Since Easter, I have been ministering in this space of uncertainity and doubt, wondering if I heard correctly that I was supposed to step out into the unknown yet again. Sam and I are celebrating a new phase of life as he takes on a new position as Director of Marketing for a Columbia-based company …
Yesterday at ministrieslab, we were able to partner with the weekly feeding ministry called Crossroads at First Baptist Asheville. We were invited to lead a time of devotion and to extend an invitation to partake in communion. After the devotion, as I was walking to the communion table a man stopped me, “Reverend? Do I call …
A couple of days ago, I was speaking to an older gentleman about my call to ministry. I told him about voicing a call to ministry and pursuing and obtaining a seminary degree. I told him about some of the challenges I had met along the way as a woman from a Southern Baptist background …
Why I Won’t Try To Convince You To Support Women in Ministry Read More »
As I was getting a cup of coffee before heading to teach a youth Sunday School class to follow up the work we had experienced together at ministrieslab on Sunday morning, the woman who took my order asked me, “Are you headed to the hospital?” “No, actually heading to teach a youth Sunday School class. …
Whether I like to admit it or not, I need help. I need help as I learn to be a stepmother. I need help as I learn to be a mother. I need help as I continue to learn how to pastor. I need help as I continue to encounter the disappointment and discouragement that …
The call Sam and I felt to start ministrieslab to pop up in the midst of need is indeed a call from God to minister to God’s people, but I didn’t realize it was a call to question my own privilege. Privilege that blinds me to need. Privilege that causes me to think I know …
As I hear more and more stories of spiritual abuse, I am discovering that many people who are victims of spiritual abuse shy away from saying they experienced spiritual abuse. I understand their sentiments because to name yourself as someone who has experienced spiritual abuse is to identify a community of faith as a place …
Next week is Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s General Assembly, the annual gathering for those affiliated with moderate and progressive Baptist churches, the group that famously split with the SBC 25 years ago. 25 years ago CBF formed as the Baptist that supported women in ministry and upheld historic Baptist principles. Next week in the midst of the …
As I have shared some of my pastor search experiences as a female pastor, I have often gotten the response from colleagues, “But you wouldn’t want to work in that church, would you?” “That” church is meant to describe churches that “aren’t ready” for a female senior pastor. At first when I was asked this question, …
You Wouldn’t Want to Work in That Church, Would You? Read More »
Recently, I received yet another rejection from a pastor search committee. While I have become accustomed to these responses or no responses from submitting my resume to pastor search committees claiming to be supportive of women in ministry in my three years of ministry, there was something different about this one. In the short response, …
Spiritual Abuse Keeps Women Out of Senior Pastorates Read More »
