Journal: Eikon
Volume: EIKON 02:2 (Fall 2020)
Article: “A Radical Question For A Conservative Church”: Should The Christian And Missionary Alliance Call Women “Pastors”?
Author: Andrew S. Ballitch

Eikon 2.2 (Fall 2020) p. 32

“A Radical Question For A Conservative Church”:
Should The Christian And Missionary Alliance Call Women “Pastors”?

Andrew S. Ballitch

Andrew S. Ballitch (PhD, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is Associate Pastor of Preaching and Ministries at Westwood Alliance Church in Mansfield, Ohio, which is in the Central District of The Christian and Missionary Alliance.

Eikon 2.2 (Fall 2020) p. 33

The Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA) is an evangelical denomination of roughly 2,000 churches and 500,000 members in the United States. A. B. Simpson started the movement in the late nineteenth century as a multi-denominational coalition of Christians and churches committed to taking the gospel to the unreached people of the globe. It solidified into a denomination in 1974 and continues to exist with a focus on sharing Christ with the nations.1

I grew up in the C&MA and then spent almost ten years in the Southern Baptist tribe. When I returned to the C&MA, I was made aware that national leadership had opened up a discussion about the appropriateness of applying the label of “pastor” to women serving in official roles in local churches. In fact, President John Stumbo, in his report to General Council 2019, the highest level of legislative authority in the C&MA, introduced “change conversations.” He said these were conversations that had “only just begun and for which, over the course of the next two years, we desire to include the broader Alliance family.”2 One of the conversations was in regard to: “our polity as it relates to male and female roles in the church.”3

Some months later, all pastors and church leaders in the Central District of the C&MA received the regular Advance Newsletter with an article entitled, “When Women Preach.” At the outset it claimed to be one of “a series of articles examining roles that women leaders can participate in within the Christian and Missionary Alliance under our current polity and application of Scripture, all under the authority of the local church elder board. It is an attempt to give an experiential understanding of the impact of properly stewarding all the gifts of the body of Christ, within all the people that make up the Church.”4

The statement was signed by its author, Becky Carter, and the District Superintendent at the time, Jeff Miller. The article itself stirred up significant debate, as it sought to normalize women preaching in the corporate worship of local churches....