CHARLOTTE, N.C. (ABP) — First it was a T-shirt. Then it was a book. At the recent Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly in Charlotte, N.C., "This is What a Preacher Looks Like" became an event.
Sue Fitzgerald, retired director of the Christian Resource Center at Mars Hill College who now serves with a non-profit crisis-ministry organization in North Carolina, signs copies of This is What a Preacher Looks Like. (Photo from the book's Facebook page)
|
Twenty women preachers — some wearing the trademark aqua-colored T-shirt that debuted two years ago on the 25th anniversary of Baptist Women in Ministry — signed copies of This is What a Preacher Looks Like, a collection of 38 sermons by Baptist women published by Smyth & Helwys.
"It was really a moment in history," said Pam Durso, executive director of Baptist Women in Ministry and the book's editor, "20 women preachers, all together." Then, Durso added, "A party broke out!"
As the scheduled time for the event came to an end, she said: "The convention folks turned out the lights on us — and we kept signing until everyone had their book signed."
Lex Horton, publisher and executive vice president of Smyth & Helwys, an alternative publishing company born in 1990 out of the moderate/conservative controversy of the Southern Baptist Convention, said he could tell from watching people wait with smiles and hugs in a slow-moving line to get multiple copies autographed it was going to be a night to remember.
"As I stood there I realized that before us was a slice of the past, present and future of ministry leadership for churches," Horton said in an e-mail to Durso. "For me, it felt like a culmination of 20 years of focus in CBF life on the important role of women in ministry."
In an introduction to the book, Durso, who has led Baptist Women in Ministry for a year, said the original suggestion for the "This is What a Preacher Looks Like" T-shirt came from Suzanah Raffield, a graduate of Samford University's Beeson Divinity School who advocates for global maternal health. She is one of the 36 women whose sermons appear in the book.
Durso quipped that the volume could have contained sermons by 836 women, if the publishers had wanted 5,000 pages instead of a 272-page paperback.
"The number of Baptist women preachers is probably larger than what most people would ever imagine," she said. "There are many Baptist women preachers."
From slogan to title
The idea that the slogan would be a good title for a book came to Keith Gammons, vice president for production at Smyth & Helwys, one afternoon while he waited in a drive-through line at a Chick-fil-A restaurant.
Watching the signing, Gammons said, reminded him of why he felt called to come to Smyth & Helwys nine years ago — "to create products that make a difference in ministry."
"This project and that gathering of women the other night are a powerful reminder to me that what we do is important," Gammons told Durso.
Durso said that for some of the women the book signing "was a powerful affirmation of their callings." Three traveled to Charlotte only for the signing, from as far away as Memphis and Houston.
Durso recalled that the T-shirt, produced and distributed during Baptist Women in Ministry's 25th anniversary celebration in 2008, was a big hit.
Joy Yee, a past CBF moderator, is one of 36 women featured in the new collection of sermons by Smyth & Helwys. (Photo from the book's Facebook page)
|
"Baptist women bought them and proudly wore them," she wrote. "Mothers purchased them for their daughters. Seminarians were seen wearing them in class. Husbands ordered them as gifts for their wives. Church leaders gave them to women who preached in their churches. And several fathers inquired as to whether the T-shirts came in toddler sizes."
Pondering the popularity, Durso concluded that perhaps something as simple as a T-shirt gave many Baptists a way to say that Baptist preachers are a diverse lot.
"The aqua T-shirts reminded us and allowed us to celebrate the truth that Baptist preachers have looked like and do look like women," Durso said.
A long history of female preachers
While the great majority of Baptist preachers through 400 years of history have been men, women preachers were active among Baptists in England as early as the 1630s, said Durso, who has a Ph.D. in church history from Baylor University. Durso worked previously as associate executive director-treasurer of the Baptist History and Heritage Society and before that as an assistant professor at Campbell University Divinity School.
Beyond the truth that women "can be and are Baptist preachers," Durso said, is the diversity of women in Baptist pulpits. They are young and old, with a myriad of preaching styles. Preachers featured in the book come from various Baptist faith traditions and hold theological views across the spectrum from fundamentalist to liberal. They are African American, Asian, Latina and Caucasian.
Some were controversial. Sue Fitzgerald, an active minister at 78, submitted a sermon that was written but never preached after her election as alternate preacher at the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina annual meeting in 1996.
The youngest, 26-year-old Kristy Eggert, graduates in December from Mercer University's McAfee School of Theology and works as the associate to the minister to families with youth at Smoke Rise Baptist Church in Stone Mountain, Ga.
For Durso, a veteran copy editor, the project became more than an assignment. Proofreading several sermons while flying to a meeting and penciling corrections into the margins, she related a particular "movement of the spirit," when she put down her pencil and continued to read.
"Through the words of Baptist women preachers, I heard and felt and experienced the presence of God," she wrote. "I felt God's Spirit breathing renewal and hope into my dispirited and weary soul. Isn't that what good preaching is?"
"The women whose sermons I read during that flight strengthened my faith and gave me assurance and hope," she wrote. "In the days since, I have been inspired and challenged and at times moved to tears while reading the sermons included in this collection. These thirty-six women are for me what a preacher looks like."
-30-
Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.