“In those days,” God declares, “I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. … I will pour out my Spirit on both men and women, and they shall prophesy.” — Acts 2:1-21
Every year on Pentecost Sunday, the Common Lectionary places in the path of the church throughout the world those words we just read from the book of Acts. And every time they roll back around, they take me back to a conversation I had more than 40 years ago.
It was sometime in the early 1980s. I was serving as a greeter for the annual World Missions Conference of the Macon Baptist Association, typically a happy and exciting week when international missionaries, home on furlough, would visit local churches to share stories of their work in far-flung and fascinating corners of the globe.
Chuck Poole
However, this particular year the gathering had been clouded by a controversy concerning the fact that some of the visiting missionaries scheduled to speak were women. Because most of the local Baptist churches did not allow women to preach from their pulpits, this had created some widespread apprehension which apparently had reached the ears of some of the visiting missionaries.
I discovered this when, upon greeting one of arriving missionaries, I asked what her work was on the mission field, and she replied, “I preach the gospel, and I hope you don’t mind.”
Those words were, then and now, surgical all the way to the center of my soul because as much as it shames me all these years later to say so, I did mind.
Raised in a world that limited leadership in the church to men only, sadly, I did mind that she was a preacher of the gospel.
But thanks be to her, not for long. That single simple sentence put a small crack in my tall wall of exclusion — a small opening through which the wind of the Spirit began to blow, sending me sailing on a spiritual journey from did mind to don’t mind; searching for the truth I never had been told.
Needless to say, that led to today’s Pentecost passage from the book of Acts, which promises a day when God will pour out God’s Spirit on all flesh — sons and daughters, men and women — and they all will preach.
Everyone told me women could not be preachers because the Bible forbids it in 1 Corinthians 14:34 and 1 Timothy 2:12, but nobody bothered to point out the Pentecostal promise in Acts 2:17.
Not to mention that other verse my church had chosen not to mention, Galatians 3:28, which says in the baptized family of faith, “There is neither Jew or Greek, male or female, slave or free.”
That means if the church is going to refuse ordination to women, the church should refuse baptism to girls because, in the baptized family of faith, all the old gender norms are washed away.
So of course we ordain women as pastors and preachers. We ordain women because we baptize girls.
Chuck Poole retired in 2022 after 45 years of pastoral life, during which he served churches in Georgia; North Carolina; Washington, D.C.; and Jackson, Miss. He has served as a visiting preacher and teacher on the campuses of multiple universities, seminaries and divinity schools. He was the founding teacher of the Wood Street Bible Class in Jackson, which he led for 21 years. The author of nine books, numerous published articles, one gospel song and the lyrics to three hymns, Chuck has served as a “minister on the street” and as an advocate for interfaith conversation and welcome. He and his wife, Marcia, now live in Birmingham, where he serves on the staff of Together for Hope.