Soror Alise is in the Denim Blazer
The Rev. Alise D. Barrymore, 37, grew up in the Church of God in Christ, part of the Pentecostal movement. She is co-pastor of the Emmaus Community, a non-denominational, “post-modern African-American church” which she founded with another minister in Chicago Heights, Ill.
Like many women from conservative Christian backgrounds, she had to leave her denomination, hop-scotching from one tradition to another, to enter the pulpit.
The church she grew up in has powerful women as members, she said, but it does not ordain them. Yet she had long wanted to enter pastoral ministry. Women in the black Pentecostal tradition can be itinerant evangelists, but rarely pastors.
“You can’t handle the sacraments, and it would not be rare for you to preach from the floor and not the pulpit, though that has changed a little bit in recent years,” Ms. Barrymore said. “Names and nomenclature in the black church are so important: as a woman, you teach but don’t preach. Yet the teaching sounds just like preaching.”
Ms. Puckett, the United Methodist associate pastor in Atlanta, left pastoral ministry for a time, she said, because she felt that she could not get the kind of work she wanted. She returned because she felt called to preach. But answering that call, she said, is a struggle.
“I’ve felt depressed sometimes, but the support of friends and colleagues got me through,” she said. “I’d ask them, ‘Is what I’m feeling about what is happening real or am I just crazy?’ and they would tell me I’m not crazy.”
To read more on this article
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/26/us...ewanted=1&_r=2
Soror Alise along with Soror Joy Challenger will co-officiate my line sister's wedding this coming Saturday.
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