Churches must pave the way for women pastors

By Rick McClatchy

“Not for Ourselves Alone” focuses on the women’s suffrage movement and two of its primary leaders, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. 

Anthony and Cady began working as a team in 1848, and the movement consumed the rest of their lives. When both died, the right to vote for women had not yet been accomplished. Yet their work was not in vain, and women did eventually obtain that right to vote.

Click the photo to read more about the documentary Rick is referring to on PBS.org.

The documentary, produced by Ken Burns and Paul Barnes, stimulated my thinking about the long, unfinished struggle women have endured, seeking to be accepted in the pastoral role in Baptist churches. 

By the pastoral role, I’m talking about (a) providing leadership/oversight for the entire church and (b) preaching to the entire congregation. Many Baptists do not believe a woman can exercise this type of leadership/oversight authority over males or have teaching authority over males. They think only a male can function in this capacity for the congregation. 

When I think about women serving as pastors in Baptist churches, it is easy to get frustrated and filled with despair. I have spent 42 years in vocational ministry, with 25 of those years serving with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, first in Oklahoma and then in Texas. At first, I thought we could turn things around radically regarding women pastors. Unfortunately, that has not occurred. 

The last study done of women pastors/co-pastors by Baptist Women in Ministry in 2015 showed the numbers were increasing in Texas. That certainly is encouraging. However, out of more than 5,000 Baptist churches in Texas, BWIM reported 28 women pastors/co-pastors—not even 1 percent. That is disappointing. 

Why is it so hard to get churches to call women as pastors and co-pastors? It is not due to a lack of qualified female candidates. Anywhere from a third to a half of the students at our partner schools are female. Many women students aspire to serve in the pastoral role, which they could do very well. 

The problem resides in the congregations’ search processes. Churches that normally would hire a seminary graduate are held captive by their reactionary, conservative members, who might not even comprise a majority of the congregation. It works like this. A search committee develops a pool of candidates and wants to find one who would be agreeable to the membership as a whole. Since some church members would be upset if the committee recommended a female candidate, it will opt out of looking at female candidates in order to appease the reactionary, conservative portion of its membership. 

This, of course, produces a cascading effect. Search committees for larger churches tend to seek candidates with years of pastoral experience. Unfortunately, they cannot find many female candidates who have served as senior pastor because they never got into their first church to gain the needed experience. 

This problem has no easy solution. However, one absolutely essential step must be taken to correct this problem. Church members who support women in ministry must apply more pressure upon search committees to include and consider female candidates. 

In my opinion—which is my opinion and not that of CBF or BWIM—search committees must include women candidates, even if that makes some conservative, reactionary church members so unhappy they leave the church. 

Some women pastors and their advocates will feel uncomfortable with this suggestion to include women candidates even if people leave. They do not want to cast women pastors as a cause for division. I understand their concern. However, if we play by the rules of appeasing the reactionary conservatives, then we will remain stymied and fail to call qualified women pastors for decades.

Another even more radical step is needed. If the search committee doesn’t have the courage to include women candidates, then church members who support women candidates should leave the congregation. They should either join a church that is open to women pastors, or they should start a new church that calls a woman pastor. 

Grace Mitchell Sosa preaching at Northhaven in Norman, OK in February 2019. Photo courtesy of BWIM.

We never will make significant progress until churches realize a price must be paid for discriminating against women candidates for pastor.

Here are practical steps for search committees to take when considering women candidates: 

• Give equal weight to a female candidate’s experience in a non-pastoral role—such as other church staff positions, chaplaincy, missions, teaching and other faith-based non-profit work—as to a male candidate’s experience in a pastoral role.

• Seek out female candidates who were Baptist but are now serving pastorally in other denominations. We have shipped many fine Baptist women pastors to the Methodists, Disciples, Presbyterians, Lutherans and Episcopalians. 

• Give attention to married couples who want to serve as co-pastors. Many young couples, who wish to serve as co-pastors, are willing to take equal part-time roles in order to have more family time with young children. This option, which will require more church financial resources, might not be as much of a financial stretch as churches think it would be. Also, the church would benefit from the added investment in staff.

Here are things churches need to do in order to pave the way for female pastors:

• Large churches that have an associate pastor position can hire a female and let her serve more like a co-pastor.  This will help her gain more experience for a step up to senior pastor. 

• Pastors should feature female guest preachers as much as possible in order to give the membership more experiences with women preachers, which can make them more open to female candidates the next time they seek a pastor.

• Pastors need to present the biblical/theological basis for women pastors to the entire congregation in order counter the toxic-masculine teaching of female submission. 

• Lay women should function equally with lay men in all aspects of the life of the church—deacons, boards, committees, ministry/mission groups, teachers. This helps the congregation imagine a woman functioning as pastor. 

I have grudgingly made peace with the reality that, during my tenure with CBF Texas, most Texas churches will not consider calling a female pastor, something I deeply desire. However, I have not and will not give up the struggle for women pastors, hoping the next generation can build upon my/our work and create parity between male and female pastors in Texas churches. Until that day, we must not give up. 

Rick McClatchy is coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Texas.