George.
It looks like the NAD plans on using tithe money to educate and pay 1,000 women to become pastors so there will be enough of them in attendance at a GC session to sway the vote so WO is approved.
A lot of money would be saved if they removed the requirement you have to get a degree and be ordained pastor before you can be a conference, union, division or GC president.
Any women that takes this money from the NAD to become a pastor should stay a pastor. Once a women pastor decides to stop being a pastor and move up to the conference level they should have to pay all the money spent to train them to be a pastor back.
Thank you for giving me something to think about. I have always wondered why we have the policy of once-ordained-always ordained. Plus, are we not violating the principle of priesthood of all believers if we seem to be giving some leaders certain privileges which others cannot access? My thoughts
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Ordination should be time limited perhaps every 7 years for the simple reason that we are all broken and err. Physicians lose their medical licenses for certain behaviors. Why not with ministers? Should they continue to uphold their conduct, then they can be re-ordained for another 7 years. Instead, those ordained ministers who err with their conduct are transferred instead. George @GeorgeTichy and I have to reapply for board qualifications, ordained ministers should too.
Hmmm, are you sure of that? Maybe I missed this detail, but I never got the idea that they want to pay for 1,000 women to get their education. Can you clarify, or provide the source of this info please?
And I wonder if any pastor ever heard about CEUs… 
The best “fake ordination” ever is what one of our friends got… He was never ordained, he is not working as a pastor in training, he is not employed by the SDAC, he has no congregation. But he calls himself PASTOR Kevin Paulson… It appears that he believes to be ordained directly by God…
@ kevin paulson (for some reason I can’t find his avatar; has he been suspended???
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Thank you for addressing WO from a sound Biblical perspective.
Maybe the way to “start over” is to create a massive signature list of men and women who wish to start the discussion all over. Who wish to participate in many open forums, in person and online, discussions with GC leadership. Where questions can be asked and opportunity given to hear both sides of the issue. To be Papal like is to shut down discussion in favor of corporate policy held as the will or voice of God.
On one of these pages someone posted a video clip where such was stated. NAD would help pay for schooling and first three years of salary.
Maybe he has been raptured. Oops I mean translated.
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I must be confused. I thought that gradually, over time, commissioned women pastors have been authorized to perform almost all the rituals, such as baptisms, weddings, etc. I think I recall that there were only a couple of things which were off limits to them, such as forming a new church. So what’s the deal?
Let’s start the discussion at the most extreme level - women must be silent in all religious settings. They are to be subordinate to men under all circumstances. Women should not even speak in the children’s Sabbath Schools - these must run by men only.
Starting at this extreme let’s see what we can agree women can contribute. If they are equal to men (FB # 14 are they?). If a mother can speak a prayer for her baby maybe she could also be President of the Seventh Day Adventist Church! Was Mary the Mother Of Jesus equal to Elder Ted Wilson? Let’s start the discussion😮
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The deal appears to be whether a person has/not a certain genital organ. This is the whole deal!
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I can’t wait for this discussion… Exactly, I cannot wait because it will take a long time to have this discussion started, and I don’t have that much time for this purpose… 
Do you think that the discriminators of women will ever have the courage to tell their wives and daughters that they need to shut their mouth while they are in church? No talking, no teaching, no greeting, no praying, no singing, no… nothing? “Just shut up and obey!”
Really? A discussion on this? Keep waiting my friend!.. 
Unfortunately it is obvious from the article and the other comments that neither starting over nor moving on without doing so will be easy. That the real issue in the Adventist Church is not only one about ordaining women, but one of defining the role and function and biblical basis and meaning of ordination itself is far more “muddy” than the article suggests. Why? Because the term has been modified in practical usage in the Church due to both internal and external practical issues.
Biblically it is clear that in the Orthodox Jewish culture in which the Christian Church arose, one in which women could not sit in the same area of the synagogue or temple as men; One where women could not sit at the feet of the rabbi and learn directly from him (as Jesus allowed Mary, commending her for it, to do contrary to tradition; one that rabbi Paul could not help but address the Jewish beliving women to do other than keep silent and ask for clarification at home from their husbands because even to this day in Orthadox Synagogues, women do not sit on the same level with the Totah scrolls where the men sit and some are curtained off (but not all in modern times, how could Paul advise otherwise contrary to the local sensibilities and customs?
What Dan Jackson seems to be saying is that local customs may, at times, have precidence over even the customs of biblical times. To what extent that is relevant and true is really the key issue.
In the New Testament only men were ordained by the laying on of hands. In the Adventist Church, as in the Biblle, until recent times, wpmen were not set apart in the same way as men to any office.Local elders and deacons were orfdained for a limited time of elected service, bu not deaconesses. Decaonesses were merely elected, but not ordained to that ministry.
When I served in my first church as a licensed minister back in 1977, I needed to be voded into and ordained as a local elder in the church in which I served. but even as a licensed minister, I could not officiate a wedding, baptize anyone, or even lead out in a communion service (although I could assist in it with the Ordained Minister who oversaw the district). But times change and for good or ill, the Church adapts to outside pressures.
Seminarians sponsored by Conferences could not continue to be hired, paid, in the same way, nor could Conference or the students take the tax advantages allowed by federal laws afforded only to ministers unless, according to law, they could perform all the duties of the office. Suddenly, licensed ministers could, only in their assigned church or district, poerform all of the ordinances. Weddings still had to be cleared by the Conference leadership, but all else could be done by licensed ministers ordained as local elders.
Local elders could still assist in the officiating of communion, but a licensed minister or an ordained minister would still take the lead. As years passed by, local elders, especially those that had taken the lead in preparing a candidate for baptism, or one whose child or near relative was to be baptized, could, with the guidance and presence of a minister also conduct the actual baptism.
While ordination to the godspel ministry beyond the local level. allowing Ordained Ministers to serve in or to raise up a church anywhere in the world had been considered a recognitio9n of lifelong recognition had been a given, the right of the church to remove that recognition was established in the
Glacier Vie Summit over the ordination credentialls of Desmond Ford.
Soon after that, ordination of ministers was largely (but with some flexibility in many initances) only valid for a long as a minister was an official employee of the SDA Chuch.
Local elders and deacons eventually could be ordained by licensed ministers in some Conferences, a rite previously limited to Ordained Ministers only. Ansd in some areeas local elders were allowed to serve communion to shut-ins and when the pastor was not able to do so,preside at teh communion service in their local church.
Ordination of deaconesses started to become more common, unofficially at first. And officially women were allowed to become local elders. Here the biblical mandate (cultural at the time according to some) otherwise restricted ib the Bible which requited elders and decons to be a man. Others agrgued that the biblical view of not having women serve in sacred leadership positions was counter cultural for their own time since other nations had women as leaders and priestesses, whereas Israel pretty much alone, did not. Some draw from this a present dayapplication of that reestriction to women serving in this capacity now. This is true for the arguments against ordination as Ordained Ministers and local elders due to the expaned functions of local elders in very recent times (beginning in the late 1980s and 1990s)
Some claim the SDA Church is mistaken in following many protestant churches in a Roman Catholic view of priesthood. Others say the Preisthood of all believers is not biblical. Others claim the Nation of Priests and Kings app;ies to men and all believers, like the counting of the number fed by the fish and loaves, does not even bother to considering women and children that were likely also present
There is much to consider also in terms of why the SDA Church organized to begin with. Most were against establishing an official organization at the time. However, once again, practical concerns set the tone. A church turned into a pickle factory because the building was not under the name of an official organization but in a member’s name. The loss of a huge tent at the hands of one not even preaching the Advent Message, although having claimed to. The church needed to protect its property and be able to certify as valid those preaching in its name. Even today there are many who would take up the banner of Advent Truth and that preach otherwise.
Take the case of Tammy, the first woman to be ordained as a minister in the SDA church. She and her Ordained SDA Minister father baptized new members on their first visit to the church leaving the task of study until later. She condoned other unscriptural practices as well. I was there and saw it take place in 2002. Later she was not only had her ordination revoked but I was told she was disfellowshipped too (I have not confirmed that part).
YES, we do need to take a very hard look at what the Bible, SOP, the historical records, and present as well as past cultural factors and sort out what is true and false. We must do so from an unbiased (as humanly possible) point of view.
Personally I am a “fence sitter” at the moment. I can see both sides of the argument. However, I also believe that when in doubt, do not try to move from the status quo, running ahead of one’s knowledge and assurance. I might even consider taking a few steps back and standing up to a morally degenerating set of cultural norms; especially those driven by governmental monetary threats that fail to actually divide church and state jurisdictions and distinctions.
The next thing the very left wing liberals among us will be pushing for,(and some already are) is to allow those whose biblical immorality has already been legalized in America to become both members in good standing and Church leaders.
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Hmm, joined two hours ago…and preaching already.
I’m not even sure where to begin-or even if i ought.
So i won’t…
…except for the final paragraph.
As a self proclaimed “fence sitter”, your splinters are showing.
Care to divulge where your pastorate is?
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Pastorate is in retired.
It’s true…we can be so inconsistent with Scriptures. We teach that some parts of the Bible are cultural, such as women should be silent and slaves should submit to their masters as to the Lord. While we are willing to insist that Male Headship is the basis for Paul’s instructions to the to choose ONLY men as leaders–as the inviolatable will of God! By logic this means that women can teach other women and children–but by creation design-default (Eve) they are incapable of spiritual headship.
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Are you referring to the Jurupa Church in Riverside?
Does not affect me. I usually don’t read posts that have more than two (modic) paragraphs… 
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In a few ways, the topic is useful. However, at a higher level of abstraction, the topic of women’s ordination is a distraction from the center of committed relationships. First to God and as a direct result to those about us, as far as possible.
If as stated, the core of why God created mankind is demonstrating the relationships God created and desires, then the question is changed. The question becomes, what is God like in response to the Genesis assertion that mankind was created in God’s image.
The answer love is meaningless unless you define what love is. While I have created an extensible model for useful love relationships, I suggest starting with what a friend of mine wrote. You can put all your weight on these words: “Love is a prinicple of action.” Since she did not elaborate what the principles were, the next logical questions is, what are those principles.
Notice that in this response the entire question of women’s ordination is not addressed directly. However, I submit that thoughtful minds will immediately see the connection. Okay, if you know the “principles of action” Ellen wrote about. Is it possible that not grasping those principles is The Problem?
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