Baptist Women in ministry...
is not an oxymoron.

Christ calls ALL people to minister in the world -- clergy and layperson, male and female.

She said she wished to be a shrub
And sit in silence, lost, obscure
In some dim woods where no one ever comes
And she could muse and watch the quiet winds go by.

But God, who long ago observed a brambled bush,
Looked at her once among the ferns.
God looked but once: the winds became a storm,
And now she burns, she burns!

"Vocation"
--Ruth de Meneze

Her story is too good not to be told, and retold.  She was the first person to practice  textual criticism on the Bible, and the first person to interpret its text for men in power.  Her name was Huldah, a prophet.  She is one of four women specifically called "prophet" in the Old Testament:  Miriam, Deborah, Isaiah's wife, and Huldah.  Huldah is likely the least known.     

Brief mention of her is recorded in I Kings 22, then repeated in II Chronicles 34.  Otherwise she is unknown in Scripture, and mostly forgotten today.  And yet, she was a key player in the enormously important reform of Josiah.  Manasseh's 55 year reign had been the nadir of Judah's history, Amon's short reign following no better. So when Josiah began his 31 year reign, the nation was in need of revival, of recovering its rootage.

Under Josiah's direction, workers were repairing the Temple and in the process found a scroll, probably our book of Deuteronomy.  When High Priest Hilkiah and Temple Secretary Shaphan brought the book to the king and read to him from it, grief-stricken Josiah tore his clothes in repentance, and immediately sent a five-man delegation to find the best educated expert among the prophets and ask two questions:  is this book authentic and how do you interpret these warnings?

At the time there were three prophets currently on the scene to choose from:  Jeremiah, Zephaniah, or Huldah.  Significantly, neither of the two men were consulted.  Obviously they needed the expertise of Huldah, a prophet who lived with her husband Shallum (the king's valet or tailor) in a place called "mishneh," sometimes translated "the second quarter" and sometimes "the college."  The word could imply a place of "repetition," and since this was the method of learning, Huldah may have been a teacher there.  In any case, it was she, not Jeremiah or Zephaniah, whom they trusted to verify the text, making her the first text critic of the Bible.  She also was asked to interpret the text.  This she did in two parts, telling the king that the judgment on Judah was coming, and then assuring the king that he would be spared.

On the basis of her words, Josiah initiated a reform that would restore Torah to its prominence, restore Passover, destroy the pervasive idols, and re-establish the covenant.