Baptist Women in Ministry

This morning I had the opportunity to facilitate a panel discussion at Vanderbilt Divinity School about Baptist Women in Ministry. This event was sponsored by the Tennessee Cooperative Baptist Fellowship with the cooperation of Vanderbilt's Office of Women's Concerns. What a privilege it was for me to hear four of my Baptist sisters share about the joys and challenges associated with their ministries!

• Dr. Eileen Campbell-Reed holds degrees from Carson-Newman College, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Vanderbilt University. Campbell-Reed earned her Ph.D. in Religion, Psychology and Culture at Vanderbilt in August 2008, and her dissertation is a study of Baptist clergywomen and the Southern Baptist Convention. Campbell-Reed, who was ordained by her home church in Knoxville in 1996 and served for 5½ years as an associate pastor at a CBF-affiliated church in Georgia, plans to teach in a seminary or divinity school.
• Kim Crawford Sheehan earned her Master of Divinity degree at Vanderbilt in 2005. Sheehan is an ordained Baptist minister who currently serves as Associate Minister at Corinthian Baptist Church and as a full-time chaplain at Baptist Hospital. She is endorsed to chaplaincy through CBF.
• Amy Dodson-Watts earned her Master of Divinity degree from Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond and was ordained in 1999. Dodson-Watts has been in ministry for the last 11 years, having served as a short-term CBF missionary, Minister to Children and Families, Associate Pastor, and Co-Interim Pastor. She currently serves as the Director of Pastoral Care at Donelson Presbyterian Church.
• Rev. Judy Cummings was ordained by Temple Baptist Church and has been on staff at the historic Fifteenth Avenue Baptist Church for six years, where she now serves as Executive Minister. Cummings holds degrees from Tennessee State University School of Nursing, University of St. Francis, and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. She recently successfully defended her dissertation – “The Stained Glass Ceiling: The Continuing Paradox of Liberation” – to complete her Doctor of Ministry degree in Preaching and Church Leadership from Asbury Theological Seminary.

As I listened to their stories, I marveled at how God has uniquely gifted each one of us to serve Him. I was also reminded of the debt we owe to trailblazing Baptist women like Addie Davis, without whom it is unlikely that such a panel discussion would have even been possible. Two weeks before I was born, Davis became the first woman to be ordained to the pastoral ministry by a Southern Baptist congregation. 

"Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord. There are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons. But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good" (1 Corinthians 12:4-7 NASB).