The voice that you hear…
Thirty-five years ago this month, Elizabeth Platz was ordained in the then Lutheran Church in America (LCA), the first woman ordained in an American Lutheran church. I was 11 years old, still wondering what I would be when I grew up. Seven years later, when I went off to college, my roommate was in the pre-theological track, wanting to become a pastor. For me and women younger than me, there have been no constitutional impediments in responding to a call and becoming a pastor. But for women older than me, that has not always been true.

When the Churchwide Assembly met in July and celebrated women’s ministries, Bishop April Ulring Larson — the first woman elected a bishop in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America — told those assembled that for many of those ordained in the 1970s, the first female voice they heard preaching was their own. She asked the participants to name the first woman they had heard preach. It took me awhile to remember, and I don’t recall her name, but the first woman I heard preach was a woman active in the women's organization. She preached a Thankoffering service at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Tannersville, Pennsylvania, back in the early 1970s. What a fitting testament to the women’s organizations, that participants in them were among the first to preach in our pulpits.

This month, as you gather with friends, ask the question Bishop Larson asked. Name the first woman you heard preach. Then offer a word of thanks to God for that woman and all the women who share the gospel. Pray, too, that faithful leaders will be lifted up in the future. May God use you to aid those who are discerning the call.