THERE'S A PASTOR
IN THE WOMEN'S RESTROOM!

Sandy Drescher-Lehman

A month ago, our daughter became a teenager. John and I had seen it coming and had pondered how we could best welcome her to womanhood. The ritual of a tea party, at which her female relatives and mentors would surround her and gift her with their womanly wisdom, held some appeal—but only to me, was my husband’s gentle reminder. Me, the extrovert; the party animal for whom any occasion can elicit plans for a celebration! Our daughter, on the other hand, tries her best to be invisible. At 13,she is more easily embarrased than we would have imagined. A tea ceremony would definitely not be a bonding experience.

My desire to mark this passage lingered, however, because I wanted her to hear different voices from those I had heard at 13. I hadn’t wanted to become a woman. I was proud of sewing my first dress, but kitchen duties were not going well. I didn’t even know the worst yet—that most of my culinary attempts for years to come would land in the trash.

I wanted to make people laugh like my dad and to travel and preach and write like him. I couldn’t imagine having children. They were too materialistic, too dependent, and probably all like the boys I babysat. They spit in my face when I pushed them as high as they demanded on the swings, and they wouldn’t eat what I made for lunch. Who needed kids! Who would want to be a woman?

As it turns out, I love being a woman and a wife and a mother, and I love to travel and preach and write. I have always wanted to give our daughter a jumpstart on appreciating who she could become.

Since her community of mentors has already broadened beyond our family and neighborhood, we invited the wisdom to come to her by mail in the form of entries for a scrapbook. She could then pore over the pages in the solitude of her own room as she was ready. That’s more her style.

One prayer, sent to her from Kansas, caught my attention: "O God—help me to believe the truth about myself, no matter how beautiful it is" (Macrina Wiederkehr). Many women wrote similar encouragement: "Believe in yourself"; "Listen to what God is saying to you"; "Hear God’s call for you, even if it doesn’t fit the box others try to put you in." My soul thrills at these pieces of wisdom being shared with our daughter.

Another part of me, however, is angry that girls and women still need to work so hard at believing they are beautifully created. There are still too many times when women are blocked in our ability to hear God’s call because of the parameters others believe we are born into and with which we consequently agree.

As I think about my profession, the pastoral ministry, I celebrate with my sisters who are also being used by the church in pastoral leadership. I celebrate because we have somehow been given the gift to hear and follow God’s call in a place where we have been told God does not speak. We have been given grace to hear Jesus’ invitation to help feed his flock and to know that this includes the church kitchen and children’s Sunday school rooms even as it does not exclude the pulpit and desk of a pastor.

We are being invited into the holy moments of people’s lives—birth, illness, marriage, baptism, anointing, and dying. Congregations are beginning to realize that women and men bring complementary gifts and together have more to offer than a solo pastor. Women no longer have to adopt the typically male structures of leadership through committees or power (or both), or of authority in relationships, to be recognized as effective pastors.

As one of my friends said when I was preparing to preach, "I was praying that God would give you a shot of testosterone, but what we really need is some mother’s milk." We don’t need to be men in women’s clothing. We can be female pastors.

This is the world of possibilities I want to invite my daughter and her girlfriends into. I don’t know that God will call her to the pastorate, and just because I have found fulfillment in working for the church doesn’t mean I need her to do the same. But I want her to know that her call from God is not limited by her gender.

As I hear concerns in the Mennonite church and elsewhere about shortages of pastors, I long to hear an admission that we have only begun to tap the resources that can be found in the other half of the human population—the female half. I would love to see as many women being invited to our "invitation to exploring ministry banquets" as men. I long for the day when the girls see and hear as many women preaching sermons (not just meditations) as often as they hear men, so they can know it’s in the realm of possibility that God could call them to be pastors as well. I long for the day when each of us loves ourselves and the church as Christ loves us, no matter how beautiful.

—Sandra Drescher-Lehman, Green Lane, Pennsylvania, loves to laugh, bake bread, bike, and work on the ministry team at Souderton (Pa.) Mennonite Church. Her husband, John, reminds her to keep breathing deeply, and her children, Maria and Jonathan, give her reasons to do all of the above.