TOSC Meets for Third Discussion on Women’s Ordination

Spectrum Staff | January 22, 2014

This week the Theology of Ordination Study Committee (TOSC) is meeting in Maryland for its third working session, following meetings in January and July last year. Bill Knott reported yesterday in the Adventist Review that members of the 103-member committee were having trouble reaching the meetings because of snowy weather.

Yesterday, committee members heard reports from ten of the 13 world divisions of the church. Each division had been tasked with setting up a Biblical Research Committee to study ordination and the possibility of ordaining women to ministry. Each committee was asked to study the issue and write a report, including recommendations for the overall church’s ordination study committee. (Spectrum reported on the content of several of the division’s reports.)

The Review reported that at Tuesday’s meetings:

“Presenters from each division answered questions from TOSC members, including queries about the division-level study groups’ male/female ratio, and whether representatives of both major positions were adequately heard in the committee process.

Although different opinions have been expressed, a spirit of understanding, congeniality, humility, and openness prevailed.”

Later in the week, the committee will discuss possible outcomes envisioned by advocates of the differing positions.

The Theology of Ordination Study Committee was created by the Administrative Committee of the General Conference in October 2012, and commissioned to bring recommendations for the GC Executive Committee to review at its October 2014 meeting. General Conference officers have announced that the matter of ordaining women to pastoral ministry will be on the agenda of the church’s General Conference session that will meet in San Antonio, Texas, in July 2015.

Image: The Adventist Review

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