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The Role of Women: Our Journey

Cahaba Valley has been a church that has sought to do the will of God as best we can understand it, even if it meant change was sometimes challenging and difficult.  In our walk with God as disciples of Jesus, one of the areas that all of us have been led to explore is that of our individual spiritual gifts.  As a congregation, we believe that it is crucial for all of us to do what we believe God is calling us to do, and we seek to respect and support each other as we each struggle to discern God's call.

One of the ways that we as a congregation have been challenged to live up to the mandate to follow the call of God is to allow God to change tradition.  In the churches that most of us grew up in, it was assumed that women would never take a part in leading public worship.  At the same time, it has become increasingly clear that cultural bias against women in general has often been a major factor in how both human culture and the church as well have talked about women and their ministries as disciples. 

By 1984, we increasingly sensed God leading us to trust the work of the Spirit of Christ in individual believers, male and female, to live out the ministries inspired by the spiritual gifts that he grants to each believer.  As a result, we began to have serious conversations about whether our practice of allowing only men to pray, serve communion, lead singing and plan worship was anchored in inherited tradition or reflected God's will.  

In 1988 and 1989, we carried out very detailed study of the Scriptures.  After much prayer and searching, the elders of our congregation concluded that it was the work of the Spirit to assign the roles and gifts of each person and that, therefore, women would be invited, along with the men, to seek to identify their gifts and ministries.  Through a gradual process, women are now involved in every aspect of worship, such as reading Scripture, praying, serving communion and preaching, as well as teaching and serving as deacons and elders.

Women were not then and are not now required to volunteer or participate any more or in any different way than anyone in our congregation.  Instead, like each one of us, they are free to explore and use their gifts in light of their reading of Scripture and their own faith in God.