By Bob Allen
Heading into the 10th annual Martha Stearns Marshall Month of Preaching, Baptist Women in Ministry Executive Director Pam Durso sees evidence of “a shift in Baptist culture” toward accepting that God calls women as well as men to preach the gospel.
Baptist Women in Ministry, which celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2013, has every year since 2007 asked churches to invite a woman into their pulpit sometime during the month of February. In the last few years, more than 200 congregations have taken up the offer.
“In the past eight years, as we have observed the Baptist landscape, we have seen greater numbers of women find ministry positions, live out their calling and serve in this world,” said an e-newsletter reminding that Martha Stearns Marshall Month of Preaching 2016 is right around the corner. “And we have seen more churches open their pulpits to women and call women to serve their congregations.”
Durso, a former Baptist history professor, chose an 18th-century Baptist woman from North Carolina to represent the spirit of the emphasis intended to educate congregations about women in ministry.
While lesser known than her husband, David Marshall, and her brother, Shubal Stearns, Martha Stearns Marshall preached alongside the men in a series of revivals across the Eastern Seaboard that came to be known as the First Great Awakening.
BWIM launched Martha Stearns Marshall Month in 2007, hoping to raise the comfort level of many Cooperative Baptist Fellowship congregations who supported women in ministry in theory but didn’t think their church was “ready” to consider calling a woman as pastor.
This year, Durso said in a recent blog, she is “dreaming bigger” about the potential for “a new Martha vision.”
“This year I hope that churches will invite young preachers, new-to-the-pulpit preachers into their pulpits,” Durso said. “I hope that churches will invite women who rarely have opportunity to preach to be their Martha.”
“Think about it,” she wrote. “What if 200 churches together said: ‘We believe in young preachers. We support new preachers. AND we believe in them and want to support them so much that we will invite them into our pulpit. We will invite women who have never, ever preached before. We will invite women who are not often in the pulpit to be our Martha. We will be an affirming church for young preachers!’”
“Imagine what that kind of encouragement would look like, what it would feel like to college women, to seminary women, to seasoned women ministers who are never given opportunities in their own churches to preach,” she said. “Imagine, just imagine.”
Resources for Martha Stearns Marshall Month of Preaching are available on the BWIM website. For record keeping, Durso asks churches planning to participate to submit church and preacher’s name to Ashley Robinson at ashleyrobinson@bwim.info.