:: In.a.Mirror.Dimly ::

Today’s guest post is by Jaimie Bowman:

This Mother’s Day I was asked to preach at my church, and the night before I realized that I was quite nervous. My mind rushed back to the first time I ever preached on a Sunday morning, which was when I was 22 years old.

The service was set to begin but we could not find the pastor anywhere.  The worship team was missing two members, a husband and wife, and it was glaringly obvious that they were somewhere with the pastor and that something was wrong.

After about 15 minutes, they rushed to the stage, faces beet red.  Something in my gut told me that it was about me, but I pushed those insecurities aside and preached for my life.  The fire that had been shut up in my bones for the past few years came out, and I felt empowered like never before.  I found out later there had been a heated confrontation about me preaching that morning.  Immediately after worship was finished, the husband and wife left the service and soon after decided to leave the church.

That wasn’t the first time my "womanhood" caused an issue.  When I was 15 years old, I announced to my parents that I felt called to the ministry. My dad, being a pastor of a conservative church that did not support women in ministry, did not feel the need to change his position on account of his daughter.  When I was 21, I was almost afraid to tell them I was becoming a Licensed Minister, but I did and we have never really spoken about it since.

Over the years, these kinds of obstacles did not seem to fade.  It seemed like wherever I went, minding my own business, other people felt like it was their business too.  People tried to "set me straight," discipline me, and put me back into the cocoon that I had just emerged from. I didn’t understand why they were so mad, taking up so much of their time trying to fix me.

The hardest part of the situations that I faced was that I was just trying to obey God.   Whenever I preached, I sensed the anointing of God like never before. The words came easy, like honey from my mouth, and my own gender just….never occurred to me.  I was too busy preparing for messages to notice what everyone else saw as the elephant in the room.  I wasn’t trying to usurp anyone’s authority, or demand my rights, or kick down any doors – I was just trying to be obedient.

Thankfully I had many wonderful people pour life into me during my early ministry years since I went to a Christian university that fully supported women in ministry.  Yet, outside of that safety net, I found the church to be a dangerous place.  I became one of those women who asked God, “Why did you make me a woman?” and pleaded with Him to take this calling away from me if it wasn’t from Him. 

Yet the burden only became stronger.

What surprised me the most was that the majority of the objections came from the women, not the men. It was the men who had spoken life into me, who had urged me to use my gifts, who had prayed for God to open the doors for me. The women often were the ones who seemed most upset and more intent on setting me straight.

I have learned that women can either be each other’s biggest supporters or biggest enemies.  Today it is my aim to help other women feel supported and encouraged in their calling.  I recently started the South Bay Network for Women in Ministry, inviting women from our area to come together for a time of fellowship and prayer.  Nine women joined together at my church, and there was such an excitement in the air.  Most of us had never met before, but we became fast friends. 

I heard story after story of women passionate about serving their God, yet their greatest obstacle seemed to be the church itself – the church they so desperately wanted to serve.  Some of these women were broken, feeling discouraged, overlooked, and underpaid. However, there was a silent hope in the room – a hope that, as we all come together, we can be the support one another’s needs, even when we cannot find it in our own churches.  

As women in ministry find one another, there is renewed hope.  We have a hope that as we are faithful to use our gifts and not give up, that God will be pleased.  We are not here to fight. We are not here to take over anyone’s positions. We are simply here to serve God with our gifts. 

Instead of pouring my energy into proving people wrong, I just want to pour my energy into encouraging other women in ministry, to let them know that they are not alone.

And that Mother’s Day sermon that I was so worried about?  One older gentleman came up to me and said, "Well, I have to tell you, I didn’t think it would be that good coming from a woman, but I was wrong."  I smiled.

Today’s Guest Blogger

Jaimie Bowman is a minister to whomever needs ministering to.  Married to her husband-pastor for 13 years, together they have two cute boys, ages 5 and 7.  As a speaker and writer, Jaimie longs to connect with and encourage other leaders.  Although she lives in Southern California, she does not have a tan and does not go to the beach for fun.  You can often find her drinking coffee and writing about leadership at www.jaimiebowman.com, or about motherhood at her personal blog The Wonder Years.  Jaimie is a Licensed Minister and holds a Master’s Degree in Church Leadership.

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: Tammy Nischan

When I started attending church, it served as a  lifeline for me. I found friends. I met people who believed the same things I’d been processing from the Bible. It didn’t take long for me to start showing up to volunteer.

I didn’t need much convincing. Church was where I made all of my friends, so if they were doing something at the church, I’d show up there as well. Along the way, I made a crucial mistake. I began to equate work in the church building with serving God.

I’ve served just about everywhere in the church, and it’s clear to me that a building does not make something holy.

That’s such a no brainer in so many ways, but it’s an easy trap to fall into. I want to believe that I’m doing something big and significant, and oftentimes I look to the church to provide that big, significant thing.

Sometimes I tried to slap a churchy veneer onto stuff I was doing at church and label it as a “ministry.” In reality, I was just feeding the internal church system, solidifying my place in my community.

The problem with serving the church system is that it’s not necessarily the same as serving other people or God’s Kingdom. That’s what’s so maddening about this thing called ministry. It’s confusing to the point that we can hardly be sure we’re talking about the same thing sometimes.

So far as I can tell, ministry is all about drawing from God’s love and power in our lives in order to serve others—becoming the incarnation of Jesus in our churches and wider communities. There were plenty of times when I just took on “tasks” at the church and tried to use them as my badges for belonging.

Just as we can treat church membership as a kind of employment, we can also use our “ministries” as our measures for belonging to a community. If you have a “job,” then you belong.

It only gets more maddening to talk about ministry because we can also fill our schedules with “ministry” that is all focused on doing stuff inside of our church buildings. While most of these ministries are good things, we face a struggle to balance the good with the best.

I’ve noticed over the years that serving primarily within the church creates these fiefdoms where different folks become really possessive—like employees at a job. The tables have to be put back a certain way. The kitchen needs to be put into a particular order. The chairs in the sanctuary have to be angled properly. The pastor preached too long. The song list didn’t have enough hymns. The list goes on.

I list many of these items because I’ve thought or said some of them at one point or another. The best thing for me was to give away my time to people outside of the church, to stop consuming my ministry time with “in-reach.”

I could be wrong, but the more I served in the church, the more control I wanted to exercise over the church system and programs. There are healthy ways to serve inside of the church, but the thing about serving others outside of the church is that it takes your focus away from all of the minutiae of the church organization. It’s a job relocation program.

Serving those outside of the church is also healthy because Christians are “sent” people. Jesus wanted us to go out. If our churches are imploding over factions and fights over the service format, sports leagues, bake sales, Sunday school classes, or whatever else, perhaps it’s time to ask how much time we’re investing in the people outside of our churches.

I’ve heard stories about families that show up early to set up chairs for church. They pray over the chairs as they set them up. That is a ministry.

I’ve also become very busy and consumed with all that I have to do in the church, failing to think twice about whether I was serving God, serving others, or just trying to fit in.

When we talk about getting involved in a ministry at church, motivations are a murky territory. When we belong to a Christian community, it’s natural to pitch in and serve others. However, before jumping at a ministry opening, I suggest asking a few questions first:

1. Am I basing my belonging on having a job?

2. Do I sense a calling to use my God-given gifts in this way?

3. Is God calling me to serve others outside of the church?

I hope and pray that our churches will have all of the help they need to thrive internally and as groups of sent believers. We need both. When all we have is a church organization to work in and to “protect,” community can crumble. The more time we spend working together to both support one another and to help those outside of our community, I suspect we’ll enjoy a lot more health.

I hope that I’ll never again fight for control of a church ministry or system. There’s too much to do in our community. There are too many people in my church who need help.

Before I invest in a “task,” I hope I can first commit to the people who I’ll be serving. A task is a lonely thing to serve. When I serve people, I find the life of God.

When author Nicole Unice signed up for the women in ministry series, it just so happened that she could pick a date that coincided with the release of her first book: She’s Got Issues. That’s not to be confused with the sequel I hope she’ll write some day: She’s Got Tissues—hope for people with allergies. Whether or not she has tissues, Nicole has a story to tell, and I’m honored that she’s sharing it with us today:

In 2000, I was sure God called me to ministry. I was so sure about it, I traded a full scholarship at a local graduate school for a five-hour commute to seminary. With blank notebook and eager mind, I set off for what I imagined to be an amazing life in the church. I had never met a woman in ministry, but I was undeterred.

And then I took my first class. And I was a 23 year old female surrounded by men, professional forty-year old men. Pastors. I loved every word of the teaching but then a few of those men, the pastors, would speak up. They would quote bible verses to each other and talk about theology and they would sound like Pharisees. I would want to raise my hand and say, “excuse me, pastors, there is a professor here who actually has things to teach.” But instead I stayed quiet, and stared around that classroom and stretched my five-hour-commute legs and thought, God must be wondering how I heard him so wrong.

So I did what good Christian females do, and switched into the counseling program. There I was safe. I was with almost all women and a few quiet men, and the kindest and bravest professors who were both pastors and counselors, who taught me what it meant to be present in pain, to be a healing voice and touch, and to stop trying to cure when all I’m given is care.

And then I did what married women do. I got pregnant. I went underground and forgot about the call of 2000. I kept learning, but this time about childbirth and ear infections and how to parent with my husband and how to root deeply into community. And for a few hours each week, I traded my yoga pants for khaki pants and unlocked my counseling office door and received people. And it was ministry. And it was good.

I volunteered in women’s ministry and began to teach and a fire was kindled in my soul. Care was important, but counseling was never what I thought I would do in seminary. And then, nine long years after the call, I sat at a women’s leadership conference and listened to a woman preach with fire and with femininity and it was like nothing I had heard in any church and I began to cry. And I asked/shouted/cried to God:

Why didn’t you make me a man if you wanted me to pastor?

Why didn’t I stay in the pastoral program if you wanted me to teach?

Why won’t you bring me a woman mentor if you want me to make it in ministry?

And slowly, out of prayers of honesty and pain, what seemed wrong, God began to make right. I began to teach and to lead, to slowly integrate all I had learned in counseling with all I had experienced in ministry. I began to speak out with confidence, using the wisdom of years of listening to people behind my closed office door. And instead of one person listening to me “preach” with passion about how God loved her and listened to her, I taught groups.

Although I thought He had forgotten me, He never had. And although I thought my degree was wasted, it never was. And although I thought I was on the slow track, the mommy track, the wrong track, he was only shaping my path, using the twists and turns to smooth out the rough edges of my soul, to embrace myself as a leader and a follower, a challenger and a nurturer, a teacher and a listener.

The slow track pressed me to surrender, and I fought it. Surrendering meant God’s way of ministry, whether that involved a business card and an office or not. Surrendering meant it was not my job to change everyone’s mind about women in leadership. Because the way anyone in ministry changes the world is by looking like Jesus. It’s with gentleness, humility, and kindness. It’s with patience. It’s with a meekness that knows when to be strong and when to be silent.

These are not easy to come by for natural-born leaders, both men and women. But when I look in the rearview mirror of life, I don’t see one mistake. God used every bend in the long road to prepare me to fulfill the call of 2000. It’s 12 years later, and He’s right on time.

About This Week’s Blogger

Nicole Unice is a ministry leader at Hope Church in Richmond, VA. She teaches in a variety of capacities within the church. Her first book, She’s Got Issues (Tyndale) released this month. You can find out more about the book at http://www.ShesGotIssuesBook.com or follow her on Twitter: @nicoleunice.

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: Harriet Congdon

Today’s guest post is by Kathy Escobar. When I think about a leading female pastor and and writer, Kathy is certainly at the top of my list.

Years ago, if you looked up the definition of "Christian Good Girl", I swear my picture would be right next to it. I was so good at being good! I knew how to keep the peace. I knew how to give people what they want. I know how to put my needs last. I knew how to say all the right things at the right time to sound really spiritual. I knew how to be nice.

Although I was not raised in a Christian home, when I turned my life over to Christ and joined his team, I found that all of the people-pleasing, peace-making, good-girl skills I had learned as a child of an alcoholic raised in chaos worked perfectly in the spiritual realm as well.

I earned all kinds of praise in the churches I was in for my good-girl-ness. Kathy’s so nice. Kathy’s such a team player. Kathy’s so easy to get along with.

None of these things were hard for me to do. They were like reflexes, a natural and immediate instinct to assess the situation, and then adjust to keep the peace and maintain whatever status quo needed to be maintained.

Over the years, though, as I started to do some personal healing work and begin to look at the unhealthy patterns in my life, something profound began to shift. I started to tell the truth about my own story. I started to not worry so much about what people thought. I started to advocate for others who couldn’t use their voices yet. I started to disagree. I started to use my voice and stir the pot about change in 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."

In my situation, the painful silence lead to me losing a pastoral ministry job that I loved. The reality was that I was just not "good" enough, submissive enough, to be part of that system anymore. Honestly, if I could have switched back to the Good-Girl fast enough, I might have been able to save my job. Temporarily.

But I was too far gone. My soul and passion had started to come alive and I couldn’t turn back.

As difficult as that season was for me personally, professionally, and spiritually, I am so grateful for it because I learned the most important lesson of my life as a leader:

Well-behaved women won’t change the church.

We just won’t.

Well-behaved women will keep the wheels spinning on systems that keep working, keep growing, keep moving. We will do good and honorable work that matters and helps people and makes a difference in their communities.

But we won’t change the church.

Some people think the church doesn’t need changing; they’re fine with the way things are because it works for them. But I think there a lot more of us out here than even we ourselves know–passionate women who believe the body of Christ needs much more than a face-lift to become all it’s meant to be.

Yeah, well-behaved women will not change the church.

Instead, change in the church will come from not-so-well-behaved women who are willing to risk their pride, reputations, and "being liked" to stand for what God is stirring up in their hearts.

Change in the church will come when women who are called to lead, lead, even when others don’t think they can or should.

Change in the church will come when women refuse to squelch their gifts and begin to unleash them without asking for permission first.

Change in the church will come when women passionately follow Jesus, not systems-made-in-his-name-that-do-not-reflect-his-image.

Change in the church will come when women bravely use their voices, power, and any influence they have to inspire others to be brave, too.

I admit, it’s still sometimes hard for me to not be the good-girl. I miss the safety. I miss the praise. I miss the security, even if it was false. Some days I wish I could make nice like I used to because it was so much easier then.

But the Kingdom of God was never about easy. It was never about comfort. It was never about maintaining the status-quo. It was never about playing nice.

The Kingdom of God Jesus called us to participate in creating–here, now–isn’t well-behaved.

That’s reason enough for us not to be, either.

About Today’s Blogger

Kathy Escobar co-pastors The Refuge, an eclectic faith community dedicated to those on the margins of life and faith in North Denver.  A speaker, spiritual director, group facilitator and advocate, Kathy is passionate about healing community, equality, justice, and change in the church.  

She has written several books, including the most recent, Down We Go: Living into the Wild Ways of Jesus, which is centered on cultivating incarnational community in a wide range of contexts.  She has a Masters degree in Management and Organizational Development and a certificate in Evangelical Spiritual Guidance from Denver Seminary and blogs regularly about life and faith at www.kathyescobar.com. Kathy lives in Arvada, Colorado with her husband and 5 children.

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: Jessica Goudeau

While attending our new, struggling church in Connecticut, we regularly faced the possibility of the church disbanding or at least going broke. Part of me hated the thought of finally finding a church and losing it.

I’d waited seven long years for this church. Would God really take it away from me now?

The more I thought and prayed about this, the more I realized that I didn’t care about this church. To put my thoughts more precisely, I was 100% loyal to the gathering of people, but I could live without the organization: the name, the logo, the meeting space, and the pens—I could manage never again seeing the 10,000 pens that a previous staff member had ordered.

On one hand, I was ready to give everything I had to this church. On the other hand, I was ready to start listing all of its assets on Craig’s List.

It was probably the best thing for me.

As I wrestled with my past disappointments with church and the hope our new community represented, the threat of losing it helped me keep a better perspective. I needed to belong to a community of people joined by God, not to a nonprofit organization.

When the people serve the organization and not God, one another, and the world, we create a barrier that may prevent us from belonging to God’s community. We become employees, of a sort, for an organization. This tension only becomes greater the larger a church becomes and the more assets it owns.

This taps into some of my issues I’m still working through with church.

On the one hand, I have no problem with investing in processes that help the community function better. For a season I helped update the church website and started an e-mail newsletter.

On the other hand, I have long resisted membership classes and any form of membership.

Perhaps my idealism lingers, but I still can’t stomach the thought of sitting in a class that explains the basic theology and practices I need in order to be a part of a community. What are the creeds for? I still imagine that the things discussed in these classes should be part of every Sunday and embodied at small group meetings and service projects.

If I need to be “taught” that my church values serving others, then what are we actually doing each week? Are we serving others?

The thought of formalized, hoop-jumping, class attending church membership still strikes me as a waste of time. I’m all for making a formal declaration that I’m committed to worshipping and serving with a group of people, but why do we need membership’s boundaries between insiders and outsiders?

The moment we create members and non-members, we’ve just created a potentially large barrier to belonging to a community. I know that the church has historically had a rigorous membership process, and I’m all for discipling and teaching new Christians, but I bristle against formalizing it and labeling people.

I’ve always tried to walk this line where I want to be fiercely committed to a community of believers where I belong while never adding anything that could put up a barrier between myself and anyone in my community.

Perhaps I’m an extremist here. I certainly don’t condemn anyone who believes in church membership or who has taken a membership class. I don’t want to make this a moral matter.

I just really, really don’t want to attend a ten week class that somehow magically makes me belong in a community. A class can’t do that.

The more I reflect on belonging to Christian community, the more I notice obstacles that we have created on our own. It’s hard enough to belong in a church. Why make it harder?

I know some churches that won’t allow people to serve in ministries without becoming a member, and that’s where I really bristle. Such a policy tells me that buying into the organization itself is more important than the ties that God has created among us through the work of his Son and the indwelling Spirit.

I could be wrong. I don’t know. I just know that the churches where “buying in” to the church’s way of doing things became a big obstacle. It wasn’t enough to profess the same creeds. I needed to profess the same vision statement and values.

That doesn’t strike me as a way to belong. That’s a way to become an employee. When an organization’s goals and values overshadow the work of God among us, belonging will be tough, if not impossible for many of us.

Jesus came to break down barriers, and therefore I’m always suspicious of any barrier we create before people can truly “belong” to our Christian communities.

Years ago, we used to attend a rural church. Naturally, the hunters ended up together.

When we moved to an urban setting, all of the cyclists shifted their chairs toward one another.

Sometimes these groups form naturally. Other times they arise because they’ve been imposed on us.

We’re frequently broken down into marketing segments by businesses for the sake of selling us products, and it’s not uncommon for churches to do the same. We naturally lean toward affinity groups and congregate around common points such as age, hobbies, beliefs, or even which service time we prefer.

Churches follow demographics, trends, traditions, prejudices, and just about any other way people define themselves. Sometimes these trends emerge naturally, while other times churches work hard to make these distinctions extremely stark.

With all of these ways to slice and dice people into groups, should we be surprised when it’s hard to find a church where we feel completely comfortable—where we feel like we fit in perfectly?

Whether we welcome affinity groups or we try to fight them through building generationally integrated small groups, there are real challenges to community and belonging.

When I tried to find Christian community again, I had no idea where to start. How could I find a place to belong? When I used to think about belonging in a community, I could only see:

• Our backgrounds are too diverse.
• Our experiences are too many.
• Our outlooks are too limited.
• Our wounds are too deep.
• Our commitments are too powerful.
• Our fears are too great.
• Our boundaries too many.

Three years after returning to church, I have a bit more perspective on that Sunday morning where we gave organized church another shot. It was so hard, so very hard to park our car, and walk into a building filled with the grins that every church visitor gets—grins that are rarely ever followed by an introduction or meaningful conversation.

I’d seen these grins at other churches we had visited during our seven year sojourn outside of a church. The lack of action that followed those grins told me: “We’re glad to see you, but please stay the hell away from our personal space.”

That’s what most church visitors see. That’s what I’ve seen too often as a church visitor. I’m sure I’ve given out those meaningless grins and handshakes to visitors more times than I can count. Once someone actually walked over and talked to us that first Sunday, I was finally able to face all of my baggage, that long list of bullet points that prevented me from belonging.

If you can survive the first visit, you face the daunting task of finding your place among hundreds or more people with a variety of interests. Where do you even begin?

This is an area where book publishing has helped me deal with rejection, failed conversations, and attempts at relationships that become dead ends. Sometimes you just can’t connect with people without facing the possibility of a limp handshake or a phony smile. My only hope over the years has been reaching out and remaining proactive.

I would have never found a place to belong without starting conversations, asking people about who else attends the church, and telling people what I care about. When a couple at our new church reached out to us, I was able to return the next Sunday and the Sunday after that, facing the possibility of rejection with renewed determination to overcome it and belong. However, I only had the courage to become proactive after someone reached to me and told me that I was welcome and valued.

I soon found people who read a lot, who garden, and value creativity. I had to seek these people out after services. I set up meetings at a café. I attended a small group. I volunteered for a ministry that connected with the passions God has given me.

The hard part about finding a community where you can meaningfully belong is that you need to begin with a flimsy handshake that means basically nothing. However, a handshake can be treated as a dead end or you can grab on to that person and learn about each other.

For years I made the mistake of assuming that all Christians viewed visitors as a threat to their neat and tidy social groups. That has been true in some cases, but as I’ve belonged to several churches, I’ve witnessed people who have really struggled to figure out ways to welcome visitors.

Those handshakes really can mean something. They aren’t necessarily a way of shooing me away after doing the bare minimum. Oftentimes, a handshake is a lifeline, welcoming me into a community. Everything changed when I took hold of that lifeline and held on for dear life.

Over the past year I’ve had the privilege of getting to know Stephanie Smith and have watched her develop her voice, refine her writing, and always, always learn with enthusiasm and humility. Those who question the quality of writing from 20-something writers simply haven’t met Steph.

I never wanted to host the women’s coffee and danish hour; I wanted to rescue child soldiers. And I didn’t want to do women’s ministry at a church; I wanted to go to the red light district of Amsterdam.

I never wanted to do women’s ministry. I got roped into it.

It was my freshman year at Moody Bible Institute, and my plan to major in missions to serve among the hungry and impoverished was effectively upturned by an informational meeting for the Women’s Ministry major.

There were only a few of us, a cluster of girls and the department chair politely taking turns sharing their passions as we went around the table. During the course of the meeting, estrogen was displayed at its finest—one girl started crying about a paper she had to finish that night, and there was the inevitable mention of PMS. The professor talked to us with her manicured hands, telling us an anecdote about how her husband recently dragged her to Home Depot when all she wanted was a latte—nonfat and no foam, please.

There we were, women young and old saturated in our own stereotypes, and somehow, in a peculiar stunt of grace, I wanted in.

I wanted in for the same reason that fires me up today—because beyond the tedious gender debates and the defensive disclaimers against angry feminists and doormat housewives, I believe in women. And I have witnessed, first as a student of women’s ministry and many times since, the beauty of a woman who has found her voice. This is what I hope we will be known for—not our looks, our limitations, or our agenda, but our voice.

She may use her voice to sing the back-up harmony or to lead an army, I’ve seen both. Sometimes her voice is bold and authoritative, trembling with the urgent tenor of the movers and shakers, muckrakers and go-getters, and sometimes she speaks quietly out of a well deep with wisdom. And me? I learned through the generous affirmation of others that my voice best ministers through paper. I’m not the woman at the helm, teaching and leading great initiatives and events. I’m the woman whose heart overflows onto the page and perhaps touches a kindred soul.

She’s free to find her own style. This is what I discovered as I delved into the Scriptures for myself, searching for God’s heart for His daughters from quick-handed Jael to meek-hearted Mary.

I used to echo the sentiment of Sue Monk Kidd, author of The Secret Life of Bees, when she said, “Mary and sacred feminine images in general had become wounded, diminished, and sacrificed…I was put off by the meek and mild look. I wanted to shake her.”^[1] But as I look to Mary’s famed Magnificat, or Mary’s song, I see a woman who knew how to articulate herself. . .and speak to her Maker’s glory. Mary not only possessed a strong sense of voice, she sang. And we are called to do the same.

About Today’s Blogger

Stephanie S. Smith is a twenty-something writer, editor, and book publicist addicted to print and pixels. She runs her business, (In)dialogue Communications, from her home in Upstate New York where she lives with her husband, trying her hand at backyard sustainable living and muddling her way through the liturgical year. You can find her blogging at www.stephindialogue.com about embodied faith, or tweeting @stephindialogue.

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: Pastor Meg Jenista

[1] Sue Monk Kidd, Traveling with Pomegranates (New York: Penguin Books, reprint edition 2010), 48.

When I asked Carol Howard Merritt to contribute a guest post to this series, I knew she had some great ministry stories, but nothing could have prepared me for what follows. Enjoy!

“Well. The good news is that you did well on your tests. Your grades are way above what we require. Your IQ is very high,” the advisor began.

“Oh great,” I sat back in relief. I went to Moody Bible Institute in the hopes of getting into their Mission Aviation program. After months of orientation and testing, I was finally receiving the verdict of whether I was accepted.

“BUT,” she said, trying to catch up with herself. “The Board rejected your application.”

“Really? Why?”

“Well,” she opened my file, pretending to examine pages for clues so she could avoid my eyes. “We don’t have any girls in the flight school. We’ve never had a girl apply.”

“That’s not true. I saw a woman in our orientation class,” I protested.

She shook her head. “She’s in avionics, not flight. Carol, we don’t even have any girls’ restrooms on the Tennessee campus,” She finally looked up and closed the file. Grasping the folder with one hand, she reached out her other hand as if she wanted to hold my palm in prayer.

I folded my arms tightly around my chest and imagined all of those secretaries relieving themselves in the woods.

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?”

“What?” I said crossing my legs the other direction. I couldn’t figure out what she was saying. I was seventeen. Did she want me to take a vow of celibacy in order to get into the program?

“You can’t fly after you get pregnant.”

I sat. Taking it all in. She did expect a vow.

“Plus,” she went on, as her compassion took on a patronizing tone, as if she was trying to explain to a five-year-old the facts of big-girl life. “Being a pilot is a position of authority, and as a woman, it just wouldn’t be what God would want.”

“Why isn’t it in the catalogue that the Flight school is only for men?” I asked bitterly.

She continued her sorrowful head shaking. “We just never expected a girl to apply,” she smiled. Pointing to a box of Kleenex, she made an invitation, “You can cry, if you’d like.”

I looked at her, rolled my eyes and thought, Oh hell no. I am not giving you that satisfaction, and walked out of the room.

I left my advisor’s office, feeling shattered, ashamed and disoriented. I didn’t want to fly the planes to be in authority. I wanted to help people—to take medical supplies and building materials onto the mission field. Why was that act of servitude off-limits? I was not allowed to teach a boy who was over the age of six, because a seven-year-old male had spiritual authority over me.

The only thing that seemed acceptable for women was playing the organ and singing in the choir. I sucked at both. With my complete lack of domestic and musical abilities, I was useless to the church. I wanted to serve God, but how?

I suppose that’s when I began to question “God’s intended order for women.” I read Jesus’s parable a thousand times. We were given talents. We were not to bury them, but to use them.

So why had God given me all the wrong talents? Why did teaching and studying theology excite me like nothing else?

What finally saved me was the fact that even more than serving people, I wanted to serve God. I began the painful and arduous path of trying to live into the fullness of what God beckoned me to be. I had to tune out the eternal chorus of people calling me a “feminazi.” I had to quit imagining how I embarrassed my parents. I had to tame my thoughts that taunted me for not being good enough, smart enough, or just plain enough to be in ministry. I kept plodding along the path God set out, one step at a time.

I would have never planned this journey—going to seminary, becoming the solo pastor of a tiny Cajun congregation, leading a larger church in Rhode Island, and serving a church in downtown D.C. I began writing, and the process was like discovering an unused appendage. Then, I stumbled upon a whole new vocation, as I travel around, teaching church leaders and seminarians.

Now I’m working on a book, trying to trace the circuitous path behind me, in the hopes that others will be able to find their own way to live into the fullness of God’s call.

About Today’s Blogger

Carol Howard Merritt is a pastor at Western Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. She is the author of Tribal Church and Reframing Hope. She blogs at TribalChurch.org, which is hosted by the Christian Century. And she co-hosts the God Complex Radio podcast with Derrick Weston.

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: Stephanie Smith

We planted our first garden in the thick, unforgiving clay soil of southeast Pennsylvania. Actually, it’s more accurate to say that my wife planted it. I was more of an occasional sidekick. The clay soil just about crushed our seeds as we pressed them into the ground.

We grew a few things that summer, but by the end of August we were shocked at how few vegetables we had grown and how many weeds had sprung up. In hindsight, I certainly didn’t invest enough time and energy into the garden to warrant those expectations.

I had every reason to think our failed garden was the end of gardening for our family.

I was wrong.

Each year we tried something else in the garden, slowly building upon each success.

One year my wife’s parents planted a few tomato plants behind our house, and we enjoyed tomatoes all summer.

The year after that, we planted lettuce and some other greens outside of the kitchen.

After enjoying so much lettuce that year, our gardens grew more ambitious for the years that followed, only thwarted by blight, critters, or drought, not a lack of effort or enthusiasm on our parts.

Friends would stop by and look at our garden and say something like, “We could never do that. I can hardly keep a house plant alive.” They didn’t realize that I started in the same place.

Each year I tried new vegetables, learned about fertilizers, and worked on improving the soil in our garden. Some years I failed, such as the time I tried growing sweet corn. Many other times we enjoyed significant success such as sugary sweet heirloom carrots and epic eggplants.

It’s easy to look at our garden and to forget that every gain we made came through failure, learning from mistakes, and cultivating better growing practices. We started with a small garden and grew it each year, adding to our knowledge about how to grow the different vegetables we found in the seed catalogue each winter.

Learning how to garden is a process, and it isn’t always a pretty process to behold. Process really shouldn’t be all that hard of a concept for us to understand.

I often think about what it would be like to meet myself at the age of 15. Like a garden packed with rugged clay soil, I had issues with pride, anger, and combativeness that I would have never admitted. God was working in my life, but I had so many problems.

To say the least, my spiritual growth since then has been a process.

I also wonder what I’ll think of myself fifteen years from now.

Spiritual growth is a process where we may not see all that much progress at first. There is a lot of failure along the way. This doesn’t surprise God.

He’s committed to us and the process because he knows that we have so much potential. He sees the goodness possible in us.

We could focus on the ways that we have failed, or we could repent and begin to believe that God sees that we are a people in process. Better yet, we are in a community with fellow Christians in the same process. While one of us falls down, the others can provide prayer and encouragement.

Paul says, “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love” (Ephesians 4:2) because being formed into loving people takes time. Love is not our default.

Thankfully we belong to a God who keeps returning to us one season after another. A failure isn’t the end of the process. It just means we need to spend more time with the one who cultivates holiness in our souls.

The Greenhouse

Think about process in your own life. What is something that you have learned to do over a period of time?

Pray for 5 minutes today about one area where you need God to cultivate more holiness in your life.

Taking Root is a series of meditations I’m writing and editing for Central Vineyard Church during the season of Lent. You can download the podcast version of each post by subscribing to my church’s podcast for each day of the series.

People are searching for you.

They want to know what you care about.

They want to know how you spend your day.

They love learning every little detail about your life—your birthday, your vacations, your favorite restaurants.

These people who care so much about you are called advertisers. They are hungry for data—anything from your personal life they can use to sell products to you, to make you interested in their brands, or to prompt you to talk to others about their brands.

There are plenty of statistics that suggest that many of us feel lonely and disconnected. We create profiles online in order to connect more. In the meantime, advertisers want to sift through this data to get to know us.

I read marketing sites from time to time for my writing clients, and the language is disturbing. Advertisers know we’re lonely, looking for distraction, and willing to share a lot of information about ourselves that they can use. They’re designing games, promotions, and other tricks to capture our attention and sell us products.

On the one hand, there’s nothing wrong taking advantage of a brand’s promotion or game for the sake of getting a sale. However, we need to remain wary of the motives. Brands want to become fixtures in our lives, friends that we integrate into our identity.

Brands want me to think of them when I ask, “Who am I?”

If we start to identify ourselves by linking together a series of brands, we may have an identity problem. We’ve been found by the wrong tribe—the tribe that wants our money, not us.

I’m always struck by the fact that Jesus founded a community of disciples instead of writing a book or even organizing himself out of a physical headquarters. He wanted the identity of his people to be rooted in their relationships with one another under God’s caring rule.

The narrative of God’s people is that we have been found by God and integrated into his family.

The alternative of being found by brands and integrated into their customer base is a terribly sad and lonely story that can’t compete with a people who are united by God’s Spirit.

When Jesus finds us, he welcomes us into his Kingdom and gives us everything that he has. He empties himself for our sake. God’s economy is one of generosity and family. God’s family isn’t dependent on money or brand identity.

You have been found and accepted. You’re not just another data point or customer with a wallet. You’re a beloved daughter or son in God’s family with a place at his table.

The Greenhouse

Try to avoid ads for a set period of time, either a few hours or a whole day. How hard is that?

Are there any brands that you particularly identify with? What are the things you value about them? How rooted is your identity in these brands?

Taking Root is a series of meditations I’m writing and editing for Central Vineyard Church during the season of Lent. You can download the podcast version of each post by subscribing to my church’s podcast for each day of the series.