Women's Work
On Finally Being Free to Flourish
March is Women’s History Month, and it is also Baptist Women in Ministry’s (BWIM) Month of Advocacy, which seems like a great time to share that I am going to seminary! Over the last several months, I have been meeting with a group of church members as part of the ordination process, and those meetings have helped me discern that my next step in pursing my calling is to get an Mdiv. I will be attending Candler School of Theology at Emory University starting this fall. They have a hybrid MDiv program, which means I can do a majority of my work virtually, and I will participate in five in-person intensives throughout the program. My goal is to become a chaplain and to continue my ministry within a perinatal bereavement context. I am thrilled to have this opportunity, and I truly cannot wait to start school.
Growing up in a Southern Baptist church, ordained ministry was not an option I ever considered. I had seen few women serve in ministry, and none outside children’s and women’s ministries. No one explicitly told me I could not pursue ordained ministry or go to seminary. It just didn’t cross my mind. I worked hard to make myself meek and submissive (without much success), which I thought was a Divine expectation of girls and women. I legitimately believed that the ideal role of ministry for women was to be a pastor’s wife. Opting for a more practical career and lay ministry, I studied nursing at Carson-Newman University, during which time I first heard a woman preach in chapel. I was appalled that they had brought in Rev. Julie Pennington-Russell to speak. Yet that event would play an important role in my journey.
I grew up in an abusive home, and as I gained distance and clarity from my childhood environment after college, I began to see that perhaps God’s plan for women was different than what I had been taught. After all, these supposedly “biblical” systems seemed to enable abuse of women and children. I spent the first 10 years of adulthood attending a small nondenominational church, and while functionally women served in a majority of positions, the church was still largely complementarian.
During that time, I went back to Carson-Newman to study applied theology, which challenged my too-small view of God and opened my eyes to a God who values men and women and all of God’s children. Dr. Randall O’Brien, former President of Carson-Newman University, taught one of my Master’s program seminars, and he said something that has profoundly impacted my calling and ministry. He shared a story about a conversation he had with a pastor regarding his missionary daughter. The pastor had said that it was fine for her to teach women and children as long as she wasn’t preaching. He later posited to the class: “Why is it that a woman can carry the Word of God in her womb and not on her lips?” That question floored me. I began to see how harmful complementarian theology can be, especially as it relates to abuse, and what the body of Christ misses out on when it cuts off half of its members. It took several years for me to move from openness to the idea of women ministers, then to full affirmation of women ministers, and finally to discerning my own calling as a woman to ministry.
“Why is it that a woman can carry the Word of God in her womb and not on her lips?”
I was beginning to discern my calling to ministry when, to their credit, our church went through a genuine discernment process and changed their stance on women preaching. This was a meaningful step, even if women still could not serve as elders. I felt frustrated, though, because this decision had been reached by the group of elders, all male, rather than through conversations with the entire church body. Men were the ones who interpreted Scripture, applied it, taught it, and made decisions about whether or not women could lead. How do women have a voice if they are not included in these conversations?
Months later, I reached out to the pastor to share my calling and to talk about options for ordination. He was genuinely kind, but the institution simply did not have a path for me, and the burden of finding my own way forward fell entirely on me. As my faith evolved, my family and I eventually left our beloved church of 10 years and started attending a CBF church at the invitation of the friend of a friend. Immediately I felt a sense of belonging that I had never experienced in church before. After a few months, I met with the pastor and shared everything - my baggage, my frustrations, my hopes for the future. He was very enthusiastic and jumped at the opportunity to support my journey. One of the first things he said was, “I affirm your calling,” which instantly brought tears to my eyes. Someone had listened to my story, heard my pain, seen my emotions surface, and affirmed that there is a place for me in ministry. Since then, I have been invited to preach from the same pulpit from which I first heard a woman preach more than a decade earlier, and I have been meeting regularly with my ordination support team as I go through that process. The support I have received in recent years has led to a much more expansive faith and a deeper sense of calling. I now have a denomination behind me, people cheering me on, and opportunities to preach and serve communion. For the first time, I feel like I am flourishing in my calling.
Women have so much to offer in ministry. Women understand embodiment well, perhaps better than most men. Our bodies break and our blood pours out, as we give birth, as we experience hormonal cycles, as we breastfeed and sustain tiny humans. Women are more likely to experience chronic illness, and it is estimated that more than one in three women will experience intimate partner violence in her lifetime. Women’s bodies have been under-diagnosed, under-treated, and under-researched for most of history. In ancient Greek medical theory, women were actually thought to be deformed males. Women, like Christ, are well-acquainted with pain and suffering, with marginalization and being overlooked, and we have unique perspectives to offer that many men simply do not share. Only a woman knows what it is like to exist in a woman’s body.
The church, and society at-large, have created hard lines between male characteristics and female characteristics. Traits like empathy, nurture, and emotional awareness are often thought of as “feminine,” while strength, bravery, and assertiveness are often thought of as “masculine.” We have created a false dichotomy, one which artificially divides the body of Christ right down the middle. I grew up believing that the Bible’s patriarchal narratives were prescriptive rather than descriptive, and I missed the fact that many passages flip that patriarchy upside down. Deborah was a prophetess (Judg. 4:4), and Junia was an apostle - a great one according to Paul (Rom. 16:7). Mary literally carried and birthed and raised God Incarnate, and she knew her Scripture (Luke 1:46-55).
To be a woman is to be made in the image of God. God describes God’s self as a breastfeeding mother, a comforting mother (Is. 45:19; 66:10-13); as a mama bear protecting her cubs (Hos. 13:8); as a hen brooding over her chicks (Matt. 23:37); and as a laboring woman (Is. 42:14). Jesus wept with his loved ones upon arriving at Lazarus’ tomb (John 11:35). He physically touched “untouchables” (Luke 5:12-13). Devaluing these “feminine” traits in favor of “masculine” traits devalues them in God, and it leaves gaps in Christian ministry.
To be a woman is to be made in the image of God.
So often in the church, women do the majority of the work. Women are administrative assistants and nursery volunteers and choir participants and children’s ministry leaders and food organizers and housekeepers. Women function in many unofficial capacities, as well - MealTrain organizers, the cooks of those meals, pastoral care work, a witness if a woman needed to meet with a pastor without her husband present. Many churches would cease to function if women did not carry much of the weight of its operations. Yet many qualified women have been kept from leadership, even if that means calling a less qualified male pastor. While it is entirely possible for women to abuse their leadership, men are significantly more likely to commit sexual violence, domestic violence, and abuse of power, which we have seen over the last few decades with clergy abuse scandals surfacing across geographic, political, and denominational divides. It is so often women who advocate for abuse survivors. It is often women who lead movements for social change and who work to meet needs in practical, tangible ways. Perhaps it is time to call the other half of the body of Christ to service and Christian leadership.
Sarah Bessey introduced me to the idea of “spiritual midwives,” women who walk alongside others during times of crisis, doubt, and deconstruction. Those who work in birth spaces often speak of the transformational power of labor and birth. It is hard work physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. When a baby is born, so is a mother. I can think of several women who have functioned as spiritual midwives for me, caring for me and journeying with me through hard seasons. And before my personal spiritual midwives, there were women I never met who made space for women like me to exist in ministry at all.
I had the opportunity last year to watch the documentary “Midwives of a Movement: A Story of Challenging Baptist Patriarchy,” produced by BWIM. The documentary reflects on the work done by Baptist women like Addie Davis to give women a seat at the table. For many women ministers, it has been an uphill battle. They were silenced and ignored, and they encountered individuals and institutions who refused to recognize their ordination and leadership. They have been criticized for the sound of their voice, the shape of their body, and the clothing they wore to preach. They have been told that they are welcome to “share” but not to preach. They could speak on Sunday morning, just not from behind the pulpit. They could teach both boys and girls, until the boys reached a certain age. Yet there were those who believed that God’s plan for women was so much bigger, and they fought for women to take their place in pulpits and in ministry leadership. My own denomination, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF), was formed in 1991, partly because they affirmed women’s ordination and ministry.
As I reflect on my own journey and how far women have come in ministry, I am aware of a shift happening within the spaces which have long prohibited women from ministry and church leadership. Many churches now have husband and wife co-pastors, or they use “pastor” or “minister” in their titles for women. Even if they do not have a woman pastor, particularly for small nondenominational churches, many do allow and invite women to preach. Outside of the West, women have been leaders in ministry for many, many years. Still, we have a long way to go. Some denominations, like the Southern Baptist Convention, have doubled down on their exclusion of women in ministry, disfellowshipping faith communities who call a woman to the pastorate. I shared about my seminary plans with a Southern Baptist loved one who said “I didn’t know women could go to seminary,” genuinely surprised that ordained women existed. And yet the Bible contains many examples of women in church leadership, as does Medieval history. Women in ministry is not new nor is it a concept introduced by feminists. It is as old as the gospel. In fact, women were the very first to be tasked with preaching the gospel (John 20:17-18).
I am excited to take my place in ministry. Despite experiencing mixed responses in favor of or against my calling to ministry, I know that being a woman in ministry is a sacred calling and that my own work might very well pave the way for more women to discover a calling to ministry. Ministry and church leadership are not just for men. Being a woman does not disqualify someone from leadership any more than being a man qualifies someone for it. Women have been doing this work since the beginning, and they will continue to, whether the institutions recognize it or not. After all, preaching, teaching, prophesying - that’s women’s work.
For further reading about women in ministry and the theological arguments surrounding women’s roles within the church, here are some great resources: