50 Years of Women’s ordination for Lutherans in the US: Beyond darts in clergy shirts

50 years ago, the predecessor bodies of my denomination voted to ordain women. I was a kid at the time and not very churchy, so I had no idea that this was a big freaking deal when I entered seminary, five years later. I wasn’t trying to be a trailblazer. I simply knew the God who first whispered in my ear, then nudged me along, and finally hit me upside the head with a two-by-four, gave me no other choice. God wasn’t going to give me a moment’s peace until I entered seminary. 

This was a deeply spiritual, and private, call for me. I never had anyone ask me, “Have you ever thought of becoming a pastor?” It never occurred to them. That changed for me when I went to seminary. Classmates and faculty members affirmed my gifts for ministry; I never would have become a pastor without their nurturing presence in my life. I’m grateful, particularly to our seminary president, whose encouragement profoundly validated my call to ministry. 

The first day of seminary chapel, when I heard a woman read from the Bible in worship, I realized I had never heard a woman do that before. In my entire life. Then I started to notice all the other things I had never seen a woman do before, including lighting the candles on the altar! Needless to say, I had never experienced an ordained Lutheran pastor who happened to be female. 

There were a few other women studying to become pastors at my seminary. With only male role models, we were all figuring out what it meant to be a pastor and female. Was the answer for us to speak like men, relate to other people like men, and even dress like men? (When I began seminary, they didn’t make clergy shirts for women. I cried when I was finally able to wear one with the darts sewn in!) For years, I wrestled with what it looked like for me to be a pastor and eventually realized that the whole point was not that I could do it like a man. The point was that I could do it like a woman! But what did that look like?

When I was ordained, I became the first woman pastor in my district (what we used to call synods). As disoriented as I was in my new role, I also felt the weight of being an example for others. For those who were thrilled to see an ordained woman, I didn’t want to disappoint them, and for those who were convinced ordaining women was a huge mistake, I didn’t want to give them a reason to say, “I told you so.” I was hyper-conscious of how I would impact those who came after me. 

I can tell you the usual war stories about people who wouldn’t take communion from me or shake my hand. Once a woman threw me out of the hospital room when I came to visit her husband, who was dying. And there were those who insisted I was going to hell for doing what I was doing. But I was far more aware of those who supported me. Whenever a group of people heard me preach for the first time, I noticed women weeping in the pews. All their lives, they had heard the gospel preached with a male voice. Hearing it from a woman was a transformative experience for them. A number of older women confided to me that, if the Church had ordained women when they were younger, they would have become pastors. I knew that I represented something much bigger than myself. 

The greatest struggle I’ve had as a pastor, who happens to be a woman, is within myself. I am an outspoken person. I am passionate about what matters to me. I can take up a lot of space. That’s who I am. And I learned early on that, while these might be qualities that are admired in male pastors, not so much in me. I’ve struggled to find my own voice when others have told me that I need to defer, soften, and stifle. Unfortunately, I’ve internalized that and sometimes allowed it to shape the way I present myself to the world. As I’ve come to terms with my own inner sexism, I’ve been increasingly determined to stop apologizing for not meeting the expectations of others. 

That’s the part of the struggle that continues for me. I have been blessed with some great calls to serve congregations who respect my gifts for ministry. But there are still those “If I were a man…” moments for me. If I were a man, would that person have spoken to me like that? If I were a man, would I be so worried about how others perceive me? If I were a man… It’s the kind of question a woman asks when she longs for the time when she no longer has a need to ask it. 

In 2020, being a woman pastor isn’t unusual in my denomination. When I gather around a table with colleagues for a meeting, at least half of us are women. I rarely think about those days when I would have been the only woman at the table. I’m thankful we’ve moved on. I celebrate the fact that the gifts we bring to ministry really have very little to do with gender and more to do with the way the Spirit is always pulling us toward wholeness by including a diversity of life experiences within the Body of Christ. Ordaining women was just one moment along the way toward fully becoming the people God is calling us to be.   

Ordination - March 11, 1979