Growing Those Trees

Several weeks ago, my kids and I spent a week with my dad. It was a wonderful week! Usually, our trips to my childhood home are quick, but this time allowed for several trips into town, which gave me space to notice a few things I hadn’t seen in a long while.

I remember one specific moment when I was driving to town. I came over a hill, and to my surprise, the farmstead on my left had a row of towering trees. The leaves were a beautiful fresh green, full and lush, reaching toward the warmth of the summer sun. The trees stood like faithful sentinels, quiet guardians keeping watch over the space.

They looked as though they had been there forever, but I was certain they hadn’t always been there. Somewhere along the way, quietly and gradually, they had taken root, grown stronger, and become something that could no longer be overlooked. It was the kind of quiet growth that happens season by season, day after day—so unassuming that those living alongside the change don’t even notice.

But I did. I noticed.

In recent weeks, I have watched conversations unfold within the church about women in ministry—particularly the Southern Baptist Convention’s recent decisions regarding churches that affirm women serving as pastors. For some, these decisions represent a needed return to biblical conviction. For others, they represent a painful moment of exclusion and a narrowing of what they believe Scripture allows. I share my story not as a way of dismissing those who hold complementarian convictions, but as someone who once held them myself.

I know the sincerity behind both convictions because I have walked through this conversation from the inside. I know what it is like to hold convictions about Scripture because I believed they honored God, and I also know what it is like to wrestle with those convictions when Scripture began to open up in new ways.

The hardest part has been carrying the tension of knowing that we share the same hope: that people would know Jesus, love His Word, and be transformed by His grace. And yet, because of a difference in how we understand women’s roles in ministry, some have felt unable to walk alongside us in this work. I honor their desire to be faithful, even as I grieve what feels like a missed opportunity to join together in the mission God has placed before us.

These past couple of years have been deeply transformative for me. For years, I studied and wrestled with the various passages in the New Testament that shaped my understanding of women in ministry. These were passages that, for many years, I interpreted to mean that I should not lead in certain circumstances. That I should not speak in certain circumstances. That I should not serve in certain circumstances.

Those convictions carried significant weight for me. And in an effort to be faithful to the text and honest before God, I worked hard to practice what I believed those passages were asking of me. In seminary I pursued a Masters Of Divinity – not because I wanted to or believed I should be a pastor, but because I was confident that the Lord was asking me to get an education that was rigorous and comprehensive. One that invited me to engage deeply with Scripture, theology, church history, and the lived realities of ministry – and prepared me to engage with humility and depth with those I would serve alongside and under as a woman on staff in a church. That was the degree I pursued, and it equipped me well for the ministry roles I believed were available to me—roles primarily within the authority and leadership structures I had come to understand.

Sometimes, without even realizing it, parts of us begin to grow and form quietly. Experiences shape us. Stories change us. Seasons of life transform us.

As ministry was shaping me through both strengths and scars, my eyes were beginning to open. I was starting to see Scripture through a new lens. And because of that, I began reading several newly published books on women and ministry. One was written by a peer of a friend, and another by someone I knew from seminary. Having a personal connection to both authors helped me engage their work with openness and trust the heart behind their scholarship.

I learned so much. What caused me to pause was how consistently Scripture highlighted women’s significant participation in the work of God’s kingdom. The New Testament is filled with examples of women teaching, leading, proclaiming, supporting, and advancing the gospel.”

I had learned to read certain passages through a framework that often made it difficult to recognize the leadership and contributions of these women. Through the work of Beth Allison Barr and Nijay Gupta, I began to revisit passages like Romans 16 with a deeper appreciation for who these women actually were.

Lydia—the woman who gathered and led a house church. Priscilla (and Aquila)—a couple who were a force to be reckoned with, with Priscilla’s name often appearing first, which is a detail worth noticing. Junia—a woman Paul names alongside Andronicus and describes as notable among the apostles. A woman whose presence in the text challenged assumptions I had carried for years. A woman. An apostle. The person I had been taught to overlook was actually right there in the text all along.

Through deep wrestling with Scripture and conversation with the Lord, I eventually said yes—with both excitement and trepidation—to walk with my husband into the journey of church planting. Together, we have walked through a challenging year. In a place where we believe God is inviting us to plant a church, we have also experienced the heartbreak of some stepping away because my role as a woman in ministry does not align with their convictions. I do not share this with anger toward those people. Many of them are seeking to honor Scripture just as I once was. I know that posture because I lived there.

And while that has been painful, it has also caused me to look back and recognize the ways God has been faithfully at work. When I stop to survey the landscape, I notice the trees that have grown. Full and lush. Healthy and strong. Growth that I didn’t always see happening. Growth that happened slowly, quietly, season by season. Growth that was taking root long before I ever recognized it.

The trees were not there yesterday. But they didn’t appear overnight either. And neither did this work God has been doing in me. Through years of study, wrestling, prayer, ministry, and faithful searching, God was patiently growing something new. And now, looking back, I can see what I couldn’t see before: the places where I thought I was simply trying to be faithful were also the places where God was forming me. The roots were growing. The branches were stretching. And the fruit was beginning to appear.

My understanding of Scripture didn’t change because I stopped caring about it. I changed because I cared so deeply about Scripture that I was willing to keep wrestling with it.

And in that wrestling, I encountered not a smaller view of God’s Word, but a fuller one—a God who has always been at work through unexpected people, in unexpected ways, for the renewal of all things. And it is my great joy to walk with that same God—the God who continues to work in unexpected ways, including in me.

Perhaps the most beautiful part is this: the God who was growing those trees long before I noticed was the same God who was growing me long before I understood.

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