I had just a short time with Courtney, a six-year-old girl who helped me clean up after church school. In a quick fifteen minutes, I needed to finish the job and put on my preaching robe to lead the worship service. I made small talk with her as we gathered the magazine pages and put the glue sticks away. Her parents did not attend the rural church in South Louisiana, but she visited regularly with a friend. I did not know her well, so I was in the middle of asking her those generic grown-up questions. I finished inquiring about her favorite subject in school and moved on to, “Courtney, what do you want to do when you grow up?” I expected the same answers that I usually hear: an astronaut, a ballerina or a teacher.
Courtney stopped. A smile began in the corner of her mouth that told me she was bursting with the news. “I want to be…um. I want to do what you do. I want to be a pastor.”
“You do?” My excitement brimmed so that I was the one bursting. We stood in a tiny classroom in a country church, but it felt like Courtney and I had passed by a huge milestone and changed history. It caused me to look back to see the long stretch behind us and made me resolve to finish the road ahead.
I grew up in the seventies, when little girls were told that they could do anything. I clearly remember when I was Courtney’s age and my grade school teacher informed me that I could become the president of the United States, if I wanted to. But I did not want to be president; I, like Courtney, wanted to be in the ministry. Of course, during that time women struggled to have it all and I saw glass ceilings shatter every day in boardrooms, on the Supreme Court, and in Congress. Yet I had never seen a woman pastor before, so I could not conceive of leading a congregation. I did not know that it was an option.
Courtney was not the first little girl to say those words that I could not verbalize, but it was the first time I had ever heard them and I felt honored that maybe my presence in the pulpit helped her attend to that still small voice. Perhaps she saw something in me that resonated with her and allowed her to assume the possibility of becoming a minister.
A lot of women came before me and made my call feasible; they sacrificed so that I might enter the ministry. I looked back down the road behind me and thought of those who initially knelt and took ordination vows to become deacons, even though there may have been debate among their congregations.
I imagined each woman who stepped out to become the first in her church to be ordained. In spite of the whispering, criticism and painful things that others may have said about her, she still got on her knees. Surrounded by the hands of men on her shoulders and on her head, the minister prayed. Those arms gently bore down on her, yet somehow, they also supported her and lifted her up. As the air in that gathering grew warmer and her knees began to ache, people stood behind and before her, praying that God would set her apart, give her wisdom and grace so that she might be full of the Holy Spirit and lead her congregation in the service of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, that small gathering represented a great cloud of witnesses that sustained her and cheered her on in the race set before her. When she stood up and began her service, I wonder if she realized how many lives she changed in that act of strength and humility, how she opened up new possibilities for the generations who would succeed her.
Those first deacons worked and explicitly taught their congregation the gospel, while implicitly instructing the members in the powerful good news that in Jesus Christ there is no Jew or Greek, male or female, slave or free. Many deacons and elders took those initial steps with humility and courage so that I could stand in a pulpit as a twenty-seven-year old woman, so that Courtney could sense some mutuality in our callings, and so that she could tell me she wanted to be a pastor when she grew up. That milestone marked a great distance.
The sign also reminded me that we have a long way yet to go. I have been a minister now for seven years, and every day the good work that women do in our denomination encourages me. In my presbytery, I meet with a group of female clergy who carry the joys and burdens of the pastorate with great humor and style, but discussions with them point to some disparaging trends. Even though the majority of seminary students are women, many positions in our denomination seem to be out of bounds for them. Although the top seminary graduates are often female, we more often find them serving as associates and solo pastors of small congregations. When comparing the compensation packages in our presbyteries, the average woman makes far below what the average man makes. Even though a growing number of women have great experience and talents, very few of them are called as heads of staff. And we see men standing in nearly all of the pulpits of the largest churches in the PC(USA).
As a young pastor, I watch the careers of my distinguished and experienced female colleagues carefully: I want them to succeed. I know that qualified women have made it to the final slate of many pastor nominating committees, and they have been passed over. When our largest churches had an opportunity to smash the stained glass ceiling, to lead a great movement, to open new doors for generations to come, and to witness to the world that the Holy Spirit calls women and men into all ministries of the church, they missed the occasion and overlooked fine, gifted female candidates.
As I look at the race set before us, I know that deacons and elders will again make the way for another generation of women to live out their ample callings in our church. I pray that the members of our congregations will sense the great opportunity ahead of them, that the women and men on our pastor nominating committees will easily envision a woman in their pulpit, and that there will be as much equity in our church positions and our pay as there is in Jesus Christ. I long for the day when Courtney will step into the pastorate without any thought of gender restrictions, with the knowledge that nothing is impossible with God, and with the hope that the Holy Spirit might use her to her fullest ability.
Carol Howard Merritt is a pastor of Western Church in Washington, D.C.
