The Story of Women Pastors Through the Last 40 Years | Eastern North Carolina Now

    I just read this most interesting account of the growth of women as pastors in Baptist churches.

    I happen to be ordained by the FBC Decatur, which called their first female minister a few years ago.

    I was a "questioning clergyman" for years regarding women ordained. The first question of them becoming deacons had to do with whether they were "tough enough" to take on hard things sometimes deacons/pastors have to consider. When Hickory Baptist Church simply ran out of men enough to fill the diaconate, I witnessed first hand the value of a female insight to serving the congregation.

    My first encounter with a woman pastor was with Judy Powell, who pastored the little rural church above my church at Hickory. She was retired military with a working husband so the church could afford her services. The other ministers, for the most part, in the N. Roanoke Association shunned her with disrespect, but she came to the Ministers monthly meeting anyway. I was an occasional attendee since I had Ministers Life duties and Monday did not always work out.

    The meeting I attended when she brought the devotional, it was a "knock out" of great content and a heart in the saying of it.

    Next, we had a terrible problem at Hickory involving 2 prominent families and immorality between a Deacon and a teenage girl. Why such things happen when I am Pastor is beyond me. I thought we had a super nice bunch of rural folk and it turned out to have a roaring scandal happening within my first 3 years there. I called Judy to get her insights. Where I was about to advocate for church discipline, she enjoined me to be patient and deal with it in love. She was SO RIGHT!

    So now, I am a strong advocate for women in the pulpit and pastorate/diaconate. They can hack it with the love and patience a man sometimes lacks! My position is not academic, but practical experience.

    Some of you might have the same qualms I had. Some of you may be "stone wall against" any woman being ordained. That is your right to have your opinion.

    I am just encouraging you to read the above article with an open mind and kind heart. My wife often helped me from student days to pastoral service. She Gave me great advice and I could not have ministered with near the effectiveness to youth and adults without her assistance!