I’m not sure if Esther Burroughs and Joy Fenner knew each other, but I suspect they must have. Both were trailblazing women in Southern Baptist life. Now they have died within four days of each other, causing an old-timer like me to reflect once again on women in ministry who have shaped us.
Along the way, I had the opportunity to work with both these women — Esther at the Southern Baptist Convention Home Mission Board and Joy at Woman’s Missionary Union of Texas.
Both proved themselves to be excellent leaders in a religious world dominated by opinionated men.
Esther Burroughs
In a 2020 article for Baptist Women in Ministry, David Burroughs explained his perception of his mother’s influence. BWIM had asked on its Facebook page, “Who was the first woman you heard preach?”
Several respondents said it was Esther Burroughs.
“My mom was a great preacher, even if she didn’t always call herself that,” David said.
Truth be told, Esther waded gently into the public speaking world of Baptist life by calling herself a Bible teacher, prayer leader and speaker. In those early days of her ministry, she could not dare call herself a preacher. Yet I remember vividly watching her hold men and women in the palm of her hand as she taught from the Bible and told stories of vibrant faith.
“My mom was a great preacher, even if she didn’t always call herself that.”
Like many Baptist rebels in training, Esther passed through Oklahoma Baptist University where in 1989 she was given the Profile in Excellence Award. Seriously, y’all, the number of key leaders who shook up the SBC and passed through OBU is staggering: Grady Cothen, Bill Bruster, Molly Marshall, John Bisagno and Charles Wade, to name only a few.
After marrying Bob Burroughs, the couple served churches in Oklahoma and Texas and then landed at Samford University in Birmingham, Ala. There, Esther became the first Baptist female campus minister in the state of Alabama.
David said: “For nine years, they both influenced generations of Baptist young people — many of whom are in ministry and mission in Southern Baptist and Cooperative Baptist life, serving all over the world.”
Esther Burroughs
The next leg of the journey is where I first met Esther. She was hired to work in the student mission office at the Home Mission Board then later moved to the HMB’s Evangelism Department, where she was only the second woman to serve in a national leadership role.
She spoke around the country at state and national SBC events. David recalled: “Some of her fellow preachers would not hold her hand when they gathered on the stage to pray before an event.”
But in this move to Atlanta from Birmingham, Esther and Bob Burroughs taught their children an important lesson about egalitarian marriage. “We moved to advance my mother’s career,” David said. “Dad moved without a job — finding a church to serve a few months later.”
After leaving the HMB as the “conservative resurgence” roared through the SBC and disempowered women, Esther launched out as an author and speaker and, dare we say it, preacher.
“Mom was a daily example of an empowered woman who was living out her ministry calling.”
“I can’t adequately explain the impact my mother has had on my life,” David wrote for BWIM. “Both my parents shaped and influenced me in ways I am still discovering. But growing up, mom was a daily example of an empowered woman who was living out her ministry calling by taking the next opportunity that came her way — with a strong will and a gentle grace that still define her.”
David and his wife, Colleen, have sought to live out that teaching in Passport Camps, which they founded and still lead. Every role on a Passport Camp summer team is open to women, including the role of camp pastor.
Joy Fenner
Joy Fenner’s journey into Baptist leadership was different yet still ran through mission work as its impetus. In all things, always, Joy was a missionary at heart.
Joy Fenner
A native Texan, she attended East Texas Baptist College and worked as a secretary at First Baptist Church of Marshall, Texas. In 1959, her intention of seeking theological education was interrupted when a call came from Woman’s Missionary Union of Texas asking her to become director of its Girls Auxiliary program, a post she held for seven years.
In time, she married Charlie Fenner and the couple were appointed missionaries to Fukuoka, Japan, by the SBC Foreign Mission Board. There, they served 14 years, working in student ministry.
In 1980, they returned to the States and Joy was named executive director-treasurer of WMU of Texas — a role she held 21 years. It was here that our paths first crossed, as I was managing editor of the Texas Baptist Standard.
Joy became the first woman ever elected president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas.
But our greatest connection came after her retirement. In 2007, Joy became the first woman ever elected president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Then in 2010, our paths crossed again as we both served on the board of a newly formed charity medical and dental clinic in Dallas. And then again in 2012 when we landed once again as fellow board members of a new missions enterprise called Gaston Christian Center.
Did I mention missions was the theme of Joy’s life?
In these latter years, Joy served as chair of the board at Gaston Christian Center with me serving as vice chair. She led us to do a remarkable thing in deeding the 66,000-square-foot property of a dying Anglo church — her church — to our new nonprofit enterprise that leases below-market space to church starts and nonprofit ministries.
Joy was a leader not only among Southern Baptists and Texas Baptists; she was a leader in her own church. With her blessing and encouragement, the second-oldest Baptist church in Dallas County discovered — in the words attributed to St. Francis — that it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
I’m getting old and I’ve seen a lot of things good and bad in Baptist life. And still, it is the witness of women like Esther Burroughs and Joy Fenner that gives me hope.
They have blazed a path and set an example for scores of God-called women in generations beyond their own. And in that alone, they have opened the gates of eternal life.
Mark Wingfield serves as executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global. He is the author of Honestly: Telling the Truth About the Bible and Ourselves and Why Churches Need to Talk About Sexuality. His brand-new book is Troubling the Truth and Other Tales from the News.
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