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It is a pleasant spring evening in New England. The first meeting of the newly appointed search committee of the Shelbyville Congregational Church (UCC) has been called to order. Because I am the conference minister who relates to this church, I have joined the group to explain the placement process in the United Church of …
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The evening was cold; the ordaining council a relatively standard Baptist gathering of preachers, deacons and other leaders of the Wolf Creek Baptist Church in Wolf Creek, Kentucky. Seated next to the blazing fire, the candidate, a recent graduate of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, seemed adequately prepared for assorted questions about God, the …
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I have known women clergy all my life. Although men outnumbered women in the profession in Vermont, where I grew up, I always knew at least two or three women who were serving churches. Therefore, I did not feel terribly unusual when I decided to go to seminary and become a minister. However, women have …
Continue reading “Hidden Dynamics Block Women’s Access to Pulpits”
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The mystique of the pastoral role is well known. There has always been a masculine mystique in the ordained ministry, but now, with the sudden influx of hundreds of women into the profession, it is logical to ask whether there is also a feminine ministerial mystique. If such a mystique exists, what is it like? …
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Dallas. Just as shivering football fans were leaving Dallas and its paralyzing ice storm after the Cotton Bowl last month, some 650 United Methodist women ministers and seminarians were arriving for what Indiana pastor Susan Ruach called “the largest gathering of clergywomen in the history of the world.” No one had handy a copy of …
Continue reading “UMC’s Women Clergy: Sisterhood and Survival”
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Though women clergy constitute a very small minority of the ordained clergy in most denominations, current seminary enrollments — in some cases more than 40 per cent women — suggest that the next few years will see sudden and dramatic increases in the numbers of women entering parish ministries and other clergy positions. What, we …
Continue reading “Women Clergy: How Their Presence Is Changing the Church”
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Text: A recent study sponsored by the Ford Foundation reports that female enrollment in the seminaries of nine leading Protestant denominations has jumped dramatically in the past decade. From 1972 to 1980, the number of women in these seminaries grew from 3,358 to 10,830. Many people in theological education readily admit that if it were …
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I received a negative response the first time I verbalized my call to ministry. Although it was 30 years ago, the memory is still vivid. I was 15 years old. One day, helping my mother put a clean bedspread on the bed, tucking the pillows into place, I looked across at her and said, “Mom, …
