Every denomination has a story it tells about the people God calls, equips and sends. Those stories shape congregational imagination and help churches recognize what God is doing in their midst. They help young leaders discern whether the church has room to receive the call God’s placed on their lives.
At the 15th General Conference, The Wesleyan Church (TWC) strengthened that story by adopting Memorial 138: Colleagues in Ministry Discipline Update, a set of revisions to The Discipline of The Wesleyan Church that makes explicit a doctrine Wesleyans have long held: the conviction that women and men are equal in responsibility and authority to serve the church.
“I’m deeply grateful for this memorial because it reflects something we have long believed in our heart as a church: that God calls and uses women in ministry,” said Rugh. “My hope is that it speaks clearly to our young women and future generations by reminding them that they are seen, valued and supported. And now, with this commitment included in The Discipline, they can know it is not only something we say, but something we have put in writing as part of who we are. We want them to know that if God is calling them, The Wesleyan Church will continue encouraging them, equipping them, and making room for them to lead and serve.”
Since our earliest days, TWC has affirmed that women and men are called by God and empowered by the Holy Spirit to serve in ministry. That conviction reaches back to some of the earliest chapters of Wesleyan history. Luther Lee, one of the founders of The Wesleyan Church, preached the ordination sermon for Antoinette Brown, recognized in the historical record as the first woman ordained in the United States.
Though TWC rightly remembers its early affirmation of women in ministry, that history also includes moments of ambiguity in practice. After Mary A. Will was ordained in 1861, Wesleyan Methodists continued wrestling with whether that affirmation should be explicitly named in the church’s governing documents. For a time, districts were left to determine how they would handle women’s ordination, and Will’s ordination lapsed when she moved to a district which did not affirm her ordination. Memorial 138 helps address that historical tension by placing the church’s affirmation of women in ministry directly in The Discipline and recognizing one of the early missionaries of the Holiness Union as an ordained woman, a historical first affirmed by the Pilgrim Holiness Church.
The adopted memorial also updates paragraph 675 to define a pastor as “a woman or man who is an ordained, commissioned, or licensed minister, who is called by God and appointed by the Church.” In addition, The Discipline will now include a new paragraph, 3007, using language from the General Board-approved position paper on “A Wesleyan View of Women in Ministry”: “The Wesleyan Church affirms that a woman is fully equal to a man in terms of her responsibility, as directed by the Holy Spirit and authorized by the Church, to preach, teach, lead, govern, or serve in any office or ministry of the Church.”
The Memorial grew out of a broader denominational conversation called Colleagues in Ministry that brought women and men together to consider how TWC could continue strengthening its practice of women and men serving together as equal partners in ministry. Dr. Carla Working, who helped develop the Memorial put forward by the Education and Clergy Development Division (ECD), suggests one of the needs identified in that conversation was the absence of a definitive statement in The Discipline affirming women in ministry leadership.
The timing also reflected the larger conversation taking place across the evangelical church. As many churches and denominations wrestle with questions of women’s leadership, spiritual authority and the relationship between women and men, Working believed TWC had an opportunity to speak clearly from within our own theological and historical tradition.
“We wanted to clarify in The Discipline: we do ordain women,” Working said.
The Wesleyan Church already had a General Board-approved position statement on “A Wesleyan View of Women in Ministry.” Memorial 138 placed that affirmation into The Discipline,” the denomination’s official book of shared belief, order and practice. For Working, that distinction mattered because The Discipline communicates who Wesleyans are, both to those within the denomination and to those looking in from the outside wondering if they might be compatible with TWC.
“This is who we are, and this is what we believe,” Working said. “It should be in there because this affirms part of our denominational identity.”
The Memorial named the concern directly: without a definitive statement in The Discipline, the absence of language “could be leveraged to prevent women from serving as ministry leaders in every capacity.” By adding clear language, the adopted Memorial provides a foundation for deeper understanding of “women’s and men’s equality and shared responsibility to be faithful to God’s call.”
For Working, this has always been a discipleship issue as well as a Discipline issue. A vote at General Conference strengthens the church’s official language, while local churches, districts, pastors, universities and denominational leaders continue the work of helping Wesleyans understand why the church believes this and how that belief becomes visible in congregational life.
“How do we raise up female leaders so that they demonstrate how God has used them, how God is speaking through them?” Working asked. “The gifts are from the Holy Spirit, not gender based. It’s Holy Spirit based.”
Many Wesleyans already recognize women in ministry leadership as one of the denomination’s distinctives. Working noted that candidates for ordination often name women in ministry leadership when asked about Wesleyan distinctives in district board of ministerial development conversations. Memorial 138 placed that shared conviction where people would expect to find it.
The adopted Memorial also reflected a wider denominational desire. Several groups submitted memorials related to women in ministry, including districts and local churches. Memorial 138 gathered many of those concerns into one recommended proposal.
“It also feels like the temperature is right,” Working said, “because so many different people and groups are calling for it at the same time.”
With the adoption of Memorial 138, The Wesleyan Church has remembered its story, clarified its shared conviction and strengthened its witness for the next generation. The Discipline now carries the affirmation Wesleyans have held through history, position papers, ordination processes and local church practice: women and men are called by God, authorized by the church and sent together to preach, teach, lead, govern and serve in the mission of God.
Rev. Ethan Linder is the pastor of discipleship at College Wesleyan Church in Marion, Indiana.
