By Bob Allen
The so-called “stained-glass ceiling” that Baptist women face when called to ministry cracked a little March 22, when two North Carolina congregations for the first time elected senior pastors who are female.
Baptist News Global reported Monday on the selection of Emily Hull McGee, a third-generation minister and Wake Forest Divinity School graduate, as 12th pastor of First Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, N.C.
The same day members of First Baptist Church in Huntersville, N.C., extended a call to Stacy Cochran Nowell to become their senior pastor. Nowell, currently associate pastor at Harrisonburg Baptist Church in Harrisonburg, Va., shared the news Tuesday on Facebook, and the church welcomed her on its website the following day.
“Indeed, March 22 was a good day for Baptist women ministers, with two women being called to pastor churches and two other women being ordained to the gospel ministry,” said Pam Durso, executive director of Baptist Women in Ministry.
Four times since 2005 BWIM has compiled reports on the State of Women in Baptist Life. The last report, in 2010, marked increases in the number of women being ordained as ministers and attending Cooperative Baptist Fellowship-affiliated seminaries. When it came to career opportunities, however, women were far more likely to find work in a local church as a minister of children, youth, education, missions or spiritual formation than as a senior pastor.
Durso, who herself was recently ordained to the ministry at Smoke Rise Baptist Church in Stone Mountain, Ga., said in the last nine months she has observed more openness and action by Baptist churches and institutions to call women to a wide range of ministerial positions from pastor to chaplain to university president.
“I think a cultural shift within moderate/progressive Baptist life is beginning to take place, and I expect that we will see the numbers of women being called to serve, especially as pastors, to continue to increase this year,” Durso said. “There is, of course, still much work to be done, but there is more hope, more light than any time in our history for women called to ministry.”
Durso’s records show a total of 165 women currently serving as pastor or co-pastor of churches affiliated with the Alliance of Baptists, Baptist Association of Virginia, Baptist General Convention of Texas and Cooperative Baptist Fellowship — Baptist groups in the South generally regarded as offering the most opportunities for Baptist women in ministry.
Texas leads the pack with 28. Durso said a number are ethnic churches led by women. Virginia has 23, followed by North Carolina with 22. Of the 165, Durso said, 121 are pastors and 44 share ministry responsibilities in a co-pastor role.
The pastor search committee at FBC Huntersville sorted through more than 100 resumes, listened to countless online sermons and conducted a series of interviews before settling on one candidate, “head and shoulders above the rest.”
While the church has never before had a woman as senior pastor, the group said in a brochure introducing Nowell to the congregation that “God has been utilizing women in leadership roles” there for many years.
Since hiring Tina Burleson — a graduate of both Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and Gardner-Webb School of Divinity — as children’s minister in 1987, First Baptist has ordained four women as ministers and 15 as deacons, including one who served as deacon chair.
“Looking back at our history, it is evident God has been preparing us for this moment,” the committee said. “We are humbled and grateful God has given us this opportunity to serve and honor Him in this unique way.”
Nowell, who grew up in the Midwest in a family that didn’t attend church regularly, accepted Christ as a teenager and felt called to ministry while in high school. She studied religion at Baylor University, while refining her ministry skills through active leadership in her local church’s college ministry.
After college she attended Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology, graduating with a master of divinity degree in 2006. She was elected president of her graduating class, and the same year received the Baptist Women in Ministry’s Addie Davis Award, given annually to a female seminarian for outstanding leadership in preaching.
While at McAfee she served as minister to graduate students and young singles minister at First Baptist Church in Decatur, Ga., where she was ordained to the ministry in 2005. During that time she also met her future husband, Luke Nowell.
After graduating from seminary, and while they were engaged, she began a yearlong chaplaincy residency at an Atlanta hospital, while he began a two-year pastoral residency at First Baptist Church of Dalton, Ga.
After their marriage she moved to Dalton and stepped in to serve as interim youth minister. In 2009 they relocated to Harrisonburg Baptist Church — Stacy as associate pastor and Luke as an active church member.
They have two children, and she serves on the Baptist News Global board of directors.