Submitted by Rev. Sandy Sutherland, CABC President, 2012
I’ve had wonderful role models at different stages of my life……godly men and women whose influence is even more apparent in who I am now, than it was in the immediacy of my knowing them. Recently, I have discovered an exemplary life in our Convention History: Rev. Josephine Moore, the first woman to be ordained to pastoral ministry by our Convention of Atlantic Baptist Churches in 1954.
Rev. Moore had significant role models in her own life. Her grandfather, two of her uncles, and Josephine’s father were all pastors. [1]
Rev. Moore married one of the deacons in the Prince William Baptist Church and had two children. She was a wife and a mother and a pastor and then, after her husband was killed in an accident, a widow and a mother and a pastor.
It was the Prince William Baptist Church that presented her to the Convention for Ordination. Two of the men who officiated at her ordination service pastored two of the churches my family attended when I was I was growing up: Rev. Watson Close (Marysville Baptist Church) delivered the Ordination Sermon and Rev. Earle McKnight (formerly George Street Baptist Church, Fredericton, now Grace Memorial) extended a “Welcome to the Ministry”. A reporter for the Maritime Advocate described Mrs. Moore’s ordination service as “deeply spiritual and conducted in a solemn, sacred manner.” [2]
I wish I could have been there. I would love to have been able to sit in the midst of that gathering and soak in the essence of the Lord. I would love to have been there to witness the quiet, humble, strength God had given this woman who, has been described by one who knew her as “wanting nothing to do with women’s rights and liberation but everything to do with God’s calling and gifting her for pastoral ministry.” [3]
That’s exactly how I feel. My ministry, like Rev. Moore’s, has nothing to do with proving anything. It has everything to do with being obedient to the call of God upon my life. God has spoken clearly to me through the same Scripture that He used to verify Rev Moore’s call to pastoral ministry, Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”. Rev. Moore wrote “In the light of the significance which Christ throws upon all life, national differences, class differences, the differences of men and women are transcended and a higher unity is reached. Not that one is better than another, but that all are necessary to the unity, that Christ’s cause might be upheld.” [4]
The Act of Ordination affirmed Rev. Moore’s pastoral gifts, held her accountable for the way that she used them, and set her free to fulfill God’s calling in her life. Many people came to know the Lord through her pastoral ministry in various Convention Churches. Our records show that at least 13 people were saved at special revival meetings she led on the Prince William field. [5] She had the privilege of leading at least two of our denominational leaders to the Lord.
Rev. Moore’s daughter describes her mother this way: “Her accomplishments were to her a byproduct of her deep desire to know the mind of Christ, to dwell in God’s love, and to love everyone who crossed her path in His Name. She spent twenty-eight years of retirement in Port Hilford in a quiet ministry of intercession for the church, the world, and her family, dwelling in a life of prayer, which had always been a key aspect of her ministry.” [6]
I would like to be like Rev. Moore because she was yielded and useful to God And, I would like to be like Rev. Moore because she stayed faithful to God’s call upon her life even though it couldn’t have been easy.
May those who come behind me find me likewise faithful. Because, you see ………… everyone needs a role model.
1. “Other Impossible Women”, Judith Jollata, Tidings, Sept 1955
2. The Maritime Advocate and Busy East, November 1954
3. “Josephine Kinley Moore: Breaking Barriers”, Laura Churchill Duke, Acadia Bulletin, Spring 2011
4. “This Week’s Sermon”, Maritime Baptist, Oct 15, 1952
5. “Prince William, N.B.”, Maritime Baptist, Jan 12, 1949
6. “Josephine Kinley Moore Bursary”, Elizabeth M. Sheppard, ADC Today, Summer 2009
