Spring 2024 · Vol. 53 No. 1 · pp. 103–107
Book Review
On Holy Ground: Stories by and about Women in Ministry Leadership in the Mennonite Brethren Church
ed. Dora Dueck. Winnipeg, MB: Kindred Productions, 2022. 201 pages.
Women in ministry leadership has been one of the most contentious and longest-running topics of discernment in the Mennonite Brethren (MB) Church. However, the grammar of this historic conversation has been confusing. Examining the phrase “women in ministry leadership” one would assume that by all grammatical accounts, women are the subject of the phrase. However, over the last fifty years of history in the MB context, women have generally been treated as objects to be discussed. Largely, women ministry leaders have been objects acted upon by other subjects (primarily men) through discussions and decision-making processes that either have explicitly excluded them or were deemed too risky to participate in. Reinstating women as subjects and valuing their lived experiences as theologically important in the history of the MB conferences is a vulnerable endeavor, while denominational support is still not unanimous. This is the risky work that the collection of personal narratives found in On Holy Ground seeks to accomplish.
In inviting various women to share their personal experiences, editor Dora Dueck gathers a collection of narratives from fifteen female church leaders in the MB churches in North America. While each story is unique, what is consistently evident in each testimony is a sense of being called by God while also being affirmed and invited by faith communities and individuals to step into ministry leadership. Dueck contends that the genre of life-writing found in On Holy Ground is not only vital for preserving our history but also offers a valuable avenue of learning through bearing witness, inviting readers to “listen well—with gratitude and interest, and without judgement” (1) as they encounter each author’s story.
This collection was initiated by the Mennonite Brethren Historical Commission, primarily in response to Carol Penner’s review in the fall 2019 issue of Direction of Doug Heidebrecht’s book, Women in Ministry Leadership: The Journey of the Mennonite Brethren, 1954–2010 (Kindred, 2019). In her review, Penner’s major critique of Heidebrecht’s work was simple, yet profound: it named the obvious oversight that Women in Ministry Leadership hardly speaks about the actual women who pioneered in pastoral leadership without denominational support and instead gives primary attention to discussions and how decisions were made—women, yet again, being treated primarily as objects to be discussed. 1 On Holy Ground takes on the task of Penner’s prescribed remedy: {104}
We need a companion volume, written by women, that tells the stories of faithful women ministers in the MB church, the challenges they faced and the theological insights they have gleaned . . . Nothing shows the power of God working in women pastors so much as the fact that there were women who ministered, in increasing numbers, despite so little encouragement from denominational leadership. 2
In each chapter of On Holy Ground, readers are invited into attentive listening as the author shares her call to and journey in ministry leadership. These stories include women who were invited into pastoral leadership, served as missionaries, participated in conference leadership, worked for the MB Herald, and some who never held an official position or title but served and led in the conference in significant ways. While each account is unique, all offer insightful theological reflections on over-arching themes of risk-taking obedience, discernment, the importance of the church as a community that calls and affirms leaders, grief and healing of wounds, and the inherent diversity and unity of the female experience in ministry leadership.
Despite the struggle these women endured through the lengthy denominational discernment process, it is evident that each of these women still contends for the importance of community-involved discernment. Valerie G. Rempel explains, “The affirmation of a community of faith is especially relevant for those who have been shaped by an Anabaptist sense of the church as a voluntary community” (6). This Anabaptist value highlights why the lack of explicit affirmation for women in ministry leadership was so painful and simultaneously why pockets of local community affirmation sustained these women over the years. While many of them reflect on their exclusion, silence, and struggles within the larger context of the Conference, they also credit much of their discernment and affirmation into leadership with individuals and other communities around them. Laura Kalmar is the first, but not the only, to credit her time in seminary or other school contexts as a significant community of staff and faculty who provided encouragement and support to young female leaders (12). Others, like Mary Anne Isaak and Bev Peters, share about specific men inviting them to present papers and teach in church services (68, 168). It is this tension found in many of the stories of navigating Conference politics while experiencing support and affirmation in local communities that helps readers understand the theological tension in both the gifts and damages that can result from discipleship intimately shaped by communal discernment. {105}
At the beginning of the collection, Dueck and Valerie G. Rempel identify the inherent risk of these testimonies going public. Rempel writes,
There is both risk and power in first-person narratives. Women’s accounts of their lives and especially their calling by God into ministry service and leadership have often been discounted as misguided. Stories, we’re told, are too subjective, too focused on evoking an emotional response rather than aligning with what is perceived to be biblical truth . . . [however] making sense of our lives is a deeply theological enterprise. (4)
This risk echoes in many of the stories. Karen Heidebrecht Thiessen shares how women did not feel comfortable speaking in conference settings for fear of being perceived as seeking power and prestige, while Carol Penner confesses that even writing her story for On Holy Ground feels like “breaking the rules. Women pastors in the MB church aren’t supposed to talk about how hard it is for us” (35, 117). But, as Sherri Guenther Trautwein observes, “[C]hange came, but only because of women who spoke up and women who submitted to discussion about them and around them” (198).
Unfortunately, the risk stated at the beginning of the book was not avoided when a decision of the executive leadership of both MB conferences in North America damaged the gift of On Holy Ground. Just before the book was published and released for public purchasing, one of the authors, Mary Ann Isaak, was informed that three pages of her story would be removed and could not be published as part of the collection due to the nature of her story reflects on the parallels between the marginalization of women with the contemporary marginalization of members of the LGBTQ+ community. 3 The decision was made by the Executive Boards of both the US and Canadian Mennonite Brethren Conferences, who fund the MB Historical Commission, claiming that the “three pages move beyond the recording of personal experience . . . to more of a brief theology essay advocating for a type of LGBTQ+ inclusion in conflict with a straightforward reading of our MB Confession of Faith.” 4
This decision by Conference leadership only further demonstrates the need for such a book that takes the risk of displaying that theology is profoundly personal, shaped by everyday experiences, and influenced {106} by the communities to which we belong. While I do not share the same opinion of the Conference in their concern for Isaak’s three pages and their choice to remove them, I can’t help but be grateful for their decision. Choosing to remove these three pages ended up promoting this book, which may very well have flown under the radar due to its niche audience and exclusively female authorship. Isaak’s commitment to courageously share her whole story led her to make the three pages available to the public. The result was that many more people than expected bought the book to read the rest of the stories. As a millennial in the MB church, I have never heard of a Kindred Productions book so highly anticipated, purchased, and circulated by my peers.
While this book can be read on its own, the profundity of its risks, insights, and tensions are amplified for those who know the history and context in which these stories are birthed, while perhaps lost on younger generations and those unfamiliar with recent MB history. Dueck strategically chose to invite women of a “certain vintage” whose age reflects years of experience within the journey of the MB Church throughout its several processes of discernment about women in ministry leadership (2). However, for those younger readers and those “new” to the MB Church, I would recommend Heidebrecht’s Women in Ministry Leadership as a helpful historical account to be read in tandem with this collection. Understanding the history and context matters and helps readers understand the diversity of experiences, the tensions, and the ongoing ambiguity of support for female leaders in the MB Church.
The words from the women in On Holy Ground offer a valuable theological contribution to the MB community. Their narratives reveal the sacred relationships, thoughts, emotions, prayers, conversations, and other holy moments that sustained these women as God called them to lead, serve, and advocate. While dismissing these narratives as merely subjective reflections may be tempting, readers are invited to take up the risk with the various authors to empathize with these personal stories as valid theological insights into the value of female leadership. Many women who read this book will be heartened and invited to reflect as they resonate with these testimonies and wrestle with which of their own stories could be added to this collection. And for those who have been privileged to assume authority and leadership within the MB Conference without the barrier of gender, my prayer is that this book will give them pause and elicit empathy, curiosity, and perhaps even repentance.
As a younger female MB Church member navigating my own call into ministry leadership, I am so grateful for the legacy of these women and others who have gone before me and my peers and have taken vulnerable risks to share their wounds and wins as wisdom for the next generation. {107} Thank you for following God’s voice, using your voices, and helping me find mine.
- Carol Penner, review of Women in Ministry Leadership: The Journey of the Mennonite Brethren, 1954–2010, by Douglas J. Heidebrecht, Direction 48 no. 2 (2019): 192.
- Penner, 193.
- John Longhurst, “MB Leaders Order Books Reprinted with Three Pages Removed,” Anabaptist World News, June 30, 2022, accessed May 11, 2024, https://anabaptistworld.org/mb-leaders-order-books-reprinted-with-three-pages-removed/.
- “On Holy Ground Book Reprinted at Request of USMB And CCMBC Boards,” MB Herald, July 6, 2022, accessed May 11, 2024, https://mbherald.com/on-holy-ground-book-reprinted-at-request-of-usmb-and-ccmbc-boards/.
