Roughly 1,600 Baptist women in the United States have been ordained to the ministry, according to a new report released June 21 by Baptist Women in Ministry.
The study reported that 60 Baptist women became ordained ministers in 2005.
According to the report, 102 women serve as pastors, co-pastors or church-starters and are in churches affiliated with the Alliance of Baptists, the Baptist General Association of Virginia, the Baptist General Convention of Texas, or the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship — the groups most closely aligned with Baptist Women in Ministry.
“While the pastorate continues, for the most part, to be only marginally open to women, and growth there is incremental, a larger number of women now serve as associate pastors and in specialized ministry roles on church staffs,” the report states. “Many women have found places of ministry as chaplains in hospitals, prisons, the military and other organizations and agencies, although women make up only 29 percent of all chaplains endorsed by the ABC-USA, Alliance, CBF and SBC.”
According to the report, the American Baptist Women in Ministry reported an increase of 13 more women who served as pastors in 2005 than 2004. Of these women, 374 served as pastors and 29 served as co-pastors.
In the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, 5.5 percent of pastors in CBF-affiliated churches are women. About 28 percent of the chaplains and counselors in the CBF and ABC-USA in 2005 were women, while the Alliance of Baptists recorded 52 percent of its chaplains were women. Southern Baptists reported 8 percent of their ordained chaplains and counselors are women, according to the report.
In a section of the study that evaluated SBC mission boards, 31 percent (3,096) of the North American Mission Board missionaries in 2005 were women appointed to full-time service. For the International Mission Board, 53 percent (2,695) of the total 5,050 workers were women.