50 years of Ordination of Women

This year is the 50th anniversary of Ordaining Clergy Women in the United Methodist Church. There are plans being made in my conference to celebrate the anniversary. There are plans for the Clergy Women’s Consultation to be in celebration of the 50th anniversary. There are plans in several different places: Columbia College, South Carolina , other conferences and here .

Clergywomen now have a website by The General Board of Higher Education and Ministries. The question is why hasn’t this been going on before now? Why just now? Will it stay up and be updated or will it be forgotten? "Okay we gave those women their pat on their back, we can go on now about our regular business."

The UMC website has available Worship ideas and here .

What are some of your ideas? I would be interested in knowing? How would you celebrate it personally?

It has been a long road for women. Many of the pioneers have retired. Many of us are in our middle ages now, and still pioneering. I am excited to see in our conference the number of young women who are answering God’s call to the ministry. It seems that the age of those being ordained is older. So it is exciting to see the young women come forward.

And yet I and other women have expressed sadness that there seems to be a division between us; whether it’s because of age, the new day in ministry, or what. I would like to see that divide crossed some way or another, where we all have a community. Any thoughts or ideas on how to do this?

The other thing I would like to address is the number of churches in N. AL. conference that are not willing to accept women clergy, or at least that is what we are told by the cabinet. Interestingly we have more women serving small town, small churches or as associates in the bigger churches. We have a few who have good size churches as well. One DS who is a woman. one woman is serving a large church. We also have women serving as Chaplains, Pastoral Counselors, and in other forms of ministries as well. Wonder what the statistics are in other conferences, denominations who have clergy who are women?