Posted on 05/19/2024 11:23:24 AM PDT by Morgana
Almost five years after hiring The Rev. Tony Lowden as its first black lead pastor, Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia, where former President Jimmy Carter is a member, has hired The Rev. Ashley Guthas as its first woman pastor.
The 2023 McAfee School of Theology graduate, whose hiring was first reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, previously served as associate minister to families with children and youth at Northside Drive Baptist Church in Atlanta. She is a divorcee who says she still feels "uneasy labeling myself as a pastor."
Northside Drive Baptist Church announced her hiring last August, highlighting her significant experience working with youth ministries in Methodist and Baptist churches and marketing at Chick-fil-A.
An official at Maranatha Baptist Church told The Christian Post Thursday that the church deacons authorized to speak on Guthas' hiring were not immediately available for comment.
In a note to Northside Drive Baptist on April 12, Guthas, a mother of two daughters, said she decided to resign from that congregation after being relentlessly pursued by Maranatha Baptist Church. She thanked the congregation for its encouragement, saying it took her years to "let go of the theological views that insisted women could not lead."
"Just months before I became a part of the family here, I was enduring the most difficult transition of my life. As I weighed the pros and cons of each job offer, I narrowed it down to two. One was to be the associate minister here and the other was to be the senior pastor of Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, GA," Guthas wrote. "Through prayer and seeking the advice of many trusted voices in my life, I believed that the best decision at that tumultuous time was to choose to be here with you."
But when she informed Maranatha of her decision, she said they asked her to "consider coming the following year."
"I did not ask them to put their search on hold. I told them I didn't even know what the next day held, much less the next year. However, Maranatha did not relent," she explained.
Guthas, who detailed her struggle with the idea of women pastors to Northside congregants only a month earlier, said she couldn't shake the feeling that she was called to lead as a pastor.
"As much as I do not wish for yet another year of major transition for me and my daughters, I cannot shake the stirring I sense in my soul that I am called to pastor," she said. "It has taken many years for me to let go of the theological views that insisted women could not lead. Many of you have offered words that have encouraged me in this calling, and you had no idea of the wrestling taking place inside of me."
Guthas officially resigned from Northside Drive Baptist Church on April 28.
"I ask for your prayers. Candidly, I seem to carry so many emotions within me regarding this calling. It is no small thing that a Baptist church, only recently separated from the Southern Baptist Convention, is calling a woman to be their pastor," she added in her note to Northside Drive Baptist.
"Thank you for allowing me to serve alongside of you. I know I have grown in my time here and though my time was much shorter than I would have ever imagined, I earnestly hope that I have helped some of you grow as well."
Carter, 99, is the oldest living U.S. president and has been in hospice care for over a year. His wife, Rosalynn, died last November at age 96.
In 2000, Carter cut ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, citing the adoption of increasingly "rigid" views. He continued to teach Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church and encouraged the church to send half its mission contribution to another Baptist church network, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.
The SBC's 2000 Baptist Faith & Message statement states that "the office of pastor/elder/overseer is limited to men as qualified by Scripture." Carter stated that he agreed with the adherence to the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message.
"I personally feel the Bible says all people are equal in the eyes of God," Carter told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution at the time. "I personally feel that women should play an absolutely equal role in service of Christ in the church."
“The ones that follow Scripture still do. “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak” It can’t get much clearer than that.”
That is not really fair because in the Baptist church I grew up in the best Sunday School/vacation bible school teachers I had were women.
Some of the really lousy ones were actually men. Now mind you this was Sunday School and not church big difference but just goes to show women can teach the bible.
Exactly. Church vs SS. My best SS teachers were women, too.
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Bible: 9Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments, 10but rather by means of good works, as is proper for women making a claim to godliness. 11A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. 12But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. 1 Timothy 2:9-12
1It is a trustworthy statement: if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do. 2An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, 3not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money. 4He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity 5(but if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?), 6and not a new convert, so that he will not become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil. 7And he must have a good reputation with those outside the church, so that he will not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil. 1 Timothy 3:1-7
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I know which position I'm standing with and it isn't Carter's.
If you are not a member of this church, then why care? They are free to chose whomever they want and worship however they want.
That church isn’t knocking on my door, insisting that I worship they way they do, nor are they telling me I have to support them financially.
Discussing what they are doing is gossip. That does no one any good.
Yes.
I can’t change other people I better work on keeping my own side of the street clean that’s what I’ve been experiencing in recent times in my life.
Thats fine, but it affects notning in my post.
Yeah you got your perspective and I got mine.
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