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Columbia College hosts ?Jubilee’ for clergywomen

April 12, 2006

A UMNS Report
By Linda Green*

A jurisdictional event to celebrate the 50th anniversary of clergywomen receiving full rights has mushroomed into a conference with a national scope.

Columbia (S.C.) College will sponsor “Jubilee Voices,” a three-day conference open to all women in ministry and students preparing for ministry in the United Methodist connection.

The May 11-13 conference was initially planned as a celebration for clergywomen in the Southeast Jurisdiction, according to the Rev. Toni White, pastor of Suber-Marshall Memorial United Methodist Church, Columbia, S.C. and member of the “jubilee” design team. After it was advertised through the denomination’s Commission on Status and Role of Women, the response was so strong that the school expanded the event.

”We wanted to do something in the Southeast to celebrate the 50th anniversary, and Columbia College wanted to join with the South Carolina clergywomen in celebration to mark the event in addition to the national clergywomen’s consultation,” White said. “It became national because of publicity.”

Columbia College, which recently celebrated its 150th anniversary, is one of four United Methodist-related colleges for women.

”Jubilee Voices: An Inward Journey, An Outward Call” will address the state of women in ministry and highlight the challenges and possibilities of the future, while honoring the accomplishments of the last 50 years. It will also be a gathering for worship, praise, education and fellowship.

The Rev. Toni White

”All of us on the design team are so excited about this conference,” White said. “We’ve worked really hard, and it will be an exceptional event for clergywomen from across the country.”

The Rev. Becky Shirley, associate pastor of Trenholm Road United Methodist Church said the conference theme of jubilee refers to the radical nature of the year of jubilee, established in Leviticus 25 and reclaimed by the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 61) and later by Jesus (Luke 4:16-19).

The celebratory feel in those Scriptures provides the conference’s focus, according to Shirley, also a member of the design team. The radical nature of the year of jubilee for the conference “is that it is God’s freedom that we are looking at and celebrating what God has done in our lives, what God has blessed us with and the gifts that we have.”

Why the need for this conference when an international clergywomen’s consultation will be held later in the summer?

”A lot of people will not be able to travel to Chicago,” for the International Clergywomen’s Consultation, Aug. 13-17, Shirley said.

She added: “Since the Columbia College recently celebrated its 150th anniversary, the college community had a heightened awareness of the leadership role of women and of the ways doors had been closed to women,” she said. There is “still a need for women empowering one another and keeping the doors open for the women who follow us.”

The Rev. Becky Shirley

Featured speakers will include four bishops and other clergywomen as worship leaders. Workshops also will be offered, and participants will have an opportunity for networking.

Bishop Leontine T. C. Kelly, the first African-American woman elected to the United Methodist episcopacy, will preach during the opening worship service. Bishop Mary Virginia Taylor, resident bishop of the South Carolina Annual (regional) Conference, will host the gathering and address the conference’s closing banquet. Bishops Minerva Carcaño of the Desert Southwest Conference and Bishop Hope Morgan Ward of the Mississippi Conference will also address the gathering. All the bishops will take questions from participants during a panel discussion May 12.

The workshops will include such topics as creating worship space, dealing with competing calls, and ”speaking nightmares out loud.” The sessions are in response to the “stories we have as clergywomen, the struggles we have as clergywomen and the surprises we have found in ordained ministry,” Shirley said.

”There are times when you doubt your sense of call and women in ordained ministry sometimes leave the ordained ministry,” she said. Workshops will show clergywomen how to renew their sense of call, refocus their vision and rejoice together, she said.

Registration, lodging details and other information about the conference are available online at http://www.colacoll.edu/jubilee.

*Green is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in Nashville, Tenn.

News media contact: Linda Green, (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.