On Monday, June 9, Gayle Rogers Foster spoke at the Southern Baptist Convention Pastors’ Wives and Women in Ministry Conference.
She is the daughter of Adrian Rogers, the late pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tenn., and one of the prominent leaders of the SBC from the time of the fundamentalist takeover in 1979 until his death in 2005.
Gayle began my acknowledging her father’s influence and ministry by remarking, “My father was the real thing.”
Meredith Stone
But she quickly followed a praise of her father’s ministry by describing how being his child meant he was “a hard act to live up to.” She said, “I wanted to detach my wagon from him, because being his daughter carries a lot of expectations.”
After confessing that she moved away from his shadow and wanted nothing to do with the church, she began describing a day when she visited his grave at the cemetery. During her visit, she began to feel the power of the Holy Spirit and surrendered to it, saying she felt called to take up her father’s mantle and continue his ministry.
As she walked every corner of his grave site, Gayle stated, “I was claiming my father’s anointing for myself.”
Did I mention this testimony was happening at the SBC Pastors’ Wives and Women in Ministry Conference?
The SBC’s annual business meeting begins tomorrow, and several male pastors have made clear their intention to reintroduce the “Law Amendment,” a motion to amend the SBC’s Constitution to declare churches that call women as pastors of any kind should be disfellowshipped.
And, yet, on the day before, in front of a room of hundreds of women, Gayle Rogers Foster said she claimed her father’s anointing for herself and is following God’s call to take up his mantle.
I have to confess, I am confused.
Gayle Rogers Foster, author and daughter of well-known Southern Baptist pastor Adrian Rogers, speaks to the Pastors’ Wives and Women in Ministry Conference June 9 prior to the 2025 SBC annual meeting. (Baptist Press photo by Josselyn Guillen)
How is claiming a pastor’s anointing and taking up a pastor’s mantle not considered “pastoring” — the same act of leadership the SBC continues to forbid women from taking?
Since the beginning of the debate surrounding women in ministry in the SBC, tension has always existed around the boundaries of how a woman can “minister” or “pastor.” Is it OK if she leads women? Is it OK in any country other than the United States (as seemed to be the case for Lottie Moon and so many other female icons of the SBC)? Is being a pastor to children acceptable? If so, at what age does a child stop being a child and need to be led by only men? Or can she minister to anyone as long as she is not ordained?
But instead of focusing the debate on the “what” of a woman’s ministry or to “whom” she can minister, the conflict in the past few years has been reduced to the title a woman holds.
Gayle Rogers Foster may not have the title of “pastor,” but taking up a pastoral mantle and anointing previously held by a man seems to be definitively in conflict with the principle that women should not lead, pastor, teach or have authority in the church.
In 1983, a resolution was introduced at the SBC annual meeting celebrating the gifts and ministry of women in the SBC and encouraged “all Southern Baptists to explore further opportunities of service for Baptist women to ensure maximum utilization of all God-called servants of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
When that resolution was introduced, Gayle’s mother, Joyce Rogers, wife of Adrian Rogers, made a motion to amend the resolution to clarify that, “Be it finally resolved, that this resolution should not be interpreted as endorsing the ordination of women.”
Out of more than 3,600 votes, Joyce Rogers’s amendment to ensure there was no possibility of women’s ordination being supported (at least that year) failed to pass by 57 votes.
Interestingly, Gayle never mentioned her mother in her speech (which sounded much more like a sermon). Gayle’s call was to follow in her father’s footsteps, not her mother’s.
I cannot speculate what Gayle Rogers Foster believes about the limitations placed on women in ministry. But I can deduce that any clarity the SBC believes it has achieved on the issue of women in ministry is murky at best.
We’ll see what the business at the SBC brings tomorrow.
Will the clarity the SBC seems to desire so fervently be finally achieved?
Or will Baptist women continue to defy the decrees of men by following God no matter what resolutions, amendments or motions get passed or not?
Because of the power of the Holy Spirit that was preached repeatedly during the SBC Pastors’ Wives and Women in Ministry Conference, I feel confident it will be the latter.
Meredith Stone serves as executive director of Baptist Women in Ministry.
Related articles:
Law Amendment will be resurrected at this year’s SBC meeting
SBC annual meeting may be deja vu all over again | Analysis by Mark Wingfield
Proposed SBC resolutions throw red meat to the base, avoid key issues | Analysis by Mark Wingfield