This week our BWIM Monday photo slideshow on Facebook featured mother and daughter ministers–women ministers who have daughters who are in seminary or are serving in ministry. The slideshow included six mother-daughter ministers: Macarenda Aldape and Alyssa Aldape, Anna Anderson and Leah Anderson Reed, Ka’thy Gore Chappell and Ali Chappell DeHay, Jeni Cook Furr and Caityln Furr, Jane Hull and Emily Hull McGee, and Beth Parker and Sarah Parker. These are but a few of the mother-daughter minister families in our Baptist world. There are many, many more.
Here is what I think is the best takeaway from the slideshow. Baptist women ministers have been around long enough to have daughters old enough to be called to ministry, educated for ministry, and serving in ministry. Baptist Women in Ministry is no longer a first generation movement. We are now in the second generation. Mothers have done the trailblazing. They have paved the way, cracked the stained glass ceiling, and now their daughters are going into the “family business.” And that, my friends, is cause for celebration!
My hope is that our daughters will not encounter nearly as many roadblocks in their ministry journeys as their mothers did. My prayer is that opportunities will be there for them so that they might live fully into their callings. My hope too is that in another twenty years, by the time our granddaughters are answering a call to ministry, gender inequality and discrimination will be part of our history as Baptists and will no longer present in our churches or in any of our Baptist denominations! May it be so!
Pam Durso is executive director, Baptist Women in Ministry, Atlanta, Georgia.
Photo: Anna Anderson and Leah Anderson Reed