Good News: Women in Ministry (Stephanie Booth)

As a child, I was enthralled with the things of God. I felt faith. I felt the mystery of this God I could not see, but whose presence I deeply felt. The stories of the Bible were magical. Something in my imaginative nature connected with the sense of the people of God, spread across time and space, and I loved it.

My dad was my very first mentor, praying with me each night, answering all of my inquisitive ponderings. It was my dad who introduced me to studying the Bible. When I was in third grade Dad came home with a box of colored pencils and an inductive Bible study book designed for children. It was the book of John, which to this day remains my favorite Gospel. My dad and I spent the next few months making lists, comparing and contrasting, and looking up Greek words in his concordance and lexicon. I ate it up.

When we finished the study of John, my dad asked if I would like to join the group of college students that met in our home to do their own inductive Bible study. I joined the group and was granted the extra benefit of staying up past my bedtime to participate. Again, I ate it up. I listened to the students ask questions and debate finer points of doctrine or theology.

More than that, I received my first glimpse into what true Christian community could be. We prayed for each other, knew each other, and explored the things of God together. I also saw the Word of God as a living breathing thing that I wanted to immerse myself in, each new book was a new adventure, and by the time I graduated high school I had studied most of the Old and New Testaments this way. I had learned that God wanted me to pursue him, that it was good to ask questions and seek truth, and that these things often happened in community.

I went to college at Taylor University, which shaped my life and taught me about Christian community in more ways than I can say. I entered college passionate about discipleship. I wanted to win over the world, which my first roommate found incredibly strange. I toned it down a bit, and learned a lot about people and a lot about myself.  By the end of my college experience I had spent a couple of years heavily invested in student development and believed I had found my calling, a way to love people and walk with them in their spiritual lives. So I completed a Master’s Degree in Student Development and spent a year as an RD before moving to Chicago to be married.

It was at this time that I started attending Church of the Redeemer Anglican in Highland Park. At this point, most of my deep and positive experiences of Christian community came from outside of the church. In fact, I was not sure I even sure if I believed in the corporate church anymore. At best I had been in churches that felt lifeless, and at the worst I had been in places that felt stifling and hurtful.

Then came Redeemer. The first few months I felt such walls in me. I hated the sermons because they seemed to call for so much of me, the parts I was not willing to give, especially in church. Could this place be trusted? And then after months of feeling this way I began to cry during the sermons instead, tears of relief, of connection. This pastor got it. He loved people, and it was evident, yet there was no compromising of the truth of scripture, of God. And then one Sunday that pastor asked me how I was and I was honest with my current discouragement and began to cry, only to look up to see the pastor himself welling up a bit, and not only that, but taking my angst. What was this, such genuine human connection at church?

Something in me shifted, and Redeemer began to “redeem” church for me. I could feel all of the passion that I had felt for Christian community outside the church welling up in me for this place.

About a year later, Redeemer was in need of a Children and Family Pastor, and long story short, I was hired for the position. I took it thinking that it would be more administrative in nature, a director, perhaps of Children’s Ministry. But the amazing thing was, I was brought into the very heart of what happened at the church. The staff mentored me, but also treated me as a peer, as someone who had valuable things to offer. Soon I began to feel less like staff at a church and more like a shepherd.

Long before I could see these things in my self, the pastors at Redeemer saw them, and kept drawing them out of me. Little by little, I became a pastor, and my world made sense. I didn’t even see it coming, and some days I still doubt greatly that I could be afforded the luxury of that calling.

I had devoted myself to ministry outside of the church because ministry and leadership outside of the church was the only option I had ever been given. Growing up I had never seen a woman pray in church, preach, usher, or lead worship by herself. Yet here I was, shepherding little people, and their parents, and using all of my gifts. My doubts of myself have been met with love. It is the community at Redeemer, and my dear friends and fellow pastors that have connected the dots of my passions and gifts and affirmed my calling, my calling to be a pastor. Without this community, it is something I never would have gone looking for, and yet here I am filled with deep love and joy for the people of God, seeking to serve.