c. 2006 Religion News Service

MOBILE, Ala. _ Growing up, Ellen Guice Sims said it never crossed her mind to think a woman could be a pastor. “It was even farther away than feeling shut out,” she said. “It was not even a question.”

That was then.

Last May, Sims was ordained in the American Baptist Churches, USA. Recently she began serving as associate pastor at Hillcrest Baptist Church, a congregation with ties to the Southern Baptist Convention, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the Mobile Baptist Association.

That turn of events may be as much of a surprise to her as it is to those acquainted with Southern Baptists’ statement of faith stipulating that “the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”

“There are more than a few twists and turns in my story,” she said, sitting in her Spartan office recently.

Sims, who returned to the Gulf Coast with her husband, George, about a year ago, grew up in Mobile but eventually settled in Nashville, where her family joined a church where “women could serve in all aspects of the church,” she said. She found it both attractive and frightening.

“But it was extremely important to me when we had a daughter,” she said. “The church provided an atmosphere that was going to be healthy for her and would be supportive of us in showing her that God loves her as deeply as the little boy who was in Sunday school with her.”

Sims started to help coordinate worship services, an experience in which she said “something was released in me.” Before long, she said, people began asking her if she had considered going into ministry.

The idea of a female in the pulpit was one she had once found off-putting. When she began considering the notion for herself, it seemed immodest.

“Finally I admitted, `Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it but I haven’t felt called,”’ Sims said. “And not that I thought there was really going to be a literal, some kind … burning bush call, but I really thought there would be a more decisive feeling or assurance of that, and I was not feeling that. … It took a lot to overcome, to hear their voices over the din of previous sexist cultural conditioning.”

In 2001, Sims enrolled at a Methodist seminary in Ohio _ “not to heed but to hear a call,” she said, but wanting to be “open to God in that process.” As she wrapped up her studies, the family took a step that she was sure would quash any hopes for working in ministry: they moved back to Alabama.

Sims was fairly certain she was returning to a place “where there was, in all likelihood, no possibility that I would find a ministry opportunity.” The couple landed at Hillcrest Baptist Church.

“We were afraid there may just be fundamentalist Baptist churches in Mobile and were heartened that at Hillcrest there were folks who read Scripture in ways that were not narrow, and above all, were blown away by the warmth of the congregation,” she said.

About two months after she was ordained, the congregation voted to call Sims as its associate pastor. The church’s action was based on her qualifications, she said, not her gender.

“Our agenda is to serve others in the name of Jesus Christ,” she said. “Our agenda is to live out a vital faith. Our agenda is the agenda of the Christian church, which is to share the good news of the gospel. That is our agenda.”

Dudley Wilson, the church’s pastor, said the congregation needed someone to focus on engaging those outside the church as well as to develop discipleship within the church.

“The reason that we called Ellen was not that Ellen was a female,” he said. “She was a gifted person who to us seemed to have the gifts that Hillcrest needed.”

Sims’ appointment garnered the attention of the Mobile Baptist Association, the group of more than 100 Southern Baptist congregations in the area. C. Thomas Wright, executive director of missions for the group, wrote in an e-mail that the association is “discussing this issue with the leadership of Hillcrest Baptist and our executive committee will proceed with a biblical and compassionate response in accordance with our constitution and by-laws.”

He noted that there are “no women who hold the office of pastor” in the local association.”

(OPTIONAL TRIM BEGINS)

While women serving in pastoral ministry within Baptist circles remains an anomaly, their numbers are growing. According to a report commissioned by Baptist Women in Ministry, “The State of Women in Baptist Life 2005,” 60 women were ordained to ministry and 102 served as pastors, co-pastors and church planters, or organizers of mission congregations, in groups affiliated with the Alliance of Baptists, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the Baptist General Association of Virginia and the Baptist General Convention of Texas. In more than 30 years as a teacher, Bill J. Leonard, author of “Baptists in America” and dean of Wake Forest University Divinity School in Winston Salem, N.C., has noted more women seeking ordination. Despite the passage of time, he said, the pursuit of senior pastorates for women hasn’t grown easier.

“So many very gifted Baptist women are leaving the Baptist fold for denominations that more readily accept and appoint them to church situations,” he said. “Even the moderate to liberal churches still have a long way to go (for) the most part in considering women as senior pastors.”

(OPTIONAL TRIM ENDS)

For her part, Sims said she’d prefer to live in a world where men and women served equally in the church and that gender wouldn’t be an issue.

“I didn’t become a minister to become a symbol, to become exploited for somebody else’s agenda other than to serve Jesus Christ.”

Yet, she said, inclusion is an important value at Hillcrest Baptist Church.

“We believe that Jesus Christ included every single person and that’s part of our understanding of what it means to be a disciple of Christ,” she said. “So if being something of a pioneer … is a way of maybe sharing that piece of the gospel, then I suppose that’s a good thing to do.”

KRE/JL END CAMPBELL

(Kristen Campbell writes for The Mobile Register in Mobile, Ala.)

Editors: To obtain a photo of Ellen Guice Sims, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.

See related stories, RNS-WOMEN-ORDAIN, RNS-WOMEN-STATS and RNS-WOMEN-VIGNETTES, all transmitted Oct. 11, 2006.