{"id":1420,"date":"2014-06-10T09:37:49","date_gmt":"2014-06-10T09:37:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/bge\/?p=1420"},"modified":"2014-06-10T09:37:49","modified_gmt":"2014-06-10T09:37:49","slug":"late-to-the-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/bge\/2014\/06\/10\/late-to-the-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Late to the Party"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lisa Sundell Olsen has been a member of the BGE commission for 6 years. She is the senior <\/em>high youth director at Covenant Church of Thomaston in Connecticut. Lisa and her husband, <\/em>Reverend Timothy Olsen’s daughter Maja, will be getting married next month. Their son John <\/em>Alrik is in his last year at North Park University.<\/em><\/p>\n

One year ago, on Easter Sunday, my dad announced to our family “What do you think of a trip\u00a0to Israel this time next year?” Shouts of enthusiasm and a few questions followed. On May\u00a015th, eleven of my family members boarded El Al \ufb02ight 002 to Tel Aviv from JFK. We spent 10\u00a0full days traveling, learning, seeing, hearing and tasting our way through The Holy Land.<\/p>\n

\"Lisa<\/a>We learned as much about the history, culture and politics as we did about the sites Jesus\u00a0walked. Our guide, named Beja, told us a lot about the Israeli army and it’s people. We met\u00a0many of them since they are everywhere. When we got to Haifa, Beja introduced us to a some\u00a0women who were in the special forces of search and rescue. He went on and on about how\u00a0dif\ufb01cult it is for anyone to achieve membership in this unit because of the sheer physical\u00a0strength needed. I was so proud of these women and got my picture taken with one of them.\u00a0Every 18 year old woman and man, if they are a citizen of Israel, joins the army for 3 years.<\/p>\n

This equal treatment of men and women made me wonder about clergy. So I did some\u00a0research. The \ufb01rst female rabbi was ordained on December 25, 1935. Her name was Regina\u00a0Jonas of E. Berlin to serve in Jewish communities in Germany. In the US, the Reform\u00a0movement ordained the \ufb01rst female rabbi in 1972. The Reconstructionist movement ordained\u00a0women in 1974 and the Conservative movement in 1985. The Conservative movement of\u00a0Judaism formed The Commission for Study of Ordination of Women as Rabbi’s in 1977 (I like\u00a0our commission’s name better) and in 1978 all eleven members agreed that “there is no direct\u00a0objection to the acts of training and ordaining a woman to be a rabbi, preacher and teacher”.\u00a0But the issue was shelved until 1983 when they \ufb01nally brought it up again. Even the Orthodox\u00a0movement has some women rabbi’s, but it’s not widespread.<\/p>\n

So why am I writing about this? I have studied the Old Testament for many of my 49 years and\u00a0in some ways it’s patriarchal and in other ways it’s inclusive of women. I didn’t know what to\u00a0expect in modern day Israel. I was thrilled to see that women are embraced equally in mainline\u00a0society…however most of the Orthodox Jews kept their distance from women as seen by the\u00a0divider at the wailing wall…\"wailing<\/a>\"wailing<\/a><\/p>\n

The Evangelical Covenant Church began ordaining women in 1976. I wish they could have\u00a0been ordained when women went off to the mission \ufb01eld devoting their lives decades and\u00a0decades before. We were 4 years later than the Jewish Reform movement and 2 years later\u00a0than the Reconstructionist. We were only 9 years sooner than the Jewish conservative\u00a0movement to ordain women who were called into ministry. Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky said “the\u00a0stupidest thing the Orthodox community does now is not having women rabbi’s. It wastes\u00a0intellectual and spiritual talent”. My prayer for each one of our denomination’s churches in the\u00a0Evangelical Covenant Church is that we fully embrace the equality of women in every level of ministry.<\/p>\n

Search Committees: Please look at every and all pro\ufb01les the superintendents send you for ministry positions.<\/p>\n

Report This Post<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lisa Sundell Olsen has been a member of the BGE commission for 6 years. She is the senior high youth director at Covenant Church of Thomaston in Connecticut. Lisa and her husband, Reverend Timothy Olsen’s daughter Maja, will be getting married next month. Their son John Alrik is in his last year at North Park […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19328],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-testimoies-and-stories"],"yoast_head":"\nLate to the Party - Commission on Biblical Gender Equality<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/bge\/2014\/06\/10\/late-to-the-party\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Late to the Party - Commission on Biblical Gender Equality\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Lisa Sundell Olsen has been a member of the BGE commission for 6 years. 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