Baps Today

[Ed Pettibone]

[Haruo]

Matt, just in case you hadn't noticed, there are already 35 or so posts in the thread dealing with this CBFMO program. I do think your thread title is better, because it makes the topic clear, so I would encourage Alan and the other participants in that discussion to continue it here.

[Matt Richard]

Oops, my apologies! Perhaps this thread should be deleted to avoid repeated comments.

Ed, I agree with the intention, but not with the method. It doesn't seem 100% ethical to me to pay a church committee to consider anyone, even if the intent is to encourage an openness in supporting female pastors. The end does NOT always justify the means. That's my take.

[Haruo]

[Ed Pettibone]

[Tim Bonney]

[Ed Pettibone]

[Tim Bonney]

[Ed Pettibone]

[Tim Bonney]

[Tim Dahl]

[Ed Pettibone]

[Tim Bonney]

Point taken Ed. I had forgotten about the Methodist Protestant Church which later remerged back into the Methodist Church.

I do still contend that the appointment system is an aid to the larger percentage of women clergy. Often in Baptist circles women feel a call, go to seminary, and then can't find a church to call them. So the prejudices of the local church carry more weight in the decision. I've known a number of Baptist churches that claim to be supporting of women in ministry but when it comes to calling a woman pastor they never do.

[Haruo]

[Ed Pettibone]

[Haruo]

And the Montanists... and Anne Hutchinson's group in Rhode Island (depending on what you mean by ordination, or what they meant), ... and the Shakers of Mother Ann... And even in Roman Catholicism, a heck of a lot of women religious have been in pastoral authority (generally over other women), even if they couldn't actually get Jesus into the crackers.

[Big Daddy Weaver]

[Gene Scarborough]

I think the idea of encouraging CBF churches to consider female clergy is admirable. For years Baptists have ventured into new "mission areas" by putting funds out there to help support something new.

The whole problem revolves around the presuppostion that women are not equal to men when it comes to leading churches as the official Pastor. Meanwhile, were it not for women most churches would get little real ministry and work done. Even old W.A. Criswell with all his bravado about women being submissive hired an entire staff of women (poorly paid) to serve as MInister of Education / Children / etc. We seem to love cheap labor even in the pulpit.

While the UMC has run rings around Baptists in placing women in pulpits, the congregations are not always happy when a woman is assigned as the new pastor. I speak from local experience with the Bath UMC. They just had a marvelous and talented woman, Kelly Sorg, as the last pastor. She stayed one term and is now at a larger church in a bigger town. The new pastor and I had a recent discussion in which he said some he is trying to encourage to come back became inactive in protest of the "lady preacher."

The real problem in all this is our prejudice against women in places of leadership. I had them, myself, until a marvelous woman pastored a small rural Baptist church next door to me. Her gifts and compassion taught me that I was wrong in my own prejudices!!! They were financially helped by the fact her husband had a bigger-paying job and she had a military retirement supplementing her meager wage for serving a small church of older people in a community where children have to leave for lack of work there.

The saddest things I have heard is that now at Ridgecrest the statement that "God doesn't call women" is being put out to the girls---and pretty much enforced under BF&M 2000.

Where are their hearts and minds---when Jesus welcomed women to his band of followers with no dismissive attitude whatsoever????

[Dave Roberts]

One of the real struggles for women in ministry is the fact that so many churches in the rural and small-town South are plateaued or in decline. Part of that is the demographics as young people leave the communities of their nurture for those places offering better job opportunities. Many of the traditional starting places for ministers simply are not there any more because they cannot support a full-time ministry. The UMC has faced this by combining churches into fields (sometimes in almost unmanageable configurations such as having a clergy couple serving 10 churches between them), but they have kept trained ministers in most of these settings. Baptists are faced with many smaller churches that may not exist at all in another generation. As I look at the area where I live, there are at least 8 to 10 Baptist churches that have little prospect for a continued existence beyond 2025. Small town churches that once had associate pastors have been reduced to having only a pastor in many of them. The competition for today's seminary graduates is increasingly difficult, no matter what the theological stripe. To some extent, I see the SBC's resistance to women as a rear-guard protective action to protect these places of service for men when there may be more able women.

I am convinced that to gain a hearing in Baptist circles, women ministers must be both better preachers and more skilled as people persons than men, and I have met several who definitely are. Some of the men in our world need to listen to the messages these women are bringing and ask, "Could they be speaking a clear message from God?" I'm convinced that some of them definitely are.

[Gene Scarborough]

A couple of years ago I viewed a sermon competition between pending graduates from several seminaries---all Baptist. There were more women than men in the competition.

As I listened to some 5 sermons as a sample, the ladies produced far more excellence than the men. They were not as dramatic as the men, but their content was significant / well presented / intellectually far more clear.

This let me know what can happen when we let the ladies lose!

With respect to the UMC, a good retired friend of mine serving as Interim Pastor for one of their rural charges. Check with your local DS and see if there might be a place of need within the UMC if you still want to preach. At the least, you don't have to put up with the constant criticism of the typical Baptist church!