Baptist Fellowship Offering Churches Cash to Recruit More Female Pastors
The Corporate Baptist Fellowship of Missouri (CBFMO) has decided to offer a cash incentive to any church willing to consider hiring a female pastor.
According to the Associated Baptist Press, CBFMO leadership decided in September that they would offer to pay interview, travel and other expenses to search committees that included a woman in their list of candidates, in order to increase the number of women in church leadership roles.
CBFMO hardly considers this to be a drastic measure especially when viewed in the context that none of the 50 CBFMO churches have female senior pastors.
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CBFMO members believe that this effort will serve to reduce the anxiety or risk some churches experience when considering a female pastor.
It is owing to such anxieties and risks that committees frequently chart the safest route in employment considerations, which usually means the hiring of a male candidate.
The goal is to open the door or provide a pathway through which the right female candidate can be recruited.
This deficit of women in church ministry is becoming even more of an issue in light of the fact that seminaries are graduating more and more women.
This was the issue which prompted Central Baptist Theological Seminary President Molly Marshall to call a meeting with CBFMO leaders, out of concern for finding churches for the seminary's graduates, half of which are women.
That meeting spurred the idea of the incentive, based on a desire to shift the paradigm. Accordingly, Marshall compared the incentive to the Rooney Rule, which required National Football League teams to interview minority candidates for head coaching opportunities.
Many may see the incentive as clumsy, but Marshall believes that so far it is proving effective, for it has been a tool through which churches can begin to address this issue.
"When I was in seminary I had to put myself out there," Marshall said. "That's how change happens - when a church hears a competent woman offer the word of God in a thoughtful manner. Change happens when the issue wears a face."
