By Bob Allen
After being around for 30 years, it’s easy to forget that a decade ago BWIM was considering whether it should continue to exist. What is the state of your movement today, and what did it take to bring it back?
BWIM is healthy and thriving today as both an organization and as a movement. In 2009, the BWIM Leadership Team recognized that a volunteer-led organization could not fulfill all the hopes and dreams that they had, and they hired me to serve as the executive director. Having a full-time staff person has allowed BWIM to expand its vision, broaden its ministries, and become a leading voice among Baptists for change and renewal.
Bringing BWIM back required two things: the courage to take a risk and money! Reba Cobb, who was then on the Leadership Team, had helped BWIM raise some money, and in early 2009, we had $50,000 in the bank, more than BWIM had ever had before (at least in all the years of my affiliation with the organization). Then the Leadership Team took a risk and hired me, an academic type who had never headed a nonprofit organization and who had little fundraising experience. For six years now, I have learned as I have led, and this has been truly an “on-the-job-training” experience. I have read and studied, but mostly I have carefully observed some of our greatest Baptist leaders, and from them, I learned the skills needed to build collations, raise money, and advocate for change. I also have been blessed with the best of supporters: my Leadership Team. They have encouraged me, prayed for and with me, and offered me the freedom to move in new directions and dream new dreams.
How have things changed for young women preparing for ministry today since the late 1980s and early 1990s when you were getting your Ph.D.?
In my seminary classrooms and doctoral seminars, I often was the only woman taking the course. I learned in a very masculine setting — my professors were all male and my friends and fellow students were mostly male. When I finally began my first teaching position, all my colleagues were male. Today women comprise half of the student populations in many seminaries affiliated with the American and Cooperative Baptists. Women students are no longer the exception, and they are not asked, as I was, “Why are you even here?”
The other change I have seen is in the area of opportunities. I finished my Ph.D. in 1992 and quickly discovered that there were very limited opportunities for me in Baptist circles. The moderate/progressive Baptist seminaries were just beginning to be established. Southern Baptist institutions would not hire me because of my gender. Other denominational schools would not hire me because of my Baptist affiliations. Baptist churches were not open to my serving in pastoral roles. I spent seven years after I finished doctoral work doing “other things,” including working as an administrative assistant, serving part-time in a Presbyterian church, cleaning houses, and mothering my two children.
The soon-to-graduate women with whom I work have so many options. Not only are churches calling women to fill a variety of roles, churches are also providing internships and residencies that offer experience and intentional mentoring. Some women receive multiple job offers and have to make hard decisions. It is indeed a different world.
One of the original reasons the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship formed was debate over the role of women in pastoral ministry. With the CBF’s 25th anniversary approaching, do women aspiring to CBF pulpits yet play on a level field?
Twenty-five years later, I would say, the playing field is not yet level, but it is leveling. More and more churches are calling women to serve as pastor or co-pastor.
In 2005, I began tracking the number of women serving as pastors or co-pastors in churches affiliated with the Alliance of Baptists, the Baptist General Convention of Texas, the Baptist General Association of Virginia and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. That year I had 102 women’s names on my list. Four years later, when I was hired as BWIM’s executive director, the number was 120. Today the number is 165.
While BWIM is not directly responsible for the increasing number of women being called by churches as pastors, BWIM is actively involved in shaping the culture of our Baptist world and helping churches reimagine what pastoral leadership can look like.
In a former life, you were a church historian. Did this whole issue of female preachers in Baptist churches begin in the 1960s?
Baptist women preaching did not suddenly begin in the 1960s with the ordination of Addie Davis. Women preachers have been around for almost the whole of our 400-year Baptist existence. Much of the research and writing that I have done in my career has focused on Baptist women, and what I have discovered is that Baptist women have been central to the growth of their churches, the funding of their programs, the theological education of their children and yes, at times, even the preaching of their sermons.
In the 1630s, at least six English Baptist women were busy preaching, and they, of course, quickly ran into opposition but eloquently defended their actions. They called the attention of their detractors to the deficiency of good male preachers and proclaimed, “It was but fit that virtuous women should supply their places.” Ten years later, Mrs. Attaway, a lace-maker and member of a General Baptist church in London, was labeled by one of her critics as the “mistress of all the she-preachers on Coleman Street.” And of course, Martha Stearns Marshall. About a hundred years later, Martha was active as a preacher and exhorter in Separate Baptist churches in Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia.
You were ordained on Feb. 28 but were an advocate for BWIM well before that. What took so long, and why now?
I have served in ministry for 30 years, and only this year was ordained. My pastor in his opening remarks at my ordination asked the same question: “Why has this taken so long?” The answer is a complex one, related to my theology, my understanding of Baptist polity, my strong commitment to equality in Baptist life, my lack of opportunity, and then some surprising, unexpected gifts of grace.
Growing up a Southern Baptist girl in Texas in the 1970s, I had no awareness that ordination would be possible. Actually, I had no awareness that ministry was a possibility either, even though I sensed a call from God as a 12-year-old girl. In college, I suddenly had a few female models for ministry, and they inspired me to explore ministry as a possibility.
As I pondered and prayed, I began to see teaching as the place to which God was calling me. So after college, I headed off to seminary and then enrolled in the doctoral program at Baylor University.
I finished my Ph.D. in 1992. These days ordination often takes place on the completion of theological education, but such was not the case in the 1980s and early 1990s in Texas. Ordination did not naturally unfold for me, and so I waited.
I was also waiting for my first job. And that turned out to be a very long wait — seven years I did those “other things” and then in 1999, I finally found a place to use my education and gifts. Campbell University Divinity School hired me to teach church history and Baptist heritage, and with my husband and two young children, I moved halfway across the country to North Carolina. Ordination could have happened for me then, but I was reluctant. I had no church that I loved enough to ask for ordination, and no church was asking me.
As I began my work with BWIM in 2009, church leaders and pastors talked with me about ordination, but I was reluctant. I had come to believe that ordination does not “make” a person a minister. The living out of calling, the faithful use of gifts, and the commitment to the church and God’s work in this world are what “make” a minister. I also knew many women who have served for years, doing beautiful kingdom work, but had never had opportunity to be ordained. For a variety of reasons, that door was closed to them, and many of them experienced the pain of rejection as a result. As I talked with many of these unordained Baptist women ministers, I decided to stand in solidarity with them, and I intentionally chose not to be ordained.
But last year the women who serve on the Leadership Team of Baptist Women in Ministry circled around me at the end of our spring meeting. They reached out their hands to me, offered words of affirmation and care, and said, “Now is the time, Pam, for ordination, for your ordination.” They invited me to pray, to dream, to explore, and they nudged me a bit. They then reached out to my pastor and church, requesting that I be ordained. And my church, Cornerstone Church in Snellville, Ga., agreed that it was time. I took my time, praying, talking with trusted friends, seeking spiritual guidance, and after six months, I said yes.
Counting four years as a volunteer member of the leadership team, you’ve been heavily invested in BWIM for about 10 years. What are your hopes and dreams for the organization in the next 10?
I have so many dreams for BWIM’s future, but three are priorities for our organization.
The first is to help college women hear and sense God’s call. BWIM is committed to providing these, our next generation of ministers, with places and times to talk through their understanding of calling and to explore the biblical images and teachings about ministry callings. The new book by Lauren Brewer Bass [Five Hundred Miles: Reflections on Calling and Pilgrimage, to be released by BWIM in June] is key to this priority. She offers us new and fresh language to use as we talk about calling and ministry, and her book will be the foundation upon which retreats for college women will be built.
A second priority is to expand the work we do with mentoring. A great sadness in our history is that we as Baptists have lost many of our best and brightest women. I believe that by offering a mentor who will coach, nurture, pray, and listen, we as Baptists just might shift the tide of the outgoing of so much giftedness.
The third priority is to strengthen our placement work. We will continue in assisting as many women and churches as possible, but I hope to broaden our reach by establishing closer collaborations with CBF organizations and seminaries. My dream is that by working together, sharing information, and communicating more effectively, we will be more helpful to both churches and Baptist ministers, women and men.
This article originally appeared in Herald, our bi-monthly magazine. To find out more about the magazine, click here.