The Audacity
By Karen Fletcher Smith
“Boooooo!!!”
It echoed from the back of the room. I could feel my face getting hot, flushed with immediate embarrassment. I wiped my palms on my jeans and cleared my throat with no other need than to ground my body and keep her from passing out with shame.
I was teaching a women’s Bible study, something I dearly loved. I struggled with imposter syndrome, thinking I was uneducated, too young and too inexperienced to be up there. I had spent 16-20 hours a week writing this particular teaching and I loved every minute of that hard work, until I didn’t.
There’s a sobering experience of getting booed on a stage that will make you question your choices in life. And that’s exactly what I think they meant to do.
It was a more conservative church and somewhere at the beginning of my teaching I went off script and mentioned how much I thought about sermons, and teaching, and preaching.
“Boooooo!” The murmuring started from the back of the room, and I heard collective grumbling encouraging the protestor. Flooded with embarrassment, I began to ask myself, “Who do you think you are?”
The question echoed from their “boooos” of dissatisfaction with me. Who do you think you are to even think about preaching?
At that time in my life I wasn’t against a woman preaching, but I didn’t think it was good idea to let women preach regularly at least, because I knew many men who would not listen. Still, I kept these thoughts to myself, knowing deep inside it was not a safe conversation to have.
I did wrestle through it on my own though and wondered why every Mother’s Day we heard from a man on what it meant to be a godly woman. Why couldn’t the woman’s pastor preach that sermon?
As the boooos echoed back to me, my body froze in fear and shame, and I panicked. “Not like that!” I said backtracking. “It’s just that I think through sermons and wonder ‘what would I say here? Where do I see this word or idea in other scriptures? What stories would I use to further explain this?’”
It didn’t help.
The grumbling continued and I swallowed my pride and tried my best to move on and teach what I had prepared, vowing never to go off script again. I wondered if I should ever teach again.
These days that story feels like a lifetime ago. I’ve changed a lot since then. We moved churches, and then because of even more damning words of fellow Christians, I nearly left church forever. Throughout all this, I went to seminary and fed the part of my heart that loves Jesus. I read, and I wrote, and I wrestled out theology with trusted friends. I began to not only believe that women can preach but I helped advocate and even taught other women to preach as well. (If you’re female and interested, check out The Marcella Project!) Through the years at seminary, three different local welcoming church bodies have asked me to fill in as a preacher from time to time. It’s an utter joy every time.
In an effort to learn and sharpen this skill, this past weekend I joined 31 brothers and sisters at Pepperdine University for a Compelling Preaching retreat that will kick off a year of coaching and encouragement. We talked about content, craft and delivery of sermons. We talked about our love for Jesus and how for so many of us in the room we can’t quite describe the mystery of being compelled to preach. We had some amazing fellowship on the beaches of Malibu, and we spoke life into each other’s callings in the kingdom.
As an artist, I have learned that to create anything you must first have audacity. I realize now that my audacity comes from my Creator himself. It takes a tremendous amount of courage to create and be creative, whether that’s painting or preaching. These days when I hear that old familiar accuser say, “Who do you think you are?” I now answer with, “I am a daughter of The King.” I simply can’t and won’t stop talking about him, I love him too much. Like the woman at the well, I am compelled with joy to tell others about The One who has seen me, offered me living water and utterly changed my life.
“For as unseemly as it may appear now-a-days for a woman to preach, it should be remembered that nothing is impossible with God. And why should it be though impossible, heterodox, or improper, for a woman to preach? Seeing the Savior died for the woman as well as the man. If a man may preach, because the Savior died for him, why not the woman? Seeing he died for her also. Is he not a whole Savior, instead of a half one? As those who hold it wrong for a woman to preach, would seem to make it appear.”
- Jarena Lee a nineteenth century preacher from her autobiography written almost 200 years ago
