The Christian Women’s Leadership Center

A co-worker asked if the timing of the announcement was planned. I assured her it was not, purely coincidental. The question was about the story in the July 20 issue of The Alabama Baptist announcing the new Christian Women’s Leadership Center and that Carol Ann Vaughn had been selected as the center’s first director. As director, Vaughn will fill the Dr. Eleanor F. Terry Chair of Christian Women’s Leadership.

The story also reported the $1 million goal to endow the chair had been reached. In addition to the gift our family made to name the chair for my late wife, Woman’s Missionary Union (WMU) and Woman’s Missionary Union Foundation both earmarked funds to complete the campaign goal. The chair will underwrite the expenses of the director and some of the related administrative costs.

The unusual element in the timing of the announcement was that it appeared exactly two years from the issue that reported Eleanor’s death. She died from injuries suffered in an automobile accident that occurred while participating in the Baptist World Alliance General Council meeting in Durban, South Africa. The story also was about one year after Woman’s Missionary Union and Samford University announced their joint project to provide a place to train and encourage God-called women for leadership in the church and in the business and professional worlds.

Helping Christian women become all God equipped them and called them to be was a cause dear to Eleanor’s heart. Education was the avenue God used to propel her into leadership roles as a teacher, a college administrator and a church volunteer. After 20 years as a public schoolteacher, Eleanor earned a Ph.D. degree and became a college administrator. She served as senior associate dean at William Jewell College, a Baptist school in Missouri. When we moved back to Alabama, she worked at Birmingham Southern College as director of graduate studies and assistant professor of management and administration.

Eleanor led statewide conferences for WMU and Sunday School. She was invited to teach at Ridgecrest and Glorieta Baptist conference centers for Sunday School. She wrote curriculum for Discipleship Training. In her local church she did everything from directing a Mother’s Day Out program to leading the church outreach efforts to directing the teacher training program.

Now the Christian Women’s Leadership Center is poised to provide a positive, empowering educational experience for generations of women. Those uplifting elements Eleanor had to draw from several different places will now be available in one place.

At a press conference earlier this year, National WMU executive director Wanda Lee said the new center would be similar to the former WMU Training School that operated for 50 years in Louisville, Ky. The legacy of that school is immense. Thousands of women walked from that campus to embrace the world with God’s love. They served with the SBC mission boards, with state conventions, with associations and with countless churches.

WMU Training School graduates were among the first associational missionaries, helped establish Baptist campus ministries, legitimized social ministries (then called goodwill centers) and evangelized lost people with every loving touch and every guiding word.

The Christian Women’s Leadership Center will renew that legacy and more. In addition to preparing women for Christian vocational service, the center will offer training for Christian women preparing for leadership in the business and professional worlds. The center will draw on the resources of Samford University to provide this specialized education augmented by courses dealing with issues specific to women and issues specific to Christians.

Samford University President Thomas Corts said the center will be the only place where the three emphases of Christian, women and leadership will be combined in one program.

I am confident Eleanor would be honored to be associated with the Christian Women’s Leadership Center. She participated in early discussions about the center and was asked to serve as its first director. It was a cause in which she believed. Our family is grateful to Woman’s Missionary Union and Samford University for the opportunity to participate in this effort.

We look forward to the center becoming a reality when it officially opens its doors and accepts its first students, now planned for the fall of 2001.