Whenever an anniversary gets celebrated, it’s almost certainly true that we’re celebrating the passage of a period of time that includes real joys and delights, right alongside real hardships and challenges.
It’s true for a wedding anniversary.
I’ve been heard to joke, say, on my own wedding anniversary of X years, that we’re celebrating X-3 “glorious years of wedded bliss.” Not because there was a 3-year stretch of misery! But because whatever number that X represents, there’s always some portion of those years that were not particularly blissful.
The same could be said of church anniversaries. There are high points and moments that made us cry tears of absolute joy, and we celebrate those. And there are complicated and grief-filled interludes in which we’ve wept the other kind of tears. Bitter ones. Copious, repeated tears.
Do you know we’ll celebrate Collegiate/Wesley’s 110th anniversary this fall? Mark your calendar now for those festivities the weekend of September 24-27!
This Sunday we’ll celebrate 70 years of the ordination of women in the United Methodist tradition. The decision was made at a general conference on May 4, 1956, seventy years ago this week. Your female pastors are beneficiaries of this decision, made before we were born.
We’d argue that the UMC’s male pastors, and the UM Church as a whole, are similarly beneficiaries of this decision! We are a stronger, and more faithful church, and we are stronger, and more faithful people, because of this decision made on our behalf seventy years ago. There are glorious stories wrapped up in this celebration.
And just like in a marriage or any celebration of passed time, there are hard stories, too. Here at Collegiate/Wesley, there are hard stories that involve women ordained to ministry and sent here to serve.
In fairness, there are hard stories that involve male clergy, too. Here and in every church.
As we come to Sunday and mark this milestone, I want us to be real about both the glories and the hurts. The path has included both.
Several years ago the UM North Carolina Annual Conference put together a video that unveils some of the hurts. It’s a bunch of male clergy reading—on camera—comments their female colleagues have endured. “This is our little girl preacher.” “Women shouldn’t wear pants.” “You’re going to hell, you know, because God doesn’t permit women to preach.” Here’s a link; I hope you’ll take the time to watch. You ought to know that this happens.
Lest you think this is an anomaly, the North Carolina version was prompted by one produced two years earlier by the North Alabama Conference. This one is somewhat longer and includes a great reflection—almost a sermon—by Rev. Stephanie York Arnold who is now serving as General Secretary of the UM’s General Commission on the Status and Role of Women. There’s also this similar video by North Carolina’s Lutheran (ELCA) Synod.
Watch any one of these videos and you’ll have a glimpse of what it’s like for women who serve as clergy. Watch all three—if you dare—and you’ll begin to understand that none of these stories are anomalies. These are a glimpse of the realities that affect all of us as women clergy, to varying degrees, but without exception (in my experience).
I personally have been pretty fortunate in this respect. I came into ministry at the age of 40, married, and with children. No one has ever told me to my face that they didn’t want a female pastor. (I have no illusions that it was never said.)
There was that time my District Superintendent expressed the intention to appoint me to a particular church, which seemed like a done deal until he gave me a compensation number that was substantially less than that paid to the male pastor I would have succeeded. “The budget is tight; they need to reduce expenses,” I was told. I expressed my resistance to this plan, and did not receive that appointment. And was angered, though not surprised, when the male pastor ultimately appointed to that church was compensated—you can guess!—essentially level with the prior pastor.
I don’t know a female clergyperson who doesn’t have stories to tell, of how hard it has been, at times. Glorious some of the time, too! And also there are hurts, and missed opportunities, and wounds.
I’m sharing these videos, and a glimpse of these experiences, because we ought to be better. Seventy years in, wouldn’t you have thought we’d be better?! We all have a role to play in making the church a better, more hospitable place where the gifts of all can be offered, and honored—for our mutual strengthening.
And not just in the church. This work is for all the places where there remains this work to be done, for good.
