Black Baptist church is one of few with female pastor

RALEIGH -- For the most part, Sunday's sermon at Oberlin Baptist Church was in keeping with African-American tradition: It began slowly, with a reading from a prepared text.

It ended with a rapid-fire succession of short, spontaneous sentences.

"Amen" came from the congregation after each one.

But one part of the sermon wasn't traditional: the pastor herself.

The Rev. Sherri Arnold Graham is one of only a handful of African-American women leading historic Baptist churches in North Carolina, and the only one in Raleigh. Oberlin Baptist Church, founded during Reconstruction, broke with its past last month when it called her as pastor.

"We saw an honest, spirit-filled person led by God," deacon Henry Skinner said. "It wasn't about her gender. It was about the church being willing to do the will of God."

Graham lives in Fayetteville with her husband, who is a physician. She grew up in a Baptist church where women were not permitted to preach. But after working in the corporate world and rearing two children, she could no longer deny her calling to the ministry.

Fortunately, her timing was right.

While the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination, maintains that the office of pastor is limited to men, a growing number of black Baptists who form their own denominations are opening to their pulpits to women. Many of these women serve as associate pastors. Others have started new congregations not bound by tradition. The historic churches have been the last to break the mold.

"I see it as a development whose time has come," said the Rev. David Forbes, pastor of Raleigh's Christian Faith Baptist Church. "As people become better educated and prepared, that barrier was inevitable to fall."

Although Graham's hiring was not unanimous, most members of this 130-year-old congregation were effusive in their praise. They point to the new clothing ministry she helped start, her outreach to neighboring churches on Oberlin Road, her invitation to host N.C. State University's gospel choir and her push to establish a website.

"She came to our community running," said Julia Campbell Green, a volunteer with the Boutique@Oberlin, a charity that provides clothes to the poor. "She brings freshness and energy, and she's full of ideas."

Born in Pittsburgh, Graham completed her undergraduate degree at Emory University in Atlanta and her master of divinity degree at Shaw University in Raleigh. She has been a volunteer preacher at the Morrison Correctional Facility near Pinehurst and served for five years as associate minister at First Baptist Church on Wilmington Street in Raleigh.

When Oberlin Baptist's former pastor was let go in June, Graham was invited to give a trial sermon. In September, she was hired as interim pastor. By December, the church had voted to keep her permanently.

"The minute I saw her, I knew she's the one," said Andria Fields, a longtime member. "She has a magnetic pull."

Since her hiring, Graham has nudged the church's 100 members to discern who they are as a congregation and how they want to serve the larger community.

"I'm very respectful of their willingness to be spirit-led rather than bound by tradition," Graham said. "It's rare. It has to be a movement of God."