Editor’s Note: This text was originally a plenary speech by Charlotte Johnstone at the 2006 Churchwide Gathering of Presbyterian Women. Additional “Dispatches” appear in each issue of Horizons, the magazine for Presbyterian Women. It is reprinted here by permission of the publisher, Presbyterian Women.
There is a young woman at Forbearance Church who is about to take a major step in her life. She is following others who, in the past 50 years, have paved the way for her. I want you to care about her–because she may enter your lives someday, somewhere.
Her name is Caroline Gardner, a daughter of Forbearance Church. She was baptized there. She came up through Forbearance’s church school and youth groups. She has just graduated from college in another state, where she majored in English literature and was active in sports, campus political issues, the college choir, and several campus religious groups. She’s 21 years old, tall, forthright, still a bit idealistic, full of ideas and opinions, outgoing and sociable, poised and articulate–a natural leader. She possesses the kind of self-confidence that comes easily to college students who excel. And she believes she’s ready for what comes next.
And what comes next for Caroline is seminary. She feels she’s called to the ministry of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church. It’s where her heart and mind tell her God is calling her. Fifty years after Presbyterian doors were finally open to women clergy, Caroline is going to walk through those doors on her way to ordination, following those pioneers, those “firsts.” How will she be received? How will we–the people of the church–assess her potential as our new pastor? Will we see only gender? Or will we see the whole Caroline–the leader Caroline? the ready-for-what-comes-next Caroline?
Pray for Caroline–for while she has heard the stories of the first clergywomen, she does not yet know what she cannot yet know. She hasn’t yet experienced what she has not yet lived. A young woman on her way to ordination–what should we tell her? Should she be warned that among the considerable joys of ministry, there might be issues she may have to confront in many of our Presbyterian churches solely because she is a woman in ministry?
That she may be interviewed by a Pastor Nominating Committee only as a token? Only because they have to?
That there may be people in her congregation, who still think a woman’s voice from the pulpit will bring the walls crashing down?
That she may have to fight for a salary equivalent to her male colleagues’?
That there may be the occasional male colleague with the arrested development of an aging frat boy–who will think it quite cute to engage in sexual innuendo or worse? Who, when she confronts him head-on, will accuse her of having no sense of humor?
That there may be male church members who are reluctant to seek counseling from a woman?
That there may be female church members in leadership roles who, strangely, will view her as competition?
That if she marries and becomes pregnant, how she looks in her pulpit robe in her eighth and ninth months and how she handles childcare will be endlessly critiqued?
That if she remains single, someone will inevitably speculate about her sexual orientation? And that through it all, she will be expected to keep her cool and rise above it?
They may not tell you about stuff like that in seminary, or if they do, it’s not quite real yet. After three years of intense concentration on biblical studies, church history, theology, polity, ethics, homiletics, worship, and pastoral care, Caroline is going to believe she’s ready for what comes next–what it really means to be a minister of Word and Sacrament. Should we tell her what she doesn’t yet know?
Should we tell her that the privilege of wearing a clerical collar comes with the need to find someone to repair the sound system on a Saturday night?
Should she be told that she will never, not really, ever be “off call”?
That creating a coherent sermon worth listening to requires roughly one hour of preparation for each minute of delivery?
That if Caroline’s sermons are in the least prophetic, her words will be bound to upset someone–sometimes a formidable someone, who is inclined to stir up trouble?
That there will be times when difficulties will redefine the phrase “Through a glass darkly”?
Caroline is going to learn quickly that her sacred obligations are always in counterpoint to more mundane concerns–that repairing broken lives will be balanced by the need to repair the broken copier.
She will discover that she can be short-tempered and occasionally disillusioned; that a few Presbyterians whom she has sworn to love are not particularly likeable; that the seminary should have included a class on building management; that sensible people can clash over disturbingly petty issues.
If Caroline is wise, she will learn that, while she should always take her ministry seriously, she will be better off not taking herself too seriously–that pomposity, pretension and perfection are often signs of an ego masquerading as piety.
She will learn that when someone says “Nice sermon” at the door, that doesn’t necessarily mean that she hit a home run that morning–maybe only that the listener managed to stay awake.
And appreciative comments after a stirring service may be counterbalanced by someone taking her to task for unsharpened pencils in the pews.
Should we tell Caroline that her profession cannot be quantified in the usual sense? That while attendance, membership, pledges, and offerings can be enumerated as profits and losses, the health of a congregation as a people on a journey of faith is far more amorphous–a living entity that requires vigilant care and attention to detail. She will need to acquire the ability to tell the difference between a genuine fight and a mere skirmish; the wisdom to know when to get out of the way; the realism to understand that politics exist even in the house of God; and enough humility to not think of the congregation as her people. They are not hers, they are God’s. And it is through their mercy and goodwill that she will be allowed into the sacred places of their lives to share their journey. Caroline should know, perhaps, that this is not a privilege to be violated, usurped for ego gratification, or used as a misguided temporal power.
Maybe we should tell Caroline that she will need to be a keeper of secrets–because if she’s good at her calling, she will become acquainted with guilt, heartbreak, confusion, and loss of hope. She will advise, console, exhort, suggest, and pray for a good outcome. In some cases, she will gratified that she made a difference–but in other cases, she will be dismayed that her carefully worded wisdom was not of particular help. She will learn that attentive listening is sometimes far more important than providing answers. Caroline will learn patience.
She will learn to handle herself and her role in moments of great joy and great sorrow, in moments of clarity and incidents of confusion, in moments of personally gratifying congregational approval, and moments of opposition and discord. Caroline will learn that God’s song can be sung in both major and minor keys, and she will learn to adroitly adjust her responses. She will discover her own maturity. Caroline will learn to minister!
To set the stage for God’s possibilities will be Caroline’s task. And she will need to learn and respect the paradox of a profession that attempts to measure what cannot be measured–a profession of collective programs, services and religious initiatives that can be charted on paper and implemented with purpose, but which, at the same time, cannot be entirely charted as to their impact on individual hearts and minds. In other words, Caroline will need to know what she will never know and she will need to become comfortable with that reality.
And perhaps Caroline should know that only a foolish minister would come to think of herself–or himself–as a star in God’s firmament, certain in his or her pride of place and erudition, sure of God’s intention to glorify effort with success, valuing the sometimes complacent good wishes of a congregation over the more difficult task of providing a prophetic voice of challenge and daring.
Caroline will learn more about herself than she ever wanted to know. And God willing and congregations willing, perhaps Caroline will one day prove to be wise enough to measure herself with clarity and humility; to balance her strengths and weaknesses with gracious humor; to spend herself unburdened with the need for equal return; to trust in God’s intentions for her ministry.
And perhaps then, Caroline will look out at a people with hundreds of stories on their faces and marvel with gratitude that they welcome her into the sacred places of their lives–the joys and sorrows, the births and deaths, the uncertainties and fears, the sudden insights and found wisdom, the reversals and the triumphs–the amazingly complex mosaic of lives being lived in a particular place and time.
Maybe then, even after she has confronted the extra challenges of being a woman in ministry, the Reverend Caroline Gardner, daughter of Forbearance Church–a woman duly ordained as a Presbyterian minister of Word and Sacrament–will fully know that gratitude and her expression of it will be her greatest gift to the God she seeks to serve.
So, care for Caroline and the others like her–God calls them. The echo of our response to their ministry in our midst will be a lasting and dignified legacy for all those who follow.
Charlotte Johnstone is a member of Immanuel Church in Milwaukee, Wis.
