DECATUR, Ga. (ABP)—A female pastor who broke the “stained-glass ceiling” in Texas Baptist life is expected to move to a historic church near Atlanta, making it by far the largest Southern Baptist church led by a woman.
A search committee of the 2,696-member First Baptist Church of Decatur, Ga., presented Julie Pennington-Russell's name May 27 as its recommendation to fill the open office of pastor. Since 1998 Pennington-Russell has been pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Waco.
Pennington-Russell, 46, is scheduled to preach June 17 in anticipation of election the same day. If elected, she would succeed Gary Parker, who resigned from the Decatur pastorate a year ago.
First Baptist of Decatur is affiliated with the moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship but also maintains ties with the Southern Baptist Convention.
Julie Pennington-
Russell
The Decatur congregation would be the third that Pennington-Russell has led. Prior to her tenure at Calvary, she served for five years as pastor of Nineteenth Avenue Baptist Church in San Francisco. She also served that church previously as an associate pastor.
While records on Baptist women in ministry are hard to track, experts in the field said the Decatur congregation would likely be by far the largest church of Southern Baptist heritage ever led by a woman.
“I can't think of any other church that would have been bigger,” said Pam Durso, a Baptist historian who serves as an officer with Baptist Women in Ministry.
Her group is finishing work on a new study that, its leaders say, will be the most comprehensive survey of the extent of women's ordination in modern-day Baptist life in the South. Durso said the study has identified female senior pastors in 117 congregations that either are affiliated with the SBC or trace their roots to the denomination. She said the study has documented 1,825 women who have been ordained as ministers in such congregations.
The vast majority of those churches are affiliated with moderate splinter groups, such as the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and Alliance of Baptists, that grew out of the conflict in the SBC. However, while such groups are officially supportive of women in ministry, few large moderate churches have called women as senior pastors. A 2006 report from Durso's group said only 5.5 percent of churches that are affiliated with CBF had female pastors.
In comparison, 2005 figures from the American Baptist Churches USA showed more than 400 congregations in that denomination had women either as senior pastors or as co-pastors alongside a man.
Pennington-Russell's resume might mark a turning point in that regard, Durso said.
“We've found that women are getting more jobs as pastors, but they're not moving from one job to another very easily; they can't get that second pastorate,” she said. “But this is her third (senior pastor position), which makes her very unique, I think.”
Pennington-Russell is a graduate of the University of Central Florida in Orlando and Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in Mill Valley, Calif. According to a biography provided to members of the Decatur church, she is “in the final phase of completing” a doctoral degree in ministry at Truett Seminary.