:: In.a.Mirror.Dimly ::

I returned to our cozy little neighborhood this afternoon with the relief and gratitude of someone who had just escaped a zombie apocalypse. I didn’t exactly escape a brush with death, but I did face the one thing that Americans hate almost as much missing American Idol: the inconvenience of the suburbs.

While my wife worked on her final papers for grad school, I took over shopping duties and ran about thirty seven errands in the suburban strip. I had to leave my comfortable little bubble in town, venturing to the edge of civilization where engine exhaust makes baby bunnies nested outside condos weep.

It didn’t take long to get angry at people.

There was the lady who didn’t look until after she almost backed her car into me. Some guy in a sporty SUV wouldn’t let me merge onto the highway and then tailed me before roaring around me close enough that I could have lit a cigarette for his passenger.

There was traffic jammed in the parking lots. Lines in every story. People who jumped in front of me in line. People who went back to for one more thing when they should have been paying!

The chicken in the cooler started to warm up. My car started to overheat. The freckle-faced kid at Rita’s told me they didn’t have root beer water ice. The world was out to get me. Inconvenience!!!

When I travel out to the suburbs for these rare shopping trips, it’s like I’ve gone to a different nation where I don’t fit in because my car is over 10 years old and has rust. The hustle and hurry grabs me and I dutifully go along with it, as if I don’t have a choice. As people become obstacles in my way or take risks that put me in danger, I begin to seethe at them. We’re SO different…

Shifting gears from suburban shopper to urban gardener when I returned home, I set to work with clumps of dirt, compost, garden borders, and a few blackberry bushes. When I had a chance to feel like myself, I began to ask, “What just happened to me?”

We could say a lot of things about the suburban shopping experience and what we each bring to it, but today I saw that I’d been looking for reasons to separate myself from people. It’s like I craved conflict. I wanted to be in the right, and in order to tap into that, I had to direct my aggression at the people who crossed me in any way.

By dividing myself from others, I was trying to build myself up or to give myself fulfillment in some twisted way.

Conflict can be a good thing that drives a story forward. However, the right kind of conflict brings liberation and fulfillment—as in that moment at church today when our prayer ministers prayed for those going through tough times. Conflict can be misused to tear people down and it leaves neither us nor anyone else better off. All we get is a conflict buzz from fighting someone a little bit.

The Gospel restores and heals relationships. It accepts that lady in the parking lot who was careless for a moment but who may be the most caring person in her family. That guy in the SUV who almost hit me may live in fear of stopping or of facing who he truly is. So he drives a sporty SUV as fast as legally possible and never stops to ask why he’s taking sleeping pills to fall asleep each night.

The Gospel welcomes these people and many more into our Christian communities—even into my own where I secretly hope aggressive and negligent drivers aren’t allowed. There’s no place for these frivolous divisions in God’s Kingdom.

Even more so, the Gospel welcomes big government liberals and small government conservatives. The Gospel reaches people who like country, alternative rock, and maybe even jazz (does anyone “like” jazz for real?). The Gospel belongs to the hip, the straight-laced, the disheveled.

If it works right, the Gospel should ruin our neat little divisions we create, trashing every us vs. them narrative. Even my suburban angst narrative needs to go.

Rather than permitting me to perpetuate my little farce where I’m the hero who overcomes conflict to get what I want, the Gospel turns God into the hero who wants everyone and who is even willing to overcome conflict with a grumpy urban gardener to reach the people he loves.

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

I used to hide my theology books and guitar upstairs. I didn’t want people I met to know I’d been to seminary or lead worship.

Writing that now sounds a bit strange. It made so much sense at the time. I’d connected serving in the church with being over-worked and exploited. For years belonging in church had been associated with “getting involved.” Sometimes “getting involved” became a higher priority for some than simply learning my name.

“Did you say your name is Fred? Hey Fred, you should join our men’s group. They’re going to set up a huge church event next Saturday. You should serve with them!”

I know many have had conversations like this. If these people had learned I had a seminary degree, they would have handcuffed me to the pulpit.

“You can preach and lead worship and we don’t have to pay you???”

I’d grown so weary of those types of conversations where desperate volunteers just tried to plug another body into a struggling church ministry. There were so many things that needed to be discussed, but I wasn’t the guy to bring it all up. When I started to return to church, I just wanted to be left alone for a season. I wanted to maintain a happy anonymity while I sorted out my place.

Since those days of hiding books and musical instruments, I’ve stopped defining myself and my place in the church by what I do in my community. I belong based on my relationships, and I serve because those relationships define my place in my church communities.

I used to feel a lot of pressure to get involved in church. If I didn’t serve, I was just a lazy drain on the church. I didn’t want to be a “consumer Christian.”

My pastor often speaks of seasons in life. We go through seasons in our communities, in our families, and in our personal lives. I passed through a season of healing and reorienting to church community. During that season, it would have been foolish for me to serve. I didn’t need to just get involved. I needed to be healed and to learn how to thrive in the church again without becoming a critical voice.

Now that I have that perspective, I feel better able to get involved and to manage my church involvement. I don’t need to serve just like everyone else. We may be in different seasons.

In two months we’ll have a baby. That’s going to change a lot of stuff for a season. My wife being in graduate school has already changed how we think of our time for this season. My helter skelter writing life imposes limits on us for a season as well.

I want to always give something to my community, but sometimes the push to get involved in a bunch of stuff just wears us out. The guilt can be crushing. And that’s the hard part about belonging to a community. We’re sometimes trapped in between two overcorrections.

We’re either consumer Christians or we base our sense of community on how much we serve.

Sometimes we need to stop all of the work just to get the basics right. If a church can’t accept us as a family, then there’s something terribly wrong. If our church doesn’t treat us like a family, they’ll fail us at one time or in one way or another. That’s not a pleasant thing to write, but it’s true.

If your family is only based on whether you pitch in and help, you’re going to have a lot of hurt former family members. Think of teenagers who just want to slump and play video games or text or whatever teenagers do these days. They may check out from family activities for a season, but they are still members of the family.

When you can belong to a church family without conditions or strings, then you can serve with that family free from guilt or obligation. You will be free to serve others with a joy that can weather the bleakest of storms. Joyfully serving others happens when you know you belong.

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.

“I know what your problem is,” a pastor from my seminary said. A barely perceptible smirk crept across his face. He knew he had me pegged, but I tried to hide behind my plate of hash browns and lukewarm coffee. I didn’t have a problem.

“You’re church damaged,” he said, unaware of my internal dialogue.

That struck me as ridiculous. I may have been church frustrated, but I didn’t see how I could be church damaged. From my perspective back then, the church was just screwed up, burning out pastors and people for the sake of programs.

Who had the damage? Not me pal. The church was the one with the problems.

Looking back on that conversation, I can see that I confused “damage” with something negative, a flaw in my personality. Damage itself wasn’t wrong. Damage just happens.

Damage can lead to conflict and alienation from one another.

Damage is behind those moments when we lash out at others or rant about church on our blogs.

Damage can even obscure our need for healing, as we focus on the pain and the past without considering there can be a future where that pain is healed.

I wasn’t ready to listen to that pastor who diagnosed me with church damage, but he was ready to listen to me. That made all of the difference. He didn’t really care about what I had to say.

He cared about me and my healing. If he cared about what I said, he would have heard another angry 20-something who is frustrated by the church, and he would have defended the church. When he used my words to understand where I was coming from, he could see the deeper story behind my frustrations.

This pastor helped me take my first step back into Christian community. He helped me recognize that my problem wasn’t “the church” per se. My problem was the damage that church had caused in me.

I couldn’t necessarily change the systems that had used me up, let me down, and left me feeling lost. However, I could bring the damage of my past to God and let him heal me. I could become a repaired person who no longer damages others.

My hash browns and coffee failed to guard me from that pastor’s penetrating stare. He looked right through me, but he wasn’t acting arrogant. He had the confidence of a doctor who knew his trade.

For that season, I remained the patient who didn’t trust doctors, though I couldn’t shake the power of his diagnosis in the months that followed. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that you can find healing in the previous source of your pain.

If I wanted to tell the story of how God led me into my writing ministry, I may need to work on being completely honest, but I certainly wouldn’t need to be all that brave. My story is my own to share, and at least in the Christian community, I should have nothing to fear—nothing that should require bravery.

Ah, but once we talk about a woman’s ministry story, that is another matter altogether.

When I started the Women in Ministry Series, I wanted to create a safe place for women to share their stories. So far, it has worked. Women have filled every day since the start of January 2012, and we’re booked just about through October.

Women want to talk about how God has called them into ministry.

I receive e-mails every week about this series and see many tweets about it. Over the past four months, a certain word has started to really bother me: brave. People say that women are brave to tell their stories and that I’m brave to share them. While I don’t disagree that these women are brave, I’m bothered that they must be brave in this particular circumstance.

Why must women be brave just to talk about God’s call for their lives if they’re just telling the truth?

Why do women fear telling the truth about the ways the church has treated them?

I saw a few of those reasons last week when a female minister wrote a guest post on a top blog about some of the ways she’d like to see the church change in its approach to women. So far as I could tell, she didn’t suggest anything all that radical, but a few of the commenters resorted to slander, name-calling, and other mean-spirited tactics.

These are the kinds of comments that I work really hard to avoid at the Women in Ministry Series. They’re the reason why I have a very clear comment policy that aims to keep away from endless debates, let alone name-calling and personal attacks.

I know that many women hold their breath before posting anything that suggests that perhaps the church may be wrong about a few things or that perhaps women have an equal calling with men. They don’t necessarily fear disagreement. They fear the attacks. They fear the bullies.

The bullies are the reason why women need to be brave in order to simply tell their stories.

I’m not out to defend someone who writes an angry or critical story. There are poor ways to tell the truth. However, in the case of the Women in Ministry Series, women are really just trying to tell the truth, and sometimes the truth paints certain men in a bad light. Telling the truth does that sometimes.

One of the main tactics used by a bully is to blame the women for taking offense. Just by telling the truth they are immediately placed in the wrong because they are trying to change the status quo—and bullies like to retain control of the status quo. In the bully’s mind, there is no “right” way for a woman to tell her story. She just needs to ask God to forgive her for not seeing things the same way as the bully.

The world of online conversation is a murky one where there are few rules, but I’d like to suggest a few.

For one, a woman who desires to respectfully tell her story with integrity should have nothing to fear. She shouldn’t have to muster up her courage to talk about a ministry calling or anything else, much like I don’t have to worry about the consequences of my own ministry stories calling down condemnation and name-calling from fellow Christians. Disagreements will come, and we should not fear them. I’m talking about the vitriol, name-calling, and anger that comes from bullies.

As to another step, I’d like to suggest that we stand up to bullies. I have three suggestions for doing this:

Bullies need grace too.

Hope for the best and tell the bullies how their remarks are being perceived. Offer them a chance to back peddle and to apologize. I’ve done this a few times and have been amazed on several occasions at how an online bully turns out to be a nice person once he realizes there are real people behind the hyperlinks and pictures of comment forms.

Bullies must be stopped.

Sometimes reaching out to a bully doesn’t work. They are either too angry, fearful, or controlling to respond to kind words and hope. In that case, every blog owner has a right to delete bullies. The internet makes it possible for everyone to set up his/her own website, Facebook page, and Twitter account.

Andrew Jones is one of the early Christian bloggers I first read, and he often spoke of his blog in terms of hospitality—a front porch where public conversations could be joined by anyone passing by. I’ve found that a helpful way to think of websites and bullies. I would never let a bully ruin a conversation among neighbors on my front porch, and I have no tolerance for bullies who want to control conversations by attacking others.

By the same token, if we reach out to bullies in person and they refuse to stop attacking others verbally, they need to understand that they themselves have created conditions where community with them cannot happen.

Make the right mistakes.

The problem here is that I’m also asserting control over bullies. Can I become a bully in the process? That is the risk. The difference is that website owners and Christians in general need to create space for discussion and healthy debate. The point isn’t silencing all dissent—only the bullies. How can we create the best environments for conversations?

I have really wrestled with the comment policy at the women in ministry series, but I think closing the comments to theology debates has saved the series from becoming just another dumping ground for the same debates that really smart theologians can’t even sort out. In the process, many women have told me that the safety of my comment policy makes it possible for them to contribute to the conversation.

I’m sure I’ve made mistakes with moderating comments on my blog, but I think those are the right kinds of mistakes: mistakes made on behalf of creating more conversation among those who have feared the reactions of bullies. If bullies know they won’t be tolerated, they don’t bother showing up, and that has made a big difference.

A Final Question for Men

I am well aware that the Women in Ministry Series is primarily read by women. That’s a shame. The e-mail list has a few men. I’m not even sure if I can count the comments by men on one hand. That makes me so sad. Men are really missing out on stories they need to read. These stories are happening in their churches every day.

In addition, by ignoring this series, men are avoiding a really important question they need to consider:

Men, why are women afraid to tell their stories?

I’m asking men, “Are you willing to explore whether you’ve played have a part in creating an atmosphere where it takes courage for women to just speak their minds?”

I would not tolerate any group of people trying to silence my wife and to strike fear into her. In the family of God, we need to ask why women are afraid and whether us men have the guts to do something about it.

We can stand up to bullies both online and in person so that women have nothing to fear in the church. I applaud women who are brave, but I also long to see a day when they can use their bravery in places other than among their Christian family.

If we truly serve a God who drives out fear with his perfect love, why do women need bravery in order to speak the truth among God’s people?

I don’t like sermons. I blame Sesame Street and video games for my short attention span. I blame hockey for teaching me to love speed and action. I blame my parents who gave me the genetic trait that resists stationary, sequential learning—like Math.

If a sermon was a practical, 10 minute exposition of scripture, I’d be happy. In fact, the homily, which is sermon-lite for Catholics and Episcopals, was the part of the liturgy that I used to enjoy the most. The reverend at this Episcopal church in Vermont that we visited a few Sundays wandered up and down the aisle like a lost puppy, sharing a few things that he must have jammed onto a sticky note the night before. If he only had better content, it would have been perfect.

The first time I attended a Baptist church where the people really belted out the hymns, I stood in wonder at the beauty of their joy and energy. When the pastor hit the 45 minute mark of his sermon, I slumped in boredom. That has not changed for me—though today I bring “toys” to church, as in, my journal.

I honestly think I went to seminary, in part, because I realized that if the sermon had to be 45 minutes, I should be the guy walking around a bit and doing something. Who wants to listen to 45 minutes of information and anecdotes? Not me. If Jesus wanted a 45 minute lecture, I wanted to be the guy sharing it.

For all of my talk about disliking sermons, I can also point to a few sermons that were particularly life-changing. I don’t doubt the power of biblical teaching among God’s people. And I don’t begrudge it to those who feel the need for it in certain contexts.

I think the problem with sermons is the way they’ve become so standardized and laden with expectations we attach to them. I suspect the nature of the sermon will also change depending on what kind of church we attend.

People expect a sermon to teach biblical truth. Many pastors preach that way. However, I think that’s too narrow a goal for a sermon. We can accomplish these ends much more efficiently and completely by picking up a commentary. Sermons that only teach, whether for 15 or 45 minutes, are missing a golden opportunity.

Sermons are a chance for pastors to bring their people on the same page, to rally them around the things God is speaking to their community through scripture. Communicating a message like that could take 10 minutes or 60 minutes.

I see pastors straining themselves, taking hours to write sermons. I’ve heard lots of sermons in many, many churches, and let’s face it: we’ve probably heard more average to below average sermons than we’ve heard good to excellent ones. We place a ton of pressure on our pastors to knock it out of the park each Sunday, and that is a burden no one woman or man should bear.

I’m not so much opposed to the sermon as I’m opposed to its narrow role in the church and the way it strains many pastors. I know some pastors who specialize in sermons, and for them, it makes sense to emphasize the role of a sermon. However, even in that case, does the pastor draw a crowd more for the sermon than for the community? Is that even healthy?

As for the pastors who don’t specialize in writing sermons, what will we do with them? Are they able to lead according to their gifts without preaching? Will we accept them in our communities?

If a congregation is relying on a pastor to draw a crowd with her sermon or to open the Bible for them with his Bible-knowledge-rich sermon, are we possibly relying too much on one person for 45 minutes each week? It’s my role as a member of the congregation to invite people to our community. It’s my role as a follower of Jesus to study the scriptures. More than anything else, I need a pastor to point me in the right direction, to help me see the big picture of the Kingdom and our church’s role.

Pastors are often placed under way too much pressure each Sunday. The sermon is treated as the climax of the entire service, and if the sermon isn’t amazing, everyone goes home wondering why the pastor can’t be more like Charles Stanley or Rob Bell or T. D. Jakes.

This is where our liturgical friends have something to teach free-wheeling evangelicals like myself who make up our worship services on Friday afternoon, rather than following a tradition passed down for nearly 2,000 years that places communion at the end of each and every worship gathering.

I want my pastors to know they can preach for 10 or 60 minutes. I want my pastors to know they don’t have to attract a crowd or take on the burden of teaching me everything I need to know about the Bible. They just need to hear what God wants them to say, say it, and then point us to the body and blood of Jesus as we celebrate communion together.

Our pastors can’t always heal us with their words. That’s not a fault or a problem. That’s just a reality. The source of our healing talked about bread and wine, the symbols of a life broken and bled in order to conquer sin and death.

Sermons can be long or short. That doesn’t really matter. What matters is where we’re looking for our life. Sunday morning does not have to always rise and fall on the power of the sermon. No person should have that kind of burden. No Christian should rely on so flimsy a form. Nothing we can say can ever trump the power of these words, “This is my body, broken for you.” “This is my blood… poured out for you.”

That is a sermon we need to hear every Sunday.

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

I’ve been collecting guest posts for Thursdays, and today I’m happy to have Lisa Colón DeLay. She’s a spiritual director with a sharp sense of humor. This week she’s launching a new spirituality project for creators that is a fast and free download and is well worth your time. Without further ado, here’ssssss Lisa:

“There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing. (They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz.) And as I lay there, it occurred to me that God is up there somewhere.”

- Donald Miller

We’re inclined to think that life is like Jazz: Random, but somehow, making strange and beautiful music. However, so much of life doesn’t jive. The harmony is lacking and the beat is off. We imagine God somewhere up beyond outer space, holding the earth–and all things–in his hands, and letting the jazz of the universe play on. What are we to do with all that jazz?

Discordant. That’s Jazz. If you hear a snippet of Jazz it may seem all jumbled and crazy. Is it music, or an imbroglio of sound stumbling to find its way? Scat is even stranger. Perfected by Ella Fitzgerald, Scat is improvisational sounds sung in syllables to the rhythm, but meaning nothing. The vocalizing comes in sync melodically but it communicates only instrumentally.

100 years ago when this uniquely American genre broke out as a viable offshoot from Ragtime music, most classically trained musicians thought all hell had broken loose. It smacked them as vile and unsophisticated. With insolence Jazz broke all the rules. To add to the madness, improvisation was key to Jazz. It seemed rebellious and uncouth. Every trained musician is supposed to behave and stay with the sheet music. Jazz might be best understood as an adjective. It describes what’s going on.

And then, there’s the Blue notes. Sometimes called a “worried note” it pipes out at a slightly lower pitch than a major scale. Discrepant, it pops apart from the expected texture. Then, mesh some of these notes with a string of shuffle note patterns and you’ve landed on syncopation.

Off beat–An interruption of normal, anticipated. Rhythm. Notes come in unequal durations. Punch. in. Punch. out. and…polyrhythms develop in layers. Long-short-long. Long-short-long. Melodic swing phrasing, cocky and bright. Trombonist J.J. Johnson puts it this way, "Jazz is restless. It won’t stay put and it never will."

Through the sins of oppression and the redemption at the source of inner emancipation the seeds of Jazz were implanted. Borne as a mash up of slave owners’ music and the musical interpretation and rhythms influenced by African percussion, the European 12-tone scale fused with tribal rhythms and made a wholly new creature. From it came Blues, Gospel, and the Spirituals, all sung on Sundays at festivals or at church. Later, came Jazz as freed slaves made a living as musical entertainers in marching bands, dance halls, and vaudeville shows.

Jazz is not a mess. It’s deliberately random. Disarray with parameters. A musician riffs his own interpretation away from, but near to, the written notes. It seems to me, Jazz is closer to Reality than we might realize, but not for the same reasons Donald Miller speculates.

As I’ve been preparing resources to help Creators and Communicators it’s become clear to me that God let’s us ad lib from the sheet music he’s written. It’s not that God has made the universe like Jazz. Instead,we are Jazz. We get to interpret and riff from the sheet music. It’s said that Jazz music finds it’s particularity in its special relationship to time and timing. Aren’t we are the same way? During our time here, and to our unique beat, we get to be Jazz and do the Jazz.

Have you seen life working this way? Where have you riffed from the sheet music God has written?

Lisa Colón DeLay is a long-time blogger with a visual arts and design background and a Master of Arts in Religion, with a Spiritual Formation concentration. She’s found a niche encouraging, inspiring, and amusing Creators and Communicators and is now launching a whole new wave of free resources for kindred spirits.

Some of the most important people in my life have been my pastors. They have provided timely wisdom and guidance that has changed my life. However, some of my deepest wounds have also originated from pastors.

I don’t blame my pastors. Personally, they never would have done a thing to hurt me. In fact, I don’t see my wounds as necessarily originating from my pastors. My wounds came from the church system that we both served.

Pastors and lay people have a common enemy: the church system.

The system is rules, expectations, and anything that defines how the organization of church must function. The system is anything that threatens to set itself over the unity of believers. The system uses the hard bolts and jackhammers of man to join together people who require a lover’s caress.

The system doesn’t care whether you’ve had a rough week. If you’re botching up the hymn on Sunday morning, people will complain to the pastor, and the pastor has to do something. The system demands action.

The system doesn’t care if you’ve been the only nursery volunteer for three months. The pastor needs someone to cover it because he’s got five more empty slots to fill. It’s his job to train and equip people for ministry, and he’ll lose his job if he can’t pull it together. He may even ask you to bring a side dish next Sunday for the elder meeting because the system needs more volunteers and you’re one of the few willing to play by the rules.

The system demands that we become fuel for the machine. We all have an idea of what the system should look like, and we make decisions in our churches based on what kind of system we want.

I want a church system that reflects my values, and I’ve fought far too many battles to create the church system of my choosing.

The truth about church is that it’s a living, breathing body joined together with the Spirit of God. We require some organizing and some leadership, but we don’t live to serve what organizes us or to make our systems a success.

Just surviving as a group in a system is unhealthy and self-centered, and survival is what a system demands. If the church organization dies, then what? We fear that every time our budgets run a deficit… What will happen to the “church”?

When I say the church becomes a system, I’m also talking about what you do in order to belong. Play by the rules, and you can be in the community. If you don’t follow the rules, you can’t be in the community.

These rules will vary from church to church, and even some churches can take good things such as inclusiveness to an extreme—as in, if you’re not quite inclusive enough, you’re out. Some systems are enforced from above and other systems are enforced by the loudest members of the congregation. Oftentimes the pressure of the system is applied equally from pew to pastor and from pastor to pew—both making demands and expectations of one another without ever asking why we do this.

The system plays leaders off the congregation. In the system, a congregation needs leaders to provide a compelling vision statement, guide their spiritual lives, and keep the church as an organization vibrant and running. If the church as an organized system fails, it is the pastor’s fault.

The pastor has to maintain a delicate balance of pushing his/her congregation to grow spiritually, while prodding them to buy into the church system. If they don’t believe in the system and follow that by attending, volunteering, or giving, then the pastor is a failure.

There is enormous pressure on both sides. The people want something meaningful to give themselves to and they need real help with their pressing issues in life. Leaders are under enormous pressure to press people to grow, but to not press them too hard.

The system falls apart when pastors push hard to get the congregation to buy into changing the system or their lives. People grow attached to their system and the status quo. It provides the comfort of meeting the same expectations every Sunday:

We show up at 9 am. We sing until 9:24. The offering and announcements run until 9:36, and we pray that there isn’t a special music until the pastor takes the pulpit at 9:37. He will preach until 10:25 because we need a few minutes for an alter call in order to be dismissed at 10:30. Heaven help us if we run until 10:35…

The system hums along until the pastor realizes that the system needs to be changed. This is where all hell breaks loose, literally. The people were told that the system will provide for them and guide them where they need to go. They have invested in a system, an institution, a church, a holy place of God that looks just right to them. Who are these pastors to tell them it needs to look different? At this point, it makes far more sense to fight for the system than to trust the pastors.

The system will give the people what they want. The pastors become caretakers whose livelihoods are held hostage to the congregation.

Other times, the pastors use the authority of the system to hold their congregations hostage. They hold the power of church discipline. They can destroy relationships with one e-mail, even one message on a social network.

The ease of online connectivity can give leaders tremendous power to inflict terrible harm if they sense someone isn’t buying into the system. The same holds true for congregations.

Some churches are on the brink of all our war with congregations and pastors both trying to control the system. When the people/pastor become a “threat” to the “church,” that’s usually just another way of saying the people/pastor want to change the system we like.

As I’ve found churches where I can belong, I try to keep an eye on the system. It’s a caged beast ready to strike our communities at any time. The system will alienate us from our leaders we both fear we’re not measuring up. The system has no grace.

I want to serve God and minister to people rather than serving an organization or becoming enslaved to my expectations. My pastors should have freedom to hear from God and to lead without fear. I want to follow them without clinging to any pictures of what a church “must” look like.

I hope my pastors know that they can fail. They can make financial mistakes. They don’t have to lead perfect families. They can have doubts. They can end a service early or late. They can teach from any part of scripture they feel lead to speak about.

I hope everyone in my congregation knows that God’s Spirit knits us together. We don’t have to prove ourselves to one another. We are free to serve one another and let an unstaffed program die because no one feels called to it. Church doesn’t have to look like anything we’ve ever known before if God’s Spirit is leading us to change how we gather for worship or how we serve our community.

We are free to love God and to serve one another, and freedom is the one thing that a system hates. I love my pastors, but I hate the system.