About a woman being SBC presdent

[JE Pettibone]

[Haruo]

Albs are nice and unisex.

[Sandy]

[Sandy]

[Dave Roberts]

This question of women in ministry is one that I have to offer a different perspective. First, my home church had a woman on staff in Christian education who was an excellent preacher and filled the pulpit for our pastor when I was around 10 year old. (I'll be 72 next week). This lady went on to teach preaching at Princeton. Second, as a pastor, I had my first ordained woman on the church staff in 1987 in youth and education. She had been ordained by her previous church, and she served us well. Third, when I am not serving as an interim pastor or doing pulpit supply, I attend a congregation with a woman pastor who has now been a pastor for more than a decade. She does a fine job as a preacher, challenges me to think, and I have never once questioned that God called her to do exactly what she is doing. Fourth, it was my privilege in 1997 to preach the ordination sermon for a friend I had known since the preschool departments in our home church. She was already a university graduate, had traveled the world as a military wife, was a university graduate with a successful practice as a substance abuse counselor, and was a grandmother by the time of her ordination. As we talked, she acknowledged having felt the same nudges toward ministry that had drawn me to feel called. She returned to seminary, served as the senior adult ministry in a church, and later accepted the pastorate of a small country church. Her preaching would put most of us men to shame. Fifth, I participated in the ordination of another female staff member around 2006. She impressed the ordination council of how much she felt called to ministry. In her current staff position, while there is an older man who serves as the bivocational preacher, she serves as the one who ministers to most of the needs in that congregation, provides the spiritual leadership, and does most of the funerals. I served an interim for aa church that called a female senior pastor (the largest church in Virginia to have called a woman with the church having a total membership of over 1,100). Then I served an interim in another church which had just been served by a woman as pastor for the previous thirteen years. I do not have statistics on the number of women serving, but It appears there are far more than Sandy has been aware of.

[Haruo]

What about the dress code delivered once and for all to saints like it says in Jude?