Mother's Day, May 12, 2013 was the day I preached my first sermon.
I'll always remember coming off the stage and being exceptionally hot! I stood next to the Lead Pastor who patted me on the back and said, "Nice job, sheesh...you're burning up!" I literally had sweat dripping down my back.
I had just transitioned out of my role as Children's Coordinator and was beginning as an Associate Pastor which included the opportunity to preach 2-3 times per year.
"Two or possibly three Sundays a year I get to preach!" I thought. "What an honor. What a blessing. What a gift."
It's strange how our perspectives change overtime.
I remained in my Associate Pastor role for over five years, delivering a total of 19 sermons.
I loved the process of studying for my sermon, of creating the slides, of crafting words and especially the experience of delivering it to a crowd of friends.
In 2018, I began pastoring within a new congregation - again for over five years. Within this time frame, I preached 14 times.
With the second church came the challenge of balancing my full-time job as the Children & Families Pastor with the Sundays that I preached. At my previous church, my job entailed ministries to adults which kept me in the same sphere of the Sunday Service, so preaching wasn't quite as taxing as being the tandem preacher and Children's Pastor. At this new church, preaching included both my normal full-time responsibilities in addition to the extra time and energy to write and deliver a sermon. I love preaching so, of course, I eagerly jumped at every opportunity to preach that came my way.
Preaching, for me as a Children's Pastor, meant late night hours writing and creating. It meant recruiting a 'point-person' for Sunday so someone would lead in my absence. It meant setting up the kids area on Saturday to alleviate some of my job the next morning. It meant being the first to arrive on Sunday to turn on lights, heat, and unlock doors so that the kids area was ready to receive children when church began. It meant running back-and-forth between service design, prayer meetings, sound-checks and checking in with teachers and families as they arrived. It meant running upstairs to the supply closet and pulling out extra buttons for a craft the teacher wants to do before I ran back to the sanctuary, getting in just in time for the completion of the song before my sermon. Heart-pounding from my jog around campus, it was now time to preach.
I had to choose my shoes wisely on these days - I often found myself literally running behind the stage back-and-forth between the opening, worship, sermon, and benediction. It was crazy!
Though I love preaching, I was also getting tired of the balancing act. Not just balancing of my time, but also my family. Most the sermon opportunities would be offered to me on holiday weekends - or weekends projected to be "quiet." My sacrifice of sleep and energy was one thing, but to have to prep a sermon on the weekend my out-of-town children would be home?
It was getting harder and harder to see the opportunity to preach as a blessing.
I remember one sermon I prepped on the Friday after Thanksgiving in my mother-in-law's closet in Carmel. It was the only place in the house that was quiet. While my family was bustling with games and fun downstairs, I was locked in a closet preparing a sermon for Sunday. This is a gift, right?
When I stepped down from my job in June of this year, I knew I was potentially stepping away from one of the activities I loved to do the most - preach. The realization of my loss had already begun to sink-in months before as I was less and less invited to preach. I noticed the "better" I did my job, the less available I was to engage in adult conversations, attend the worship service, and be given opportunities to preach. It was a Catch-22 situation. To win was to lose. Perhaps I was simply in the wrong role to even have the desire to preach - but let's get real, I live in the Central Valley. Children's Ministry is one of the few positions available to women in our churches.
What's sad in this story is that no one seemed to notice when my voice was not included. No one noticed my exhaustion at the end of my Sundays on the days I preached. Some might argue that I didn't tell them it was too much. My fear, however, was that if I confessed that preaching was too much that one of the three possibilities would enfold:
1. I would no longer be asked to preach.
2. I would be told that my desire to preach was on me so I needed to suck it up.
3. I would be told that my inability to do a full time job AND preach was an indicator of a woman's incapacity to preach.
I have always loved the preparing and preaching component of sermons - it was doing all of it and my full-time job that was getting wearisome. So instead, to prove a point and to keep preaching, I endured. I found I had no one to advocate for me to help me make this work better. Instead, the problem sat squarely on my shoulders and in my incapacity to do it all.
News Flash: This is an unhealthy system!
My struggle for always feeling, "not enough" has come from these very much unrealistic expectations that have been put on me. I do not believe anyone can do what was expected of me. It is not a fault of mine, but a fault with the system.
While the youth pastor got to preach monthly, I needed to be content in my building, with my children, and with my own ministry. Was the problem with me and wanting too much? I was hired as the "Children and Families Pastor," after all. Why would I expect to be in church or asked to preach?
That, my friends, is a hard pill to swallow.
There's a discrepancy when a church has two full-time associate pastors and one preaches monthly and the other twice a year. "Yeah, but Connie, the youth pastor doesn't have responsibilities on a Sunday morning, so he has more time to devote to his sermon than you do."
Answer: That's a systemic problem. Perhaps, there's a problem when one full-time pastor has free time and the other full-time pastor has too large of a load to be involved with the life of the church.
I do not doubt the youth pastor (or other associates for that matter) have similar problems; I'm sure this is not my problem alone. But it also makes me wonder if this is why the typical associate pastor only lasts for 5-years. Is that just the norm, or could there be, perhaps, a different way? Could we navigate our churches differently in a way that anticipates our leaders to grow and grow with them?
Yesterday I got to preach again.
I, honestly, wasn't sure if I'd ever get the chance to preach again after I left my place of employment, but Fresno Pacific University reached out and offered me a chance to speak for College Hour.
I discovered that without a full-time job to attend to in addition to speaking, preparing a sermon was simple! My slides were in on Friday and then I had to wait....and wait....and wait for College Hour on Wednesday. I cannot express the strange peace and unhurried posture in which I found myself in the waiting on Monday and Tuesday. It was so very unlike me, and especially unlike how I normally functioned leading up to a sermon.
What I noticed this time was that I slept peacefully the night before (not my normal Saturday-night-before-my-sermon). My watch never notified me that my heart-rate soared and I didn't even feel nervous during my message. My pace was good - I didn't feel rushed like I was borrowing time and needed to wrap it up. There was this strange peace surrounding me.
My topic was on "The Divine Cobbler," a bit of a play-on-words I got from my son when he had asked me if I knew anyone who can sew on his soul. He was actually referring to the sole of his tap shoe (ha!), but the idea of a soul-mender began forming deep within me.
In my experience thus far with the Transforming Community, I've been praying that God would mend me back together: heart, mind, soul, and body. That my "doing for God" would extend out of my place of "being with God."
I am realizing that the anxiety I felt when I preached in years past was due to an over-loaded plate and lack of support, as well as a busy, hurried spiritual life that made no room for resting in God.
The "resting in God" piece I am doing well these days. I'm grateful for my growth but disappointed that my church couldn't grow with me. I find myself thinking different scenarios for ways things could have worked out, but know I need to let these fall to the ground and die. Thinking about the "what ifs" of life never works out well or does not lends itself to emotional health or spiritual vitality.
At this point in my life, if someone where to tell me: "We so value your voice that we're going to allow you to preach two-three times a year." It feels more condescending than it does generous.
We've got to do better.
That bettering involves looking at our systems, our job descriptions, our relationships and noticing how they affect us - are they supportive or are they are diminishing? Are they laced with inequalities that we've become so accustomed to that we're blind to them? Within the church, are we handing out token opportunities to women, or actually creating spaces and ministries for women to thrive? We cannot give job descriptions designed for men to women and expect these jobs to work. Likewise, we cannot give women job descriptions that worked in the 80's and then be surprised when women feel unsupported. We need to be innovative in how we make space for all voices to be heard and thrive. We've GOT to get creative and we must move toward gift-based leadership positions over adhering to the straight-jacketed approach of job descriptions. Did both churches follow through with offering me a chance to speak twice a year? Yes. Did the churches create a place for my gifts to grow and flourish? No.
As I continue to wrestle with my own grief, I am also grateful for the healing that has come in my resting with Jesus. I also hope that, by God's grace, I can help create healthy solutions to systems that need to be reimagined because I know deep down that we can do better than this for the women and men who serve in our churches.
#equality
#untileverywomanisheard
