THE ORDINATION OF WOMEN
"As soon as you start ordaining women you're on the slippery slope down into the mire of every liberal idea that the culture embraces." That's what I keep hearing from a certain vocal segment in the Church. And the grandest example they point to is the Episcopal Church. "Look, they ordained women and now they are ordaining homosexuals..."

Of course, the problem with this argument is that it is historically naive (or perhaps parochial -- assuming that the mainline churches are the only churches). Yes, the slippery slope does appear to be the fate in many of the denominations which did the pc thing in the 70's or 80's and began ordaining women to make friends with the liberal (and vocal) end of the feminist movement.

But the fact is that there have been churches which ordained women long before it was a politically expedient thing to do. For example, the Free Methodists, Church of the Nazarene, the Salvation Army, and the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) were all ordaining women in the 19th century. Many of the early Pentecostal churches were led by women. And none of them appear to be any closer today to embracing the agenda of strident homosexuals than they were back then.

In the Evangelical Covenant Church we were ordaining women in the early 20th century (although they all served as missionaries abroad) and we never had a rule or policy to overturn when we started to become more aggressive about doing so in the 70's.

Jordon Cooper has an interesting article on women in the Free Methodists tradition. He writes: Denominations that emphasize the work of the Holy Spirit have tended to be more open than others to the ministry of women. Believing it is God who must place the call on any minister, they have accepted that God could choose to call women as well as men. Since its founding, women, called and empowered by the Holy Spirit, have ministered in the Free Methodist Church.

If the emphasis is on trying to be relevant to the new generation or on identifying with the cultural edge, things will backfire. However, if the emphasis is on gift and call, recognizing that women can be Spirit-gifted leaders will not send the church sliding.

There are some good biblically based resources from the Covenant:
+ Called and Gifted (.pdf)
+ A Biblical and Theological Basis for Women in Ministry