A student of mine, sitting near me in a lobby between classes, began chatting with her friend about choosing a church in the area. A comment of hers interests me. She said she had gone to a local church, but observed that there were no women in leadership, and that she wanted to be involved in a church that supported women in ministry.
Then another student is now blogging about his prayers and dreams about church-planting and how he (Lightning) and Sara will be co-pastors.
The emerging evangelical generation may be the generation that finally crosses the threshold of not only having seminary professors teach women’s ordination and denominations embrace the ordination of women, but local churches that call women as (senior) pastors.
There are, of course, lots of issues here for theologians and students of the Bible. Some day I’ll post about those issues, but I’m not so concerned about those issues in this post, but instead I’m thinking of denominations, like the Evangelical Covenant Church, that has already come to the conclusion that ordination of women is fine but where not enough women are being called to pastorates. This generation might be in the vanguard in committees and churches that do call more women.
Two of the most gifted students I taught at my former school were women who did not receive any calls. One is an MD in Columbus, OH, and the other working for the Feds in Washington, DC. Maybe this generation will be the one that changes the trend.