On Sunday, March 19, we will participate in the Baptist Women in Ministry Month of Advocacy. We will welcome Andrea Johnson to come and preach in worship as other Baptist churches are doing the same during this month. We will join others in celebrating the gifts of women in leadership and ministry.
Andrea Johnson is a seminary student at the McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University. Andrea is also a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Georgia Lancaster Scholar, and she received the John R. Claypool Excellence in Preaching Award in 2022.
She serves currently as the inaugural Suzii Paynter March Advocacy Fellow with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Through this work, she is an advocate for public education. Andrea and her husband, Norm, and their two children, Aaron and Leah, reside in Villa Rica, Georgia.
We are looking forward to welcoming Andrea and her family to Auburn on March 19. Auburn First Baptist has a long history of recognizing the calling of women to leadership and ministry, ordaining its first woman, Leland Cooper, as a deacon in 1974.
Even today, we acknowledge that many churches do not support women in ministry, limiting the calling of God’s people and the use of their gifts. We hear debates about this all around us, but we lean into the words of Galatians 3.27-29, “As many of you as were baptized into Christ Jesus have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
In baptism, there is no longer male and female, distinguishing between those who are called and those who are not. It is as Chuck Poole has said, we ordain men and women because we baptize boys and girls. We give thanks for the gifts and calling of all God’s people!
-Tripp