Where are the girls?

I was having a discussion with a friend the other day about a pastor she met who sounded more like a used car salesman than an ordained minister.  Having my theories, I responded that when a little boy grows up in a congregation and tries to sell everyone some Jesus, people naturally affirm, "Well, he'll make a great pastor someday!"  In reality, pastors come from many different backgrounds, including as car salesmen in their first careers, and this statement may not be entirely true.  I have seen the "young preacher" types before though, and it wasn't necessarily a predestined calling for these boys because they were natural leaders, knew their Bible all that well, or had the most pure thoughts.  They just knew how to talk to people well.  They were extroverted.  They struck people as confident.  Sometimes they were pastors' kids.  They knew it was safe, even praiseworthy, to talk about Jesus in church.  Some actually became fantastic ministers.  Others not so much.

I wondered then, from my relatively new context of the PCUSA, how do congregations nurture their little girls who seem called to church leadership, or who display an early call to the pulpit?  I never really saw this when I was growing up, and I haven't seen it much in the last four years, but it's quite telling that there are more female M.Div. students at the seminary where I studied than male students.  Many of my female friends from seminary largely had no idea what it is like for those potential female leaders in churches that consider it un-Biblical to ordain them.  These lovely friends often acted like I was from another planet when I was trying to confront my own issues of my unworthiness to God's call to preach and teach and be "The Reverend."

Then I read this article today about PEW's (Post-Evangelical Women) and the experience of going from "silent in church" to "the preacher."  There's a great deal of truth here.  I'm reminded that one female Christian, perhaps many, can have extraordinarily different experiences between churches, not because they are all so different but because they are perceived by the others around them in drastically different ways.  So I ask in all naivete, how do churches who ordain women (and have for a while) identify those girls who seem early on to have a call from God to preach?

*Photos were taken by me in the church where I preached for my supervised ministry internship during my seminary studies.  It's one of the early places where I struggled to find my voice.