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When secular reporters write about women in ministry in the context of Southern Baptist life they don’t bother calling Susie Hawkins, Simone Monroe or Kathy Sibley. Instead, they pick the rare woman who pastors what is typically a small congregation with few ties to the SBC. That phone call will provide comments about male-dominated leadership oppressing and silencing women who make up the majority of the 16-million member denomination.
If you had a chance to hear from the three Texas women who spoke at a recent Criswell College forum, you’d hear about the opportunities they’ve had to minister to groups small and large, locally and internationally, influencing women and men. Between the three women, they recounted 30 different types of ministries they have conducted in the context of Southern Baptist life.
“Women participate equally with men in the priesthood of all believers,” stated Monroe, an administrative assistant at Criswell College. “Their role is crucial. Their wisdom, grace and commitment are exemplary. Women are an integral part of our Southern Baptist boards, faculties, mission teams, writer pools and professional staffs. We affirm and celebrate their Great Commission impact.”
“Few subjects have generated as much heat, though often with as little light as the subject of the proper role of women in ministry,” stated Kathy Sibley, a former Southern Baptist missionary who now serves as assistant to the president of Criswell College. “For us, the starting point for any discussion is not societal standards or cultural norms?it is the authoritative Word of God.”
The three women cited their own ministries that involved music, hospitality, mission education, administration, discipleship, mentoring, evangelism, radio and television broadcasts, Christian education, church planting, retreat ministry, teaching, writing, counseling and work with students. “We have also served as wives, mothers, grandmothers, students, missionaries, pastors’ wives and on church staffs as pianists, young married ministry director and women’s ministry directors,” Monroe told the audience of students.
The overwhelming passage of a revised Baptist Faith and Message doctrinal statement in 2000 drew increased media attention to the role of women in ministry within the SBC. While the revision affirmed women as being “gifted for service in the church,” reporters and critics zeroed in on the clarification that “the office of senior pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”
“Nowhere does it say that women can’t proclaim the gospel,” explained Hawkins in an earlier interview, careful to distinguish between women serving in an authoritative pastoral role and women proclaiming the gospel.
“In our own Southern Baptist tradition we have the obvious examples of missionaries Lottie Moon and Bertha Smith who were used greatly by God.” Answering those who use Mary Magdalene as an example of a female spiritual authority, Hawkins reminded, “She was their co-laborer, their partner in spreading the gospel.”
When the BFM Study Committee on which Hawkins served specified the restriction on the office of senior pastor, they chose not to comment on women performing a preaching role outside of local church life.
“Upon the discussion of the issue of women in ministry, I am eager for others to know that the men on the committee were more than willing to hear the women’s perspective.”
In her presentation at Criswell College, Hawkins reminded listeners that when Shubal Stearns influenced early Baptists in America with his preaching at Sandy Creek, his sister Molly Stearns Marshall was also delivering sermons on the frontier before and after the Revolutionary War. Much of missionary heroine Lottie Moon’s church planting efforts in China involved proclaiming the gospel, and yet, she anxiously discipled newly converted men who could assume leadership of local churches.
International Mission Board President Jerry Rankin retraced the steps of Moon throughout China and wrote an account of his study of her life. “It is very clear and well-referenced that as Lottie Moon went on itinerant witnessing tours to the villages, teaching the Bible and yes, probably preaching, that she would not allow any men to be present.” That didn’t prevent men from being saved through her ministry, Rankin noted, as they listened through the window to her message.
He added that Moon called upon a male Chinese evangelist to work alongside her, performing baptisms of converts and other pastoral roles. “Nothing prevents a woman from engaging in any kind of church-related ministry,” he said, noting the scriptural restriction against holding a church pastorate as the only limitation.
When Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission President Richard Land needs an example of a woman ministering scripturally he cites Shannon Royce who serves as the ERLC’s legislative counsel and director of government relations. Royce’s mother, Barbara O’Chester, a Southern Baptist pastor’s wife from Austin, developed a model for retreat ministry that has been embraced by Southern Baptists.
