Feb 17, 2012
Women in Ministry Series: Faith is a Line – Faith is a Circle
If we were picking teams competing for Christian awesomeness, and I was the captain (Who would make me a captain of anything?), I’d choose Addie Zierman. She has served all over the place in the church, and she has a lot of stories to tell. Though I haven’t clocked her yet at the sword drill or asked about her stamina for leading youth group lock ins, she’s a talented, up and coming writer that you’re going to love.
We outnumbered the men on campus by a wide margin, filling the halls of the dormitories with strawberry-scented body spray and laughter. We were tromping through the snow to our classes, becoming leaders in our chosen fields – education, business, psychology, music.
But in the various Biblical studies classrooms, we were a debate, a theological knot to be worked out. What is the role of women in church? Could we lead? Should we not? What did the Bible really say?
The whole thing smelled of dry erase markers. The same dusty verses being used to fight the same old battles. The air was tense and tinny with words like Egalitarian and Complementarian.
To be honest, I didn’t much care one way or another. I’d spent the last four years leading that early-morning Bible study at my high school, lugging the weight of stalled conversation on my tired shoulders. I was ready to let someone else do the talking.
*
Her name is Judy, but we called her by her last name: Hougen. She was a writing professor with a reputation for being brilliant and brutal, her green pen slashing through your best poems. Push!
She wanted more here, less there. She wanted you to hold your breath and sink down deep into a moment; she wanted every grainy bit of it on the paper.
And she was a church elder. Not just an elder. Chair of the elder board at a big, well-known church at the edge of Minneapolis’ western suburbs.
She tells me that she was floored when they asked her to serve as an elder, but to me, it was an obvious choice. Judy speaks about God in ways that are beyond the theological – in beautiful, concrete, images.
She had a way of recognizing the brokenness in her students before we saw it in ourselves, and she collected us like the empty, shored shells that we didn’t know we were. She took us out to coffee. She gave us space to complete the sentence that begins with “I feel…”
In the Bible Department the voices were masculine, bearded, middle-aged. They spoke in great, weighted words and organized their thoughts into outlines, charts. From the men, I learned that faith is linear; from Judy, I learned that it is circular, a labyrinth, ever circling the great mystery of God.
Here it was: not a dusty debate but a song, a harmony, two voices, decidedly different, uniquely beautiful. And of course, we need both. I needed both.
They were smart, this church in the suburbs. They recognized the beauty and truth of the female voice. When they brought her on as chair of the church board, Judy’s first act was to make things less corporate, more intimate, moving their meeting spaces out of the conference room they’d been using and back into the heart of the church building. She was about prayer. She was about protection.
“The Judy Season was much more touchy-feely,” she told me when describing her time as chair. “Focusing on the relational feels more feminine to me; it feels a little bit like the water we swim in.”
In various classrooms, the debate raged on. Judy didn’t say much about it, but she read us William Carlos Williams and showed us the holiness in a red wheel barrow, glazed with rain.
She grew tall like an oak; she spread herself like so many branches over the rest of the church leadership, over all of us. She said, “You are safe here.” She said, “Talk to me.”
About Today’s Blogger
Addie Zierman blogs at How to Speak Evangelical and has been speaking evangelical fluently since she was three years old. In her life, she has been a Bible study leader, prayer group founder, Sunday school teacher, worship band singer, and Awana Spark for Jesus. She still knows all the words to the song “Jesus Freak.”
In December 2010, Addie completed her Masters of Fine Arts at Hamline University, where she focused on the creative nonfiction genre. She is currently represented by the Carol Mann Agency and hopes to find a good home for her coming-of-age memoir How to Talk Evangelical.
Addie lives in Minnesota with her husband and two young sons. If you see her out, please don’t say anything about the streak of spit-up on her shirt. It will only embarrass her.
About the Women in Ministry Series
The Women in Ministry Series is a collection of guest posts that aims to:
- Provide an alternative to the women in ministry debates by telling the stories of women in ministry.
- Encourage women to explore their God-given callings.
You can stay updated on the latest post each week bysigning up for the weekly e-mail list. (You also get a free E-book!)
Comment Policy: Everyone is welcome to leave a comment. However, this series takes for granted that women are called by God into every facet of ministry. This is not the place to debate that point and such comments will be removed.Women have been told “no” in far too many places. This is one place that is committed to saying “yes.” For more about the comment policy or submitting your own story, read here.
Next Week’s Blogger: Lisa Burgess
Addie, keep living it out. Keep writing. So grateful for someone like Judy in your life. Alice Mathews at Gordon Conwell has been such a one for me. May God surprise you with the blessings he has planned for you.
Gorgeous essay, I want to save this, especially your line about linear and circular faith. Yes! As a women’s ministry student in college, I know that old dusty debate quite well, and it exhausts me to see men and women having it in an either/or tone of voice. I want the harmony. Just like sometimes in a family husbands and wives help each other see the situation in a new light, we can broaden our perspective in the church by listening to each other and learning from the harmony.
I’d love to meet Judy. I pray God makes me into a Judy for someone else. Thank you for this, Addie.
Oh, Addie. Beautiful and THANK YOU.
Addie, you make my heart yearn for a rainy day, re-fresh the coffee pot, turn off the tv, pull down the drapes, and read for like like 24 hours without stopping.
Yes!! This is gorgeous. I do especially love the bit about faith being circular, and relationships being like the water we swim in. I’ve grown into a far greater appreciation for this kind of experiential, participatory knowledge in the last few years. I’ve even found that my own theological process works much more in this feminine way than in the masculine way that everybody expects. It has been interesting to see how some men are fascinated, and others offended, by these ways of thinking.
lovely and true. amen.
So, so beautiful. I felt this way down deep and plan on letting your words marinate for awhile. Thank you for sharing with us, Addie.
Where is Judy? I need her.
So thankful for people like her who serve out of their uniqueness, whether it originates from gender or profession or talent or whatever God puts in them to make them special. We all have something. Shouldn’t we all be able to use it?
Thanks, Addie. I bet Judy would be proud of you.
THIS. This is what makes this series AMAZING. Thank you, Addie, for your beautiful voice. This was fantastic.
Thank you Ed, for facilitating this conversation. These are the essays that give me hope. Beautiful!
Thanks Tony. My own experiences with women in ministry mirror Addie’s story here in many ways, so this post has meant so much to me. God is using women in the church, so who am I to argue the point?
O hooray for just doing what you are called to do while the debate rages on around us. While others ‘talk’ about women in ministry, let us be women in ministry. What a priveldge.
Thanks for this series!
‘A minister in training’
If you have a story to tell Philippa, check out the guidelines at the Women in Ministry home page. There are slots open this summer to tell your story if you like.
Addie! Yes. This is gorgeous and so telling. I still feel pulled, by allegiance to my sex, to say, “Yes! See! Women are important and smart and have strong lovely voices!” But what Judy did was to not fight it, to not even engage in it. Judy just lived it. She lived her ministry. And isn’t that an elegantly swollen image of how we are to move in our created-ness? Thank you Addie. Thank you, Ed! Again. More socks, please, Mr. C.
Thanks for this, Addie. It brought me to tears thinking of how Judy-less most of our lives are. My last church experience was like the corporate one you mentioned, and it’s left me with some scars and angry tears, but it’s also left me with a resolve to continue challenging, encouraging and training women, especially as it pertains to our worth and our place in the body. Looking forward to reading more!
I love how you put this:
“From the men, I learned that faith is linear; from Judy, I learned that it is circular, a labyrinth, ever circling the great mystery of God.”
There’s something very telling in that—not just about what you learned from Judy, but also how she was able to participate in the conversation without engaging in the direct debate.
Blown away by all these kind comments. Thank you, everyone. Truly.
Thanks, Addie, for your kind and beautiful words. It’s wonderful to watch you begin to truly find your literary powers–and you’re only getting better! I love how this whole series highlights how much we need each other. May we all, as women old and young, reach toward to each other to support, to call out, and to bless.
Gosh…we need a follow up article!
Where is she now? Did term limits push her out, or did she nurture leaders to take her spot? That was great prose…but such an “ellipsis” post…
Like… Dot Dot Dot ya know?
Your story makes me realize just how much I need a Judy in my life…like a Gandalf style spiritual director, who lives close by. Someone who’s read a LOT of Henri Nouwen!
Thanks for this great post, Addie.
She’d be tickled that you called her a spiritual Gandalf.
As for her term on the board, she actually served longer than the regular term because she wanted to make sure things were stabilized and healthy. And then she nurtured someone to take her place.
Spiritual Gandalf? That is funny! I think I’m more of a Yoda type.
P.S. Love Nouwen too, do I!
[...] Addie Zierman’s post at In A Mirror Dimly. Ed, the author behind In A Mirror Dimly, has been running a weekly series about women in ministry [...]
This is stunning writing that unearths grace and favor. Addie, may we all grow to be oaks. Thank you.
Yes. Yes. YES. Live the change. Live the truth you want to see. Encourage others to do the same. Become a part of that great labyrinth circling the Mystery and provide sheltering limbs to others trying to live their truth. Do it, be it. Thank you so much for this, Addie. And thanks to Judith – and her kin. Their number is legion and I am grateful for each and every one.
I love this: “But in the various Biblical studies classrooms, we were a debate, a theological knot to be worked out.” I’ve heard that debate my whole life, and yet it never stopped the women in ministry I love, because they weren’t concepts, they were people, with God-given voices and dreams. The issue of “women in ministry” might never be solved, but women keep ministering anyway. Beautifully written!