There's healing happening for me in what's on at Highview this Sunday.
Dr. Bill Webb, author, conference speaker, professor and leading theologian in understanding redemptive Christianity, will be speaking about those troubling texts in our Bible regarding women and what they are and are not supposed to be doing in Christ's church. This is part of a broader series of three weeks, covering other weird and wacky parts of Scripture (slavery texts and war texts), and was first imagined and planned for way back last March.
I knew in advance this would be a good thing for Highview. First, to have Bill share his expertise and insights on these matters is no small deal, given his status in the academic community, and the scope of his influence in shaping contemporary Christian thought. We are truly humbled and honoured to have him teach us these three weeks.
And, of course there's the matter of helping us know better how to read our Bibles, and not to be afraid of the parts that seem troubling to us. Bill is truly adept at taking complex textual analysis and making it understandable to regular people who sincerely want to live for Jesus.
But I'm surprised at how I am personally responding on an emotional level as I anticipate the particular session this week. As much as I would like to believe I am relaxed and confident in my femaleness as a spiritual leader, I go deeper and find something trembling there....with anticipation.
Yes! This Sunday something very personal will be affirmed! It's okay to be me. It's okay to be a woman AND to lead a spiritual community!
The story of my journey to the position of pastor is one where the facts and events are fairly well known; at least within the scope of the church, and the friends who've walked this way with me. There was a church-merger, where an egalitarian position on the role of women in leadership was adopted. Then, a year on the sidelines, while the new church found its leadership stride, but without "forcing" a female Elder on anyone. Then a gradual stepping into increments of greater responsibility as we grew beyond the sum of our parts into a new entity.
In the years that followed, there was the departure of first one, then another male colleague, and the decision on the part of the church itself to invite me to step into the void and take the lead as senior pastor. All the while, there has been and continues to be the ongoing educational piece as I seek to "retrofit" by means of grad studies. In all, I am acutely aware of the risks others have been willing to take as I have been embraced to lead by a church bold enough to stand differently in the realm of fairly traditional evangelicals.
Yet, as affirming as the broader picture my story paints, it hasn't come without personal woundings.
Overt patronizing, malicious gossip, outright rejection, insulting job offers. Requests to perhaps avoid talking about what I do "at the church" and just talk about my husband and children, when being interviewed for a certain mission's video. Requests to not mention at all that I am a pastor when being introduced at certain functions. The accusation that a significant church crisis was God's judgment on the church for having a female pastor. When seeking to process these wounds with other male colleagues, being told that I was making it all up. And the worst of it, to be accused of dishonouring the Father and His Word, when in truth I would die for love of Him. I need to be honest, even as the sharpness of each lessens, these wounds kind of wear on me after a while. If I'm not careful, they tend to pile up in my soul.
I've never mounted the soap box. And to the best of my knowledge, I've never pressed my own agenda. I only wanted to let God make me into all He had in mind when He created me. All of it. Fully surrendered. Here I am God, let's go as far as You say. I'm Yours. Isn't that what fully devoted followers of Christ are supposed to do?
At the beginning of that journey of surrender, I would not have considered it could take me into the realm of serving Him as a pastor. But it did. So here I am.
And that's why this Sunday seems like a marking moment somehow. One of the Church's brightest and best theologians will be at the church I now pastor to show why the Bible redemptively supports who I am and what I do. And I rejoice on behalf of my sister theologians, pastors and leaders as well, both those serving right now and those in the wings waiting.
And it seems so right and fresh and good and energetic and....healing.
And I am grateful. I am grateful for the woundings and sacrifices of Bill Webb and others who have taken more heat than I ever will, and do so courageously and with great grace. For what they've lost to stay true to what they are convinced of, I am profoundly sad, but deeply grateful.
And to a patient God who somehow makes His plans and purposes prevail in spite of what should not be, I am eternally and truly devoted.
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