Introduction
Melody, one of our senior preministerial majors and departmental teaching assistants, threw herself into a chair in my office, obviously upset. "Read this," she said, as she thrust a letter toward me. It was written on Church of the Nazarene stationery, signed by the secretary of the District Board of Ministerial Credentials. In one short, terse paragraph it said, "We regret to inform you that your request for a District Preacher's License has been denied." There was no invitation to reapply at some future date. The issue, as far as they were concerned, was settled.
I glanced up at Melody. She was biting her clenched fist. Her cheeks were wet with tears. I asked her to tell me about the interview with the board. She shared that her answers to questions relative to her Christian experience, her ministerial service, and her grasp of the doctrines of the church seemed to be well-received. When the interview was almost over, however, one of the pastors asked, "Why do you really want to be a preacher?"
"Because God has called me," she responded.
"Perhaps what you need," he countered, "is to marry a preacher." That remark elicited some chuckles, and it broke her heart. Obviously, they could not understand why a woman would want to enter into a profession that was so traditionally male-dominated.
Melody was an exceptional student with extraordinary gifts for ministry. She spent one summer working in an inner-city mission in Washington, D.C. The following summer she served as a youth intern in a small rural church, where she inherited one teenager. By summer's end, however, she had built the youth group to more than a dozen
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active participants. If there had ever been a woman with the gifts and grace to make a significant contribution to the church in professional ministry, it was Melody.
I was embarrassed for my colleagues on the credentials board who, apparently, had allowed their male chauvinism to blind them to this young woman's potential for ministry and had made them forgetful of the enormous contribution women ministers have made to our denomination throughout its history. I apologized to her for them and reassured her of our faith in her. I believed that she possessed the gifts, grace, and temperament to be a productive and fruitful minister in the church. I assured her that, in due season, the church would recognize God's call upon her life and give her its official blessing. I prayed with her before she left.
A thunderhead of righteous indignation began building in me over the insensitivity of those male ministers to a gifted young woman's sense of calling and self-esteem. Then I began to ask myself some searching questions: If I had been on that credentials board, would I have raised my voice in reproof of those who had made light of her call? Would I have risen to her defense? What was my record like across 15 years of pastoral ministry? How many women ministers did I call to fill my pulpit as evangelists and guest speakers? In seeking for associates, did I even consider the possibility of a woman being on staff? How were potential women ministers and leaders to sense God's call if they never saw women preaching or teaching or exercising congregational leadership in my churches? In 15 years, was there even one woman called to full-time ministry because of my preaching and encouragement?
How proactive was I in encouraging women to discover and exercise their spiritual gifts in the church? How often did I invite women to read the Scriptures or pray in public worship services? Or even take up the offering?
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Women far outnumbered men in the active membership of every church I pastored. Yet, how sensitive was I that they be granted equal representation on the boards and committees of the church?
While I never considered myself to be antifeminist, on reflection, I had to admit that, like most ministers of my generation with the evangelical movement, I had unselfconsciously drifted along in the traditionalist stream of patriarchal hierarchy where men are the dominant players and women comprise the supporting cast. I was embarrassed when I thought back over all the sermons I had preached that only reinforced the stereotype of dominant husbands and submissive wives, insensitive to the fact that many, if not most, of the women in my churches were unmarried, divorced, or had non-Christian husbands. I asked myself: Had I ever encouraged women to claim their full inheritance under God, as bearers of His divine image, who calls them to be who they are in their own right quite apart from whether or not they are married? Had I made a conscious effort to help them discover and exercise any spiritual gifts other than that of being a wife and homemaker? What had I ever said to the majority of women in my churches who were not presently actively mothering? Had I affirmed them as having full status before God, in their own right, or usefulness in the church apart from teaching Sunday School, singing in the choir, and serving covered-dish dinners? When I began to soberly assess my own nonsensitivity to women, my edifice of indignation against my colleagues collapsed. I found myself repeating the words of the spiritual, "It's me, it's me, O Lord,/Standin' in the need of prayer."
Then I began to think about the enormous impact women ministers had made upon my life. I remember calling out for my mother, a nonordained but productive woman preacher-teacher, to come and pray with me as a 13-year-old
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under terrible conviction. She knelt beside my bed and took my hands into hers. Her gentle prayer helped me across the great divide from fear and condemnation to faith and security in Jesus Christ. Shortly thereafter, I heard a woman evangelist preach. I was amused by her keen sense of humor, astonished at her lively pulpit antics, and convicted by her preaching. It was at the close of one of her sermons that I knelt at my pew and surrendered my life to the Lordship of Jesus.
Then I thought about Janet, a single Presbyterian missionary, who led a Sunday afternoon Christian Endeavor group for English-speaking teens in Hong Kong where my parents served as missionaries. Even today, I can see her face light up like that of an angel as she spoke of Jesus. Her Christlike spirit and gentle manner made an indelible impression on me. Working in that same mission was a Presbyterian couple where both preached. I recall distinctly being more enthralled by her sermons than by his.
A parade of women ministers, including evangelists, marched across the screen of my mind, along with a host of gifted women educators who taught me in college and formed the backbone of the churches I pastored. Two books that exploded like bombshells in my mind, greatly impacting the development of my theology and preaching in my formative years, were written by women: Catherine Marshall's Beyond Ourselves and Mildred Bangs Wynkoop's Theology of Love. Across nearly two decades of teaching Bible and theology in two colleges, many of my most gifted and capable preministerial students have been women. Sadly, they have met passive resistance on the part of a male-dominated church and, like Melody, have failed to receive the kind of official sanction or open doors necessary for the exercise and development of their gifts and calling. Few are serving the church today in professional ministerial roles, and to my knowledge none are senior pastors.
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I had to candidly admit that I was more a part of the problem than a part of the answer. In spite of the enormous impact women ministers, theologians, and leaders had made on my life, I, too, had endorsed the prevailing evangelical philosophy of church growth that deliberately builds upon male leadership. I, too, had allowed the revolution in contemporary society regarding women's liberation to pass me by, unnoticed and unaffected, except to occasionally lash out at the "feminists" whom I believed were undermining traditional values and were contributing to the destruction of families. I refused to really listen to what they were saying about the gross inequities under which women have suffered since the dawn of world history. I, too, had allowed myself to be squeezed into the mold of Evangelicalism's blatantly sexist opposition to women's equal rights in church and society.
Several weeks after Melody laid that disturbing letter on my desk, she came bounding into my office, excitement radiating from her face. "Guess what," she announced. "My pastor just called me and asked if I would preach for him while home on spring break." Although she had taught Sunday School classes and had preached dozens of informal sermons to mission crowds and youth groups, this was her first invitation to preach for a regular service in a local church from behind a pulpit. She preached the sermon she had submitted to me for our college's senior sermon contest. Not only her numerous relatives but also many in the small town who had watched her grow up came to hear Melody preach. They were not disappointed. Early the next morning, while she and some friends were making the long drive back to the college, their car hit an antelope and rolled off the road. Melody was killed.
Several weeks after this tragic accident, I received the sermons entered by 27 preministerial students back from the judges. I added up their scores. Melody's sermon tied
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for first place. As a finalist, she would have preached it before the entire student body, if she had lived. Her text was:
Though the fig tree does not blossom,
and no fruit is on the vines;
though the produce of the olive fails
and the fields yield no food;
though the flock is cut off from the fold
and there is no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
I will exult in the God of my salvation.
God, the Lord, is my strength;
he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
and makes me tread upon the heights.
(Hab. 3:17-19)
Melody's death affected me profoundly. After much soul-searching, I determined that I could no longer drift along passively with the prevailing traditionalist tide. Though her voice was silenced, mine was not. I would speak for her and on behalf of all who, like her, are making a concerted effort to respond to the call of God to preach. I would do everything possible to sensitize the church concerning its unique and glorious heritage of inclusiveness and equality.
Furthermore, I would call upon the church to open its pulpits, lecterns, and boardrooms to whomever the Holy Spirit should call and whomever evidenced gifts for public ministry, without regard to race, social class, or gender. It is time for the church to rediscover the richness, beauty, and spiritual power that can be released only through the full expression of women's unique gifts and special sensitivities. To this end this book is dedicated.
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"In Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus."
(Galatians 3:26-28, emphasis added)
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