
We’re welcoming Sarah Styles Bessey of www.emergingmummy.com today for the first guest post in the Women in Ministry Series:
There is my mother, of course. Can any woman’s story start without her mama, her first woman she watches? So I watched her, I took her freedom and confidence, her love for that well-thumbed Bible, into my bones. I can tell you how she grew up without really knowing much about this God stuff so when she somehow decided to take us to church, she came to Sunday school with me, passing out crayons, just so that she could listen and learn about her beloved Jesus, captivated. How she found herself in mothering us and found God there, too. In my later years, I watched her step out with my dad, gathering university girls, new parents, young couples, and friends around them, how she easily remembered their details, taught during home groups, cried and laughed, placing her hands on their backs to pray life into them, she feels like they are her family, I know.
Then there are the women in my churches. Because of the nature of our post-Christian society, we don’t do the mega-church thing too often here. So our communities tend to be a bit smaller, a bit more intentional, most of us are there because we want to be, cultural Christianity long since abandoned by all of our peers and parents. And in every Sunday service I attended as a kid and a teenager, there were women. They prophesied easily. They lead ministries. They preached. Taught. Read Scripture. Sang. Ministered. We sent them out as missionaries, single, married, far away from us, their smiling pictures tacked up to a corkboard in the foyer, a string of yarn connecting their pictures to push pins of their locations on the map.
Our pastor was usually a plural form.
I can tell you about Janet, whose husband was on staff with my own husband at our church. I was 22 when we moved there and, let me be perfectly clear, I was a know-it-all with a chip on my shoulder. This was no two-for-one deal, I huffed, I have a career, too, you know, and I am no pastor. It was Janet and the other gracious staff wives like Natalie, Bonnie, Sylvia, Jessamy, that revealed to me that I was a bit of an idiot, desperate for Jesus still. These women helped me to understand my own callings, my own vocation, to stop thinking so defensively, to learn generosity of grace. These women showed me the truth of life lived in ministry, they pastored me in the best ways possible, over time, gently praying, dismantling my brick walls by laughing, serving the least of these with joy, showing me a better way to live, forgiving easily. They taught me how to live a seamless life, all of my work an offering.
I can tell you about Pastor Helen here in Surrey, of her more than 30 years of, yes, “official” ministry. I can tell you about her daughter, Angela, my age, ferociously preaching in her knee-high leather boots on a steel stage. I can tell you about Idelette who turned her passion for stories and women into a life-giving movement worldwide. I can tell you about Nancy who started a small home for girls in the grips of life-controlling issues and decades later, hundreds of women are set free and transformed. I can tell you about Musu, Juliet, Nicola, Rachelle, Megan all working at the women’s residential home where I work, too, here in Canada in the daily trench work of saving lives. I can tell you about Tracy who leads worship with passionate abandon, jumping and preaching and calling out to God every Sunday in that elementary school gym where we gather together.
I can also write a line for the good men around us. The ones who support their wives as they are supported, the ones who serve as they are served. The men who listen when a woman speaks and can easily receive wisdom from her. Men who are not threatened by a woman who leads, who affirm friendship and respect and mutuality in their marriages, their work, their parenting. Good men, true men, strong to the core and holy.
Oh, can I tell you stories about women in ministry. And the reason I can tell you stories is because women have been in ministry, in all ways, in my world without question for a long time now. We left behind a lot of those gender-debates that wear a soul out and just got on with the business of loving God and loving people.
There is life here in the wide open spaces. When you stop waiting for permission from anyone but God, you’d be surprised how many of us there are here, waiting for you.
About Today’s Blogger
Sarah is a writer and non-profit marketing director. At her personal blog, Emerging Mummy she grapples with spirituality, theology, mothering, politics and almost everything else you’re not supposed to discuss in polite company. She lives in British Columbia, Canada with her husband and three tinies.
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.
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, read here.
Next Week’s Blogger: Jamie Wright (Jamie the Very Worst Missionary)