The national media won’t be on hand, and there aren’t likely to be hot debates over women in ministry when the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship gathers in Atlanta next week for its General Assembly. The largest of two breakaway groups from…
A 1984 prediction comes true for the SBC
In 1984, Sarah Ann Hobbs, director of mission for the North Carolina Baptist State Convention, offered some predictions for women in ministry over the next 30 years. She rightly noted that as women took on more roles in the workforce,…
The Southern Baptist Convention is wrong
Baptist Women in Ministry is grieved by the actions of the 2023 Southern Baptist Convention. Today, the vote was announced in which the SBC upheld its Executive Committee’s decision to disfellowship Fern Creek Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky., where Linda…
Is Rick Warren reviving the fight against the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC?
Rick Warren announced a couple of weeks ago that he will appeal the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee’s decision to disfellowship Saddleback Church. In the past few days, Warren has grabbed a bullhorn and “taken to the streets,” so to…
Her church
I haven’t been able to get the book Her Country by Marissa Moss out of my brain since reading the “State of Women in Baptist Life,” released in 2022. The book explores the decline of women on country radio through…
Those who say women cannot be pastors are ‘wrong,’ open letter asserts
Christians who insist God cannot call women to pastoral ministry are “wrong,” according to an open letter drafted by Baptist Women in Ministry and so far signed by 540 women who are pastors and almost 2,000 others. Unlike a letter…
Why we should amplify women in all roles of church leadership
My first encounter with Baptist Women in Ministry’s Month of Preaching was during my first year of seminary. I was asked to preach in a local congregation — my second sermon ever. It was Transfiguration Sunday, and as part of…
Dear churches who invite women to preach
Because of the Southern hospitality indoctrinated in me, I begin by saying, “Thank you.” Thank you for inviting women to preach. Women preaching has been oppressed, overlooked and ignored. So, thank you for thinking of me, affirming my call and making…
Challenges for Baptist women in ministry today
I first saw a clergywoman in 2007 visiting a small, rural Church of England church in Yorkshire, UK. Brought up in mostly Catholic Poland, with limited religious literacy, I only had a vague idea that this was possible in other…
Mary, Our Mother (For Baptists): Blessed is she
This is the final article in a four-part Advent series. One of my children asked me the other day, “What’s the big deal about access to birth control?” My answer was, “If your mother had not had access to birth…
Introducing BWIM Month of Advocacy
Baptist Women in Ministry researches and publishes the State of Women in Baptist Life Report to provide statistics and analysis for women in ministry among Baptists that might serve as a metric and motivator for progress. The most recent report,…
Progressive National Baptist Convention elects woman to leadership role for first time
One of the country’s leading Black Protestant denominations elected a woman to a key leadership role for the first time. On Aug. 11, during its 61st annual session, the Progressive National Baptist Convention elected Jacqueline A. Thompson as second vice…