January 2001

Greetings from Fortaleza!

We are together, my child and I. Mother and child, yes, but sisters really, against whatever denies us all that we are.
Alice Walker

January 14 and 21 of this year were two remarkable Sundays in the life of the Presbytery of Ceará: for the first time, two women were ordained to the ministry of the Word and Sacrament. For us to be part and witness of this transformative experience in the life of the Independent Presbyterian Church of Brazil (IPIB), a 97-year-old Presbyterian denomination, is a great honor.

Ordained on January 14 was Mrs. Rosangela Santana Lima, a graduate of the Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Fortaleza in 1992, who had to wait for nine years for the General Assembly of the IPIB to approve the ordination of women to the ministry of Word and Sacrament. The second woman ordained was Mrs. Eldia Maria Cortes Diogenes, also a graduate of the Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Fortaleza.

After many years of debate, controversy, opposition, and adversity, the IPIB decided to open its doors more fully to the ministry of women, the ministry I call "the heart of the Church." Imagine a local church without the ministry of women!

The two women ordained by the IPIB came originally from denominations that are still strongly opposed to the ordination of women. Mrs. Santana is from the Evangelical Christian Church. She has been in ministry with the IPIB since the beginning of the 1990s. Mrs. Cortes comes from the Presbyterian Church of Brazil (IPB), a denomination that does not even ordain women to the office of deacon. For Mrs. Cortes to find the space and freedom to develop her leadership more fully, she had to leave the church into which she was born and in which she grew up.

Mrs. Cortes once told me that when she was introduced and recommended to the strategy committee of a new church development, she intended to cooperate and to eventually become a member of the NCD’s organizing committee. Right after her introduction to the strategy committee, however, she was told by the members of the committee to confine her leadership to the Sunday-school program.

It is so sad to hear stories in which Christian leaders oppose this issue at the beginning of the 21st century. It is so sad to see Christian denominations that think women’s ordination is a heresy issue. It is so sad to see leaders of the church preaching from the pages of the New Testament and ignoring the role of women during Jesus’s ministry, the participation of women at the birth of the Church, in the book of Acts, and in the Pauline letters. It is so sad to have leaders of the Church who, even though they live in a pluralistic society where woman have gained more space, still have closed minds with regard to dialogue about women’s ministries.

I know the story of a sister who went to the fellowship room for coffee after the worship service and there remembered that she had forgotten her Bible in the sanctuary. One of the ushers placed it in the lost-and-found box located under the pulpit. When she went back to get it she was presented with a dilemma—women in that church were not allowed to approach the pulpit. Everyone could go up to the pulpit, including kids and teenagers. Only women were excluded. The rest of the group decided that if she wanted to get her Bible back she could go up to the sanctuary, but only on her knees. And that’s what she did: she went up to the pulpit on her knees to get her Bible.

It is so sad to hear stories such as this at the edge of this new millennium. What makes me saddest is the posture of some Christians leaders who claim to be holier than the Christian community they belong to.

The struggle to ordain women to the ministry of Word and Sacrament in the IPIB began in 1972, the first time the ordination to woman was recommended. Until its approval at the General Assembly in 1999, the issue was in constant debate. The issue was presented three times to the highest body of the institution (the General Assembly) and was rejected the first two times by the majority of the commissioners. Nevertheless, during these 28 years of struggle, many women were recognized for their ministry.

Today, the IPIB is ordaining women every month to the ministry of Word and Sacrament, to the ministry of elder, and to the ministry of deacon. Praise be to the Lord!

Paz!

The Greens: Ricardo, Reyna, Kerry, Ashley and Richard Ashbel

The 2001 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 258