Today's pastors, evangelists and church leaders come in a variety of packages. They can be black or white, Asian or Hispanic. They can be rich or poor, self-taught or seminary-educated.

And they can be male or...female.

Historically, the church has struggled with the questions surrounding the proper biblical role of women in church leadership. Many of today's female ministers, however, have resolved that conflict, at least in their own hearts--and sometimes in their own churches.

Delrio Berry, 48, pastor of Lombard Central Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, says she felt "the call" to preach for years. But her Pentecostal denomination, the Memphis-based Church of God in Christ, forbade ordination of women.

"As a child, I remember asking why there were no women in the pulpit," she says. After she became a Pentecostal in her 20s, she signed up for every ministry opportunity available. In 1985 she was told she might be ordained as a university chaplain in the bishop's study.

"The precedent was that a woman would be quietly ordained in the background," she explains. "I felt that would be a dishonor to God and to my own person, so I let them know up front that I wouldn't do that."

Thus Berry, who has three master's degrees and one doctorate, was ordained in the sanctuary of Philadelphia's Holy Temple Church of God in Christ along with 15 men. She eventually left her denomination to be named pastor of Lombard Central in 1991. She is the only black female, senior Presbyterian minister in the region.

"We're regressing," states Berry when asked about the status of ordained women. "The women are coming forward, but they're not being sent or called to churches, even among Presbyterians.

"They don't get the key roles where they're able to call the shots," she says. "The women don't always get the best pick of the churches unless you've got a female bishop or a male bishop who's an advocate for women."

Frustration over this "glass ceiling" was a recurring theme sounded recently. Last summer marked the 20th anniversary celebration in Philadelphia of the ordination of the first 11 women to the Episcopal priesthood. That ordination was illegal until two years later when Episcopalians voted to approve it.

The concern? Women ministers in the 1990s, most often, are relegated to assistant pastorates, chaplaincies, seminary professorships, prison ministries or other positions that men do not want. They get handed a double whammy if they are single--without a husband for "spiritual covering."

"You do get handed something a man doesn't want," admits independent charismatic evangelist Iverna Tompkins. "And then you make it what you want it to be."

  THE SWINGING PENDULUM

Despite the fact that the International Foursquare Church was founded in 1923 by a woman, Aimee Semple McPherson, opportunities for women in the denomination "regressed for a long time," says Nevada Foursquare pastor Marjorie Kitchell. "There was a time when even missionary women weren't allowed on the platform, and women weren't allowed on committees."

But the pendulum has since begun swinging back toward the center, she says.

Kitchell, 62, entered the ministry after her husband left her 27 years ago for a church secretary. She now pastors the 300-member Boulder City Christian Center. And although the local ministerial association first balked when she began to attend its meetings, she was eventually elected its president.

"I had thought it was good enough to be the pastor's wife," she says, "but deep down, I knew the Lord had something more for me."

After years of working behind the scenes in the church, Nancy Milsk was thrust into international revival leadership. Her opportunity followed a trip to China in 1988 with evangelist Nora Lam.

"Avenues are opening up for women if they obey God, go forward and don't get hung up on criticism or doors that are closed," says Milsk. "People wouldn't let me minister but I ministered anyway: at kitchen tables, at someone's home, wherever.

"Even though denominations closed the doors," she says, "I never let that bother me." Milsk currently bases her international preaching ministry in Southfield, Michigan.

One outspoken advocate of women's ministry is Daisy Washburn Osborn, 70, wife of evangelist T.L. Osborn. She has written six books encouraging women to overcome what she calls "female dominance phobia" in churches.

"Is God in a woman to be subordinated to God in a man?" she wrote in her 1990 book Woman Without Limits. "Jesus Christ expected women who received Him as Lord to obey Him. But did He plan later for them to acquiesce in favor of Paul's alleged position for women to be silent?"

Osborn says that Paul's statements--"I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent" (1 Tim. 2:12, NIV) and "women should remain silent in the churches"
(1 Cor. 14:34)--have been extracted out of their cultural context. She believes they have been distorted and then held up before women as "arbitrary barriers."

"I would never permit a few words by Paul, spoken to women of an archaic epoch, to limit my obedience to my Lord in my generation," she writes.

Other female pastors and evangelists interpret 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy in similar ways.

"I just say to people that we need to have more information about the text and the times," says Delrio Berry. "The same Paul who said, 'I suffer not a woman to teach' also commended Phoebe to the Romans."

"Scripture says that if a woman's going to learn, let her ask of a husband at home," says Fuchsia Pickett, an evangelical Methodist minister and conference speaker. "What about single women? They don't have a husband.

"Besides, I'm teaching, not learning. What Paul was referring to was a local problem. Women were hollering from the balcony and disrupting the service."

One night, during her early 20s, Pickett says God called her by name while she was in bed and told her to minister. Over the years that followed, she found that many men assumed female pastors were out to snatch authority from them.

Nothing could be further from the truth, she says. "We're helpmeets, just like women are in the home," she says. "We're not trying to act like men, think like men, talk like men. We're women who respect men."

A YEAR OF CONTROVERSY

The year 1994 has been a controversial one for women in ministry. In March, the Church of England broke with 400 years of precedent by ordaining hundreds of Anglican women. Two months later, Pope John Paul II issued a statement declaring that Catholic women can't be ordained.

In addition to noting Paul's controversial statements to Timothy and the Corinthians, some opponents of women's ordination say no one has a "right" to that office, since it is a symbol of Jesus Christ to His followers and thereby available only to males. Proponents of women in ministry quote passages like Galatians 3:28 to say that maleness or femaleness makes no difference in Christianity.

"If a woman was found worthy to carry the Lord for nine months, surely a woman is worthy to speak the Word," says Aretha Wilson, 36, an evangelist, teacher, preacher and associate minister at New Greater Bethel Ministries in Cambria Heights in Queens, New York.

"More and more people are beginning to recognize that God has been giving a message, too," she adds. "Most of our churches are filled with women. It's becoming easier for women to go into ministry and to cross over into churches run by men."

Female-filled churches are more of a factor overseas, as in the former Soviet Union, where Karen Anthony ministers. Anthony, 42, was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1992 but knew her ministry opportunities in the United States were limited.

Having accompanied evangelist John Guest to the Ukraine in 1991, she decided to begin a ministry there for women. Anthony is the only female pastor she knows of in Kiev.

"Some Ukrainian pastors have accepted me, and others are cautious," she says. "But none of them will join me in ministry because I'm an educated woman with better preaching skills than them."

Of course, not everyone is called to minister abroad. Assemblies of God pastor Janie Wead, 48, found people from another cultural background coming to her when she started a Hispanic congregation in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, three years ago. The 100-member congregation recently built a 10,000-square-foot building.

"I'm an Anglo lady trying to pastor Hispanic men, which is a struggle," she admits. "A woman in my shoes has to lead gently. You have to know that God has called you.

"That's the bedrock of staying with it," she adds. "You have to put a velvet glove on a steel hand and swim up the current."

Bishop Barbara Amos, 37, founder of the 2,000-member Faith Deliverance Christian Center in Norfolk, Virginia, says she got around the women-in-ministry question by joining a small denomination that allows female leaders, Philadelphia's Mount Sinai Holy Church in America. She says a growing number of women are inquiring about the denomination.

UNDECLARED PREJUDICE

While few denominations or Christian groups say they don't ordain women, many more have unofficial policies that prevent women from moving into top positions.

"Ask some of these denominations how many of their large churches are pastored by women or how many women serve on their boards," says Tompkins. "That's where you find the undeclared prejudice."

Ruth Tucker, a professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, and the author of several books on women in ministry, points out that the problem is broader than churches. At the turn of the century, she notes, there were 40 evangelical female-led mission agencies. By the 1920s, most had merged with denominations, and the women lost their places.

"There's a fear of women getting positions in organizations that have influence in the Christian world," she says.

One charismatic mission agency, Youth With a Mission (YWAM), is slowly rectifying the fact that more than half of its 8,000-person work force is female, but few women lead. Out of YWAM's 500 bases worldwide, about 5 percent are led by women, says Ron Smith, co-leader of YWAM's training center in Lakeside, Montana. Twelve women direct national YWAM ministries in countries that include Switzerland, Jamaica, Turkey, Mozambique and Portugal.

"Evangelical and charismatic women carry a whole lot of pain because they have these tremendous giftings and can't use them," Smith says. "Others have men tell them they'll let them lead, but when the rubber meets the road, that doesn't happen."

Vinson Synan, dean of Regent University's School of Divinity, says the percentage of female pastors in Pentecostal denominations is actually declining from the percentage at the turn of the century. He attributes that to men's fears of the secular feminist movement.

Until this year, such fears barred women from joining the Charismatic Concerns Committee, an informal but influential annual gathering of charismatic leaders. The group has been meeting since the early 1970s.

"Several of the men involved saw the meeting as their covering, their authority," Synan says. "If a woman came, then they couldn't come. In order not to lose those fellows, we decided not to let women in."

Eventually, Synan says, a majority of the men attending the meetings felt the male-only atmosphere was too sterile, so they voted for a change in 1993.

"At this year's gathering, one of the guys who fought hardest against women coming said to me, 'You were right, it's helped us to have women here,'" Synan recalls. Still, he admits, "a kind of grassroots resistance runs deep against women in any sort of leadership."

THE POWER OF ANOINTING

When Chicago evangelist Juanita Bynum went on a 21-day fast, she said the Lord informed her she would minister to the masses. But when a Chicago minister invited her to speak before 4,000 people, she told God that all the female ministers she knew had been to Rhema or Oral Roberts universities.

"This is the college I'm sending you through so you'll be well-schooled in who I am," she says the Lord replied.

Now 35, Bynum heads up her own ministry and has written a book, The Planted Seed.

"The greater the suffering, the greater the anointing," she says. "I've paid a great price for where I am today." Things are opening up for women like her, she adds. "Because of the vastness of the corruption in our society, the Lord's work cannot be finished with just the male gender."

As more women move into ministry, the questions surrounding female spiritual leadership will continue. But for Fuchsia Pickett, the matter comes down to one simple factor: anointing.

"Experience, age and training help," she says, "but what got me my ministry was anointing. If a man comes to hear you, he's got no problem if you've got an anointing. It's the anointing that breaks the yoke."