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Women, Calling, and Guilt

Is seminary a waste of time?

For the first year and a half that Marcy* was in seminary, she struggled with guilt. Marcy was a full-time student at an evangelical seminary, but she was also a staff person at a para-church ministry. She worried her financial supporters wouldn’t understand, and she described their skepticism this way, “They think I’m wasting my time frivolously doing more education when I don’t have to have it.”

As it turns out, Marcy is not alone in her feelings of guilt. Among the women I interviewed at evangelical seminaries around the country, many expressed the same concerns, though for a variety of reasons. For some, seminary seemed impractical: why spend the money on school if church positions for women are scarce? For others, it was a question of motives. They wondered whether they were pursuing ministry for God’s glory or their own.

Some women were simply confused. They couldn’t reconcile their strong sense of calling with their theological convictions. As one woman put it, “I feel kind of confused because I have the giftings of a pastor, but I don’t feel like that’s . . . all my life that’s not something that the women would do.”

For many of these women, seminary seemed “impractical.” It didn’t make sense professionally or financially. Even so, they couldn’t ignore their passion for studying and teaching God’s Word. They were eager to take their first classes, to learn Greek and Hebrew (if that’s not calling, I don’t know what is!), and to become better equipped for ministry.

In the end, passion won the day, but the pursuit of passion is an emotional roller coaster whenever it’s coupled with risk. On the one hand, these women chose a path that was personally meaningful to them. On the other hand, they had a gnawing fear that they were wasting their time and resources. Although they described seminary as “God’s gift” to them, or a time of “spiritual retreat,” lurking behind those motivations was an abiding concern about selfishness: “I thought maybe I was being selfish by wanting to attend.”

I suppose these emotions are not surprising. “Following your passion” can sound a bit head-in-the-clouds. I can see how the students might consider their choice an indulgence, rather than a necessity. And yet, answering God’s call is not like taking a year off to “find yourself.” These women are doing the divinely commanded work of stewarding their gifts for the good of the church. Why all the guilt? Where’s it coming from?

My research did not address those questions directly, but my interviews left me with a solid hunch. Although some women struggled with guilt, others did not. Some were actually quite confident that seminary was the right choice for them, and that distinction caught my attention: why did one group of women feel guilty, while the other didn’t?

I decided to look closer at their stories, and figure out what was different between the two groups. This is what I found: the difference between the women who felt guilty, and the women who did not, was felt need. The women who were most confident about their decision felt needed by the church. They identified an area of the church requiring attention, vision, or care, and they believed God was calling them to address it. In other words, they saw their place. They believed the church would be weaker without them, and it gave them a sense of purpose and urgency.

“Felt need” may be the secret to empowering women to use their gifts, and if that is the case, I believe we can draw three important conclusions about women, calling, and ministry:

1. Women need to know they are needed.

In churches that are predominately male-led, it’s easy for women to see their ministry gifts as somewhat inessential, like icing on the cake. If you have the time to get training for ministry, then good for you, but most of the heavy lifting is already being handled by men.

However, that is not the message of Scripture. 1 Corinthians 12 teaches us that all gifts are given “for the common good” (v. 7). Our interests, our talents, and our passions are not “just for fun,” and they’re certainly not just for us. God grants gifts for a purpose greater than ourselves, and without each member exercising his or her gifts, the body of Christ is a crippled body indeed.

It’s a beautiful paradox, that we cannot be fully ourselves without one another, but that is how God designed us. God intended us to depend on one another, and that means our gifts are not frivolities. They are essential to the church, and I suspect more women need to hear that message.

2. Calling isn’t always practical.

I won’t spend much time arguing this point, because the scriptural evidence is so clear. Throughout the Bible, God is constantly picking the least qualified candidates to do his work: the poor, the lowly, the unreliable, the immoral, the disobedient. Think of Paul, a persecutor of Christians; Rahab, the prostitute; Moses, with his speech impediment; David, the nobody shepherd; Mary, the unmarried teen; Peter, the uneducated fisherman.

God’s glory shines brightest in the unlikeliest of vessels. If God had a calling card, that would be it. So don’t let impracticality deter you. God loves a good Cinderella story.

3. You don’t have to be a martyr.

All too often, Christians believe that following Christ should be miserable. If we’re not suffering, then we’re not doing it right. I suspect that logic was behind some of the guilt I encountered. Some women couldn’t believe God would call them to a field they actually enjoyed.

John Piper effectively debunks this misperception when he writes, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” With these words, Piper captures the long-held Christian belief that God wants us to have joy. God wants us to enjoy him. He designed us to be most content, most full, when we are following him and using the gifts he gave us. No, following Christ is not always easy, but it is good and fulfilling—and it can even be fun. Pain and suffering, in and of itself, is no indication of God’s leading.

From time to time, it’s good to examine our motives. Inviting God to search our hearts and know our thoughts is, according to Psalm 139, prerequisite to the “life everlasting.” In that sense, I want to honor and affirm the self-examinations of the women I interviewed.

But if I could go back to each one of those women and chat a little longer, I would say something like this: Your gifts are not your gifts. Your gifts are an expression of God’s generosity to the world. By way of your talents and passions, God will bless others. What you are doing is not selfish. It is an expression of divine generosity, and we will be a better church—a better world—because of it. So press on.

* The student’s name has been changed

Sharon Hodde Miller is a writer, speaker, pastor's wife, and mom. She earned her PhD on the subject of women and calling. You can read more of her writing at SheWorships.com.

January28, 2016 at 8:00 AM

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