'By What Authority Do I Preach?'

The following is the extemporaneous speech that Nancy Hastings Sehested gave before the Shelby County Baptist Association on October 19, 1987.

"I am Nancy Hastings Sehested, messenger from Prescott Memorial Baptist Church, pastor of Prescott Memorial Baptist Church and servant of our Lord Jesus Christ.

"I am a full-blooded Southern Baptist. My mother is a Baptist deacon. My grandfather was a Southern Baptist minister for 70 of his 93 years. My dad is a retired Southern Baptist minister [with] 50 years of ordained ministry.

"My four siblings were the creative ones in our family, choosing creative careers. But me? No. I decided to follow in my dad's and my granddad's footsteps and become a pastor.

"By what authority do I preach? That question you ask of me. It is not a new question. It is a question that was asked of our Lord Jesus Christ on a number of occasions. He had not the authority of the religious establishment, nor the authority of the state, [but] the authority of none other than the Holy Spirit that moved in his midst.

"And so by what authority do I preach and bear witness to my faith? By the authority of the Southern Baptist Convention? By the authority of the Shelby County Baptist Association? By the authority of Prescott Memorial Baptist Church?

"No. No, my brothers and sisters. By the authority of the Lordship of Jesus Christ, who did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, becoming a servant.

"And following in his footsteps, as a servant of Jesus Christ, who took the towel and the basin of water and exemplified the kind of servanthood that each one of us is called to live under, I found a towel with my name on it.

"And who was it that taught me this wonderful freedom of the Spirit? My Sunday school teachers. My pastor. My Southern Baptist church, who nurtured me and said, 'God calls each one of us, so listen!' And so I listened.

"They never said, 'God calls each of you and with God everything is possible, remember, except to be able to stand behind a pulpit. Women can't do that.' They never said that. They said, 'With all things -- God is able to do all things.'

"The winds of the Spirit blow where they will. And we do not know whither they come and wither they go.

"NO, YOU'RE RIGHT. It is not the autonomy of the local church that is under question here. It is not the autonomy of the Shelby County Baptist Association that is under question here. What is facing us is whether or not we will once again say that the freedom of the Holy Spirit is acting among us to call each of one of us in whatever way we can to serve our Lord and witness to his light until at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord to the glory of God.

"And while we are in this place debating about who can or cannot stand behind a piece of wood, there's a world out there. And the cries of the world are growing louder. There's a world that is desperately in need of all of us, a hurting world that is desperately needing each one of us to offer a word of healing and hope and the light that we carry within us.

"Are we going to say to that world that not all things are possible with God? Are we going to say to that world, 'No, not all things are possible. A woman cannot preach!'

"But as you know, all things are possible with our God. And so, what will we do tonight? How will the world hear us tonight?

Peter and John were questioned -- by the religious people! They wondered, 'How can common and "irregular" people like you preach and heal?' And what did they say? You'll remember that what they said was, 'Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge. But I cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.'

"And whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge. For I cannot but speak of what I have seen and hear of a loving God, of a God who reaches out to each one of us, of a God who calls all kinds of 'irregular' people like a murderer like Moses, to be a leader of a people; and a persecutor like Paul, to be a leader of the early church; and women and men of all kinds of backgrounds. He transformed their hearts. Are we going to say no to this incredible God who calls each of us?

"You'll remember that Jesus was questioned about his biblical interpretation -- in his own town by his people at his church, who wondered if he was reading scripture right by his interpretation of Isaiah 61. And you'll remember that they did not like his interpretation because he included people who they thought needed to be excluded.

"So I leave you with my testimony:

'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because God has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.'

"'Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.'"

Nancy Hastings Sehested was pastor of Prescott Memorial Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee when this article appeared.