TERRA INCOGNITA

CHARTING NEW TERRITORY FOR CHRISTIAN WOMEN

To lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished notonly humanly but also spiritually.

—Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets

For as long as I can remember, I have been drawn to lonely places,to places long forgotten or places undiscovered. The badlands ofthe Texas Panhandle are the beginning of the American West. Mostpeople, from Spanish explorers in the sixteenth century to modern-daytravelers of US Route 66, thought of the Panhandle, an areasparsely vegetated with cacti, crooked honey mesquite, and junipertrees, as a land you just passed through.

Our family passed through it every year at Christmas as we madeour way from one set of grandparents to the other. Through the backwindow of my parents' Grand Marquis, I would peer out at the aridlandscape riddled with canyons filled with tall grasses, plums, andhackberries and long for another kind of life. I daydreamed aboutbeing a cowgirl exploring the Palo Duro Canyons on a palominoquarter horse.

Years later, while going to grad school, my husband and I lived ina parsonage on the edge of the San Gabriel Mountains in Glendora,California. Los Angeles County is the most populous county in thenation, but you would never know it from the top of Colby Trail.Despite a demanding schedule working three jobs in addition tofull-time PhD coursework, I still headed out my back door three orfour times a week to explore miles of often-isolated trails.

Still even more years later, I chiseled out my dissertation on theedge of another range of mountains—the Colorado Rockies. Locallore is filled with harrowing tales of expedition and discovery, butthe story that made the biggest impression on me was the story ofLewis and Clark, who passed through the Rocky Mountains nearLincoln, Montana.

When Meriwether Lewis and William Clark embarked on theirlegendary expedition in May of 1804, President Thomas Jeffersoncommissioned them to find a direct water route across the continentto facilitate commerce, and to discover and document theresources in the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase. In May 1804,the land stretching from North Dakota westward to the Pacific wasterra incognita—unknown territory.

The story of Lewis and Clark underscored something I hadbelieved from those early days sitting in the back seat of my parents'car: it is not that lonely places have no stories; it is that their storiesare still waiting to be told. I guess it is this same impulse to find theuntold stories that first stoked my interest in female Christian leaders.In the twenty-first century, we are inclined to think that thereare no unknown territories, no frontiers left uncharted. Yet whenwe seek to explore and explain the experiences of female Christianleaders, we are embarking, like Lewis and Clark, on a journey intoterra incognita.

Though there are women leading in almost every area of Christianministry, they are not that visible. We know very little about theirexperiences and the challenges they face. Because of this, Christianwomen are often either sidelined or their efforts are altogether derailed.

TALES FROM THE SIDELINES

Samantha was thirteen months old when her parents divorced. Herfather was never around or involved in her life, and her motherworked seventy hours a week to support Samantha and her threesiblings. For most of her life, Samantha felt that she had to figurethings out on her own. I met Samantha during her sophomore yearat Azusa Pacific University (APU), where I worked as an adjunctprofessor and reference librarian.

When you are nineteen years old and fresh out of your parents'home, it's easy to get caught up in the carefree college days and putoff making big decisions like which major to pursue or what careerGod may be calling you to. But Samantha did not waste any time.She double-majored in political science and history and workedpart-time at the library to pay the amount of her tuition that wasnot covered by her scholarship.

Samantha was thoughtful, disciplined, and desperate to make adifference in the world, but she was often frustrated by the lack ofthoughtful resources for Christian women. "I feel called to do somethingin ministry," she told me, "but I have no idea how to get there.When I go to a bookstore to look for guidance on how to developas a female Christian leader, I don't find any meaningful Christianresources to help me. I don't know any female Christian leaders inthe organizations I'd like to serve in."

Helen was a fellow professor at APU. One spring morning wetalked softly in the library, savoring the lull in activity that alwayscomes midsemester. The semester had been launched, lesson planswere written, and final exams were in the distant future. We talkedabout theology, about our students, about our stage fright whengiving lectures. But most of all, we talked about our futures. Bothof us had achieved significant accomplishments at a fairly early age:she had been the recipient of the only full scholarship that FullerTheological Seminary offers MDiv students, and I was a publishedwriter wrapping up the final semester of coursework for my PhD.

Both of us had been encouraged by mentors throughout our academiccareers, about our potential for contributing to the academiccommunity, about charting new territories for female Christianscholars. And we loved academia and the life of the mind. We neverthought—in all our years of learning and studying and teachingand writing—that anything, even our gender, would stand in ourway. Both the feminists and our fathers had taught us that we couldaccomplish anything we wanted to, that the world was ours for thetaking, that we were limited only by the things we chose not to do.

But on that March morning, we secretly admitted that we didnot feel the academic world was all we wanted out of life. We didnot just want to be Christian scholars and professors; we wanted tobe mothers. And we wondered how on earth two such demanding,seemingly opposing spheres of life could ever be reconciled andhow we could participate fully, incarnationally, in both worlds. Iremember the tension building as we spoke, our minds scramblingfor answers to what we thought were new questions. "The problem,"I said, "is that we have no maps." At the time, neither one ofus had appropriate role models to guide us; our mentors were eithermen or women with no children.

Sally...