Should Churches Be Paying To Add Women As Tokens To Pulpits?

What do you think about the idea of churches getting cash for bringing in women candidates for senior pastor? Well a group of Missouri churches who have cut ties with the Southern Baptist Convention have decided to do just that....offer cash to churches who interview women.....this wonderful idea by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Missouri offers to pay costs for such things as travel and interviewing by a female candidate — even if they’re not really top candidates....the aim is to drum up interest in hiring women as pastors and to encourage search committees to include a woman candidate in the process....even if she not the top candidate....you know what the nerve to pay a search committees to consider women as top candidates....is bad enough but, paying them to treat a woman “as a top candidate even if she isn’t actually one of the top candidates is a slap in the face....someone seems absolutely desperate  to get a woman in the pulpit.....I wonder if women looking to be pastors  would even consider this foolishness?


Cash for interviewing women pastor candidates?

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Peter Smith

Churches could get cash for bringing in women candidates for senior pastor under a plan by a group of Missouri churches that has cut or loosened ties with the Southern Baptist Convention.

The plan by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Missouri offers to pay costs for such things as travel and interviewing by a female candidate — even if they’re not really top candidates. The report by the Associated Baptist Press is here.

The aim is to drum up interest in hiring women as pastor, reflecting concern that even though many churches in the Missouri and national CBF still have men in the top post, even though the fellowship was formed 20 years ago in part due to splits among Southern Baptists on the very issue of whether women should be pastors.

The aim is to encourage search committees to "include a woman candidate in the process - treating her as a top candidate even if she isn’t actually one of the top candidates," said Associate Coordinator Jeff Langford of the Missouri group.

"Even if the church isn’t ready, the search committee may discover a remarkable candidate along the way that changes their perspective, either for the current search or for a future one," he said.

The concept grew out of a discussion convened in August by a familiar face, Central Baptist Theological Seminary President Molly Marshall, who in the 1990s resigned under pressure from her position as the first female theology professor of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville.

Commenting on the latest plan is Southern Seminary President, Albert Mohler, the one who presided over her ouster. He said the plan is "hard to believe at first glance" but "deeply revealing," saying that the slow pace of hiring women pastors among moderate Baptist churches indicates not prejudice but "the endurance of a biblical instinct" toward men pastors.

But not just Mohler is critical.