But believing women should have a chance to be ordained, and knowing it might serve as future support for women in ministry, she agreed. In a March 19 service, with family and friends surrounding her, Neil received their laying on of hands, as well as their affirmation and celebration of her life's work.

"I thought it could be seen as exploitation of the holy service," she said of her first inclination after a number of people, including the members of the church's Ordination Committee, sought her out. "I didn't think it was appropriate."

What they wanted to do, they explained, was a blessing - and with that approbation, she couldn't say no.

"I could hardly refuse a blessing," she said. "So I agreed."

Millbrook Baptist Pastor Robert E. Albritton said church members had "seen her ministry in our midst for a long time. We also looked at the other part of Baptist tradition where the church called out to those for ministry."

He stressed that the idea behind the ordination "was not something she sought or requested."

Church members simply felt "Millbrook Church and Christ's Church have been blessed by one who was attuned at an early age to hearing and responding to the voice of God, who has taken initiative in clearing new paths for spiritual development, who has contributed profoundly to the role, impact and visibility of women in ministry, and has nurtured men and women alike to discover the depths of the spirit-filled life," the recommendation for ordination said.

And though Albritton is Neil's son-in-law, and her daughter, Becky, served on the ordination committee, its members voted unanimously to honor her with ordination to the gospel ministry.

Committee members met with Neil in early February to review "the development of her personal/spiritual growth and her sense of calling to the work of missions, ministry and education." They found, their report said, that "by word and deed, she has demonstrated a sound scriptural and theological basis for her work."

In addition to long-time mission service to Nigeria and Ghana with her husband, Lloyd, Neil is a former adjunct professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. She also was a founding member and early president of both the Alliance of Baptists and Baptist Women in Ministry. And she was one of the masterminds in the creation of Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond and Baptist House of Studies at Duke Divinity School.

She is honored yearly by N.C. Baptist Women in Ministry when the group presents its Anne Thomas Neil award to a deserving woman in ministry. The Neils raised two daughters - one a college professor and the other an ordained minister - who witnessed during the service to their mother's spiritual journey.

Throughout her career, Neil has participated in more than 20 ordinations for women.

But her own ordination invoked feelings she didn't expect - the satisfaction of a deep longing she had never acknowledged, not even to herself.

If she was experiencing the same sense of calling today that she did more than 50 years ago, "I think I would want to be a pastor."

That realization began taking shape several years ago when, as a new member of Millbrook Baptist, Neil attended a forum to discuss the kind of person the church wanted to call as pastor.

"I was hearing those attributes and when I left that night, I said to myself, 'in some ways, I missed my calling,'" she said.

Though she has no regrets about her life as a Baptist woman in ministry, Neil always thought it odd that ordination could not be a part. That was underscored in her Woman's Missionary Union training at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., where, as a woman, she was allowed to study for only two years. Through the years, she worked side-by-side on the mission field with men, who could be ordained, and women, who could not, she said.

At Winthrop College (now University), a fellow student who was Methodist told everybody she was going to be an ordained minister one day, Neil recalls. "I wasn't shocked," she said, "but it seemed an oddity.

Today's church is "in such major transition in the culture of the world and global church community," Neil said.

The changes make her realize that "sometimes it's hard for younger women today to understand the dynamics of the world we grew up in," she said, "and what was expected of women, what the church expected and allowed women to be."

Friends hearing of her ordination have asked if she plans to "take a church," she said, chuckling. "I hardly think so. Most people in Baptist life think about preventing something like that."

Neil believes, however, that her ordination is a step she has taken for the future of the church as it enters the 21st century, for those women in ministry who are following.

"I've always been a future-oriented person," she said.