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Grandmother
was a preacher My
grandmother was a preacher. After she was saved, that is, at the
age of 39. Prior to that she ran roadhouses, brothels, and smuggled
rum from Cuba. She had never married, never worked for any man,
and was a strong independent woman. She was a single mother, my
father being her only child, and he too was saved shortly after
she when he was 20. Both Grandmother and Daddy were preaching
within months of their conversions, finding audiences on street
corners, WPA work camps, jails, brush arbors and Hemming Park
in downtown Jacksonville. Their
enthusiasm could not be contained. After
he was "better trained" by local preachers in Jacksonville,
men who later founded Luther Rice Seminary, Daddy objected to
his mother's preaching, saying the Bible forbids such. I can remember
their arguments about that. Grandmother said she could not refuse
to preach when God had called her to do so. Daddy's friends would
ridicule her by joking, "God called him to preach, but she
answered!" When
the Baptists in Jacksonville refused to give her pulpits to preach
from, she went to Harlan County in Kentucky and preached to coal
miners and mountaineers too far from towns and too hostile to
outsiders for the numerous timid men preachers. She heard of people
in the bayous of Plaquemine Parish in Louisiana who had not been
reached by the Gospel, so she took her message and some medicines
in a small pirogue into the tributaries of Cajun Country. Then,
upon her return to Jacksonville when I was a small boy, she found
a hospitable congregation in the Church of the Nazarene, and it
was there she preached until she was overcome with cancer and
died in 1959 at the age of 60. I
wish I could talk with her today about the new addition to the
Baptist Faith and Message Statement, the one that states "the
office of pastor is limited to men... ." I
could not participate in the discussions between my grandmother
and my dad. I was too young. I am sure she pointed out the various
Scriptures alluding to women preachers. They have settled the
issue I am sure in the Land Beyond, but I would love to hear them
on this issue. Jerry
Vines, a Luther Rice graduate, told his Jacksonville mega-audience,
"We are all preachers, but the role of senior pastor is for
men only." Senior pastor? The title was unknown in my grandmother's
day. Pastors were called preachers. The parsing of terms by the
Baptist Faith & Message committee which places this new wrinkle
on suppressing women called by God would be lost on her. She would
not be intimidated by them; that's for sure. Her calling did not
come from gender-fixated, insecure men and their wives. It came
from God. We
stood singing innumerable verses of "Just As I Am" one
Sunday in a church far away while the preacher stood at the front
in earnest conversation with a young woman who had walked the
aisle. She was responding to the call of God in her life to preach.
The pastor replied to her offer of surrender to that call by saying,
"Surely you must be mistaken. You must feel God calling you
to be a preacher's wife!" My
grandmother was strong enough in her mature body and young faith
to withstand such intrusions between the Holy Spirit and free
persons. My wife, Carolyn, and our daughter, Amy, had they been
called to preach would be strong enough as well. And, I pray that
if by God's good grace He should call our 9-year-old granddaughter,
Madeline, to preach that she would be strong like her great-grandmother
and say to any self-absorbed preacher man "My calling does
not come from you and is not dependent on your permission. My
call comes from God and I can do no other!" Madeline
can be anything she wants to be: writer, scientist, doctor, lawyer,
judge, astronaut, senator, CEO, police chief, plumber, fighter
pilot, diplomat...you name it. She can do whatever her inclinations
and abilities permit. Who among us would tell her, "No, young
woman, your gender prohibits that ambition"? But
if God Almighty calls her to serve Him as a preacher (and what
a gifted preacher she could become!) she would have to overcome
a man-made barrier in Southern Baptist life which would seek to
dissuade her, to convince her that she was not qualified for God
to give her such a calling. What arrogance to dispute God's call!
What foolishness! The world is going to Hell and Southern Baptist
preacher men are deciding who God can use and who He can't, how
He can use them and how He can't. Sometimes
I imagine a gender-limiting preacher, upon reaching the portals
of heaven and asked by the Savior "what have you done for
me while you were on earth?" replying proudly with a wink
and a nod, "I kept the women from preaching, Lord!"
The preacher man would expect to be congratulated, patted on the
back and told, "Well done! Come and enter!" That's what
he would expect. But somewhere along the streets of glory he will
meet a preacher woman named Betty Anderson. She will help him
understand the error of his ways. July 2000 |