By Laura Rector
What happens when a Southern Baptist girl takes God’s love story for her to heart? What happens when she grows up with heroines like Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong? What happens when she prays for missionaries every week?
For this former G.A., it meant growing up and feeling God calling her to ministry as an adult woman — even though the very denomination that taught me to hear and heed that call didn’t officially approve.
As a little girl in a Southern Baptist church, I was a member of Mission Friends, then Girls in Action, and then Acteens. I loved missions even before I made a profession of faith in Christ, so it wasn’t much of a surprise to anyone but me when God called me to missions while I was praying and reading my Bible outside the dorm at Union University. It was something God had started preparing me for from the earliest days of my childhood.
After he grabbed my attention and affirmed that he was truly calling me — through Scripture, prayer and words from Christian brothers and sisters — to missions, I rushed through the end of my time in college. I even added an extra class or two to my course load in order to finish my B.A. in Christian studies in three years instead of four.
I went on to do M.Div. work at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. At age 21, I was their youngest new masters student in the year 1999 — but I was ready to serve Jesus with all my heart. Southern gave me opportunities to do that, both locally and overseas. I did internships in South Korea and Mongolia while I was there, and I served as the youth minister of First Korean Baptist Church of Radcliff, Ky., for three years.
I learned my method for hermeneutics through the professors at conservative Southern Baptist Convention-related schools at both the undergraduate and seminary levels. Apparently, I was good at exegesis and New Testament-related courses, receiving good grades and honors for my work. Surely that means that I had mastered the skills taught by those schools, right?
But none of that mattered when I felt called to ministry — and when, using the education I received from Southern Baptists and their hermeneutical methodology, I understood Scripture to support women at all levels in church leadership. Unfortunately, in the midst of my seminary studies, the SBC’s Baptist Faith & Message statement was revised to say women should not be pastors.
My academics, my spirituality, my felt calling didn’t matter anymore. The only thing that mattered to the SBC was my gender.
Before my graduation in 2002, it became necessary to sign the BF&M 2000 to serve as a missionary of the SBC’s International Mission Board.
I met with the IMB candidate consultant in an office on Southern’s campus and asked if I could be accepted as an exception if I explained my theological reasons for believing women can be ordained to ministry and serve as pastors. After all, news reports about the new IMB policy said exceptions would be considered for those who had theological reasons for their beliefs.
The candidate consultant explained that mine was too big an exception — that other women who had served as children’s ministers and pastoral counselors had been forced to choose between missionary service and turning in their ordination certificates to their churches.
“But if the reason women aren’t allowed to be pastors is that it involves teaching men, why is it okay for them to lead all-male Bible studies in prisons?” I asked.
“They aren’t performing baptisms or funerals or weddings” was the answer I was given. (Funny how the verses used to “prove” women can’t be pastors don’t mention anything about those things.)
She prayed for me, but made it clear that I would never be a Southern Baptist missionary.
With my naïve and broken heart, full of questions and frustrations, I walked home to Mullins Hall — the women’s dorm at the seminary. I played back my answering-machine messages.
During the time that I was in the meeting with the candidate consultant, a local soup kitchen left a message on my answering machine. They wanted me to come preach and pray with the people who came for lunch on Fridays — men included.
Apparently, the Holy Spirit decided to have the last word that day — and God’s word is still more important to heed than the SBC’s.