CLEVELAND -- Imelda Ellison sits quietly in her pew as, one by one, dressed all in white, the members of the Emmanuel Women of Worship come down the center aisle.

Their heads held high, some 15 women step and sway, clapping and singing. For a few mesmerizing moments, the women's choir is the center of Sunday worship.

It's times like this when Ellison, a religious educator with a "burning" call to the ministry, envisions herself up front leading the flock in prayer.

But when the women take their seats near the pulpit, the male ministers seated on either side of Emmanuel Baptist Church's pastor take over the service.

The pastor, the Rev. David Cobb Jr., started the women's choir six months ago to increase the visibility of women in the service, but his congregation is not ready for women ministers, he says.

Black women activists say change is long overdue in their struggle for equal opportunities in their church. They can be trustees and teachers and can even be ordained as deacons and ministers in some black churches.

But like many evangelical churches, many individual black congregations still ban female clergy. And even among churches that accept women ministers, it is rare for a woman to be a senior pastor.

Rather than continue to fight, many women with seminary degrees have switched to predominantly white mainline Protestant churches to find a place in the pulpit.

To be sure, there are success stories -- there are three women bishops in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, for example. Yet they are mostly the exceptions. Many black churches such as Emmanuel still have all-male deacon boards to oversee the congregation's spiritual life.

Tradition and a literal interpretation of biblical texts urging women to be silent are part of the reason women have been kept from the front of the black church, observers say.

There are concerns that women clergy could undermine the historic role of pastors as important leadership models for black men. The issue is also about power and sexism, women say.

"How can we say we love the Lord and we oppress women?" Ellison says.

In the late 1950s, an Emmanuel leader informed Doris Jamieson he would nominate her to be the only woman on the board of trustees, which oversees church finances and administration.

"But you got to learn to keep your mouth shut," Jamieson recalls being told.

Today, a third of the 12 trustees at Emmanuel are women. And women there, unlike at many other black churches, offer Communion. Visiting women ministers preach on Women's Day.

Cobb would like to find a more prominent role for women at his church. In the coming months, he plans to feature women at least monthly in the service in roles ranging from reading Scripture to leading congregational prayer.

"I want everybody in the church to know they can play an important part," Cobb says. "I don't want it to appear the only thing women can do is cook and hand out clothes."