Updated Friday, Feb. 29, 2008

Phyllis Foy to chair women's ministry task force

By Norman Jameson

BR Editor

ASHEBORO - Phyllis Foy, long a fixture in North Carolina Baptist life, will chair a women's ministry task force named by Milton A. Hollifield Jr. Feb. 29.

Foy, a former first vice president of the Baptist State Convention (BSC), leads a task force of 11 women who will propose areas of "women's ministry" that eventually will be sponsored and funded by the Convention.

Hollifield, BSC executive director-treasurer, was charged by the Board of Directors to name the task force after Woman's Missionary Union of North Carolina (WMU-NC) flexed its independence and assumed responsibility for its own funding and office space.

WMU -NC has not vacated offices from the Baptist staff building in Cary yet, but their new location in north Raleigh has been secured.

Hollifield told the Executive Committee, meeting Feb. 29 at Caraway Conference Center at the end of their annual winter retreat, that he met with the task force and, "I told them how much I value and appreciate the work of the WMU."

"Not a woman in the meeting seemed to have an agenda that would be anti-WMU," Hollifield said. "I was grateful for that. They don't want to start a ministry that is in competition with WMU."

Nancy Curtis, WMU-NC director 1977-1993, said in an earlier conversation with the Biblical Recorder that WMU has nothing to fear from any women's ministry of the BSC or any other sponsor, because WMU "is not a women's ministry."

"WMU is a missions organization," she said, whose purpose is to support missions and is not for the benefit of its members.

Hollifield predicted there will be some overlap between the developing women's ministry and the missions support work of WMU. "There will be some overlap," he said. "But I do get from these women that they do not want to duplicate what WMU is doing."

Hollifield urges that churches not let the dichotomy become controversial. "Let those in your church who want to relate to a particular ministry relate to that ministry," he said. "It is not a competition."

He said it will not be uncommon to find women's ministries and WMU programs in the same church.

Hollifield said five of the task force are women "in their 20s and 30s."

Members include: Anne Beck, First Baptist Church, Hendersonville, wife of Sandy Beck, associational missionary; Nancy Beck, retired secretary and member of Peninsula Baptist Church, Mooresville; Foy, member of Peninsula Baptist Church, Mooresville, former first vice president of BSC and former interim president of WMU-NC; Tara Furman, Apex Baptist Church, author and speaker; Carrie Gilliam, Sandy Creek Baptist Church, Louisburg, bank teller; Maxine Hare, North Kannapolis Baptist Church, ministry volunteer for Church Renewal Journey.

Also Lisa Horton, Gate City Baptist Church, Jamestown, member of BSC Executive Committee; Norma Jean Johnson, First Baptist Church, Cary, and administrative assistant to the BSC executive leader for business services; Cathy Moffett, Holly Hill Baptist Church, Burlington, writer, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary student; Lisa Oxendine, Island Grove Baptist Church, Pembroke, author, teacher retired physicians assistant; Debbie Puryear, Lewisville Baptist Church.