Javanut

I have enjoyed reading your responses and can relate to many of them. When I was growing up, all I wanted was to be a full time minister. I grew up Southern Baptist and in those days (60’s and 70’s) women were allowed to be ministers as long as they weren’t the “senior pastor”. I figured associate was good enough and set to work getting ready to enter the ministry.
I went to a Baptist college college where I lead a bible study that eventually grew to 50 out of which 9 people went on to full time ministry. I went on to seminary eventually ending up with 3 master’s degrees (MS in Counseling Psych, MMin in Biblical Counseling and a ThM).
Here I am Lord – use me! No paid offers came in. It was ok to be an associate minister (unpaid of course) while the men got a salary in various charismatic denominations that said they were for women in ministry. Working 40 hrs a week just to pay bills doesn’t leave much time for ministry though. I got a few speaking engagements at Women’s Aglow meetings that paid a $25 honorarium for a four hour round trip journey.
I talked with the president of SBTS in Louisville about my future. He said if I got my PhD he would offer me a job as Old Testament professor. Less than two years later the doors of the SBC slammed shut on women in any kind of ministry and all the women professors at SBTS were fired.
I’m 52 now and still the doors remain closed unless I’m willing to go to a really liberal denomination. I write articles that few read and study the bible for my own benefit and try to share with as many as I can.
It’s frustrating though. I recently built a website for our local church and drew up a statement of faith that I worked hard on. I tried to capture the distinctives of our church as compared to another and just found out today – one of the pastors erased the statement without even bothering to tell me why. My guess is that women can’t think theologically. Not that any of the men in our church could write a statement of faith but we just can’t have a woman doing it, ya know!
I’ve tried to do what’s right and play by the rules but that hasn’t worked. Now what?