Prove All Things:
A Response to Women In Ministry
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A Very Significant Development Regarding Women Pastors
[Published originally in Adventists Affirm 12/3 (Fall 1998), pp. 5-17.]
The North American Division has passed an action of such significance to the question of women pastors and to the Seventh-day Adventist movement as a whole that we think every Adventist will want to know about it.
This action appears designed to circumvent the 1990 General Conference (GC) decision opposing women's ordination to the ministry and the 1995 GC decision forbidding the North American Division (NAD) to go its own way in this matter. It seems intended to achieve this goal without risking a third vote on ordination by the General Conference in session.
The editors of Adventists Affirm greatly regret that even after two overwhelming decisions by the world church, some of our people continue to divide us over the controversial issue of women pastors. A relatively small group of articulate individuals is "pushing the Brethren" to adopt its pro-feminist agenda, at a time when many other issues, like congregationalism, evolution, divorce, homosexuality, rock-like music, and the denial of basic doctrines, are forcing their way into some of the major centers of our church in North America. We feel a great need for God's special people to pray for our leaders to be fully open to heaven's guidance.
This is the reason for this issue of Adventists Affirm.
Definitions and Background
The action in question was voted on at the NAD headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland during the October 7-10, 1997 year-end meeting.
Some Definitions. For those of you who may appreciate some definitions, the "NAD" is the "North American Division of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists." It is one of 14 divisions of the General Conference around the world. The NAD covers the United States, Canada, and certain islands in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and consists of 58 conferences gathered into 9 union conferences. It counts about 850,000 members in an Adventist world population of some 10,000,000.
A "year-end meeting" is a gathering of the principal officers of a division and of its union and local conferences, along with selected laity and representatives of major institutions in the division. It is held in the autumn, after the General Conference annual council, and meets for the purpose of hearing reports and laying plans for the coming year. Most, though not all, of the actions voted on at a year-end meeting have been prepared in advance by committees and are accepted unanimously as a matter of routine, with little discussion at the time of the vote.
The action that we are considering here dealt with a document entitled, "President's Commission on Women in Ministry--Report," a copy of which is included in this issue of Adventists Affirm. (From here on we will refer to it as "the Document.") Apparently some, at least, of the top NAD administrators intended that the Document would merely be read at the year-end meeting and then laid aside; that is, they appear to have planned that it would merely be "received." But when the time came that the document was actually read at the meeting, urgent voices demanded that it be voted on as an official "recommendation." After a short discussion, the chair agreed to allow such a vote. In consequence, the Document was officially voted on under three heads. First, it was "received"; second, the recommendations which it contains were to be sent to appropriate committees; and third, those recommendations that would be approved by the committees were, so far as funds would allow, to be "implemented," that is, put into effect as official policy.
Already several of the recommendations appear to be undergoing implementation.
Unlike most proposals at year-end meetings, which are approved unanimously, this one was not. A substantial minority of the conference presidents and other officers present voted against it.
Adventists Affirm desires to congratulate all the officers who voted No and to encourage them to increase in their holy boldness.
At the 1990 Indianapolis session of the General Conference, the world field, by a vote of 1173 to 377, said that women were not to be ordained as Seventh-day Adventist ministers. At the 1995 Utrecht session of the General Conference, the world field, by a vote of 1481 to 673, said that the NAD should not go its own way and ordain women in its own territory, but that instead the whole church should hold together.
In the face of these overwhelming decisions, the Document intends to authorize women to serve as senior pastors, even as conference presidents and union-conference presidents, subject to their being "commissioned" but without their needing to be ordained.
Because of the significant nature of the Document, we are, as we mentioned above, including a copy of it for you to read for yourself. It begins on p. 13 [p. 399 of this book]. But because it is written in rather terse language, we are first introducing it with comments for those who may appreciate them. For easy cross reference, we'll follow the Document section by section. We suggest that you flip the pages back and forth so you can read them section by section while reading our comments.
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