I was recently invited to offer a challenge to a dear friend who was being installed as pastor of a First Baptist Church in Georgia. It was a wonderful day filled with affirmation and appreciation for her gifts and the church’s willingness to step out of the pattern of calling a male senior pastor.
I was delighted to be included in this celebration. I appreciate that more women are responding to the call to be pastors, and churches are honoring that calling.
When we got in the car, I turned to my husband and said, “You know, I never believed I was called to serve as a senior pastor, and sometimes I felt something was wrong with me because of that.”
However, I always remembered knowing I would serve Jesus. But my image of ministry always involved ministering to people on the fringes– those who may never be part of the institution we call “church” or who struggle to know how they fit into the Kingdom of God.
So, I went to seminary to prepare for whatever ministry opportunities presented themselves. After college, I hoped it would be as a campus minister.
Ironically, when the Southern Baptists first decided in the 1930s-50s that campus ministry was needed to link students back to the church, it was not very well funded. It was hosted mainly by the churches closest to campus. Often, those willing to be in charge of these part-time ministries were women, who were called Baptist Student Union (BSU) secretaries.
My daddy told me when he was at Campbell College after World War II, the BSU secretary was a woman, and he remembered her fondly. This is one time that being underpaid may have opened the door for more female accessibility to a ministerial role in the future.
By the time I went to college in the 1970s, campus ministry was at the peak of its value and funding. There were BSU buildings on state campuses, and people were hired as full-time professionals.
While my campus minister was not a woman, Joe David Fore made me believe my calling to ministry was good. There were already women serving as campus ministers, and they seemed very comfortable with their role. I did not think of them as pioneers but as people who had found their niche in the kingdom.
These women were not interlopers. They worked for state conventions across the South or were hired at higher education institutions. They applied, were voted on, and served with all of the support and financial equity of their male colleagues.
They had a significant impact on both the young men and women with whom they served. They defied stereotypes and often quietly served the students they walked alongside. They courageously broadened the concept of missions, calling and race relations and were respected for their expertise.
Nell Magee was the quintessential voice on evangelism, international student ministry and missions. She was not the woman’s voice. She was the voice.
Pitts Hughes was the campus minister at Vanderbilt University when Perry Wallace was recruited as the first African American basketball player in 1966. In an interview, she told me she sought him out to ask how she could make his transition easier.
Hughes invited him to be part of the Baptist Student Union on campus. She knew he would need community.
She discovered he did not know how to drive, so she taught him how to drive in parking lots on campus using her car. Pitts Hughes was just over five feet, and he was well over six feet.
She said they looked ridiculous together, but she believed being present for him was the right thing to do. That story is not told in any of the recorded history of that era at Vanderbilt. Still, it happened, along with many other stories of how women campus ministers walked alongside students that others often overlooked.
I was privileged to serve with some of these women and equally gifted men in the years I lived out my calling as a campus minister in North Carolina.
On the seventy-fifth anniversary of BSU ministry in North Carolina, the attendees at the annual meeting of the Baptist State Convention were asked to stand if their lives had been impacted by campus ministry. About 75% of the 2,000 attendees stood. They did not distinguish between the gender of their campus minister, but at the time, 25% of the staff were women.
I lament that campus ministry is no longer a priority for most denominations. Still, I celebrate this new day as women begin to break through the stained-glass ceilings by serving as senior pastors and in various other roles. Women are impacting the kingdom of God in the lives of children, students and the marginalized.
The beauty is that women in ministry know this is true and support and appreciate each of the callings that have insisted on perseverance, often against profound odds. Yet, we continue to persist.
Retired campus minister, campus ministry coordinator for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina, and Collegiate Specialist for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.
