Saying “Yes” might be the easiest part of following God’s calling in your life. But walking in that calling can bring problems – both big and small. Let’s be honest about one of those problems: When it comes to being a woman in ministry, we’ve come a long way – but there’s still much more we need to embrace.
Transcript
Twanna Henderson: Welcome to T Time: Spiritual Conversations For, With and About Women. I’m your host, Twanna Henderson and as always, I want to remind you to like this broadcast, and to definitely share it with someone in your life. Well, I have a very special guest with us on today. Today’s guest is Sarah Burtt. Sarah serves at Grace Church in Erie, Pennsylvania, where she is part of the preaching team and the lead for much of their written content. After serving as a volunteer staff person for eight years, two years ago, she was licensed as one of the staff pastors. Sarah is an alum of Indiana Wesleyan University. And she is also a former Spanish teacher, former volleyball player and is an outdoor enthusiast. But mostly she loves Jesus a whole lot and is a self described introvert who is learning to live and function in the extroverted world. She’s married to Nate and they have two kids, Madeline and Lincoln. Sarah, welcome to T Time.
Sarah Burtt: Thank you so much, Twanna. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Twanna Henderson: Yes, you are definitely a multifaceted woman.
Sarah Burtt: Aren’t we all know? Aren’t we all?
Twanna Henderson: Absolutely. Well, you know what, to come back to the Spanish thing because that’s my last my little side thing, my Spanish. But I’m just so excited to talk to you and to hear about your ministry journey. You and I met last November and had the opportunity to talk about women in ministry over lunch. So I want to first just go back to the years of young Sarah, and, you know, when you were growing up, what is it that you want it to become?
Sarah Burtt: Yeah, so in my younger years, I didn’t have the typical like, oh, I can’t wait to grow up and get married and have kids but nor was I dreaming big of like, Oh, I’m gonna, you know, be an astronaut. I was a very in the moment kind of kid growing up, I think whatever it was that I was doing with my family. And and I think that’s because I was safe and secure and in a good loving home. But there was a moment when I was eight that I heard the story of Amy Carmichael, for the first time, she was a missionary in India and helped rescue kids from orphanages and hearing her story stirred something up in me that wanted to be a missionary. And so that was kind of always, in my mind, even as I was, you know, very happy with playing outside and being at home and all of those things. So there was this. Yeah, there was this thing in my heart that thought maybe I’ll be a missionary someday.
Twanna Henderson: Yeah, and that’s, I mean, that’s a pretty lofty, you know, career goal. When you speak of Amy talk about some of the roles that you saw women filling in ministry when you were younger?
Sarah Burtt: Yeah. Well, I think one of the things that I saw through the stories that I read, and just what was happening around was that women were able to do ministry by being missionaries. We were able to go serve somewhere else in the world, somewhere else. In like this, you know, God given role of ministry, and so that was one way. And the other ways in the local church were the very typical and good ways of hospitality and behind the scenes kind of service, you know, making meals for church lunches, or, you know, serving in those making costumes for Christmas pageants and those kinds of roles. Those things did not appeal to me then. Nor would I’d say that those are my strengths now. But that that was the limited picture that I had in my brain of Oh, to be a woman in the church is to serve behind the scenes or to go overseas, potentially.
Twanna Henderson: Yeah, and I mean, certainly there’s nothing wrong with that. But I mean, it is very limiting in terms of, you know, who we are as women our capacity and, and what you know, God has, you know, put on the inside of us. I want to just kind of talk about your journey because, you know, you’ve gone from volunteer, you know, to preacher to pastor, and inquiring minds want to know, how did you get there? How did you get to this place?
Sarah Burtt: That’s a good question. I ask the same thing sometimes. When I’m, you know, being stretched to that next thing. I’m like how did I get here? What have I done? It really did start with me seeking connection in church. So young single twenty something, moving to a new city and not knowing people. Walking into a church and just really craving community, and so found myself as part of a life group with other women. Found myself leading that life group and feeling incredibly, you know, incapable of doing so, and leaning heavily on a woman who offered to mentor me through that leadership experience. And so that really, I think, was the training ground that God was preparing me for all kinds of things I would never have ever dreamed of. At no point. Until the day my pastor said, Would you consider being licensed as a pastor? Did I think of becoming a pastor? It just wasn’t at the end, like we said before, it wasn’t something I saw growing up and it wasn’t on my radar. I didn’t think that I was capable of doing something like that, but spent a lot of years leading Life Group and then through the mentorship of a woman named Miriam and through the encouragement of some other people at the church, began to be asked to do some additional things as to help teach this class at the church as to go ahead and write a class for the church invited to host a service on the stage invited to pray for leaders meeting just small steps like that of things and they were all very stretching, because like you said, the introduction. I’m an introvert.
Twanna Henderson: Isn’t that amazing how God does that?
Sarah Burtt: I think he’s just smile and laughing at me.
Twanna Henderson: He has a great sense of humor.
Sarah Burtt: He so does, he so does. But I think for all of us, not just women, but all of us as Christians, we know what it’s like to say yes to the next thing that God wants to do and allow him to pull us a little further, a little deeper. Stretches a little more than we’ve ever been stretched before and then watch him do what we didn’t think we could do. You know, and that’s really what it felt like for me every single step of the way. So I was asked to preached my first sermon and my first question to my pastor was, am I allowed? Because I just hadn’t seen much of that. My experience wasn’t that women did the teaching but man, I had a passion, I still have a passion for the Word of God and for making that known and, and playing and stirring that up in other people’s lives. And so I said, Yes. And then I said, Yes, again. And then I said, Yes. And then one day, he said, Will you be licensed as a pastor? And golly, I said yes.
Twanna Henderson: Talk about that. I mean, talk about that day and how that came about. And just, you know, and it really says a lot about your pastor.
Sarah Burtt: Yeah, yeah, it does and I think it was a journey for him, though, I won’t speak for him and a journey for the elder team at our church, and I won’t speak for them. So just for me, personally. We were, we have a partner church in the Dominican Republic and my pastor Derek is his name, we were both on that trip. On the flight back, we were seated next to one another, and he just asked, hey, would you consider praying about this? And I was pretty flabbergasted. And I said, Yes. And then commenced a long time for both me and the team of elders of just prayer and a lot of study honestly, Twanna because I hadn’t seen it. I really wanted to be sure that this was the Spirit’s leading and not my own pride or not some attempt to be culturally relevant, you know. And so a lot of study on both sides reading people who say women should absolutely never preach teach or you know, lead in any way and with people who, you know, all the way to the other side of yes, women can do all the things that a man could do. So a lot of time a lot of prayer, a lot of reading and studying. I feel like I know way too much about everybody’s arguments. It’s not always pretty out there. But yeah, so then just really got to a place where I felt like if God has gifted me, and if he has called me then I cannot resist the Holy Spirit’s work in my life, I must say, yes, wherever that goes.
Twanna Henderson: Yeah, yeah. Well, I’m so glad that you did. I know that saying yes has come with its own set of challenges if I can use that, you know, with your journey to being licensed as a pastor. Would you describe it as as smooth sailing? As a straight path or was it bumpy with some winding roads? You know, what has it looked like?
Sarah Burtt: Yeah, I wish it would have been more smooth. But it wasn’t it was pretty bumpy. So our our lead pastor was 100% on board and he proposed it to the elders and the elders weren’t ready. And so it took time, it was about three years of winding road between the moment he asked me and then the day that I was actually licensed. It was a long haul, a little rough, a lot of pushback. You know, when there’s controversial things that come up in a church, people are going to get upset, people are going to walk away and this is one of those big controversies in the church and for our church, in particular, having never had a woman licensed as a pastor before, though we’re part of the Converge conference where you are a paster. It just, it hasn’t been done yet where we are and so it was winding and it was bumpy and it was hard. For my confidence, you know, wrestling was some insecurity through that period of time, I felt like the enemy really came at me and made me question who I was in Christ. Both on that, like ministry front, but also with some, you know, tough personal things that came up in my life. It was, it was rough and it reminded me that when we say yes to God, when we say yes to the Holy Spirit, that does not mean he’s just going to clear the way and you get, you know, this, really cool, awesome rainbow and sunshine experience. It’s hard.
Twanna Henderson: And yeah, because I mean if he did that, then we wouldn’t, you know, we would probably be tempted to not lean on him as much as we need to lean on him, you know, but we find ourselves having to lean on him and look to him. You know, and I’m so glad he comes through all the time.
Sarah Burtt: Yes I know, right. Where would be?
Twanna Henderson: Absolutely. And I know, just for myself as a woman in ministry, you know, that there can be various challenges. What have you found to be particularly hard about being a woman in ministry? And you know, how does this impact your husband and your kids?
Sarah Burtt: Yeah, yeah, good questions. Some of the standard hard things about ministry are just, you know, it involves people. And people don’t operate on a nine to five schedule, right? And so, you know, for ministry, it’s Sunday through Saturday that, you know, people may need or call or those kinds of things. And again, being an introvert, the people part can be especially challenging. It drains me faster than maybe I want to, but also makes me lean on Jesus more like we’re just saying. And then particularly like, as a woman, and as the first woman, it’s just like a winding path. Like, I have a fantastic group of staff around me, the men on staff, the other pastors are all men. I mean, they’re amazing and fantastic and encouraging and they’re all for me, and they stand with me and all of those things, but they are men.
Twanna Henderson: Yeah, yeah.
Sarah Burtt: And men think like men, and especially in a man’s world, where things are, you know, always just been assumed or done a certain way, or it’s all the new things to navigate. It’s all of the new conversations to have with them. It’s for me learning to discern when do I say something about that’s probably maybe not the best way to handle that if we’re going to encourage women to step into leadership here, like, when do I speak up? When do I just ride it out? I’d say all of those kinds of things can be tricky to navigate and I’m probably in the best possible environment for that because again, I’ve got the support the encouragement of very godly men around me, but they will still say things a certain way that I’m like, oh.
Twanna Henderson: Yeah, yeah. Well their still men.
Sarah Burtt: Just, you know, like all the pastor’s wives and I’m like, well, this pastor as a husband, so what does that mean? You know, on my side. To answer your question about my husband and my kids, they’re very for me. I would not be here if it weren’t for my husband. He has been my biggest champion the whole way. He wants nothing more than to see me thrive in what God has called me to do and so he just loves it. Yeah. And he sings. He’s one of the worship leaders at our church. He sings and plays the piano. So there are Sundays when we’re both working, you know, on stage. He’s behind me, which is just interesting and I’m the one, you know, standing out front speaking and so I just I love him so much that he’s, he’s manly enough to be okay with his wife standing there and that’s amazing. And then my our kids are little and so they’re just along for the ride right now. They think it’s great. They love church. So I hope that stays.
Twanna Henderson: Yeah, I think that’s so important. I mean, when you, you know, the Lord has definitely put you in a great position to, like you said, to be surrounded by a godly team, and then to have the support of your husband, you know, which is huge. I mean, of course, whether you’re a man or a woman, you know, when your spouse is not on board, it just doesn’t work.
Sarah Burtt: Right.
Twanna Henderson: You can never just say, oh, this is their thing, or whatever, It just doesn’t work that way. It’s always a team effort, because it requires, you know, two people coming together and, you know, really believing what God has purposed. I know, really to be fully vested in ministry, it means, you know, you know, taking the good with the bad. Taking the ups with the downs, the highs with the lows. And you have to really love the church.
Sarah Burtt: Yeah. Yeah.
Twanna Henderson: Why does Sarah love the church?
Sarah Burtt: That’s a good question. Because to be honest, Twanna, there are times I wonder.
Twanna Henderson: I feel you.
Sarah Burtt: People are hard, because we’re all broken. And when I say people, I include myself and that’s a “we people”, we people are difficult and challenging. So I mentioned before how much I love the Word of God. And over the years, having, you know, read it, start to finish over and over and over again, and just being saturated, and with overwhelming truth of how God loves his people, and how much Jesus loves His church, and how that is his design, and is his intent for how the world will know who he is and what He has come to rescue us from. And so for that reason, that is like the anchor for my commitment that I will serve the church for the rest of my life and that you know, the role, the position, the title will probably change. But I can think of no better way to love the Lord with all my heart and to love other people with all my heart and to serve his church. And so if it weren’t for Jesus, I would not love the church because people are hard. But because of him, and because how much he loves us and has done for us. And so for me in my role and my passion of my gifting, that means that I will serve the church by making the, you know, Word of God, accessible for everyone, you know, whether that’s preaching, teaching, writing, researching, podcasting, whatever, form that takes. Let’s get the word out there right? Fill people with truth.
Twanna Henderson: Yeah. Yeah, that that is so important. So talk to us about how or really where you found the courage and the confidence for the work of ministry because you’ve got to have a lot of courage for ministry and you’ve got to have, you know, a God confidence, you know, for the work of ministry as well.
Sarah Burtt: Yeah. Well, it certainly does not come from within me. I know that to be certain. I had mentioned just, you know, reading the scriptures and seeing how much God loves his people. I have read through the Bible several times in the last couple of years and I had this realization at just a month or so ago, at the end of last year that how much that has built my confidence, because I’m reading over and over and over who my God is, and what he has done. And over and over and over seeing what he has done for his people. The language he uses for his people, the things he has done for his people and so that, again, the people includes me. And so I, you know, am his child and I am justified and I am called and I am sanctified, you know all of those things that I can stand on and so, Twanna, I really believe that the more time I spend in the word the more he builds my competence because I know who he is, and therefore I know who I am. And other than that, I don’t know how anyone does what they do without knowing those two, those two things, you know,
Yeah. Is there a scripture, sort of like a life scripture that that speaks to you? You know, that relates to your life and ministry?
That’s a good question. I’m not really like a life verse kind of person but I would say that at this moment in this season Ephesians 2:10, immediately comes to mind that, you know, Paul’s speaking to the church that we are His workmanship and that the Greek word there is Poiema. So it’s like this beautiful masterpiece, you know, artistically formed, and that we were created for good works that he prepared in advance for us to do. And so, the confidence in that verse of He has created, He has put together this masterpiece that He has planned for each of us to do his good work. I can stand on that one for a long time.
Yeah, yeah. That’s a good one. That’s a good one. What would you say to the young woman who is just coming into her ministry path and needs some guidance along the way?
Yeah. First things that come to mind are, read the Bible, read the Bible, read the Bible. Stay plugged into that, no matter what, you know, commit to that time, every single day, getting that word every single day. To me, that’s the biggest thing. And then the second thing is, some of us are dreamers. And we have a vision for where we’re going to be in five years, two years, 10 years, right. And we dream big. And we have, you know, we’re getting really excited about what potential is that God has for us, and others of us don’t have that dream. And we’re just like, unsure and we get insecure about who we are. We’re not sure the next step to take. I’d say, for both kinds of women, look for the next best yes. So if you’re a dreamer, and you’re five years down the road, fold that back and look for what God wants you to say yes to today. And if you if you get crazy thinking about what’s happening in the next year, and you just can’t even begin to dream that far. That’s all right. Just today, what’s God’s best yes, for you today. Because of he’s got a big lofty plan for you. He’s going to take you there one step at a time. He’s not just going to, like skip all the little steps, you know, in between. So I think that that would be that’s what I would love to go back and say to my 20 year old self.
Twanna Henderson: Your younger self?
Sarah Burtt: Yeah.
Twanna Henderson: Yeah. Because so often, we want to know all the steps, we want all the details to turns, you know, we want it we want it all. And it just doesn’t work that way. And I’m actually kind of glad it doesn’t.
Sarah Burtt: If we would have known some of the things.
Twanna Henderson: Oh, my goodness, we would be like, no, no, no, no, no! Well, you know, this has been so good. You know, we have women who are listening to us today. Some who are serving in leadership and ministry, some who desire to, and some who feel burned out by it. I want to ask you before we close, if you can just pray for all of our listeners, and encourage them in their ministry, leadership journey.
Sarah Burtt: Yeah, I’d so honored to thank you.
Twanna Henderson: Thank you.
Sarah Burtt: Jesus, I, I love that you are here with us. Wherever we sit wherever we are, whatever’s going on around us, could be chaos, it could be calm, but Jesus, you are here and you are present. And so Jesus, I pray that in the peace of your presence in the majesty of your presence, and the aw and the wonder and the hope of your presence, that you would fill up to overflowing every woman who is listening. That they would know who you are. And then they would know who they are in you. That they would know that you are their Creator, you’re the Good Shepherd, you’re the light that’s going to lead them. You’re every good thing that they could need, that you are enough for them. And that they would know that they are your child, that they are safe, that they are secure, and that nothing is ever going to separate them from your amazing presence. And so whether they’re burned out or just getting started or coming off an incredible victory or facing a giant in front of them, wherever they are, I pray that you would give them confidence as they look forward, that they keep their eyes on you to take whatever next step that they need to take. Whether that’s a hard no, whether that’s a oh, I’m not sure but I’m gonna say yes, because it’s hard. Whatever that next step is Jesus. I just pray that the power of your presence would give them confidence to take that step with you. And we are just so thankful. We give you all the glory, all the honor for everything that you are doing in the women who are here and listening. I thank you for Twanna and her ministry and how she is reaching and encouraging so many. I pray that you would bless her big too. In your precious name we say these things. Amen.
Twanna Henderson: Amen. Amen. Well, Sarah will be one of the breakout presenters at this year’s 2023 Unleash Conference, which actually starts on February the first. So if you are a woman in ministry, and will be in Orlando, please be sure to attend her breakout session. We would love to see you there. I know that it’ll be a blessing to you. And we would just love to hear your story as well. Well Sara, thank you again for sharing your journey with us. I know that it has encouraged so many and I’m just so excited about even the next that the Lord has in store for you.
Sarah Burtt: Well, thank you so much. Again, it’s an honor to be asked to be here Twanna, thank you.
Twanna Henderson: And to all of our listeners. Thank you for joining us today. I’m Twanna Henderson, be blessed of the Lord.
