A Woman is Elected a Union Conference Vice President for the First Time
by Monte Sahlin
By AT News Team, March 7, 2014
Celeste Ryan Blyden became the first woman to be elected a union conference vice president in the Seventh-day Adventist denomination on Thursday (March 6). She will serve as vice president for strategic communications and public relations in the Columbia Union Conference, the denomination's regional judicatory that covers eight states from the Mid-Atlantic to the Midwest.
Two other women were voted promotions by the union conference's executive committee. Beth Michaels, who has spent eight years at the Visitor magazine, the last two as managing editor, will now serve as editor in chief. Tabitha Martinez, who has served as assistant treasurer since 2006, has become associate treasurer.
“It was one of those decisions where you could catch and feel the electricity in the room," said Pastor David Weigley, union conference president. "It was time to do this. This is the right thing to do. It is the first time, to my knowledge, that the Columbia Union has had a woman vice president,” he said as the room exploded with a standing ovation.
Blyden has spent 12 years as editor of the award-winning Visitor magazine and has 25 years of experience managing Adventist media activities. She has served the church as a journalist, editor, public information officer, marketing coordinator, media relations manager, corporate communication director, social media strategist and television producer. During her tenure, Blyden and her team grew the Visitor to a multi-media brand including a weekly Email newsletter, videos, web sites, a popular annual calendar, social media and other platforms.
Prior to joining the union conference staff, Michaels worked for several non-profit organizations around the Washington, D.C., area, leading and assisting in their communication and marketing departments. She also spent five years at ADRA International assisting in and then leading its news and public relations activities.
Martinez has served four years as an assistant staff auditor for the General Conference Auditing Service. She holds a bachelor of business administration from Southwestern Adventist University in Texas and will finish her MBA from Washington Adventist University in Takoma Park, Maryland, in May. “Over the years, Tabitha has served as a dedicated and faithful member of our team,” said Seth Bardu, Columbia Union treasurer. “As an associate treasurer, she will be presented with even more opportunities to serve her church.”
In other personnel actions, the union conference executive committee promoted Pastor Rubén Ramos from assistant to the president for multicultural ministries to vice president for multicultural ministries. Ramos, a specialist in evangelism and church planting, was born in Argentina and grew up in the home of missionaries. He holds a degree in education and theology from River Plate University and has served as the pastor of several Hispanic churches in the Potomac Conference before serving as the Hispanic Ministries director there for 11 years.
This story is based on a bulletin from the Columbia Union Conference communication department.
Congratulations to Celeste. You have done a great job with The Visitor, and I have always admired your work–they picked the best.
Likely an action by the CU President in his support of the feminist agenda and likely he pleased two constituencies by the appointment. This is in no way intended to demean any talent Celeste my have. I have had occasion, however, to question her editorial judgment.
Maranatha
Instead of being so quick to judge and condemn, is it possible for you to watch and see how God is working? God has surprised me many times by working powerfully in ways I did not expect. I remember several years ago on a Sunday morning when my ministry team and I were enroute to a home where we would be doing some major repairs, starting with demolishing water-rotted flooring and beams across a considerable area. Halfway there I got a phone call from a slender, soft-spoken, gentle woman in our church. She said she felt like God was telling her to come and help. Could I give her directions? This woman, who may have never used a hammer in her life, on a construction site doing demo? My reaction was to tell God that I thought He had gone crazy! But I repented, accepted that perhaps He was doing something I hadn't considered and gave her directions. She and the woman who owned the house quickly became friends and worked together through the day. She was able to minister to the home owner's heart in ways none of the rest of us could have done. She also proved to be a willing worker who soon was doing things with skill that she had never done before.
TS
Why did you find it necessary to add the last sentence, since it had nothing to do with the subject?
As one who has worked closely with Celeste for eight years while a union communication colleague, I bear witness that she is an extremely godly, wise and delightful person. She is a woman of prayer and integrity–the first person I called upon for counsel in a communication crisis. There is no feminist agenda going on in her appointment–just good discernment.
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Is Ms. Blyden listed or will be listed as a Union Conference Vice President in this 2013 Yearbook?
"Feminist agenda" is a paranoid fantasy.
So really, what's the big deal? Ella Simmons has served as a G.C. vice-president for nearly ten years? And since when was gender identity a de jure barrier to serving on Union and Conference executive committees? How long will we continue to see the advancement of progressive identity politics within the institutional Church as occasions to break out the Martinelli's – as sentinel, definitive evidence of Holy Spirit movement within our local communities of faith?
I very much welcome the selection of qualified individuals, regardless of gender, to high office in church institutions. But given my cynicsm about top-down change, I am quite skeptical toward the notion that God is going to be able to do great things through the SDA movement now that the last barriers to women holding ecclesiastical offices, with full authority, rights and benefits, have been penetrated in the NAD.
This is a political event, quite unlike the abandonment of circumcision as a mandatory rite by the early Christian church. It is long past due. But the fanfare with which the conferring of titles has been greeted suggests very misplaced values and priorities. Throughout Christian history, ministers of the gospel, both male and female have generally served Christ under far more oppressive conditions than mere unjust deprivation of title or office.
The fact that so many get so excited over something that has so little practical significance for so few troubles me. Tell me about the hundreds – the thousands – who are renewing commitments to Christ or taking their stand for Him as a result of the recent window dressing that has been put on gender inclusiveness in the NAD (remember, the GC broke down the barrier to women as pastors over two decades ago), and then I'll be ready to cut loose. Then I'll be impressed that what I now perceive as important symbolism is really a God thing rather than a moral thrill movement.
God did "great things" when Christianity was opened to everyone, not just the Jews. Any religious institution that has retained leadership positions only for one gender is not "opened for everyone" and does hinder the Gospel's spread. That should need no explanation, just as the Jews tried to maintain religion, even in Christ, open only to the circumcised. As a male, it probably has "little practical signifance" for some, but for others it is a wide door opening for all who can expect equality.
What evidence do you have for the proposition that religions which maintain gender role differentiation in their ecclesiastical leadership are less effective in spreading the Gospel? Good arguments can be made that the erosion of gender role differentiation in society has been a mixed bag of consequences. It is a very new and untested phenomenon in the history of civilization. Radical egalitarian utopianism has been strongly associated with dystopic political and social orders.
But for Adventism, the cows are out of the barn. So it strikes me as preposterous sophistry for the Denomination to have sanctioned the ordination of women as pastors, but to now deny them the authority, rights, and benefits conveyed to men by that title.