Meet Samantha Jones, a current Time for Equality in Adventist Ministry (TEAM) scholarship recipient studying at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan. TEAM is an organization supporting the ordination of candidates to pastoral ministry regardless of gender, race, or social class. Visit timeforequality.net to learn more about the organization and how you can contribute to TEAM’s support of women in pastoral ministry.
the real review may need to be laity attitudes…some congregations just aren’t interested in women pastors…and no conference is going to send a woman pastor to a church that they know doesn’t want one…
i think conferences convene with church representatives before appointing pastors, and church representatives know what would work for their congregations…i’ve never been part of this process, but i’ve heard this is how it works…
in any case, a congregation can make things miserable for an unwanted pastor…in the case of a female pastor, where a particular congregation may view her appointment as a sin, or an attempt by the conference or division to force the issue, i can see all kinds of problems…
but i can’t imagine a female pastor wanting to minister in a congregation that doesn’t want her there…who’d want the stress…
Here in the UK, the local church has no say in who is appointed the minister, at least not before their arrival. There has been been reported cases however of local churches refusing to acknowledge female ministers and forcing the hand of the local conference to make a change - how embarrassing eh.
As I traveled the world interviewing Adventists, I found women pastors and department heads in surprising countries as early as the 1980s: for example, a woman was the Director of Education in El Salvador at that time, and there were women pastors serving in such diverse countries as Peru and Zimbabwe. I was also fascinated to realize that many of the lay evangelists, and indeed, many of the most successful ones, were women. This was true throughout the Developing World, but perhaps most developed in Latin America and Africa, the continents where I would have least expected it.
–Ron Lawson Sources of the Current Crisis in the World Church – Ronald L. Lawson Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Queens College, CUNY
REVIEW AND HERALD, August 8, 1968 Vol 145, No 32, p 12
It might be worth looking at what other Christian denominations have done to ensure mutual understanding and cooperation. Incidentally, I witnessed first hand the process of calling and ordaining a woman pastor for a PC(USA) congregation in Los Angeles at about the same time they invited my wife to serve as their music minister.
this is a sad situation, most of all for the female minister, who no doubt has worked hard to get her degrees, and is a worthy candidate for ordination…in this kind of situation, perhaps the prospective female minister should visit the church she knows she’s about to be sent to, to get the lay of the land, so to speak…surely she must be in a position to refuse a position, or at least advise on where she should be sent…
Not a very Christian attitude on the part of the church.
Yes, Conferences have an understanding of what each church body is like and will appointment a pastor as they see appropriate. The church body may lean one way or the other but it is not homogeneous. There will always be some who will welcome the new pastor.
All pastors are allowed to refuse a call or appointment but it does not read well on their record if they refuse a call… remember it is “God” calling them.
Seem to me the Adventist Church is very confused. It follows the government lockdown with the pandemic, with out a blink of an eye, but now with ordination of women it has an issue??? How comical, and know wonder membership is down! Wake up CURCH!!!
