Monday’s opening worship of the International Council of Community Churches Annual Conference in St. Louis featured a marvelous and moving sermon by Rev. Rhonda Blevens, Pastor of Chapel by the Sea in Clearwater Beach, Florida. It reminded me of a time several years ago when a church in Charlotte called a female pastor.
There was a man in that church who was adamantly opposed to having a woman pastor. Most Protestant Christian churches have long moved on from that issue, noting the commitment to equality of “neither male nor female” powerfully affirmed in the gospel, Jesus’ inclusion of women among his follower and witnesses, and Paul’s inclusion of women in his circle of coworkers. But this man led his family to oppose his church’s new pastor, solely on the basis of her gender.I ran into this man a few years later, and asked him how things were at his church. Instantly, his demeanor changed, and his eyes became moist as he spoke. “Things have never been better at our church,” he said. “You know we have a woman pastor,” he continued, “and I was opposed to her. But when I faced surgery, she was there. She has led our church with grace and wisdom, she’s a good preacher and has a pastor’s heart.”
He then took my hands, looked in my eyes and said, “Bruce, I was wrong about women pastors.” Then he said, “and if I was wrong about women pastors, it occurred to me that I might have been wrong about a lot of things.”
I’ll never forget that. It was as if the heavens opened and the Holy Spirit came down in our very midst. “I might have been wrong about a lot of things.” Contained in those words is the raw material God can use to change a person, a family, a church, maybe even the whole world.
Even at our best, our beliefs are fallible, there is always room for growth, and humility is the fertile ground in which God can work in our lives in a new way. There may be more power unleashed than we’ll ever realize in the simple admonition of, “I was wrong.” When we can admit that, it’s as if God smiles and says, “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
In the name of the One who can do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine,
Bruce Jones, Pastor and Co-Creator,
Imagine Church of the Carolinas
