Sheryll Prinz-McMillan, pastor of the Victoria Seventh-day Adventist Church in Loma Linda, was ordained to the gospel ministry in her church on Sabbath, December 2. Jerry Davis, director of chaplaincy at the Loma Linda University Medical Center, delivered the sermon, reminding the ordinand that she is a needed flute in a band of loud trombones. Fritz Guy, professor of theology at La Sierra University, played a key role in organizing this ordination, and he offered the ordination prayer. Prinz-McMillan responded to her ordination by inviting all to live by the Spirit in lifting one another up for the common task of ministry.
"In a sense this ordination is more significant than those at Sligo and La Sierra in that it represents a small, predominantly working class church choosing to ordain its woman pastor," commented La Sierra University church historian Paul Landa. The sanctuary, which seats only 125 comfortably, had twice that number in attendance, with little standing room. The three women ministers recently ordained at the Sligo Church in Maryland were present, as well as many visitors and some 25 ordained ministers who joined in the laying-on-of-hands in ordination.
According to Steve Daily, chaplain at La Sierra, these two local ordination services on December 2, at La Sierra and at the Victoria church, have been in the planning stages for several months, and were not intended to defy the world church. Rather, like the Sligo Seventh-day Adventist Church ordination which preceded them, they were meant to recognize the calls to ministry received by the women who were ordained until those calls are acknowledged by the world church.
First Printed in Adventist Today January / February 1996 Vol. 4 No. 1.