Ministry Today

A female senior pastor talks candidly about eight intimidating barriers she has faced in ministry--and how she has conquered them.

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Everyone who answers God's call to ministry will have obstacles to overcome, regardless of their gender. However, being a female in ministry does pose unique challenges. Looking back over my own ministry experiences, I realize there have been numerous hurdles along the way. Many were character-developing, faith-expanding, destiny-defining and definitely Christ-confirming.

As I share my challenges, I pray you will hear my heart and nothing else. I do not blame men, hate men, wish to be a man or desire a man's nature. I love being a woman! I enjoy my femininity and the opportunity to work with both men and women. My only prayer is to see women reach their full potential in God and align with Him in their destiny on earth.

Obstacles are barriers or restrictions that we run into along life's path. Some we just jump over, some we go around, some we knock down, and some take great energy to conquer. Here are eight of the ones I faced.

1. The issue of submission. My first challenge revolved around the issue of submission. As a female leader, I was scrutinized extensively regarding my submissive nature. I had always thought of myself as a submissive person, but when ministry became my goal, submission became an issue I had to grapple with and fully understand.

As young believers, my husband Bill and I encountered well-meaning Christians who suggested we submit ourselves to their authority. Many felt Bill needed to keep me under his thumb.

I was starting prayer meetings, leading people to Christ, preaching and sharing the gospel all the time. According to them, this was a man's job. I was not sure what that meant. Jesus called us to disciple, to "go," but now I needed to ask my husband's permission?

Finally Bill told them we did not believe God wanted that arrangement. They had a fit! Being new to the ways of God, we really had to trust that we were hearing the Lord's voice. He taught us that submission was an attitude of the heart. The Lord began to speak to me about submitting to Him and to my husband. We could mutually trust and work as a unified team.

Submission was in my heart, and I needed to establish that I was a submitted person. But this did not mean others were free to run my life for me, or that a man must scrutinize all my decisions because he was "free of deception" and I was not. I spent years coming to the understanding that God sees submission as a willingness to serve Him. A love of mankind causes one to deny himself or herself for the good of others.

2. The idea that 'women can be easily deceived. ' This was another obstacle that surfaced as I desired to grow in my calling. As a female, I had no one to train me in ministry. Someone warned me to be careful because "women can be easily deceived." I became concerned that maybe I could get into error.

Yet day after day people came to my home for ministry, deliverance, healing and teaching. My prayer life grew, and many times I would pray all day long at home.

I asked the Holy Spirit about my lack of a mentor, and He led me to 1 John 2:20-21, 27: "But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things. I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and that no lie is of the truth...But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him" (NKJV).

Wow! The Holy Spirit would be my teacher and trainer! The very next day the Holy Spirit led me to several books on prayer in a Christian bookstore. Through these books I realized He could equip me for ministry without a man's help. The Holy Spirit Himself kept me from error as I developed in my call.

3. The fear of man. One day in the early 1970s the Lord instructed me to call a citywide revival prayer meeting. This had never been done in my city, and I had no previous experience from which to draw.

Innocently I phoned local ministry leaders to come to my home to pray on a Friday night. They came, but one man in the group immediately challenged my right to direct the meeting. Since God never said I had to be in charge, I was not threatened. But when he suggested that only the men lead each night, I was quite disheartened.

Suddenly I found myself as a spokeswoman for all the females. Why couldn't we lead? What was wrong with a woman overseeing the prayer times? My simple obedience to do what God had asked brought me face to face with the gender issue in ministry.

Eventually the prayer times were divided among all present. Did God honor those prayer meetings? I don't know, but I did learn that responding to God's call and getting it done are not the same. I had no idea there would be controversy about a female leading a prayer meeting.

I also learned that revival cannot come to a community when leaders have their own agendas. As God worked on our hearts those days and nights, we prayed that walls would fall. We did not experience revival then, but we did learn that revival could not come without unity--men and women alike.

4. The church's system of titles and positions. At one point I found myself in a supportive position of pastoring under male leadership. This man was kind and very good to me in many ways. However, he said he could not call me "assistant pastor" due to my gender. Instead he would call me a "pastoral assistant." I did not understand the difference, but he felt the distinction was necessary.

Years later I was still in the same conflict. Someone wanted to appoint me to a specific office of leadership but was struggling with my title. A decision was made to set me in the position with another man and call us "co-directors." We were the only co-directors in our fellowship in the nation, but evidently the leadership felt safer about this arrangement since I was a female.

The leaders in both these situations had no problem with my ministry calling, but both told me other people did. Supposedly these semantics games were the best ways to deal with church politics. Interestingly, when my co-director resigned his position, the leadership kept me as the only female director in the fellowship. God has a way of working things out on our behalf if we will trust Him.

Similarly, as I started attending pastor's conferences, I discovered the terminology used was "pastor and wife." While the women were sent to fashion shows and luncheons, the men were trained, equipped and feeding on the meat of the Word. I am not against fashion shows, but I went to those conferences to learn, grow and mature as a minister.

I needed help, someone to encourage my gifting and give correction if needed. I tried one conference after another looking for ministry support. Finally I realized the help was not out there for women ministers, so I developed Women's International Minister's Network (WIMN), a vehicle to train women for ministry.

5. The challenge of a unique lifestyle. The lifestyle God had specifically called me to was the fifth hurdle I had to conquer. The Lord had called me to full-time ministry, but not my husband. Bill was a businessman who loved his secular job, and I loved the kingdom's work.

The two of us did not struggle with this, but we heard and felt the opinions of others. Some said if God calls the wife, He would certainly call the husband alongside. Others warned having different callings would divide our marriage. We were told God's order was for Bill to be the head of the ministry, and I was out of order in leading.

No one questions a male pastor whose wife works in the secular world. But people constantly come against a female pastor whose husband works in the business arena.

I spent the early years in our marriage supporting Bill's occupational changes and moves. I never complained and always yielded what I was doing to follow and assist him.

However, when I turned 40, God clearly spoke to me to start a church--through a vision of handwriting on a wall while I was in a Mexican restaurant. At the same time He spoke to my husband, who was in another state on business, telling him to "help Sharon start a church." God showed Bill a "movie" of our past with me encouraging him year after year. Now it was his turn to help me.

We were both surprised at God's command, but who were we to tell Him no? We knew this format was not the norm, but we had God's grace for our particular lifestyle assignments. At that time I found comfort in the book of Judges, where I read about Deborah, who became a leader with her husband in a supporting role.

6. The challenge of my call to be a senior pastor. As we started the church in 1990, we announced I would be the senior pastor and my husband would assist me. Some leaders talked behind my back and said it would never work. Others laughed and thought I was crazy.

Amazingly, I found some of the most vocal objectors to women being pastors are women. Just recently a lady approached me at a conference I was attending and asked forgiveness for judging me. Her opinion was that women could not pastor because they were too emotional. While sitting in a workshop taught by J. Lee Grady, editor of Charisma magazine and author of the book 10 Lies the Church Tells Women (Charisma House), God told her she was in error and must ask for forgiveness. I was shocked she felt that way, as she had never shown any negative behavior toward me.

Several months after I embarked in this senior pastor adventure, a man came in my office to say he loved the church, but he could not sit under a woman pastor. I asked him what he feared, and he became very unsettled. I felt the problem was not me as the female, but rather his acceptance of his being a man. Could I rob his manhood by being a woman in leadership over him? This was my question to him. Ultimately he decided to stay, and today that man is one of my main church leaders.

A few church members made comments about the need for a man to fill the pulpit. I heard things such as, "Bill has such a pastor's heart." I wondered what kind of heart they thought I had!

There was continual pressure to give up my position. Words have power over us, and eventually I began to entertain the suggestions. I just wanted to do God's best. I had started the church, but I began thinking maybe someone else should continue it. I actually began to believe a man could do this better and quietly implemented a search for a replacement, little by little convincing myself God wanted a man leading our congregation.

During this time of deluded thinking, an evangelist came to our church to minister. At one service the power of God was strong and people began to prostrate themselves on the floor. Feeling the leading of the Holy Spirit, I laid down directly behind our pulpit and immediately God spoke to me: "You have not treasured the pulpit I have given you. Who are you to give it to someone else?"

Instantly I realized gender was not an issue with God. Never again would I take lightly the divine purpose He had for my life.

7. The big accusation word: control. None of us wants to be labeled as controlling or as a Jezebel. In the secular world, control is simply the leadership required to run a company, manage a household or keep things in order. But when applied to the work of God's kingdom, the devil makes accusations of control. He tempts people to distrust leaders, especially when that leader is female. This hinders the development of God's work.

How did I overcome this accusation? I evaluated my actions, studied scriptural truth, sought godly input and settled in my heart that I was not controlling. As long as we follow the Lord diligently, stay teachable, repent of ungodly ways and listen to His voice, we will remain pure in our motives. Revelation of who we are in Him conquers every intimidating force.

8. The fear of rejection. Often I have been passed by at a fellowship table and have not been recognized as a minister. I have attended pastor's meetings with my women associates, and no one would talk to us or even recognize our presence. If I took my husband or a male associate, then other male pastors might engage in conversation with me since I was with a man.

I have found the secular world does a much better job relating and communicating between the sexes than the church world does. We talk love, but we just do not know how to exercise it well with co-laborers of the opposite sex in God's kingdom.

As I look back over my years of ministry, many things have happened to challenge my character, calling and heart before God. Each obstacle has helped me mature as a woman minister. In the process God has taken my basic feminine lamb-like nature and equipped me to also be a lion. I have discovered that operating in both mercy and might requires the furnace of affliction, His power to overcome, His Word to reveal truth and His love to forgive.

God's will fulfilled in my life is more important to me than being ignored, ridiculed or used as a token. I have found peace with my Lord and Maker and do not need to defend myself, prove myself or do anything other than obey my Father's will. God fights for me. I believe there is greater merit in forgetting those things which are behind and pressing forward toward the mark of a higher calling, rising above all obstacles to accomplish the full purpose of God in my life.

So what does the future hold for women in ministry? Here's what I see:

**a great army of women arising on the scene

**more women discovering their God-given potentials and receiving divine calls

**men awakening to the gifts of women and encouraging their development to advance the Lord's work.

**a new vocabulary emerging in the church to incorporate women into ministry. There will be a shunning of old terminology that identifies women as harlots, deceptive and lesser.

**many female-led ministries developing in foreign countries and operating with tremendous favor, authority and power

**more female pastors successfully leading churches and being welcomed into both their communities and denominations

**women apostles developing networks of female ministers

**male pastors encouraging their spouses alongside them in team ministry. Remember when God called Abraham in Genesis 17 to father the nations? In that very same chapter He also called Sarah to mother the nations. God said that out of them the leaders would come--out of the cooperation of the two.

I also see a strong evil force coming against all of these advancements. But even though the enemy will try to prevent the further release of women for the Lord's work, the plan of God will not be stopped. God is in the business of setting captives free.

For the female, her set time has come. This is a new day and a time of new beginnings for women in ministry.

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J. Lee Grady, author of 10 Lies the Church Tells Women, shares 10 important steps the church must take to fully empower women for church leadership.

For the sake of the harvest, we must set women free to preach and to lead. I suggest we take the following steps:

1. We must repent and apologize for gender prejudice. From the very beginning of the Christian era, we have allowed cultural prejudice against women to prevail in God's house. Male pride is the root of our sin.

2. Christian men must vocally defend the right of women to preach the gospel and lead the church. Throughout history, whenever women have been empowered as missionaries, evangelists and church planters, brave men were always willing to side with God on this issue. If the Lord of the harvest is sending our sisters, who are we to stand in their way?

3. The church must stop misusing the Scriptures to limit the ministry of women. For centuries the church has insisted that the curse of subjection and degradation placed on Eve must forever remain on all women, even though Christ redeemed them from the curse. We desperately need to be delivered from the spirit of the Pharisees. We have been quick to quote Bible verses out of context to justify our position.

4. Bible-believing churches must dismiss the notion that ordaining women is a 'liberal' position. We must make the distinction between secular feminism and biblical feminism, which has its roots in Scripture. If the Bible champions the idea that women are equal with men in the eyes of God and that they should be treated with fairness and respect, then this must become part of the gospel we preach.

5. The church must stop ignoring the ugly sin of domestic abuse. For too long Christian women have been told that God requires them to submit to emotional and even physical cruelty in order to demonstrate obedience. The church must put an end to this madness. Husbands must learn to follow the Christlike model of servant-leadership, which empowers others instead of seeking to control and dominate.

6. Christian women must respond to injustice with forgiveness--not revenge. Anger has fueled the secular feminist movement. But women who desire to overcome the stronghold of patriarchal pride must do so by trusting in the power of the Holy Spirit--and by exhibiting a Christlike attitude of humility and selfless love. This doesn't mean they should keep their mouths shut, but they must not allow a root of bitterness to poison the message they prophesy to the leaders of the church.

7. The church must reject human control--from male and female--and settle for nothing less than the Holy Spirit's direction. Many conservative churches vehemently oppose allowing women to serve in positions of leadership because they think God blesses the church only under the leadership of men. How ridiculous! God does not want His church to be controlled by men or women. He wants it to be controlled by the Holy Spirit.

8. We must take reconciliation and healing to women who have been offended by the church. Women have been the backbone of the church despite the fact that they have been denied opportunities to lead it. They have provided the bulk of financial support for most churches as well. Do we honestly believe that men alone are going to reach all of the lost people in our society?

9. We need to encourage millions of women to go to the mission field in the 21st century. Men cannot fulfill the Great Commission alone--this was never Christ's intention. In fact, when He was describing the way the world would be evangelized, Jesus compared the process to a woman putting leaven in three pecks of meal " 'until it was all leavened'" (Matt. 13:33, NAS). It is interesting that Jesus used a parable involving a woman to describe how the gospel would spread globally from one insignificant city in Israel.

10. Christian women must take an active stance in this crucial hour. We are in a war! People are perishing! The call of God rests on you, and when you stand before Him on the last day, He will not accept lame excuses such as, "I was a woman, and they told me to be quiet," or "They told me a man had to do that." In this hour God is rallying an army of Esthers who are willing to risk their lives, break patriarchal traditions and contradict society in order to rescue a generation.
J. Lee Grady
Adapted from 10 Lies the Church Tells Women by J. Lee Grady, copyright 2000. Published by Charisma House (www.charismahouse.com).

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Sharon Predovich serves in a senior pastor role with her husband and co-pastor, Bill, at Resurrection Life Church and World Ministry Center in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. She also is founder and president of Women's International Minister's Network (WIMN). Visit www.rezlife.org.