:: In.a.Mirror.Dimly ::

I started the Women in Ministry Series in January 2012 as an alternative to the endless debates about women being called to full time pastoral ministry and as church leaders. Rather than debate texts that have been explored ad nauseam in theological books, I wanted to share the stories of women in ministry so that both sides of the debate can put a face to the people living these stories.

If I can make one thing clear, I’m not giving women a voice. They already have their voices and are using them well. I’m just trying to gather them together in one place in order to make them a little easier to find.

Here are some of my personal favorites mixed in with some of the most popular posts in the series. If you want to browse all of the posts, click browse by topic in the navigation bar. Thanks for reading, and be sure to check out the blog of each contributor!

Meg Jenista, Sometimes I Think God Made Me Wrong

In my first preaching class at seminary, I prayed that I would suck. I did. I prayed that God would relent, that it would be manifestly obvious that this was NOT God’s gifting. Then I would be free to return to my regularly scheduled life – a life that did not include rocking the boat. I didn’t have a radical agenda. I wasn’t looking to prove anything. That’s not quite true. I was looking to prove that I didn’t have a radical agenda.

Jamie Wright, From Woman in Ministry to Woman Who Ministers

The truth is, the women who ministered to my own wanting soul weren’t “women in ministry” at all. They were good neighbors and generous friends. They were soccer-Moms who took my babies off my hands for a few hours at a time, when I most needed help. They were steaming coffee dates where no subject was off limits, where laughter flowed freely and tears of anguish were met with tears of empathy.

Carol Howard Merritt, Navigating the Fullness of God’s Calling

She exhaled, shook her head diagonally, and continued, her words dripping with sympathy, “Believe me. The Board had a difficult time with your application. It felt like those men argued for hours. But the donors spend more money on flight school students than any other student. They just couldn’t take the risk.”

“What risk?” I asked.

“Think about it. What happens when you get pregnant?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you willing to promise that you’ll never get married?”

Kathy Escobar, Well-Behaved Women Won’t Change the Church

I started to worry more about pleasing God than pleasing man.

And guess what happened? Leaders didn’t like it. They liked me a lot better when I was following the rules, playing the good-girl game. A weird and subversive shift occurred when I started showing up more honestly, more passionately as a leader. The best words I can use to describe it are: "painful silence."

Addie Zierman, Faith is a Line, Faith is a Circle

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.

Amy Young, In Which We Have a Frank Chat About My Marital Status

So, returning to the question as to why I am single, there is no simple, easy answer; but I do believe that, in part, it is because I am a woman and a leader and didn’t marry before it became apparent that I was not a behind-the-scenes leader but an up-front, out-loud, follow-me one.

Katherine Willis Pershey, Standing Up for God’s Calling

I understand that this might be hard to believe, but I am not exaggerating. I have encountered so few instances of sexism within the mainline church that I could probably count them on one hand. I have been affirmed, supported, and respected every step of the way.

Thanks for reading! We’ll see you in 2013.

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.

NOTE TO READERS

We’re taking the rest of 2012 off and will resume again in 2013.

Carolyn Custis James was recently listed as one of 50 evangelical women to watch and recently published the award-winning book Half the Church. She wraps up the 2012 leg of the Women in Ministry Series with this story about her calling into ministry:

"You need to find out what God wants you to do with your life, and I’m not the answer."

When my brand new husband of one month uttered those paradigm-busting words, I’m sure my face distorted like the face in Edvard Munch’s The Scream. I was flummoxed that the Texan sitting across the table was telling me I had a calling of my own. What a revolutionary idea!

Growing up in a devoutly Christian family in Oregon, I absorbed the belief that besides being a mother, the calling of every Christian wife was to support her husband’s calling. Quite simply I took that to mean I did not have a distinct calling from God. My calling was subsumed in my husband’s calling. So it took a while for this new revelation to sink in, but it did—with a vengeance.

That doesn’t mean it was easy to get from where I was then to where I am now. Anyone tracing the early trajectory of my life would be hard pressed to explain how I ended up doing the kinds of things I’m doing now. The roadmap I started out with didn’t lead in this direction. I never dreamed of writing books or speaking at conferences or becoming a spokesperson for the ezer-warrior and the Blessed Alliance between God’s sons and daughters.

I enjoyed an idyllic upbringing. My father was a wonderful pastor for 65 years (he preached until he was 91). I inherited from both my mother and father a passion for God’s Word and a burning desire to serve God’s people. Ministry is in my DNA. Had I been a fourth son, instead of the only daughter in my family, I would have gone straight to seminary after college and prepared to be a pastor like my dad. But because I was a girl that option was off the table.

Like other women, I embraced simpler aspirations inspired by what I learned in church and observed in the lives of women in my circle of family and friends. I hoped for marriage and motherhood, expecting to minister as a volunteer in the church—teaching a women’s Bible study and putting those years of studying classical pipe organ to good use. My central calling, I believed, would be to support God’s calling on my husband.

But as we all discover sooner or later, God has a way of shaking things up. Right out of the starting blocks, I faced the reality that my path didn’t match the roadmap I meant to follow.

Instead of marriage, I landed in a long stretch of singleness. Instead of motherhood, I fought and lost my battle with infertility. When God unexpectedly blessed us with a daughter, instead of being a stay-at-home mother, I combined motherhood with breadwinning as a software developer while my husband earned two doctorates. Instead of finding my calling in Frank’s, I needed to find my own calling. While Frank was convinced marriage was weaving our two callings together—in deeper ways it turns out than either of us ever imagined—he valued my gifts and challenged me to follow God in developing and using them.

Those purposeful bends in the road that seemed like detours raised questions for me about God’s calling on his daughters lives that ultimately shaped my ministry. They drove me back to Scripture in search of answers for all his daughters no matter how our particular stories play out.

Early in my single years, I realized women were often subsisting on an anorexic spiritual diet. Never will I forget my embarrassment at the spiritual fluff dished up at my first women’s brunch. I shuddered to think some man might poke his head in and discover the pabulum we were ingesting.

The discomfort I felt went well beyond personal preference or the ridiculous ‘Mary versus Martha’ caricatures. The stakes are exceedingly high when women fail to dig deeper into God’s Word and think theologically. I learned that the hard way whenever circumstances forced me off the approved path for women forcing me to think for myself. God lit a fiery determination in me to raise the bar for women. I drove a stake into the ground for women to take themselves seriously with When Life and Beliefs Collide—How Knowing God Makes a Difference.

Literally over night (3:00 am to be exact), the realization that every woman is an ezer-warrior (translated “helper” in Genesis 2:18 at the creation of woman) expanded my ministry with a call to action on behalf of God’s kingdom. That call took on a disturbing urgency when I read Kristof and WuDunn’s Half the Sky and wrote Half the Church—Recapturing God’s Global Vision for Women.

From the opening words of the Bible, God’s calling for me—for every female who has graced this planet—remains unaltered no matter how many unexpected bends we encounter on the road of life. We are God’s image bearers and ezer-warriors in a Blessed Alliance with our brothers to advance God’s kingdom wherever he stations us.

Our calling is grounded in God himself—unchanging and indestructible—and, as I am learning, doesn’t always follow the roadmap we choose for ourselves.

About Today’s Guest Blogger

Carolyn Custis James speaks internationally and writes deeper books for women that men read too. She earned her B.A. at Westmont College and her M.A. in Biblical Studies in the first class of women at Dallas Theological Seminary. She is passionate about unearthing the Bible’s message for 21^st Century women and recovering the foundation that supports the deep conviction women have that God calls us to full engagement for his kingdom. You can read her blog and find out more about her ministry at www.whitbyforum.com.

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.

NOTE TO READERS

We’re taking the rest of 2012 off and will resume again in 2013.

Kimberly Majeski wears many ministry hats (or head coverings if your prefer) as a radio personality, conference speaker, women’s retreat leader, Bible teacher, and pastor. You can now add to that list: guest blogger.

Maybe it is because I’ve been off carbs for six weeks or maybe it’s because I need to purge my sin sick soul, but the bread and wine of Holy Communion are especially sweet today. I take in the broken loaf and my starch starved self is satiated and the wine washes down the heavenly morsels smoothly.

The truth is, I am empty.

The weather has turned cold and the trees now stand bare, undressed by the early winter winds. Today there are student papers to grade, research projects to complete, presentations to polish, deadlines to meet, and dishes in the sink.

For some of us in ministry, somewhere between holy calling and taking out the trash, in between the thin places and the board meetings, we realize the work is hard, the hours are long and the thanks can be, well, sparse at best; it can be arduous work for our tender hearts and frail egos. It can be a trap for those of us given to the chains of achieving, producing, accomplishing, attempting to earn favor. Before the madness creeps in, today I stop to remember an image burned into my heart from a trip to Jerusalem earlier this year.

We were tired. It was the last day of our journey, and we decided to visit Dormition Abbey, the Church of the Assumption of Mary. Though it was cold outside, the church was grand and warm. The domed ceilings covered with golden tiles and her image there smiling with her baby son. The amber light of candles flooded the room and bounced from the gold dome to the limestone floor in a rhythmic dance; the twinkling lights on the tree invited us, “Come in.”

Beyond the sanctuary there was a café, of course there was, this was Our Lady’s place—not a cold stone cathedral but a friendly, cozy space for sharing coffee and croissants and the beauty of the day. We unloaded our weary selves for a moment and enjoyed the sunshine goodness of the winter punch and it struck me, the wonder, the power of the welcoming place.

For all the centuries of debate over Jesus and Women, the rightful place of the—what some dare to call—weaker sex, for all the proof texting and poor Greek of sermons built on feminine submission, in the end…He chose to be made known through her and she welcomed Him well.

I am a daughter of His church and the feminist revolution; raised by a single mother and saint who worked three jobs and made sure we had Jesus and Jordache. She taught my sister and me the stories of the Bible that made known this One who loves and welcomes all, but, sometimes I forget, He welcomes even me. How easily I forget the ways I have known Him.

I have known Him in the arms of women wrapped ‘round one another after the husband and provider of the home is long gone. I have known Him in the prayers of the healers bent over the sick and broken in the late hours of the midnight long after the men have departed under pain too great to bear.

I have known Him in the grocery store as we shop for the ingredients to make a casserole of butter and chicken and love. I have known Him in the gracious hospitality of women just as He first chose to make Himself known to us.

I am a woman fully captivated by the revelation of Jesus in the Word and in the world, mesmerized and happily confounded by the way He chose to come to us. I have spent my life studying the Scriptures and I have a lifetime more to learn but I am caught by the truth that the first to receive and share the Savior was a woman, young and tender who by human logic should have chosen otherwise.

Before the whirlwind of the season takes hold, before I am laid low by all of my own striving to be more, I pause to recognize the miracle of Mary’s discipleship; the simple, profound wonder of her “Yes.” I consider the power of her surrender, and the hope of Christ, the One who saw fit to come to us—to women– broken and imperfect as we are and allow Himself to be made known through us, I eat, I drink and I am filled.

About Today’s Guest Blogger

Kimberly Majeski is a scholar, preacher and author who challenges her audiences to find the life-transforming connection between their personal story and the inspiring, ancient story of the Scriptures. As a radio personality, conference speaker, women’s retreat leader, Bible teacher, and pastor, Kimberly captivates audiences with her ability to exposit Biblical truths through storytelling that is engaging, transparent and uplifting. Kimberly and her husband Kevin reside in Anderson, Indiana where she serves as professor of Biblical Studies at Anderson University.

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 by signing 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: Carolyn Custis James

If I had to choose one word to describe Jenny Rae Armstrong, it would be: passionate. She is passionate about ministry and passionate about empowering women to find their God-given callings.

"Yes, but what have you done?"

I blinked at the young man interviewing me, schooling my expression as I gathered my thoughts. I had just finished describing the youth ministry my husband Aaron and I had run at the church he used to work at, the Campus Life clubs we had built when he was on staff with Youth for Christ.

Yes, it was Aaron’s name on the paycheck. But we had attended all the training events, seminars, and youth activities together. And I thought I had made it clear that I ran the junior high ministries, while Aaron was responsible for the high schoolers.

Apparently, my ministry experience was only valid if someone had kicked me some coin for my efforts, or I had at least done the job alone. Me, myself, and I. Facing down hordes of squirrely tweens on the rock-solid foundation of my personal awesomeness. None of those weak "working as a team" or "ministering together" platitudes, even if I had been putting in close to twenty hours a week. The moment my husband entered the conversation, I was demoted from "minister" to "helpmeet."

There was nothing to do but go home and whine at Aaron.

"I don’t understand men!" I wailed, sitting at the kitchen table while he chopped onions. "It’s like it’s all about status and being the one in charge."

"I keep telling you that," he shrugged, still chopping. "You don’t believe me, but I keep telling you."

"But it’s so stupid," I protested, swatting away a tear. "It’s arrogant!"

"Yep," he agreed.

I stewed as Aaron scraped the onions into the chili pot, gritting my teeth. I could play the achievement game if I needed to. I was smart, passionate, and well-connected. But the fact remained: I thought the game was misguided, and didn’t want to play.

Still, I tried for a while, throwing myself into ministry activities that would look good on my resume. I was careful to do them alone, or clearly establish my leadership, so my successes would be attributed to me.

I felt like a jerk, diluting my loving intentions with personal ambition, but I reminded myself that these were the hoops I needed to jump through to make headway in the male-dominated world of vocational ministry. Guys did this all the time, and didn’t seem to feel guilty about it.

While I did some good things and felt pride in my accomplishments, underneath, I was unhappy and frazzled. My true state of mind seeped through in my sleep. Over and over, I dreamt I was crossing a bridge in my community that had somehow become impossibly steep, climbing the slippery surface on my hands and knees, fingertips scrambling for purchase on the asphalt.

Years later, when my dream self finally made it to the other side, the familiar terrain was dark and threatening. The safe landmarks had vanished, and my friends, family and mentors were not where I expected to find them. I was alone, vulnerable, and under attack.

I woke up, literally and figuratively, and re-embraced what I had always known. Going it alone is stupid, and "performing" ministry is arrogant and sinful. But how could I move forward in ministry if I was laying down my bid for approval, accolades, and (most importantly) acceptance–acceptance as an equal who deserves to have her efforts taken seriously, not as a pretty prop to be patted on the head and sent off to play with the women and children?

Women called to vocational ministry walk a precarious line. I am not the first woman who has felt she had to stifle her feminine soul to make headway in a climate that values achievement and autonomy over relationships and collaboration, and I won’t be the last.

But what has really struck me is just how much the 21st century church, despite our insistence to the contrary, undervalues the volunteers, the lay leaders, the people who "help." Those roles that have, traditionally, been filled by women.

Now, I’m a staunch egalitarian. I don’t swallow the idea that men are called to lead, and women to function as their "support staff." But I was also raised as a missionary kid, and had a front-row seat to the full-throttle partnership missionary couples brought to their ministry.

Yes, it was usually the man’s name on the paycheck. But the women worked too, often at great cost. Until recently, it was not uncommon for mission agencies to require children to be sent to boarding school, freeing the women up for full-time service. It was/is a crappy policy. But those women? They got the job done, paycheck, title, status, or not.

So I get a little prickly when people criticize, belittle, or get affectionately patronizing about the contributions of the "helpers": the hyper-involved homeschooling moms, the "controlling" church matrons, the ministry wives who seem to live at the church. I mean, I’d like to see a church try to run without those powerhouse women, women who have dedicated their whole lives to the service of God and others.

I’ll see your hot-shot pastor and raise you my grandma. Roll your eyes at the decorating committee one more time, and I won’t be held responsible if you find darling elitist appliqués hot glued to your iPad.

Maybe, after the "women in ministry" controversy has blown over, we’ll discover what is truly subversive about female leadership, about the collaborative, relational systems women build and thrive in. Something about laying down your life to find it, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ, considering others better than yourself, and the meek inheriting the earth.

Now that would be an achievement.

About Today’s Blogger

Jenny Rae Armstrong is an award-winning freelance journalist who writes about women’s issues for Christian publications. She and her husband are currently working together to create a youth curriculum for Christians for Biblical Equality. She loves making new friends, so drop by her blog (http://www.jennyraearmstrong.com) and say hi, and add her on Facebook (jennyraearmstrong) and Twitter (@jennyrarmstrong).

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: Kimberly Majeski

Today Erin Raffety brings an international perspective to the Women in Ministry Series along with insight into those we overlook every day all around us:

Sometimes when I read the Bible I’m astounded by how little Jesus’ disciples seemed to understand—they bristled at the outcasts who came to Jesus, they quibbled over who was the greatest, and in the end, some deserted and betrayed him. Sometimes when we read closely, these twelve followers end up looking more like a motley crew of misfits rather than winning evangelists.

I don’t say these things just to be provocative (okay, maybe I do), but also to draw attention to the way in which power and position often mystify humanity. Perhaps we like the idea of the disciples better than who they really were, and we can be blinded by their official roles, their seats at the table beside Jesus, and their exaltation.

I was blinded by the men who inhabited the official roles in ministry around me, so much so that I often failed to see the women in the background. But while the men were the ministers, women were ministering. My mom, for one, took my sisters and me down to the homeless shelter where we played cards with the men who came in off the streets, and we learned not to be afraid of people who looked different from us. While a man stood in the pulpit on Sundays, it was the women, the mothers of my friends, who taught us about Jesus in the church’s basement classrooms.

It was my college roommate who encouraged me to go to seminary, a gutsy Catholic woman who taught me the discipline of centering prayer, and my sisters and my friends who have taught me what it means to be a woman of God. When I met men in college who didn’t believe women should be pastors, I dug into the Bible to see what Jesus had to say about it, and felt not only a conviction toward women in ministry, but also a personal call in the process. Was it possible that God didn’t just want women to be pastors, but God even wanted me?

I don’t mean to downplay the men who also taught me along the way (of which there were many), but precisely because of their non-ordained, unofficial status, and their place in the background, these women taught me something valuable and different—namely, what it means to be a servant. This is why I left college in the summer for the slums of Washington D.C., the borderlands of Mexico, or the barrios of Puerto Rico, because I’d seen women quietly and effectively giving their lives in service to Christ and others.

This lesson in servanthood begins with my mother, who selflessly gave up her career for her children. It extends to women on the border who bravely led families while the men migrated for work, and the women I recently lived alongside in China, who foster orphaned and disabled children despite the great costs. Before coming to China, I’d worked in a multicultural congregation of immigrants in the U.S., and I’d struggled with how I might serve God in a nation where official ministry would be tricky.

Despite the lessons of my own journey, I’d become distracted with what it means to possess a platform, power, and a title, and I’d questioned what God could do with me without one. But I felt God’s presence perhaps more palpably than I’d ever felt it in China, and God brought budding women leaders and pastors in China’s growing churches to my doorstep. I had the incredible opportunity of encouraging them to follow their calls, affirming their gifts and talents, and exploring their questions and concerns. Their witness, together with the foster mothers I studied not only made me feel like a flailing, misfit disciple with all my doubts, but also reminded me of all the other humble women who had directed my path along the way.

I don’t mean to romanticize or idealize the sacrifices that women make, or the real barriers to ministry and the injustices that still exist. In fact, I hope because of women such as these, subsequent generations will go on to practice servanthood in preaching and teaching and leadership.

But I call attention to these servants because they did great things from humble places. I call attention to them, as Jesus did, because “they are the greatest among us,” without whom I would have an impoverished understanding of leadership, and with whom, my own call is forever intertwined, whatever titles and official roles may become me. And I tell their story, because Jesus says, after the disciples have come and gone, the Pharisees and the leaders and the powerful, “all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all those who humble themselves will be exalted” (Matthew 23:11-12).

About Today’s Guest Blogger

Erin Raffety holds a B.A. in Anthropology from Davidson College, an M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary, and is certified to receive a call with the Presbyterian Church (USA). She is a Ph.D. Candidate in Anthropology at Princeton University, where her interests include kinship, foster care, and domestic adoption in China, and theology and anthropology. She has worked in Asia, along the US-Mexico border and Puerto Rico, and in Washington, DC on international poverty and hunger with Bread for the World and The ONE Campaign. Erin recently returned from conducting her dissertation fieldwork in Southwest China, and lives in Princeton, New Jersey with her husband, Evan. You can reach her via her blog, Little Sacred Space.

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 by signing 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: Jenny Rae Armstrong

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about folks from Texas, it’s that they tend to have A LOT of enthusiasm. When I met today’s guest blogger, Rev. Angie Mabry-Nauta, at a writers conference, I was struck by both her enthusiasm and her genuinely humble and kind spirit. She exudes energy and grace. She’s also working on a memoir that should be killer awesome. I’m grateful to share one of her stories today.

I was a pastoral intern when God graced my husband and I with our first pregnancy. The congregation I was blessed to serve celebrated with us.

Weeks later joy morphed into pain when I miscarried. The pastor graciously gave me several weeks off.

When I returned to church I was greeted with hugs, love, and strong support. And yet, people didn’t know what to say. The congregation seemed not to know what to do with me or the situation. How often are churches faced with a pastor who is grieving pregnancy loss? I recall feeling as if I was given only a few short weeks to grieve, and then I was expected to return to my congregational duties.

Time to move on, Pastor. The Word of God needs to be preached, and people need visiting. And besides, the joy of the Lord is our strength.

But it wasn’t that simple. My husband and I lost our baby. I needed time to sit in that cloudy emotional place but was denied that.

Skip ahead two years.

I was the mother of a beautiful infant daughter. Sophia was born during the spring semester of my senior year in seminary. During my interview with the church that eventually called me, I brought up the topic of maternity leave.

Crickets.

The committee blinked and looked around at one another for an answer. Red faces, embarrassed smiles, and uncomfortable chuckles filled the small room. The chairperson cleared his throat.

“We’ve never had to think about that before,” he says. “I suppose we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it if you’re the one that we call.”

Two-and-a-half years into my tenure, the time to cross that bridge came. When I announced that my husband and I were expecting our second child to the church’s leadership, they were sincerely joyful. They were also anxious, but that wasn’t expressed as directly.

There were, of course, not only pastoral implications Who would preach? Who would visit? What happens if there is an emergency? There were financial concerns, as well. How much do we pay her? How much will pulpit supply cost?

I sensed that some saw my pregnancy as an inconvenience to the church. Most, though, were jubilant. This pastor, someone joked, is really serious about church growth!

For a church that didn’t know nothin’ about their pastor birthin’ no babies, they rose well to the occasion. The denomination recommended six weeks of paid maternity leave. I was given eight.

After I returned to work, the ladies of the church generously gave me a baby shower, even though showers for a family’s second born weren’t usually done. And, most importantly, the whole congregation “adopted” both of my children.

There were, however, some strange and painful moments that ranged from subtle to outright sexist. One woman worried that I would leave the church after my baby was born. “Sometimes working mothers decide to do that, you know.” True. I wonder if she said the same thing when my predecessor’s wife gave birth to their children. He may have chosen to leave ministry to stay at home with his children.

As the signs of my pregnancy became more and more evident, comments about my body and how I dressed grew more frequent. My breasts were too big, and my blouses were too low cut. My clothes too tightly silhouetted my body. Few of my brothers of the cloth receive comments about their bodies and how they dress; and some of their bodies have changed dramatically due to weight loss and gain.

What stung the most, though, was the small number of visitors at the hospital after my daughter was born. When this topic was discussed at a church leadership retreat about a year later, I was still emotional. If this is how we visit our pastor when she is in the hospital for a good reason, I shudder to think how we visit the person in the pew who is sick or dying, I say.

“You asked for your privacy,” responded one of the leaders. Okay, I conceded a misunderstanding. I just didn’t expect my request to be taken so literally as to keep people away from visiting me and my newborn daughter at the hospital.

“It was just kinda…weird,” says another. “We’ve never had a female pastor before, and there’s lots of different dynamics.”

My guess is that these two congregations are a microcosm for the greater Church. Some things were done well, other things not so much. Sadly, in both cases I experienced my pregnancy and pregnancy loss as events for the church and its pastor to “get through” together. Life and the loss of it are so much bigger.

The Church, I regret to opine, is overall unsure what to do with pregnancy and pregnancy loss in the pulpit. I believe this stems from the fact that (on the whole) the Church still does not know what to do with women in the pulpit. Yes, there have been great advances. But, we still have a long way to go, baby.

About Today’s Guest Blogger

Rev. Angie Mabry-Nauta is a writer and an ordained Minister of Word and Sacrament in the Reformed Church in America (RCA). She served in congregational ministry for six years. A member of the Redbud Writer’s Guild, Angie blogs at “Woman, in Progress…” and on the Church Herald Blog of the RCA. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter @Godstuffwriter.

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 by signing 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: Erin Raffety

I met Micha Boyett at a writing conference this past Spring after recently learning about her blog called Mama Monk that had been really taking off. In Micha I found someone who is deeply thoughtful, gentle, and aware of the challenges parents face with spirituality. If you’ve ever read Mama Monk, you already know that Micha has a powerful writing ministry that is touching so many. Today she writes about her ministry days before she took her “vows” as a blogger…

I stood on Mt. Princeton in 2005, overlooking the valley and the aspens that stretched out miles before me, and I sighed my surrender to God. I had just finished grad school, was newly married and moving soon to Philadelphia, my husband’s hometown. And I’d just traveled with 150 high school students on buses for two days, all the way from New York State to Colorado for camp.

I whispered, “God, I think I’m created for this work. Right here.” Nothing brought me more joy than ministry to middle and high school students. I gave myself to it.

I cried a lot my first year “in ministry.” It turned out that working for a parachurch mission meant devoting one-third of my time to fundraising. In my town, where most men were working in suits and most women were home with their kids, that meant helping to run a golf tournament for men twenty years my senior and asking for a big financial donation from an intimidating male executive over lunch. It meant constant discomfort in my skin.

I wasn’t good at developing volunteer leaders and having hard conversations with them about their choices and gifts. I wanted to avoid conflict at all costs and in doing so, I struggled to be more than a surface-level cheerleader for them. I was not good at managing my area’s finances. I was not good at not crying when faced with all the things I wasn’t good at.

But I was great at relationships. I was fairly good at speaking. And I was awesome at dressing up in spandex and dorky 80’s shorts and leading girls in the Best. Dance. Party. Of. All. Time.

Here’s the thing: I needed to be good at all of it, not simply the relational aspects of the job. But as a woman in a largely male-dominated mission, I struggled with separating my personal weaknesses from the anxiety I felt over my female brain.

I feared that I was bad at left-brained aspects of ministry because I was a woman. In truth, I was bad at it because I was Right-Brained-Micha. Relational connections and silliness and teaching came naturally to me. Administration didn’t.

What I needed was a woman in ministry, twenty years further down the road. I needed a woman to sit down with me and say: This is how to handle yourself in a fundraising setting when there are twenty fifty-year-old men and you. This is how to embrace conflict when you’re a good Southern girl who’s been raised to avoid it. This is how to encounter a room of male staff and release yourself from striving for their approval.

When I think of myself behind the desk staring at numbers or dealing with the male, ragamuffin leader, I think, Oh, I was so miserable in that job. But that’s not true. Half the time in ministry I was actually with people. And I was in love with my work.

I was at the high school volleyball game and driving kids home from the spring play. I was eating at Chili’s again with a table of freshmen girls who were trying to understand how to be Christ followers while living in families that did not support their newly found faith. I was singing to Taylor Swift on the radio with a suburban full of kids ten minutes after sharing with them the story of the cross, the story I believed could alter, was already altering, their lives forever.

Did I fail at ministry?

I find myself asking that question a lot. And then I think about the Bible study I helped lead at 6 am on Friday mornings while my baby ate breakfast at a friend’s house. How with paperback Bibles in our hands, I spoke to that room of sleepy freshmen and sophomores who opened the scripture while simultaneously trying not to fall asleep. And, rarely, I saw in their eyes a love for that passage. I saw in their faces a moment of recognition. They got it. They understood the power of a life marked by Christ.

I didn’t fail.

But I did quit.

Sometimes I think of the older woman who didn’t lead me, who didn’t exist for me, and I ache in fear that she’s just like me. I’m afraid she quit too.

Was I supposed to be That Woman for another girl who is just now hearing God’s deep call to the life of ministry? She is standing on the edge of the mountain and looking over the valley and saying: “Yes, God, I will give my life to this. Whatever the cost.”

I am praying for that girl. I’m praying that when the cost is administrative anxiety; when the cost is time away from her spouse or uncertainty about her kids; when the cost is fear of conflict: I’m praying she will be brave enough to find a woman to whisper that flourishing in ministry is possible. I’m praying she will persevere and be the woman who speaks hope to all the women who come after her.

About Today’s Guest Blogger

Micha Boyett (pronounced "MY-cah") is a youth minister turned stay at home mom trying to make sense of vocation and season and place in the midst of her third cross-country move in three years. A native Texan, she is mama to two blonde boys and wife to a very tall Philadelphian. She blogs at Patheos about motherhood, monasticism, and the sacred in the everyday. Follow her on Twitter at @michaboyett or find her on Facebook here.

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 by signing 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: Angie Mabry-Nauta

Today’s guest blogger Deborah Berruti has some fresh insights into women in ministry that she gained while serving as a missionary…

I don’t work in a church. I was never ordained. I’m not a Bible scholar. Not even a Sunday School teacher. No. I am an Occupational Therapist; I serve in a hospital at the southern edge of the Sahara desert.

And I’m a woman in ministry.

Upon first seeing our village, visitors often gasp “This must have been what it was like when JESUS was on earth!” Usually I chuckle “Well, I’m sure if Jesus came to Galmi today, He’d say ‘This is what it was like when MOSES was on earth!’ Minus the motorcycles, cell phones and plastic bags, of course!”

So much of the backdrop of my new life resembles The Holy Bible: Pop-Up-Book Edition. Women gathered around the well, drawing water. Boys racing donkeys down the road. The sandy, rocky terrain speckled with mud-brick homes lacking electricity. Men congregating to sit and discuss while women busy themselves with the responsibilities of the house. Children gathered at the place of worship, memorizing verses of their holy book. Men marrying multiple wives, and in turn, jealousy and competition within the family.

I look outside my window and the cultural context of the Bible walks by.

It’s been over a decade since I completed a year of Bible school. It was an institution that prided itself on the depth of its fundamental tradition and literal translation of the Scriptures. A place where the most common pick-up line was “You’re going to make a great pastor’s wife!”

Here, I was taught that a woman’s role in ministry was not based on gifting, but rather gender and marital status. Aspiring to be a children’s Sunday School teacher earned an ‘A’, but to set ones sights high and snag a Man-in-the-Ministry, well, that was the gold star. Because, after all, that is the roll to which God had called us women: silent service.

By the end of that academic calendar, 1 Corinthians 14:34 was my arch nemesis. This verse had been used against me countless times: you must be silent.

But I’ve never really been one to do what I’m told . . . so I went into “full-time ministry”. I signed up with a mission and moved to Niger, the forgotten place on the map. But it is here where the context of the Bible came alive.

Living outside of my own culture has reminded me that we each examine the Word of God through our own lens, and making a home in Niger has only magnified mine.

Several months ago, our hospital’s HIV/AIDS Clinic held its first community education outreach. The chiefs and influential women of several villages were invited to come and learn about how this deadly disease is transmitted and can be prevented.

The chiefs occupied three short benches off to the left, the rest of the room was crowded with older women. These ladies out numbered the chiefs about 5 to 1, and apart from the obvious inequality of the demographic, what hit me hardest was that so few of the women were listening.

They seemed to be huddled in groups, whispering. Some women were perched, showing their back to the speaker; others fiddled with the hem of their dress while listening to a neighbor chatter instead of the man providing the education.

I was standing in the back of the room watching this scene unfold, when another missionary leaned in and said “If you ask me, this is what Paul was referring to.”

I stared blankly at her. She elaborated, “When he said women should be silent in the church; sitting and listening is a new skill for these women. They don’t know how to sit and be silent. It was the same way in the Bible. The men attended the synagogues; the men were educated. Women were home, talking as they worked together.”

As an educated woman from the West, I had never thought about like that. In this context, girls didn’t go to school. Women didn’t attend services.

When examined from that perspective, I saw that Paul was offering a social commentary, not about a woman’s role in ministry, but rather that women should show respect for the teaching of God’s word. He was suggesting that during the service was not the time for women to discuss amongst themselves, rather each should ask her husband. He would have been learning in the synagogue his whole life. But, just as they do at church in Galmi, women would have been seated separately from the men, so she’d have to wait to ask until they got home.

And through this lens, I also see that Paul was offering a revolutionary counter-cultural idea: women were not just welcomed in the church, they were encouraged to come and participate.

About Today’s Guest Blogger

Deborah Berruti is an Occupational Therapist working at the SIM mission hospital in Galmi, Niger Republic, where she has trail blazed the new department of rehabilitation and is implementing auxiliary services such as a prosthetics clinic and center for the fabrication of post-burn compression garments.  She is passionate about serving the poor, photography and a great cup of coffee.

Deb keeps a record of her many misadventures on her blog, Avec Deux Mains(www.dberruti.blogspot.com) and can be followed on twitter, @DebBerruti.

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 by signing 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: Micha Boyett

I admire Mihee Kim-Kort because she has a pretty fascinating book on the horizon (see below for more), but even more than that, she writes and ministers while raising twins! Oh, and she has another one on the way. She literally has her hands full, and so I’m grateful that she’s taken the time to write this guest post:

Silence.

It’s a universal expectation for women – lauded by men and if absent, it is criticized by both men and women. For some reason, it’s an easy attribute to embrace and cultivate, and that makes sense because to raise one’s voice, whether in response to some injustice or simply to clarify or honestly express one’s feelings…it requires more than breathing from one’s diaphragm to get some good volume and project. Something much deeper needs to be coaxed out.

Growing up in a Korean home I saw my mom raise her voice – to me when I tortured my brother too much, to my father when he did or said something to make her frustrated, to the dishes when she got so sick of everything. But this was the only time. And it was the only time I really saw any Korean woman speak up and out.

I’d never seen a woman preacher in the pulpit in real life, and even cringed at the thought of it. My home church was Presbyterian, but a traditional and conservative community. Women could sing solos, but not read Scripture or offer the congregational prayer on Sunday mornings.

And even now, post-seminary, post-ordination, post-years-of-ministry-under-my-belt, although I have seen many women preachers, I have only seen one Asian American woman preach from the pulpit, and that was my current mentor, Rev. Dr. Grace Ji-Sun Kim, an associate professor at Moravian Theological Seminary.

I’ve always wondered if something about my relationship with my mother was a key to this lack and struggle.

One of the first heart-to-hearts my mom and I had was on a road trip she and I took together alone while I was in seminary. My parents were living in South Dakota at the time, and I had to go to my home presbytery for a meeting. It was about a six- hour drive from where they were in Sioux Falls, and we decided that we would do it together so I would not have to make the trip by myself. My father could stay and go to his own meetings.

We started off. Soon we discovered we had been going the wrong way for a good hour, so we had to turn back around. This stressed me out. I cannot recall what triggered it, but we had an argument where we were full- out shouting at each other.

I honestly do not even remember what we were yelling at each other. I had never responded to her in that way. For a moment, I heard her in my voice— that loud, harsh Korean woman screech.

After we had calmed down and apologized to each other, we began to talk about what it was like for her in the early years of her marriage, and it all came spilling out. Stories about her original plan to come to the United States to become an art teacher and get her elementary education certification, her sisters convincing her to get married first, her excitement and fear of having children so quickly after their marriage . . . and how she had to put all her plans on hold when they first got here.

They never got a chance to leave the ground.

Though she may periodically have regrets, she has said she is thankful that she poured all she could into us so that we could live happily and healthily. After all, someone did have to stay with the kids, keep the house clean, and have the meals ready.

Someone had to give it all up. Someone had to give a story and a dream to me.

When I was in seminary, I reflected often on her story, which is inextricably tied up in mine. And the more I thought about the struggle of being an Asian woman in North America, particularly the US, the more I wanted to give voice to it. I wrote the following for a paper:

paper margins

before beginning the lesson on America’s story
the teacher called attention to the class
and held up a piece of yellow construction paper
next to the soft underside of her arm
and said, “See, she’s not really yellow.”

according to the teacher, the white teacher
says this model girl is not really yellow
just similar to yellow they say

this model I suppose for all minorities
so the other minorities end up hating her
she’s not a model for the majority
since she sits somewhere in the middle
the very middle of the class
her last name is Lee or Kim
she is always in the middle somewhere
surrounded by people

and yet, inside she feels like no one is familiar
everyone else is foreign
but she knows she is really on the margins
these same notebook paper margins
on which she doodles with a
bright crayola absentmindedly
daydreaming not about paper cranes or ghost tigers
but about Johnny Depp, bicycles with pink streamers
and the Smurfs and the Brady Bunch

when the teacher is reading from
some book about the history of the people around her
something about pilgrims, slavery, wars, the Great Depression
it is supposed to be her history, too
but no one looks at her and thinks that
this yellow girl belongs in the same story
this story of America.

this not- really- yellow girl is not really anything
and it is worse because not only is she yellow
she is a girl, so that both the yellow and white
and other crayola- colored people tell her
how to be a girl

a girl is this and that
and sometimes it sounds the same
for the yellow girl and the white girl
the brown girl, the black girl
sitting next to her in class but mainly
in this story she hears a girl
is not better than a boy
like when she was born some wished
she was not a girl but a boy
but since you are here anyway, okay
these are the places for the girl:
be in the kitchen, in the garden, at the piano or violin and
in front of the washer and dryer, you girl are
a baby- machine, too
did I mention in the kitchen?

not really barefoot because
your feet are in bindings
not just your feet but the world inside you
but then, wait forget the kitchen
until you are married, here in America
you, yellow girl, go to an Ivy League
do math and business
become a doctor or lawyer or engineer

and prove yourself our little
yellow girl, prove to us that you are a model
human being
that you belong in this story of America.

This felt like a beginning – for me to discover my voice in this struggle, and a chance to live into it – live into my voice, live into the shared struggle of Asian American women’s silence, and live into the vocation of not only speaking up and out, but also preaching and proclaiming God’s justice and grace in the world.

About Today’s Guest Blogger

Mihee Kim-Kort is an ordained minister in PCUSA. She has served two congregations as an associate pastor and is currently a full-time mother to toddler twins (with one on the way) and a part-time staff person for the Presbyterian collegiate ministry IUKIRK. She blogs at First Day Walking (www.miheekimkort.com) and tweets @miheekimkort. Her first book, Making Paper Cranes: Toward an Asian American Feminist Theology is due out in November 2012.

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.

Contributions Welcome: Contact Ed to pitch your post idea in 2-4 sentences.

You can stay updated on the latest post each week by signing 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: Deborah Berruti

I have been deeply encouraged by the writing ministry of Tanya Marlow. She has a unique, difficult path that she is walking, and I’m delighted to have her guest posting today:

It was 1999.  I was sitting in a room with a tear-stained girl my own age and we were asking each other the question,
‘How do you know if you’re called to ministry?’

We were at a retreat in the UK designed to help university students to think about whether they were called into full-time ministry.  At that time, I think we were probably skipping the seminar we were meant to be at, because we were so disheartened by what we’d been hearing.

By and large, the guys had been taken off and mentored at the retreat, and encouraged to go straight from university to Christian ministry and prayerfully explore being a pastor. The message to the guys was: ‘The harvest is plentiful, the workers are few.  If you haven’t got a good reason not to do it, you should do it.’

In contrast, the female leaders who were there were giving a very different message to the women:

‘There aren’t very many opportunities for women in full-time ministry.  By all means do a year in a church, but it’s probably more realistic to think about a secular job afterwards.  There’s plenty of opportunity to serve in your churches at the weekend if you get a job like being a school teacher. Or you could marry a pastor – that’s a great way of being involved in ministry.’

They were honest, at least.  There are fewer options for the women than the men, and at times it can feel very competitive for those few opportunities that exist.

But they had crushed our spirits.  I sat with my friend as we summarized our experience of the retreat,
‘They’re telling the men to be ministers and the women to get married.  This sucks.’

She paused and asked me, ‘Maybe I’m not called to full-time ministry. How do you think you really know if you’re called?’

I didn’t know what to say. So I asked, ‘What do you love to do? What are you most passionate about?’

She paused, and then uttered the most remarkable statement, "What I really love doing is dialoguing in Arabic to Muslim refugee women and telling them about my hope in Jesus."

I just stared back, open-mouthed.  It was just so specific.  "And that DOESN’T sound like a calling to you?"

It was her turn to be astonished. "Isn’t that what everyone wants to do?"

That’s just it.  Those things that so excite us and energize us that we think we couldn’t possibly ask to get paid for doing, because surely everyone in the world wants to do it too  – they may just be the whisper and direction that God is calling us to, because He has uniquely put that on our hearts.

*******

I often think back to that conversation we had as a turning point. Despite the discouragement we’d had from the leaders at the weekend, we’d given each other hope. We both left determining to explore full-time ministry further.

If I could travel back in time, these are the things I would tell my younger self:

1. Start with your passion…

We can tie ourselves in knots wondering if God is calling us, and I think many women are still waiting needlessly for ‘permission’ or confirmation to do what God made them to do.  If God has put it on your heart to serve Him, if God has given you gifts to use in His kingdom, that sounds like calling to me.

2. Cheer one another on, even if no-one else has cheered you…

Sometimes, sadly, it is the women who are more discouraging to each other than the men.  It can be tempting to judge one another harshly and be competitive rather than generous-spirited.  Resolve to be encouragers of one another as women, and find those who will encourage us.

3. Do ministry in a way that fits you…

I didn’t get ordained, and I didn’t become a school teacher, (though ironically I did wind up married to a pastor. I know, I know. In my defense, he wasn’t a pastor when I married him…)

I didn’t want to lead a church, but I did want to be involved in full-time Bible teaching, evangelism, and pastoral ministry.  I also didn’t want to just be seen as the ‘buy-one-get-one-free’ appendage to my husband.

I was pessimistic and thought that there wouldn’t be opportunities, but God provided me with exactly the right jobs and ministry positions for my gifts and passions as I evolved as a person and as a minister.  Since I graduated I haven’t had a ‘secular’ job, and I am blessed to say that I have been paid for all the ministry positions I have held.

As for my friend? She went with her passion – she has been working in the Arab world as an academic and evangelist since graduation.

The harvest is more plentiful, and the workers fewer than you might think.

Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore to send out workers – women and men who want to give their lives to building His kingdom.  And maybe, just maybe, it’s you who’s being called to answer that prayer.

About Today’s Guest Blogger

Tanya Marlow was formerly in Christian ministry for a decade and was Associate Director and lecturer for a university-level Bible training course. Now she reads Bible stories to her toddler as she learns what it means to be a mum who is housebound with an autoimmune illness. She blogs at Thorns and Gold (http://tanyamarlow.com) on the Bible, suffering, and the messy edges of life.

Follow Tanya on Twitter @Tanya_Marlow or like her Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/TanyaMarlowThornsAndGold )

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.

Contributions Welcome: Contact Ed to pitch your post idea in 2-4 sentences.

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: