Leading from the Margin

As a female lay rostered person in the ELCA, I feel that I lead from the margins.  I am not quite legitimate. When I was a student at Luther Seminary, I had other female students in the MDiv track tell me,"One day, you will be one of us."   That made me feel like a second class person in the church.  When I was in the rostering process, the psychological evaluation needed to find a reason why I decided not to be ordained.   In his report, the psychologist decided that I must have had a poor relationship with my father that I chose not to be ordained.  As I talked to two other women in the Associate in Ministry track like me, they also had statements in their psychological evaluations which indicated something was wrong in that they decided not to be ordained. Obviously deciding not to be ordained was considered deviant behavior by this psychologist.

Another story - About 10 years ago the leadership of the congregation in which I was serving, wanted to participate in a program at Luther Seminary which placed students in congregations for their contextual education experience. A student had contacted the congregation and was very interested in the outreach we were doing in the Liberian community.  The Senior Pastor felt he was too busy and asked if I wanted to be the mentor for this person and attend the group meetings.  I said yes.  When I went to the orientation meeting for the mentors, the director of the program at Luther Seminary said to me while I was checking in, "Now Diane don't be offended if I refer to everyone as Pastor because everyone else is a pastor."   Of course, I was instantly offended.  During the orientation it was made very clear that all the mentors were pastors and were expected to be pastors.   I went back to the Senior Pastor and told me that I had to withdraw from being a mentor as I was not ordained and this would be a hindrance to our participation.   Our congregation withdrew much to the dismay of the student.

 Even now after 20 years of serving in four congregations, there are positions in the church for which I would not be considered because I am not ordained.  Only clergy need to apply.  Sometimes that is stated clearly in the job description and sometimes told to me.  So what does this all mean for me as a strong female lay leader in the Church?
To be continued...